Shania Twain may be willing to forgive her ex-husband, but she isn't forgetting anything. She opened up about her ex-husband Robert "Mutt" Lange cheating on her with her best friend Marie-Anne Thiébaud in 2008
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"Forgiveness is in the family of letting go," Twain said on the Great Company With Jamie Laing podcast on May 28. "But forgiveness, more specifically for me, anyway, is not about forgetting necessarily."
Twain said that she wanted to understand Lange and why he did what he did. The two were married for 15 years prior to the affair. They even had a son together. However, they ultimately separated in 2008 before divorcing two years later. "It's about understanding the other person, and that might mean that they're wrong," she added. "Maybe you believe forever that whatever they did was wrong."
In an ironic twist, Twain ended up marrying her friend's ex-husband Frédéric Thiébaud. Essentially, they traded spouses. The two married in 2011 and appear happy together. "Do I hate my ex-husband for making a mistake? No. It's his mistake. Not my mistake," Twain said on the podcast."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."
Shania Twain Moves On
She said that Lange had "problems." She said that he deserved some empathy. "It's not for him, not for, you know," she said. "So, it's very hard to hate or not be able to forgive somebody that you believe. He's a human being that deserves empathy and understanding. I think we all do."
It's not the first time that she spoke about her former marriage. In an interview with the New York Post in 2015, she said she mourned her marriage like one would a death.
"When that happened, I thought, 'Forget it, this is more than I can handle — I'm never going to sing again,' " she said. "I had to grieve through it." She doesn't speak to her former friend. "I don't see her, ever. I don't invite that trigger into my life ... She's not my future — she's my past."
Ultimately, Twain found love again.
"I'm so grateful I found the faith and courage to love again — because the last thing you want to do when you're crushed is love again," she explained. "When you have a great loss, you lose faith; you get very discouraged. I'm sure a lot of people say, 'I'm never going to love again. I never want to fall in love again.' Songs have been written about that. I'm really glad that that got turned around for me, and that's what this relationship is."
