The Divorce Whisperer 6: Forgiveness

Do you HAVE to forgive to move on?

When someone has hurt someone else, the aggrieved party is often told that they have to forgive the wrongdoer in order to move on. I call BS. Some people don’t deserve to be forgiven.

One of the things I’ve heard and read over and over from multiple sources (but, let me be clear, never from my therapist) is that in order to “move on,” you have to forgive the person who hurt you. I struggled with this at first. How could I forgive someone who had made my life (and the lives of my children) a living hell? How do you forgive the unforgivable? The very existence of the word “unforgivable” means there are some actions that just don’t deserve to be forgiven, right?

My wasband has written to me that he’s “sorry for the hurt he caused,” without going into details. This non-specific, generic phrase is just useless. We all know and have seen public apologies that are not really apologies - “I’m sorry you were hurt.” “I’m sorry you feel or felt that way.” “I’m sorry I got mad, but…” We know how ridiculous these phrases are - there is no ownership or acknowledgement of WHAT the perpetrator did, nor is there any effort to show they intend to “change their evil ways.”

In the Catholic Church (at least when I attended), you could go to Confession and tell the priest your sins and have them washed away from your soul. But in order to really be forgiven, you had to be specific about your transgressions and - most importantly - you had to promise to “sin no more.” In other words, you had to show that you intended to make the effort to NOT make the same mistake(s). If you went in, confessed your sins but in your heart knew you were going to do it again, it wasn’t a “true” Confession. And while the priest may have been fooled, God sure wasn’t.

A while back, I commented on an Instagram post saying I didn’t think we needed to forgive in order to move on. A very smart woman (@vegan_trucker_chick) posted this in response to my comment with these words of wisdom. I love what she said:

(Used with permission from the original author)

“Radical acceptance.” Word. Forgiveness as a “gift of love.” Right on.

What we DO need to do is forgive ourselves. For our mistakes - maybe for getting involved with this person in the first place; maybe for not leaving sooner; maybe for being too proud to listen to advice from people who love us; maybe for trying to live up to society’s expectations; for not wanting to be a “failure” (whatever that means); for not wanting to admit that other people were right; for any emotional damage we inflicted or allowed to be inflicted on our children (or others close to us). There is so much for which we need to forgive ourselves. That is where we need to focus our efforts; let the transgressor seek forgiveness elsewhere (or not). We must take care of ourselves and that means forgiving ourselves, not necessarily forgiving someone else.

The day that I learned to practice “radical acceptance” of the awfulness that was my marriage is the day I began to feel free. I am able to look back on my 30 plus years of life with wasband and just go “oh, yeah; that happened.” It’s almost like remembering a book I read or a movie I saw. There’s that tired saying: “It is what it is.” Well, in this case, it was what it was. Acknowledging that is enough. Accepting what happened is enough. Acceptances doesn’t equal saying that what happened was OK. You don’t have to like what happened. Just know it happened. Moving on with your life is the goal. Forgiveness is optional.

Musical interlude from the Dixie Chicks: