I really don’t hold a grudge. I’m completely forgiving when someone hurts my feelings or treats me badly or whatever. I never forget the transgression, but I can forgive it.
As an example, my friend was murdered in the summer, for no reason - was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. While I’m certainly not going to invite the man who did it into my home, and I hope he goes to prison for a long time, I don’t hate him and I don’t wish any ill will on him.
I can’t decide if this is a good trait or a bad trait, but it’s mine and I have to live with it, so there you go.
It’s pretty rare but when it happens it’s like trophy caliber. I reckon it’s a bit like what Omega Glory expressed; people are suppossed to treat others a certain way and if due to a serious character flaw they don’t, well, I don’t think much of that. I still hope they’ll redeem themselves at some point and will give them every opportunity but if it doesn’t happen I don’t have much use for them. Furthermore, my memory seems very keen in that regard. Wish it wasn’t so much sometimes but there it is.
I can only think of two people I’ve just completely written off and harbor ill feelings toward. Granted, there’s a couple still on the fence but over the course of decades that’s just something that’s going to happen.
I’ve got two people whose asses I would kick if I ever saw them again; they made my life that bad. However, they really don’t take up space in my head unless I actively decide to relive how shitty it was. I just hope I never do run into them.
I don’t hold grudges. It’s not a decision, it’s just the way I am. And I consider it one of my healthiest/most adaptive traits. I’ve never listened to someone carrying a long-term grudge and said “now *that * person is well-adjusted.” Obviously it’s different if we’re talking about the victim of a serious crime or serious abuse. But the day to day stuff needs to be let go at some point - the sooner the better, IMHO.
There’s no logical reason why you have to carry a grudge to react appropriately to somebody who’s hurt you. I get angry, and have a temper, just like anyone else - more than enough to keep me from being pushed around. And just because I don’t seethe for weeks and months doesn’t mean I don’t learn what people are like, or can’t extricate myself from destructive relationships.
I can hold a grudge for a really long time, but I think how it is for me and most other people is that eventually it doesn’t become a grudge so much as a general apathy towards the person. I don’t actively hate them, but it becomes a passive, not give a shit about the person one way or the other if I don’t have to interact with them.
Wow, man. Grudges are something I’m an expert on. It is possible to make me forgive you, but the process is excruciating, and most people who have incurred my wrath are the sort of people who can’t stand up to it…so my grudges go on forever. I find it to be a character flaw in me. It takes a lot of energy to hold a grudge, but I can’t help it. I wish I could just get on with the forgiving of people easily, but I can’t help but feel that it’s giving them a pass or reward for bad behavior. You’re in luck, I’ve come with an example:
I hired a longtime friend of mine to do a job at an after hours party for a place I worked at the time. I had worked at this place for many years and had become management by this time, so everyone knew who I was. Well, she did the job, but proceeded to get drunk and sloppy and offend a few of the people at the party. This, I could have forgiven because I knew what kind of person she was…a drunk and a slut, so it wasn’t exactly outside the realm of possibility that this might happen, and the environment the party was being held in wasn’t exactly a Republican National Convention anyway.
The thing that lit my fire was this: After the party was over, she decided to take her boyfriend behind a “structure” out there and blow him. She was caught by a couple of people doing wandering security…one of whom happened to by my boss’ boss. This, I also could have gotten around…what I couldn’t forgive was the fact that she then lipped off to said boss and became extreemely belligerent to the point where she was escorted off lot. I heard about it first thing the next morning…from the boss who dealt with it and knew I’d hired her to work this function. I apologized, said it would never happen again, left the office and called her to ask what the hell she thought she was doing. I lit her up pretty good. I was pissed that she’d messed with my delicate reputation that way. You know what? She wouldn’t apologize. She told me to get over it. :eek:
I. Lost. My. Mind.
I kicked her out of my life that second, and made it clear to our mutual friends that if she knew what was good for her, she’d get gone and never show up again.
Cut to five years later…just last year. She had the nerve to write me an email about how I should let it go, we were such good friends, blah, blah, blah.
She still wouldn’t apologize or even be a little contrite. I never answered it, and I never will as long as she’s under the impression that she didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe someday when she realizes that she has no more reasonable, normal people in her life, she’ll wonder why and think to herself, “Oh yeah. I was a self absorbed drunkard of a cunt. It’s no wonder.”
I can hold a grudge. With violence and extreme prejudice.
Nope, I can’t hold a grudge at all and I don’t particularly want to learn. If someone treats me bad or screws me over I may be more cautious dealing with them in the future, but I don’t stay angry at them.
