25 years ago, I graduated with my Master’s Degree. Yay me! I had accepted a job several states away and my husband (fiance at the time) were planning the move. His father and step-mother had invited us out to dinner. I had thought it was a congratulations/celebration of my graduation. It turned out to be a lecture on how we shouldn’t move and how my fiance (now husband) needed to stay and finish his degree. Now, school was not his thing and he struggled with it and he was not in school at the time anyway. He’s one of those that is actually very brilliant. He’s currently an IT executive at his company and has achieved great success even without a degree. He’s certainly has had more success in his career than I have. I definitely married the right man.
That lecture was 25 years ago, his father has since died, and it still sticks in my craw that these people couldn’t be happy for me in what was my greatest achievement at that time. I “got past” it and was perfectly nice and civil when we saw them but our relationship (at least on my side) was always tainted by that experience.
I’d be lying if I said there are things in the past that don’t still bother me; but I rarely think of them. Those people have nothing to do with my life, and spending any time thinking of them is a waste of mental energy. I wouldn’t mind them knowing I find them irrelevant, but it doesn’t matter if they do or not… because they’re irrelevant.
There were three bullies in Middle School that made my 7th grade experience a living hell. Now mind you, I haven’t seen any of them in 50+ years, but yeah, I still hold a grudge. And both Applebee’s and Alamo Rent-a-Car both made the mistake of stiffing me many years ago, and I still do not patronize either place 10-15 years later.
That’s funny. I was just thinking about this today. Several years ago, one of my co-workers told my boss that I was a racist. We had worked together about 10 years and she knew this was not true. But one of her subordinates had screwed up a project and she was trying to spin it that I somehow sabotaged it because I was a racist. My boss knew exactly what she was trying to do and told me so. I was pissed beyond words but just kept my distance and didn’t say anything to her.
After some time she started acting like nothing had ever happened (interestingly after the subordinate had been fired). She started being really friendly again. We have co-chaired a committee for the last three years and work well together. But that’s just on the surface. I will never, ever forgive her. Ever. And I sometimes think about what I will say to her the day I retire. Today was one of those days I was thinking about it.
That’s the only grudge I’ve got and I think it’s justified.
I’m north of 50, there are people from 35-40 years ago that I would gladly watch starve to death in a box while I ate pumpkin pie. And I despise all things pumpkin.
I do not hold grudges. That is a total waste of my time & energy.
However, I do believe in “Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me.”
If someone has caused me grief in the past, I will not let them have the opportunity to do so again. I do not consider this action to be a grudge, it is learning from previous mistakes.
Nah. I’m nice that way;) OTOH people generally treat me nice. I’m quiet and unassuming. I play it close to vest. Really, I’m kinda of chickenshit when it comes to social relationships. So I’m real careful. I have one really loudmouthed, boisterous friend who’s mad at a different person every 2 days. Or having some drama with her family. She’s a hot mess. She tells me I’m the only person ever, in her whole life that she could never be mad at. I don’t give her any ammo. I play safe.
Oh my, yes. My previous employer, a very bright engineer with Donald Trump’s personality and respect for others (particularly those who helped him get rich for ten years), tried to get out of paying my severance when he laid me off after ten years. Threats of siccing the Man on him got me what I was owed and a few grand extra for trying to steal from me on top of it, but I still regard him as one of the lowest lumps of whale blubber in the ocean depths. I hope his business burns to the ground; if he’s in it at the time, oh well.
I naturally do so quite readily, so I got to some lengths to prevent it unless the person deserves it and I will be in regular contact with them. But it has to be something really, really wrong, and not something petty.
I’ve tried, but I don’t. It takes too much mental and emotional energy for me to do so. Even my cheating ex-girflriend that I dated for a few years and I swore not to talk to ever again after discovering her dalliances, within about a half year or so it was just bridge under the water for me, and I chalked it up to being in our 20s, neither of us really knowing what we wanted, yadda yadda whatever, and I’m friends with her and still see her and her mom when I visit Budapest. I just suck at holding grudges.
I don’t hold grudges based on a single incident but there are a couple of people with enough of a pattern of incidents that I just don’t bother with them anymore.