The Forgiveness Cycle

The Forgiveness Cycle

This article presents a topic that I call the Forgiveness Cycle, which outlines a general process that can lead from transgression to forgiveness. One can interpret existing concepts about stages of forgiveness.

Originally published as: https://deliverystack.net/2025/11/18/the-forgiveness-cycle/

I recently wrote something about apologies that may provide some context for my perspectives regarding the Forgiveness Cycle:

To summarize, apologies and forgiveness are important for making progress as individuals and in relationships. A person who fails to apologize may neglect to change. A person that is unable to forgive often hurts themself as much or more than the person that they choose not to forgive.

My outline of the stages in a Forgiveness Cycle is as follows:

  1. Transgression: One person takes an action that breaks implicit or explicit expectations, boundaries, terms of agreement, or some other principle of another, possibly through accident, miscommunication, or misunderstanding. This transgression causes a reaction, such as emotional pain or physical consequences, which often violates person's sense of righteousness, triggering anger.

  2. Identification: The offended party informs the first party that they perceive a violation.

  3. Remediation: The offending party acknowledges the transgression. This can sometimes be enough, though an explanation, apology, and/or efforts to mitigate the impact of their action may be appropriate or even required for progress.

  4. Forgiveness: The offended party forgives the offending party and indicates their forgiveness.

People often get stuck at the first and second stages of the Forgiveness Cycle, where one person's transgression, or their identification of a transgression that the other person interprets as a transgression, results in further transgressions by either party. This can occur when the offended person fails to identify the transgression to the first person or when the offending party refuses to acknowledge their transgression. A key takeaway is that calm communication is critical for resolving transgressions. This is one reason that maintaining a sense of equanimity is critical to effective and efficient human development. Calm communications, apologies, and thanks are all generally free. Refusing to participate in such processes appear childish and prevents progress and improvement.

One explanation of the steps to true forgiveness describes four stages. These may all occur during towards the end of the Forgiveness Cycle, but may begin earlier.

  1. Uncovering: Exploring impacts of the transgression
  2. Deciding: Choosing to forgive
  3. Working: Making an effort to forgive.
  4. Deepening: Sensing forgiveness and its benefits.

There's a Wikipedia page about forgiveness: