Article: Take things slow with the person and work on repairing your relationship. You may not trust the person right away and you may have some doubts about whether or not you can continue to be friends or to date each other, and that’s perfectly normal. Take things slow and hang out in low-pressure situations while giving each other space to be alone, too. Don’t open up completely to the person and have less intense conversations until you feel comfortable sharing. This may not feel as great as your relationship used to be, but if you want to go back to how things were before you were hurt, then you’ll have to take baby steps to get there. So you’ve tried everything. You’ve given yourselves time apart. You’ve shared your feelings with the person who hurt you. You’ve shown compassion and have considered the situation from that person’s perspective. You’ve tried hanging out in low-pressure situations. But no matter what you do, you can’t stop thinking about how hurt you are, being angry with the person, and doubting that you’ll ever be able to fully trust him again. Though this is unpleasant, it’s perfectly natural, and if you can’t get over it, then it’s better to admit that than to be in denial about how you feel.  Sometimes the pain is so deep that you won’t be able to brush it aside and act like nothing happened. Now you have to decide – even though you can’t forget the pain, will you be able to find a way to deal with it that allows you to still spend time with the person who hurt you? Accept it if you can’t keep being with the person. Maybe the wound was so deep that being with the person feels like picking the scab all over again. If you really just can’t get over it, then there’s no point in forcing something that just isn’t there anymore. Make sure to have other things on your mind while you’re working on rebuilding your relationship. Spend more time running and training for that 10K next month. Work on finishing that short story you’ve been working on forever so you can submit it to a local contest. Enjoy your relationships with people who haven’t hurt you. Find something else that makes you really happy and that you can look forward to, and you’ll spend less time feeling the pain.  One day, you may look as see that hey, the pain is no longer there anymore. You might have thought that would never happen, right? Staying busy will keep you moving forward and having positive things to look forward to. If you give yourself too much time to wallow, you’ll only feel worse and will be less likely to forget what happened. Though staying busy and active will help you heal faster, you shouldn’t be so busy that you don’t have a second to breathe or think about what happened to you. Make sure you have time for “me time,” that you can write in a journal about your feelings, or that you can just take some time to turn off your computer, television, and phone and focus on just inhabiting your own mind and body. Being quiet with yourself can help you figure out how you really feel about the situation; the faster you know exactly what you think, the faster you can move forward. Plan a weekly or bi-weekly date with yourself when you have nothing to do but spend time with yourself. This will help you calm down, think, and get rid of those angry feelings. You may be so hurt that you want to get the person who hurt you back to make him or her feel the same pain that you felt. However, this will only make you feel more stressed out, angry, and bitter, and it won’t solve anything. If you really feel the need to seek vengeance, then know that the best revenge you can get is just to live a great, accomplished life, to be happy, and to not let what happened get to you in the end. This may not sound as sweet as slapping the person in the face or hurting him or her the same way they hurt you, but in the end, you’ll feel much better for being your best self instead of stooping down to that person’s level. Just live your life and enjoy being yourself and doing the things you love to do. If you spend all your time trying to make the person who hurt you feel terrible, then you’ll never be able to go on. Focus on the future and all that it holds for you – whether the person who hurt you is in it or not. If all you do is wallow in the past and think about all of the ways that you were wronged and that life hasn’t been fair for you, then you’ll never be able to forgive and forget. Instead, have gratitude for all of the people who do make your life great and all of the opportunities you have and think about all of the wonderful things that lie ahead.  Focus on the goals you want to meet in the future that will make your life even better. Make a plan for achieving them instead of thinking about all of the things that went wrong for you. Continue to work on yourself. Improve those things you want to work on and see how much better you feel as you become a more caring, compassionate, and well-rounded person. You have made a choice to forgive and forget, and you should be proud of yourself for doing that, even if it takes longer than you hoped to get there.
What is a summary of what this article is about?
Rebuild your trust. Accept it if you can’t forget the pain. Focus your energy somewhere else. Take time to reflect. Know that only positive revenge is worth it. Move forward instead of looking back.