Nah. We're not all dumb here in Ph.D. land. ;-)

Forgiveness is complex and most academic researchers I know would take issue with simplistic interpretations of it. It's true that some people with PhDs will write pop psych books that peddle simplistic forgiveness but they're mostly there because there's a big market in America for people with credentials telling everybody what they want to hear. That doesn't make them liars (though some probably are); it just means that a believer who writes a book that says "forgiveness is the cure!" will become a bestseller while a skeptic who says "wait no think this through!" won't.

My take is simply that there are shallow cuts and deep cuts. Shallow cuts are easily forgiven. A person whose history consists mostly of shallow cuts can believe the standard Western forgiveness script very easily. Deep cuts, however, force you to renegotiate what forgiveness means, and rethink the lines. I wouldn't deny somebody else that process.

Most cuts in my history have been shallow. Even ones other people would consider serious. So I have a reputation for being very patient and forgiving. I can only do that, though, because the rare few times that someone cuts me deeply, they are out quickly, and without chance of repair.