Forgive and Forget?
The first Thanksgiving after my abuser’s suicide was brutal. It hadn’t even been two months since I received that phone call, and I had yet to regain my bearings despite the best efforts and advice of those around me. I was still trying to make sense of it all, hoping that if I could only understand why, I could move on.
Why did he do it? Why couldn’t he figure out how to solve the problems he got himself into? Why didn’t he love his daughter enough to spare her this pain?
Anyone who’s ever had a conversation with a preschooler knows, “Why?” is a never-ending rabbit hole, but one question disoriented me more than most: Why was I so devastated that he was gone? This was, after all, my abuser, my tormentor, and the source of tremendous pain to me for over two decades.
“Would you be interested in speaking to a medium so you can talk to him?” a well-meaning friend asked me. No, I replied, I have nothing to say to that [*beeeeeep*], I’m so mad at him.
So when a dear, dear aunt of mine listened to me patiently at Thanksgiving, and she counseled me that it would serve me well to forgive him for everything he’d done, I gave it some honest consideration. Should I forgive him for what he’s put me and our daughter through, if that will allow me to move forward from this agony? (Less well-received was when an older relative clapped his arm around me and said, “He’s gone, just get over it!” Grrrrr… Not helpful.)
I asked Erna what she thought at our next appointment: Would forgiving my ex help me to move forward from the unbearable pain I was in?
”Pssshhhht,” Erna scoffed. “Forgiveness has nothing to do with your ex.” What’s that?? “Forgiveness is you making peace with your creator or the universe that this is the situation you’re in, and knowing you can put your world back together. That is what makes it possible for you to move on.”
“Do whatever you need to do. Write it on paper and burn it to the gods or scream in the woods at the top of your lungs. Once you’ve made your peace, and you are in harmony with the universe again, then you can start to move forward. But forgive your ex? No, it’s not gonna help.”
I’d never heard someone speak so plainly and decisively against forgiveness. Not only is forgiving and forgetting unproductive when you have an abuser on the other side of the equation, it can be downright dangerous. To be clear: in healthy, non-abusive situations, forgiveness is a necessary and even wonderful thing that allows you to continue to have a relationship with the other person. But not in situations where there is abuse.
Why Forgiveness is Not Effective in Abusive Relationships
We may all have slightly different notions of what it means to forgive someone, so let’s start with a tried-and-true dictionary definition to level-set:
for·give
/fərˈɡiv/
verb
stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
“I don't think I'll ever forgive David for the way he treated her”
There are three parts of this definition we want to focus on: anger, resentment, and offense.
Anger is an emotion that we have some idea of how to approach. Anger is the Alarm Emotion that lets you know you’re experiencing an imbalance in your Wood element, and Wood has to do with power. When we are angry, that is a sign that we are not in our power, something is preventing us from setting our own goals and pursuing them.
When things go sideways in non-abusive relationships, we can regain our power by examining what went wrong. “I was working towards a goal and got derailed. How do I get back on track?” Once we understand how to realign with our partner so that we can continue to work towards our goals, our balance and power are restored, and our feelings of anger dissipate.
With an abuser, victims are kept off-kilter because their abuser makes it impossible for them to pursue their own goals. Abusers steal their victims’ attention in pretty nefarious ways, so although their goal is not specifically to strip their victims of power, the effect on a victim is the same: because their attention is bound to their abuser, the victim cannot move towards their own goals, and therefore they are unable to be in their power.
In fact, when someone has suffered abuse for an extended amount of time, not only do they completely lose sight of their goals, they sometimes forget that they have the ability to set goals of their own. The limitations on their own personal autonomy can even make them feel like they have to ask for permission to use the bathroom, à la Shawshank Redemption.
When your attention is bound to your abuser, you cannot be in your power, so it’s not possible to truly forgive. When you break the tether to your abuser, and you are able to regain your agency and power, then you can move forward.
Forgiveness can be a natural by-product or consequence of being back in one’s power, but you must move on before it is even possible to entertain forgiving the abuser.
Feeling resentful, on the other hand, hasn’t got to do with the Alarm Emotion of Anger; rather, resentment is related to Pain, the Alarm Emotion that signals a Fire (love) imbalance. When you feel resentful, the sentiment you experience is, “Somebody I love hurt me,” which doesn’t make sense. The emotional disorientation you feel is like being knocked around in the surf underwater: how could someone I love hurt me?
