Forgiving helps you to heal

Forgiveness sets your free. I would really like to move on to something a bit more romantic but, based on your letters, it just seems many persons are having issues with unforgiveness, and it's not just spousal unforgiveness, as I had initially set out to rectify.

Jamaica is too small a place for so much hurt, resentment and bitterness, so let's try getting rid of it. There is a really good book by John Nieder & Thomas Thompson, Forgive and Love Again, Healing Wounded Relationships, that I would recommend to my readers to further help with this matter.

Now, please understand that you benefit immensely when you choose to forgive, so does everyone around you. Whether you need to forgive others, or need to forgive yourself, doing so sets you free from the past and enables you to fulfil your true potential.

Forgiveness allows you to break free from limiting beliefs and attitudes. It frees up your mental and emotional energies so that you can apply them to creating a better life. Forgiveness also helps you to achieve even your most practical and immediate goals. If you have not forgiven, a part of your inner life energy is trapped in resentment, anger, pain or suffering of some kind.

This trapped energy will limit you. It's like driving with your foot on the brakes all the time. It slows you down, frustrates and makes it difficult to move forward.

The choices you make and the things you believe are possible will be influenced by the fact that you have not forgiven yourself or others.

Forgive yourself too

Learning to forgive yourself is vitally important too.

Hurting yourself, by refusing to forgive yourself, hurts others also. If you do not forgive yourself, you will punish yourself by denying yourself the good things in life. The more you deny yourself, the less you have to give.

The less you have to give, the less you can benefit those around you. When you stop limiting what you receive, you stop limiting what you can give. Everyone benefits when you forgive yourself, as you allow more good to flow into your life.

Is a forgiving person easier to be around than an unforgiving one? Yes, of course. A forgiving person is always much easier to be around than an unforgiving one. The quality of your life depends on the quality of your relationships.

Every aspect of your life will change for the better as soon as you learn to forgive - whether in your family, your work life or your social life.

When you forgive, you become a better husband or wife, a better lover and friend, and a better parent or child. As you learn to forgive, many problems (possibly even health problems) will gradually disappear, and even abilities which have been dormant within you will emerge.

You will also discover yourself to be a stronger and more capable person than you previously imagined.

So, maybe he or she never cheated, but you believe what they did was very hurtful, maybe even abusive words that cut very deep and are not easily forgotten.

We could certainly find a few more ways in which you have hurt each other, but is it worth holding on to, especially at your expense or the expense of lost intimacy and broken relationship? No!