The message is drummed into us from childhood: forgive people who've wronged you, because it's the right thing to do. Forgiveness is a virtue, we're told—the only way for us to truly move on and heal, freed from the baggage of bearing ill will.
However, I'm not buying it. Forgiving someone can indeed be a beautiful thing, but it's not always what's best for us. In fact, if someone has hurt you deeply and the relationship isn't healthy, trying to "fix" things can do more harm than good.
Most of us would probably agree that forgiving a wrongdoer means letting go of negative feelings—like anger and resentment—towards them, as if nothing happened. Actually this isn't helpful. It pressures us to minimize our feelings and revise our boundaries—to say "it's OK" when for us, it isn't. While it's not a good idea to focus on negative thoughts, recognizing and processing all of that pain is an important part of the healing journey. And when someone doesn't make us feel seen or safe, forgiving them can actually reduce our self-esteem.
A 2010 research paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that folks who forgave partners that didn't make them feel valued had less respect for themselves. Letting minor offences that happen now and again slide can be great for any relationship, but repeatedly forgiving bad behavior can encourage that person to keep hurting you.
At least, that's what 2011 research by psychology professor James McNulty argues. He found that when a partner was more likely to forgive those acts, the aggressor was more likely to keep committing them. McNulty suggests that this is because facing the consequences of their actions is what motivates people to change their ways, and being offered a clean slate can be a kind of pass to avoid making changes. So forgiving frequent and major offences, like verbal or physical abuse, can do more harm than good.
For me, this speaks to the core tension in the idea. Instead of looking to forgiveness like a magic medicine, we can focus on recognizing what happened and coming to terms with it, however that looks for us and without any sense of obligation towards our offender.
