for me, it's not easy. you can gain my trust easy, but you can loose it just as easy. to put things bluntly, anyone that pisses me off by betraying me or tries to feed me shit looses the trust i gave them. and it's not cuz i'm cold, it's cuz i refuse to take shit from anyone after everything i've been through.

i'm tired of all the bullshit that people are trying to feed me. i'm going to throw it up all in their faces [:<

My ability to forgive is directly attached to the severity of the infraction and what it will mean over time. People are human and they screw up from time to time. I try and understand what it is or was that led them down the path to a situation and if I can understand it, I can usually forgive it. I'm not easy though. I'll take a position and just watch for a while to see how the person involved acts and reacts. That usually gives me an indication of what I will do.

My mother used to say; "Watch how people treat others and someday they will treat you in the same way." She was right even though I didn't fully understand what she meant back then. How many times in your life have you thought...oh, he/she would never do that to me and somewhere down the road they do exactly that. Forgiveness is a healthy attribute but it doesn't mean you should continue a relationship with that person. You can forgive and walk away, albeit with some sadness. People also outgrow one another and there is nothing you can do about that no matter what you feel. Letting go is difficult...all one can do is let go with love and forgiveness in your heart.

I don't believe in forgiveness. If someone betrays me I cannot wilfully waft away the reactive feelings I might have - it's a gradual fading of the memory. Active rationalisation is only the salad around the salmon.

I have a way of dealing with this. fool me once ok,I forgive fool me twice now you ahve to give me a soild reason to want to but fool me 3 times? Now I don't care what you say you are out like in baseball and nothing you can say will make you forgive you ever.

When you interact with someone there can be one of three outcomes: 1) They hold you up 2) They tear you down and 3) Neutral.

Basically I give everybody mental points when they do the first, and take some away when they do the second. The severity of the act effects the amount of points I give or take away. The higher their score, the more willing I am to trust and forgive that person. If their score gets too low, I'll cut them out of my life.

Note that I don't actually have numbers assigned to everybody :) it's more of a feel based thing. Like, sure I have a lot of fun with that person, but they also have a tendency to stab me in back from time to time... Does the joy derived from the fun outweigh the pain derived from the stabbings?

It all depends on the situation. This question is entirely too vague to even have an opinion on.