Can I forgive someone without trusting them again?

Yes. Forgiveness and trust are two different things, even though it's easy to mix them up.

Forgiveness is a decision about the past: choosing to release your own claim on revenge or bitterness toward someone who wronged you. Trust is about the future: a belief, built over time through someone's actions, that they won't hurt you again.

The Bible actually treats these as separate. When Jesus describes handling conflict, he includes real accountability—if someone won't listen or change, the relationship changes too (Matthew 18:15–17). Forgiveness doesn't erase that process or require you to pretend nothing happened.

You can genuinely forgive someone—let go of wanting to see them punished, stop replaying the hurt to fuel your anger—while still, wisely, not handing them the same access to your life they had before. That's not a lack of faith or a failure to forgive. It's simply being honest that trust has to be rebuilt through real change, not granted automatically because you've forgiven.