The myth that forgiveness requires understanding the offender

"You need to understand them before you can forgive them."

I've heard this lie whispered in therapy offices, shouted from pulpits, and printed in self-help books with glossy covers. It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? So mature. So evolved. Like forgiveness is some intellectual puzzle you need to solve before your heart can be free.

Bullshit.

Here's the thing - I spent years trying to understand someone who hurt me. I read books about childhood trauma. I mapped their family history. I traced their patterns back to their own wounds. I became an amateur detective of their pain. And you know what happened? I got smarter about their suffering. But I stayed just as trapped in my own.

The myth that forgiveness requires understanding the offender is one of the most insidious traps in the healing world. It sounds noble. It sounds like the high road. But it's actually a cage disguised as wisdom. Let me show you why.

The Trap of the "Why"

When someone hurts you badly, your brain does something natural. It asks "why?" Why did they do this? Why me? Why didn't they stop? Why didn't they care?

This question feels urgent. It feels like the key to the lock. If you can just understand why, you think, then maybe you can make peace with what happened. Maybe you can find the thread that, once pulled, unravels the whole knot of pain.

But here's what nobody tells you: the "why" is a bottomless well. You can keep digging forever and never hit the bottom. Because human cruelty, neglect, betrayal - these things don't have tidy explanations. They're not math problems. They're not puzzles with solutions.

I've sat with people who spent decades trying to understand their abusive parent. They read every psychology book they could find. They interviewed relatives. They pieced together timelines. And they still couldn't find the singular cause that would make the pain make sense. Because there isn't one.

Does that land? The search for understanding can become its own form of avoidance. As long as you're still looking for the "why," you don't have to feel the "what." You don't have to sit with the raw truth that someone hurt you. That it wasn't fair. That it wasn't your fault. That it just - happened.

Understanding Doesn't Equal Healing

Let me be really clear about something. Understanding someone's trauma history, their childhood wounds, their own pain - this can be valuable. It can help you see them as human rather than monster. It can soften the edges of your rage.

But understanding is not forgiveness. And understanding is not healing.

I've known people who could give you a PhD-level analysis of why their partner cheated. They understood the childhood neglect, the fear of intimacy, the patterns of self-sabotage. They could explain it all perfectly. And they were still drowning in resentment. Still waking up at 3 AM with their jaw clenched. Still unable to look at their partner without feeling sick.

Understanding gave them a story. But it didn't give them freedom.

There's a book that helped me see this more clearly than anything else. It's called The Deepest Well by Nadine Burke Harris (paid link). It's about how trauma affects the body - not just the mind. And one thing it made crystal clear to me is that your body doesn't care about understanding. Your body cares about safety. Your body cares about release. Your body doesn't need a coherent narrative about why someone hurt you. It needs to know that the threat is over. That you're safe now. That you can let go.

Understanding is a cognitive process. Forgiveness is a somatic one. They happen in completely different parts of you. And confusing one for the other is like trying to eat a menu instead of the meal.

The Pressure to Be the "Bigger Person"

There's another layer to this myth that I want to name. The pressure to understand the offender is often wrapped up in spiritual or moral expectations. You're supposed to be compassionate. You're supposed to see their humanity. You're supposed to rise above your own pain and extend grace.

And look - I'm not against compassion. I'm not against seeing someone's humanity. But when that pressure comes before you've actually processed your own hurt, it's not compassion. It's bypassing. It's spiritual armor against the messy, ugly, necessary work of feeling your feelings.

I remember someone telling me, years ago, that I needed to understand why my father was the way he was. That if I could just see his own childhood wounds, I'd be able to forgive him. So I tried. I really tried. I imagined him as a scared little boy. I imagined the pain he carried. I felt sorry for him.

And you know what happened? I bypassed my own anger. I skipped over my own grief. I pretended to be more evolved than I actually was. And the resentment didn't go away. It just went underground. It came out sideways - in my relationships, in my body, in the way I held myself tight and small.

True forgiveness doesn't require you to understand the person who hurt you. It requires you to feel the full weight of what they did. To let yourself be angry. To let yourself grieve. To let yourself want justice, even if you never get it.

Only then can you choose to let go. Not because you understand them. But because you've honored yourself enough to stop carrying their weight.

What Actually Works

So if understanding isn't the path, what is? I'm glad you asked. Because there is a way through this. It's just not the way we've been sold.

First, you have to stop trying to understand them and start feeling yourself. Where does the hurt live in your body? Is it in your chest? Your throat? Your stomach? Can you sit with it without trying to fix it or explain it away? Can you just let it be there?

