True friendship exists when human beings share a love of goodness and truth. Two friends alone, like two legs on a table, offer a wobbly situation at best. But two friends anchored to a third, spiritual center form a rock-solid foundation to support everything that comes: hardship, suffering, exaltation, love. True friendship between two human beings exists only when there is a third Friend present: call this third friend God, or simply the Sacred.
It is not "forgive and forget" as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but "forgive and go forward," building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.