Forgiveness is something you can choose to consciously do, but only if you're truly ready to forgive. Saying you forgive, but not really forgiving is not helpful.
But there is most definitely such a thing as true forgiveness, regardless of what you are forgiving.
My experience with forgiveness was extremely powerful and changed my life. I was at a point in a relationship where if I was to move on with the relationship, I was going to have to completely forgive the other person for past deeds. My choice (in my mind) was to either get out of the relationship completely (not something I really wanted to do) or forgive completely.
I chose the latter.
Forgiveness doesn't mean that you condone the acts you're forgiving. I think that's where people get messed up with this. You can know what was wrong, and still forgive. It doesn't mean you forget either. You simply take all the hurt and everything that happened, and crumple it up in a ball and let it go.
It's extremely freeing and it will change your life. You don't even need to tell the other person anything about the forgiveness because the fact of the matter is you will begin to treat them differently as a matter of course because you will no longer be thinking of or bringing up all the past misdeeds. You have forgiven them and you now have a clean slate to work with.
It's a really difficult thing to try to explain to people, but if you can really and truly forgive, you won't be sorry. Especially if there are very important people in your life who could use the forgiveness.
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