Shania Twain wants to make it clear that she has no hard feelings towards her ex-husband, but forgiveness doesn’t mean she will forget.
In 2010, Twain divorced Robert “Mutt” Lange after discovering his alleged affair with her former friend and personal assistant, Marie-Anne Thiébaud. Following the end of both marriages, Marie-Anne Thiébaud and Lange eventually tied the knot. Meanwhile, Marie-Anne’s ex-husband, Frédéric Thiébaud, and Twain grew close after the controversy and began a romantic relationship and eventually married in 2011.
On a recent episode of the Great Company with Jaime Laing podcast, Twain talked about her divorce and her thoughts on forgiveness. She explained that forgiving someone doesn’t mean forgetting what they did. Instead, it means understanding the other person’s actions, even if they were wrong.
“Forgiveness is in the family of letting go,” Twain said. But forgiveness, more specifically for me anyway, is not about forgetting necessarily. It’s about understanding the other person, and that might mean that they’re wrong … Maybe you believe forever that whatever they did was wrong.”
Given the circumstances, Twain said she doesn’t have hard feelings towards her now ex-husband.
“Do I hate my ex-husband for making a mistake? No. It’s his mistake. Not my mistake.”
“So sad for him that he made such a great mistake that he has to live with. And I don’t know what that is, but it’s not … That’s not my weight,” she added.
When talking about forgiveness, Twain also discussed her difficult childhood, mentioning the abusive household she grew up in, which led her to flee her home at the age of 13. She spoke about her late stepfather, Jerry Twain, saying, “My father’s a better example, okay, because this is someone that I totally forgive.”
“I understand that he wasn’t well, that you don’t act certain ways unless there’s something wrong with you,” she continued. “There’s something wrong with your stability. I feel bad that he had those problems. So, it’s not for him, not for, you know…So, it’s very hard to hate or not be able to forgive somebody that you believe.”
It’s been a long journey for Shania Twain to reach the mindset she holds today. During a 2023 appearance on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast, Twain reflected on her divorce, explaining that at the time, it was not easy to forgive.
“It wasn’t just, ‘Infidelity happens.’ That was not me. I spun around in that for quite a while. That was the hardest part to let go of really, the anger.”
“I was uncontrollably fragile over it, which I had never felt before ever because I thought for once I was stable. I really believed that I’m safe, so that really devastated me I think more than any other instability I’ve ever felt,” she shared.