People often refuse to forgive because they believe withholding forgiveness protects them and others. The conversation challenges this directly: if you exile someone but don’t put them behind bars, they simply go cause the same harm elsewhere — you haven’t actually protected anyone, you’ve only held “a false idea of not forgiving so that we can think we’re protecting something we’re not actually protecting.”
The more radical claim is that the opposite move — forgiving while holding firm boundaries and staying, where possible, in relationship — can actually change the other person. Seeing someone’s inherent goodness while refusing their behavior invites them into a different reality than cutting them off does.
“I’m going to forgive you. I see your goodness… I’m not going to make you bad. That is inviting the perpetrator into a different reality.”
The boundary is not optional to this; it’s the precondition. The dynamic cannot change without it. As Tara puts it, “it will not change if you do not have boundaries.” You can’t do the forgiveness work in order to change them — that’s manipulation — but when the work is genuinely for your own open heart, the other person is, more often than not, changed by it anyway.
“If we do the forgiveness thing, hold our hearts to this openness and invite someone else into a different reality… that is potentially inviting them into a different reality than if we just cut them off.”
Related Concepts
- Strong boundaries are an act of compassion to self and other
- Blame and resentment stand in for a boundary you haven’t set
- Making someone wrong prevents healing
- Forgiveness is an act of self-care, not a duty to others
- Forgiveness is a three-step process of heart, head, and gut
- Heartbreak is the mechanism of healthy boundaries