The Meaning of “Someday You’ll Understand”

The phrase “someday you’ll understand” is an overused cliche that is normally used by egotistical assholes. When you tell someone “someday you’ll understand” you are assuming a position of authority over them making it seem like you know something they don’t.

The use of this phrase is not always offensive. Sometimes it is used by an elder or a teacher when they are unable to explain to a youth or student the way something works. Sometimes the best way for them to learn is through experience and time. When used in this manner it is not offensive, it just means they cannot explain it.

Unfortunately, the phrase is mostly used to offend or insult someone. It also gives people a little power trip when they assume a position of authority they neither earned nor deserve.

When someone uses this phrase to justify a decision they made or an action they performed, they don’t literally mean that someday you will understand. Chances are they probably don’t understand it themselves. The phrase “someday you’ll understand” can generally be translated to “good luck I hope it all works out.”

That’s essentially what they mean. They want to appear smart and be able to say “see I told you so — more ego for them. But in all honestly, they really don’t know what they are talking about, which is why they use the cliche.

Let’s say you’re in a relationship with someone and one day they leave for the oddest reason that you can’t understand at all. The only thing you are able to understand is that they were fake and probably never really committed to you but they leave you with, “Someday you’ll understand.”

And then someday comes along. You get over them, they move on, and you move on, and now you’re post justifying them leaving and saying you understand. You say you understand because you moved onto a new relationship that is “better” and you met the person of your “dreams”, and maybe they have too.

But most relationships start off like this and down the road they’ll encounter their own or maybe the same problems you encountered and they’ll leave that relationship saying, “Someday you’ll understand.” — and it happens all over again.

Whether or not they told you someday you’d understand is irrelevant. It is completely natural for you to meet someone else and share your happiness with them. Someone else will come along and fulfill their role, and someone else always will. There will always be things about them that isn’t quite right and things that are always much better, every person is unique. But this makes the cliche irrelevant and over dramatic. All the person is really saying is, “Hey I’m an egotistical asshole that thinks I know more than you, later chump.”

The most important thing is the understanding you left them with, not even the understanding, but how you made them feel that day — not some day down the road. First impressions are important but so are last impressions. Some day doesn’t matter and some day doesn’t always come — when you abandon someone without explanation you will never escape your fate, karma will catch up to you. The abandoned understand perfectly well what you are all about..

So a word of advice, save the Shakespeare dramatic endings for the fiction book you write. Not everything in real life has to be acted out like your favorite movie. Be real, you owe it to them — you owe it to yourself.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou