We all have that one ex who was a terrible human being, the one that cheated, lied, broke promises, ghosted or hurt us in other ways. Kim Horne, a painter and decorator from London, is all too familiar with this, "My girlfriend—or fiancé at the time—cheated on me. I found out on her sister's wedding day and I found out it was with someone I knew."
Sometimes this sort of thing can, understandably, get stuck in our craw for a few months, a year, or maybe even five. But there comes a time when forgiveness seems like a better option than keying their car.
Forgiveness is hard to define. Sure, it's in the dictionary, but psychologists have written entire books on exactly what forgiveness is. Some say it's an emotion or internal attitude, others think it's an attitude that needs to be expressed outwardly, or even an action. Some think of it as a process, like Plato thought of love.
Professor Kathy Belicki, a psychologist who specializes in forgiveness, noticed that the unique act is hard to define. She and a colleague set about asking a lot of people what they all thought forgiveness was. "We found many, many, many different definitions—the point is that it is what people live it out as," she says.
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