Regaining your footing after being hurt by the person you love is no easy feat. To make sense of what happened, oftentimes we tell ourselves, “They didn’t mean to hurt me.” In non-abusive relationships, we accept that people are flawed, and everyone makes mistakes. When we understand that our partner didn’t intend to hurt us, it’s possible to let go of any resentment and move on.
But when our partner has committed an offense which was done with intent, this is when we end up in abusive territory, and feelings of resentment remain.
The Problem with Forgiving Abusers
When well-meaning people (such as my aunt) counsel us to forgive our abusers, they assume that, by doing so, we will be released from the pain that our abuser inflicted. But forgiveness isn’t a life hack, a tool we can deploy to get ourselves out of feeling an emotion we don’t want to feel; nor is forgiveness something you can just will into existence. Rather, forgiveness is a by-product of being balanced, of being in our power (Wood) and knowing we are worthy of being loved (Fire).
Forgiving our abuser is touted as a tool that can be used to put the injury behind us, conveniently overlooking the fact that injuries have to heal. And what are we expected to do to “find” forgiveness in our hearts? Usually to empathize with the abuser: understand and justify that the abuser behaved in such a horrible manner because of their own history. The problem is that this process of empathizing takes our attention and places it back on the abuser, which is fundamentally disempowering because we’re not focused on achieving our own goals.
For example, say you have a physically abusive father who you grew up watching hit your mother. You dig into his history and find his wound and emotional injury: growing up with an alcoholic mother and abusive father. You think, okay, that made him into the person he is; he is a good person, he just has a very misguided way of expressing his pain, reflected by the way he treats my mother and me.
This line of thinking does not actually help you get away from your abuser or to prevent future abuse. This does not put your focus on you and your goals because your attention is still held captive by the abuser. To get away from the abuser, you need to take your mental focus away from them and place it squarely on yourself. Sometimes that means turning away from the abuser so they cannot demand your attention; other times it’s to stop being afraid of how they might punish you. Only then can you focus on your own goals and how you will achieve them.
An abuser can even use the social framework that it is a person’s moral obligation to turn the other cheek as a free pass to continue their abusive behavior. The expectation that a person who has suffered abuse ought to forgive their abuser puts the onus to restore harmony in the relationship on the person who has been injured. This is awfully convenient for the abuser if the rules demand that the injured person must always forgive the person who hurt them.
Never Forget
Forgetting about the abuse is another way of leaving victims vulnerable to future abuse in two ways. First, if you don’t remember the circumstances of the abuse, what led to it, and what the results were, you won’t be able to spot the signs of impending abuse in the future and avoid other abusive people and situations. We cannot learn if we do not remember.
Second, if a victim “forgets” the abuse, the abuser is exculpated. If forgiveness is required, at least there is some acknowledgement of wrongdoing; but by “forgetting,” any abuse suffered is rendered null and void, as if it never happened. “I have no idea about this ‘pain’ you are complaining of. What abuse? Oh, that doesn’t count, it’s been forgotten.”
Being told to “just let it go” is equally as disempowering as the original abuse. You’re hurt and angry – and rightfully so! – but you’re being told that you don’t have the right to be hurt or angry, that the offense was so trivial that it can easily be dismissed and forgotten. This is the equivalent of giving the abuser license to repeat their behavior because how you feel as the victim doesn’t matter: your anger and pain count for so little that whatever caused it can easily be forgotten. Imagine going to a doctor with physical pain and being told to “just let it go”!
If we ignore the injury inflicted by abusers, not only do we give them power by letting them off the hook, we signal to the victim and every observer that this behavior is acceptable, so either they can do it to someone else, or if someone does it to them, they shouldn’t expect to be treated with compassion or for their injury to be acknowledged.
How can someone find their power, their purpose in life, if the overriding message around them is that how they feel matters so little that it can – and should! – be forgotten? People stop asking for help because they’ve learned that none is forthcoming, that they’re on their own. Such treatment causes alienation, community and societal disconnect, because you cannot participate in a community if no one has compassion for you.
Forgiveness after Abuse
True forgiveness is the result of emerging from the down-trodden state of abuse, and coming out of the other side as a survivor who has value and self-worth and the ability to exercise their will. You open up to the universe having dusted away all the terrible lies that the abuser has told you: “You’re not worthy of having your own goals, you don’t have the power to achieve what you want, and nobody loves you, certainly not enough to help you.”
After these lies have fallen away, as the Navajos say, then you can walk in beauty in the world that surrounds you.
