Forgiveness Without Reconciliation

 

 

It’s the question that stops every man in his tracks.

I’ve heard it hundreds of times—in therapy sessions, in men’s groups, in quiet conversations after workshops. The words change, but the question doesn’t: Does healing mean I have to let my father back in and forgive him?  The answer is no.
And that “no” is one of the most freeing things a wounded son will ever hear.

Forgiveness

In thirty years of clinical work with boys and men carrying father wounds, I’ve watched the word “forgiveness” do more damage than almost anything else. Not because forgiveness is wrong—it’s essential. But because we’ve confused it with something it was never meant to be. Forgiveness is an inside job. It’s the decision to stop carrying the weight of what someone else did to you. It’s releasing the grip that resentment has on your nervous system, your relationships, your sleep. It is, at its core, an act of self-liberation.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is something else entirely. Reconciliation requires two people. It requires accountability, changed behavior, and earned trust. It requires the person who caused the harm to show up differently—not once, but consistently. And here’s what no one tells wounded sons: you are not obligated to provide that opportunity.

I work with boys whose fathers hit them. Boys whose fathers disappeared. Boys whose fathers sat in the same house for eighteen years and never once asked how they were doing. And I work with the men those boys become—men in their thirties, forties, fifties, still waiting for a phone call that will never come, still rehearsing conversations they’ll never have.  The therapeutic world often pushes reconciliation as the gold standard of healing. Family systems theory says repair the relationship. Religious traditions say honor thy father. Well-meaning friends say, “He’s still your dad.” And so wounded sons carry a double burden: the original wound, and the shame of not being able to fix it.  I tell my clients something different: Your healing does not require his participation.

Keeping it Real

Here’s what forgiveness actually looks like in practice with the men I work with. It doesn’t look like a Hallmark card. It doesn’t look like a tearful reunion. Most of the time, it looks like this:  A man sitting in a circle, saying out loud—maybe for the first time—what his father did. Or didn’t do. Naming it without minimizing it. Not “he did his best” or “it wasn’t that bad” or “other people had it worse.” Just the truth.  Then the harder part: letting the truth exist without needing his father to confirm it, apologize for it, or even acknowledge it.  That’s forgiveness. It’s the moment you stop needing the other person to change in order for you to be free.

Reconciliation may come later. For some men, it does. A father gets sober, or gets old, or gets honest, and a real relationship becomes possible—one built on truth rather than pretense. When that happens, it’s beautiful. I’ve watched it happen.  But I’ve also watched men destroy themselves trying to reconcile with fathers who haven’t changed, aren’t changing, and have no intention of changing. They go back again and again, hoping this Thanksgiving will be different, this phone call will be the one, this time he’ll finally see me. And each time the wound reopens a little wider.  The bravest thing a wounded son can do is forgive his father and protect himself from further harm. These are not contradictory acts. They are the same act, viewed from different angles.

If you’re reading this and you recognize yourself—the son still waiting, still hoping, still carrying it—I want you to hear this clearly:  You can love your father and grieve the father you needed. You can wish him well and choose not to be in the room with him. You can forgive what happened and refuse to pretend it didn’t. You can honor the relationship you wanted while accepting the one you got.  Forgiveness without reconciliation is not a failure. It’s a complete sentence.

 

Clayton J. Lessor, PhD, LPC, is the author of the upcoming new book The Father Wound: Healing the Hidden Injury Behind Your Son’s Struggle and the founder of The Quest Project, a clinical program that has served over 2,000 adolescent boys since 1996. He is a former White House Council appointee on Fatherhood and Mentoring and lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

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