Not Everything Deserves Forgiveness

Midlife taught me the difference between peace, people-pleasing, and handing out emotional hall passes.

I used to think being quick to forgive made me emotionally evolved, mature, compassionate, strong.

Now though, I know a lot of it was me trying to keep the peace, avoid discomfort, and make everyone else feel okay again as fast as possible, because there’s a certain kind of pressure women get handed early in life that nobody really talks about honestly enough. We’re taught to smooth things over quickly. Be understanding. Be gracious. Be the bigger person. Don’t hold grudges. Don’t make things uncomfortable.

Otherwise? We risk being labeled bitter, dramatic, difficult, cold, selfish, hard.

Women are expected to absorb pain gracefully and then hand out absolution like participation trophies so everyone else can feel okay again.

Midlife has made me realize how much of that conditioning I internalized.

There are situations in my life now where I have consciously decided to not explicitly forgive someone. And for a long time, even writing that sentence would’ve made me deeply anxious because I thought forgiveness was the final destination of healing. Like if I haven’t forgiven and forgotten, I must still be broken, or spiritually stuck.

But I don’t actually believe that anymore.

I also think there’s a massive difference between forgiveness and acceptance, and women are rarely encouraged to separate the two.

I can accept that something happened without pretending it was okay. I can understand why someone became who they became without giving them unlimited access to me again. I can stop carrying active rage without offering emotional absolution like some kind of personal hall pass.

And forgiveness (if it ever comes) does not automatically mean reconciliation. Looking back, I definitely saw forgiveness as restoring the relationship to its previous form… as if full healing only really counted once trust was rebuilt, the tension disappeared, and everyone quietly returned to their old roles pretending the rupture never happened.

But those are separate decisions. I can forgive someone and still decide they no longer belong in the most intimate parts of my life. I can release the anger without re-entering the dynamic.

That distinction has completely changed my relationship with healing.

Some Stories Do Not Get a Redemption Arc

There are certain things that can permanently alter your trust. Some things change the way you move through the world. And I’m tired of pretending every painful experience needs to end with everybody tearfully self-aware and magically transformed into better people.

Sometimes the ending is simply: “That mattered. It hurt me. And things are different now.”

That’s it.

There’s actually a term therapists and psychologists sometimes use called “toxic forgiveness” which refers to forgiveness that’s forced, pressured, premature, or used to bypass real accountability, anger, grief, or boundaries. Psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula has spoken openly about how forgiveness can become emotional bypassing, especially when people are pressured to “move on” before they’ve fully worked through what happened or before trust has actually been rebuilt.

The first time I started reading about that concept, I felt weirdly seen. I was practically trained (though not intentionally by anyone) into this: make everybody comfortable again and tie my worth to how fast I was willing to just move on.

For much of my life, I forgave because:

• someone cried.

• I didn’t want family tension.

• everybody else wanted closure.

• I was exhausted.

• I didn’t want to carry the anger anymore.

• being “understanding” had become part of my identity.

And sometimes (this part stings a little) I forgave because I secretly thought endless compassion would finally make somebody love me properly.

I can see now how much of my own quick forgiveness came from discomfort intolerance. I wanted the tension over. I wanted everybody okay again. I wanted resolution more than I wanted honesty.

This hits especially hard when I think about parenting. One of my boys reminded me the other day about a time when he was maybe five years old and he and his brother were fighting over something completely ridiculous, which was basically the full-time occupation of small boys at that age… (and really, probably still is.)

I told him to apologize and he looked at me and said very calmly: “I’m not ready yet.”

I was straight up baffled! My instinct was to run the same script so many of us inherited: Say sorry now. Fix it now. End the conflict now.

But all these years later, his memory of it is completely different. He said, “I’m glad you didn’t make me do it.”

I realized something important: a forced apology means almost nothing if the person saying it hasn’t actually worked through what happened. And rushed forgiveness works exactly the same way. We pressure ourselves and each other to move on before we’ve even fully metabolized the pain. Discomfort makes everybody uneasy. Especially women’s discomfort. Especially women’s anger. But forgiveness on demand can feel more like emotional crowd control than real healing.

And look, before I go any further, I’m not anti-forgiveness. Some forgiveness has absolutely freed me. Some resentment was heavier than the original situation. Some pain genuinely softened over time once I stopped gripping it so tightly.

But the difference is that kind of forgiveness arrived naturally through my own process. It wasn’t forced out of me through guilt, pressure, family expectations, therapy buzzwords, or inspirational Instagram quotes floating over ocean sunsets.

It happened when I was ready. And that’s the part we gloss over: forgiveness only means something when it belongs to the person who was hurt. Not the person demanding it. Not the family system benefiting from it. Not the culture romanticizing women who endlessly absorb emotional damage with grace and wisdom and a fucking casserole!

I also finally understand that peace and forgiveness are not always the same thing. Sometimes peace comes from reconciliation. Sometimes peace comes from distance. Sometimes peace comes from accepting that a person will never fully understand the impact they had on you and deciding you no longer need them to. And sometimes peace comes from finally admitting: “No. That was not okay. And I don’t need to clean it up or make it meaningful to move forward.”

Before You Rush to “Move On”…

Or worse, convince yourself you’re healed once everyone else is more comfortable. These are the questions I ask myself now:

• Am I forgiving because I genuinely feel ready, or does everyone else just want this wrapped up?

• Has real accountability happened here?

• Do I feel safer now… or just pressured to move on?

• Am I confusing empathy with excusing behavior?

• Would I tell my daughter or best friend to tolerate this?

• Is forgiveness reconnecting me to peace… or reconnecting me to dysfunction?

• Am I trying to earn love by being endlessly understanding?

• Do I secretly believe boundaries make me mean?

• If I never got an apology, could I still create peace for myself?

• Am I forgiving because I’ve healed… or because conflict makes me deeply uncomfortable?

• Does forgiving this person require me to betray my own reality?

• If nobody expected forgiveness from me… would I still choose it?

The older I get, the more I believe this: Not everybody deserves forgiveness. Not every relationship deserves restoration. And not every wound needs to become a lesson wrapped in inspirational language for public consumption.

Sometimes the healthiest thing I can say is: “I understand what happened. I accept that it changed me. And no, you do not automatically get forgiveness just from enough time passing.”

And for me, some of the deepest peace I’ve found came after I stopped forcing myself to call something forgivable when it simply wasn’t.

#RealGirlsGuidetoMidlife #MidlifeForgiveness #MidlifePeoplePleaser

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Illustrations by Carrie Trimm Drew