The player who retaliates gets the foul call!
Learning to accept injustice and externally-imposed suffering is hard, but necessarily to grow spiritually.
The highest, the most saintly form of forgiveness is bestowed silently, and immediately. Directly in the wake of the insult or injury in question. We all must try to get to that plane of equanimity. Fair warning—those being forgiven in this way will almost always fail to perceive that they’ve done anything wrong or requiring forgiveness. So consider only allowing your subsequent behavior toward them to be the subtle signal that they’ve been forgiven. Telling them, “I forgive you”, can be a little too “on the nose”, prompting resentment. And confusion, too, particularly because they are neither asking for pardon nor feeling any real remorse.
Denial being, as they say, not just a river in Egypt.