You Are Not Required to Forgive The People Who Wronged You

And you shouldn’t feel guilty for it either.

We live in a society that emphasizes forgiveness. We hear a lot of overtures about forgiving those who have wronged us as a means of feeling better about ourselves. Turning the other cheek is considered Christlike.

I say to hell with that.

We are not required to forgive people who have wronged us. Many people live with abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, and just straight-up awful people. It takes a lot of strength to escape that kind of situation. Lots of people live like that for years, decades even.

Being told that we must forgive the person who destroyed our happiness, our joy, our sense of self, feels awful. I’ve known people who lived in physically, sexually, emotionally, and mentally abusive situations for most of their lives. Only when they got out did they realize how truly disgusting and sub-human their perpetrators were.

Being told that you must forgive the person that is the cause of years of depression and anxiety, thousands of dollars of therapy bills, and a lifetime of traumatic reactions that you will carry with you forever? That’s hard to swallow.

For a decade, I participated in my family while feeling like I didn’t fit. Any suggestion to that effect was brushed off.

My father, meanwhile, did a lot of very minor things that got under my skin. When we were looking at houses, he steered me away from the neighborhood we wanted to the neighborhood he wanted. He mocked my choice in music and hobbies, all under the guise of friendly ribbing.

He never cared for learning about me as a person. He celebrated my job, working for a charity, as though it was a feather in his illustrious cap. He bragged about me all the time to his buddies, how awesome his son was for dedicating his life to charity. All the while, he didn’t seem to give a crap about the rest of the things that made me, me.

He slowly froze my then-fiance out of family events. It was fairly clear early on that he didn’t like her, but he continually lied about it, insisting that he did. When we were planning our wedding, he wouldn’t include my wife when he made suggestions. Instead, he told me directly and all but finalized the decision without her.

When I wrote and sent a thought-out email detailing my frustrations, he counterpunched hard. Instead of addressing my concerns, he attacked my friends, my partner, her family, everything I loved in life.

In email after email, he tore down everything in my life that I cared about. He seemed to make up things about the other people in my life, insisting that they were bad and didn’t really care about me. All the while, he would extend a velvet glove, insisting that all would be forgiven if I just came back.

I recognize this now as gaslighting and abusive behavior. Amazingly, I haven’t talked to him in nearly three years and I only realized it in the past week.

My therapist asked me at one point if I ever wanted to see him again, and I struggled for a good minute before admitting that no, I didn’t. She nodded and said, “that’s okay.” It felt like a weight was lifted.

You mean it’s okay that I don’t want my father in my life? There’s nothing wrong with that? I’m not wrong or bad for feeling that way?

That was a few months ago, and I’m still processing that thought. I’ve been so angry at him for tearing down everything I loved over the course of a six-month fallout, but I thought I had to forgive him and go back eventually. Being told I have a choice felt amazing.

I’d dealt with the passive-aggressive crap from him for quite a while, but I kept going back. I rationalized that he was my father and he loved me, so it was okay to let it happen.

In retrospect, my opening email that launched six months of bickering and emails filled with emotional garbage was a last-ditch effort to get him to back off. I had been miserable for a while seeing him weekly for father-son dinner, and I got to the point where something had to change. I didn’t expect him to go full-on emotional abuse.

Looking back at our past relationship, he was like that a lot. Subtly (or bluntly) putting down those he didn’t like. Emphasizing that family was everything and nobody will love you like family. Insisting that I come to every family gathering, then saying I was always welcome to do something else if I wanted, I just misunderstood him.

I don’t think of my father as abusive. He helped me survive high school in a very literal way. But after years of this kind of stuff, I don’t ever want to go back.

I don’t hate my father. I just can’t forgive him for all the stuff he said and did.

And I don’t have to.

We are told that forgiving the people who wronged us is the first step in feeling better about ourselves. I can think of numerous people for whom forgiving their abusers would feel like a betrayal of themselves. Saying “all is forgiven” would be a crime against their own soul.

Some of us will carry the trauma that was perpetrated upon us forever. For some, forgiving the perpetrator is a positive step. It feels like releasing a burden that they’ve held onto for years.

For others, it feels very invalidating. For them, forgiveness is a blanket statement of “you wronged me, but that’s okay,” when it’s not okay. It feels like letting them get away with all the crappy things they’ve done with a slap on the wrist.

I’m not here to tell you not to forgive those who have wronged you. If that makes you feel better, do it. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to if you don’t want to. It doesn’t make you a bad person to not forgive those who have wronged you.

Ultimately, you have to do what’s best for you. If that means holding a grudge until one of you dies, then you do you. If it means giving yourself permission to hate someone that was supposed to love you, do it.

Trauma is hard to live with, and everyone deals with it in different ways. Forgiveness is not the only way, nor is it always the best way. Please don’t force it on others. Otherwise, you may find that you will be the one who needs forgiveness.