Second, you have to stop waiting for them to change. This is huge. So many of us stay stuck because we're still hoping the offender will finally see what they did. That they'll apologize. That they'll understand. That they'll become the person we needed them to be.

But they won't. Not always. And waiting for them to change is just another way of staying trapped in the story.

There's a book that helped me understand this piece so deeply. It's called It Didn't Start with You by Mark Wolynn (paid link). It talks about how the patterns of pain in our families get passed down through generations - not just through behavior, but through our very biology. And one of the most liberating things I took from it was this: you don't have to understand the whole chain of trauma to break it. You just have to feel what's yours to feel. Right here. Right now.

Third, you have to forgive yourself for still being hurt. This is the one nobody talks about. We judge ourselves for not being over it yet. We think we should have moved on by now. We think understanding them would have unlocked forgiveness by now. And that self-judgment keeps us stuck more than anything else.

What if you just let yourself be exactly where you are? What if you said, "I'm still hurt. I don't understand them. And that's okay"? What if forgiveness wasn't something you had to earn by being evolved enough, but something you could simply choose when you were ready?

The Real Work of Forgiveness

Here's what I've learned after years of sitting with my own pain and the pain of others. Forgiveness is not about them. It never was. It's about you.

It's about you deciding that you don't want to carry their weight anymore. It's about you choosing to put down the rock of resentment, not because they deserve your mercy, but because you deserve your freedom.

Understanding them might help you get there. It might not. Sometimes understanding makes it harder, because you see their pain and you feel guilty for being angry. Sometimes understanding makes you more trapped, because now you're carrying their story on top of your own.

The people I've seen truly forgive - I mean really, deeply, let it go - they didn't all understand the person who hurt them. Some of them still don't. But they did something more important. They felt everything they needed to feel. They grieved. They raged. They wept. They let themselves be the messy, un-evolved, not-bigger-person that they actually were in that moment.

And then, when they were empty enough, they chose to let go.

Not because they understood. But because they were done.

I want to recommend another book here, because it spoke directly to this. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown (paid link) is about vulnerability and shame, but it's also about what it takes to really show up in your life. And one thing Brene says that I've never forgotten is that you can't numb the hard feelings without numbing the good ones too. When you try to bypass your anger by understanding the offender, you're numbing. You're skipping the hard part. And you're robbing yourself of the full, messy, alive experience of being human.

Let yourself be human. Let yourself not understand. Let yourself be small and petty and angry. Let yourself want them to suffer. Let yourself want revenge. Let yourself be the worst version of yourself in your own head.

Because when you let yourself go there - when you stop pretending to be evolved - that's when the real work can begin. That's when forgiveness becomes possible. Not as a spiritual ideal. But as a practical choice. A choice you make for yourself, not for them.

What Forgiveness Actually Is

I want to be really clear about what I'm saying. I'm not saying forgiveness is bad. I'm not saying you shouldn't try to understand people. I'm saying the myth that understanding is a prerequisite for forgiveness is a lie that keeps people stuck for years, sometimes decades.

Forgiveness is not understanding. Forgiveness is not condoning. Forgiveness is not saying what they did was okay. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. Forgiveness is not even about them.

Forgiveness is you looking at the weight you're carrying and deciding you've carried it long enough.

It's you saying, "I don't know why you did what you did. I don't know if I'll ever understand. But I know that holding this is killing me. And I choose to put it down."

That's it. That's the whole thing.

You don't need to understand their trauma. You don't need to feel compassion for them. You don't need to be the bigger person. You just need to be done carrying what isn't yours to carry.

The last book I want to mention is one that changed everything for me. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (paid link) is about how trauma lives in the body. And it taught me something essential: your body doesn't speak the language of understanding. It speaks the language of sensation. Of release. Of completion. You can understand someone perfectly and still have your body locked in fight-or-flight. You can have all the insight in the world and still wake up with your fists clenched.

Healing happens when your body knows it's safe. Not when your mind has a satisfying explanation.

So stop trying to understand them. Start trying to feel yourself. Start trying to let your body know that the danger is over. That you're here. That you're safe. That you can put down the armor now.

One Last Thing

I know this might be uncomfortable to hear. I know the myth of understanding-as-forgiveness is deeply embedded in our culture. I know it feels risky to let go of the search for why. Like if you stop looking, you'll never find peace.

But here's what I've seen, over and over again. The people who stop looking for why - the ones who stop trying to understand the offender and start feeling their own pain - they're the ones who actually find peace. Not because they figured it out. But because they stopped needing to.

They let themselves be angry. They let themselves be sad. They let themselves be broken. And somewhere in that mess, they found something better than understanding. They found themselves.

You don't need to understand them to forgive them. You just need to be ready to let yourself go free.

And you are. Right now. You always were.