While forgiveness is both important and necessary for a healthy marriage, it’s not as simple as this expression implies. Forgiveness is a process and cannot be rushed. In addition, it may not be possible or even desirable to “forget” an incident that requires forgiveness.

Depending on how emotionally damaging the event is, “forgetting” about it may be too big of an ask. The best that might be hoped for is to move through it and eventually have it become part of the past. But specific steps need to be taken for that to happen.

First, real accountability for the harmful event must happen. This requires both a clean and specific apology. This means acknowledging the particular action or actions that caused the hurt without any explanation or justification for why it happened.

Second, real behavior change regarding the damaging behavior must occur and be sustained. This part is what makes moving past the harmful event possible.

“Forgetting” about behavior that did harm opens the door for it to happen again. You both need to remember enough of what happened to protect your marriage from similar behavior in the future.

When these steps are followed and real healing and forgiveness have occurred, the incident can then really become part of the past. And that’s why the process can’t happen too quickly.