I only hold grudges for other people. I can’t think of a single grudge I hold that because of something that was done to me, but I’ve got half a dozen that I hold over things that were done to other people. And I don’t necessarily mean friends or relatives, there. Some years back, I read a post here on the SDMB about someone’s grandfather snatching a book out of their hands and throwing it out the window while they were on a long car trip. I don’t even remember who posted it, but just thinking about it gets my blood pressure up. But if it had happened to me, with my book and my grandad, I’d probably have been over it by the next day.
I cannot hold a grudge. I simply cannot invest the emotional energy into being angry with someone for a long time. If someone fucks me around, I possibly am more careful around them next time, but I can’t stay grumpy at them for very long at all.
I admit, I’ve never had a problem with enemies in my life, but I also do not hold grudges. I might have in the past, but nowadays, I believe that things like grudges rarely help situations.
I think grudges are a gateway to misunderstanding, which causes a vicious cycle of anger. Grudges set up those feelings and mental walls that prevent you from trying to mend the problems with your enemies.
Most of the anger and grudge-ness that surrounds me and my friends always seems so pointless. Hating people cause they like a certain type of music, or someone calling someone a bitch. And then, just because of that, we should hold grudges for months, years?
(For me, all anger and grudge-ness can be summarized as pointless, unnecessary, and the bane of the world. But this just a personal belief)
It is possible for me to loosen a grudge but it takes years at a minimum and consistently corrected behavior. I wouldn’t even be around most non-family members much at all if I held a grudge against them so it wouldn’t even be possible. When I hold a grudge against someone, I want them to experience terrible things, I want them in pain and then I want them dead. There is no better way to put it even though I know that sounds bad to virgin ears. Although, I am fairly young, a few of my grudges have died along the way. Hearing the news is like finding a crisp $100 bill on the sidewalk.
I don’t screw with other people much and it takes a concerted effort for them to screw with me enough to establish a grudge but it has happened a number of times, mainly when I was younger. I make a mental note to damage them or hurt them if the opportunity ever makes itself irresistible. It rarely does except in the case or workplace grudges. I don’t think about it much or let it drain my energy. It is just something that is there under the surface.
Have you ever considered that you have some of the blame in this situation? You said yourself that you knew she was a drunk and a slut and she…acted like a drunk and a slut! It reminds me of that parable about the scorpion stinging the fox and them both drowning.
This is part of the reason I can’t hold grudges properly; I usually try to see both sides of an issue, and the vast majority of the time, nobody is 100% wrong or right. (Um, that sounds a little holier-than-thou than I mean it to be - I’m not some kind of saint. It’s part of my make-up to look at things this way.)
Don’t worry, I know exactly what you’re talking about. Sometimes I’m so paralyzed by my ability to see all sides of an issue I give up on taking a stand on it.
I think the opposite of love isn’t hate but indifference. I think that hating people and, to a lesser extent, holding grudges gives that person or that situation power over you in the sense that it colors how you behave and how you spend your emotional capital. It is my experience that grudges are heavy and that I am always better off to just put them down rather than try to carry them around.
So it’s not that I can’t hold a grudge, it’s that I purposefully can’t be bothered to hold a grudge. Certainly I think an inability to carry a grudge is a good thing, not a character flaw. Carrying a grudge serves no good person. It makes your life harder but has no impact on the life of the person your grudging against.
I am totally unable to hold a grudge but worse, I completely forget (block out?)things that are done to me. I can totally understand what the OP is saying. It does seem odd to people especially when someone does you really dirty and life simply goes on as it normally would if that situation had not occurred.
I have actually had conflicts with my parents over the abusive treatment I have received at the hands of my mentally ill husband. They feel he is undeserving of any kind of support either financially or emotionally for his behavior and yet I don’t have a bit of hurt or anger in me and really when I did, it lasted such a short time. For the record, I had a story book, normal childhood. Perhaps that is why I am like this. Not because I am used to abuse but because I am used to everyone getting along and tend to thrive better in that kind of environment.
Nope. You are totally right there. The only caveat I can take with me is that she (up to this point) had always pretty much kept enough care of her professional reputation to not go off on a tear while conducting business. I do take some of the blame, to be sure, that this situation occurred, but I can’t get over the fact that she doesn’t think she’s done anything wrong and will not apologize. I don’t actively hate her anymore, but I will not allow her near my life anymore, as I feel that would condone her “fiddle dee dee, me me me” attitude. Part of being an adult is being able to own it when you’ve fucked up, and she just can’t.
I guess I can own that I could have prevented this by just not hiring her. If anything, it helps to piss me off further that I have to be pissed at myself. :o