What are the ins and outs of holding a grudge ?

How long and under what circumstances is it appropriate or justified, versus harmful or unjustified, of holding a grudge ?

I understand holding a grudge or a special place in hell against someone who committed a serious crime against yourself or a loved one, or a long standing grudge against various forms of corruption against yourself or society in general.

But what about everything else in life ? When is it ok or not ok for things that may not be so black and white ? I'm supposing this question valid in either direction, whether you're the victim or perpetrator, or anything in between that may be a grey area for lack of a better term.

What do you think.

Ask my dad and sister. They are/were experts and there is no gray in their worlds. It exhausts me. I personally think it hurts the grudger more than the grudgee. I hate being caught in the middle.

Grudging doesn't work for me. It drags me down and captures my thought process. It took me a while to learn how to deal with it. I learned to move on doing what's best for the family and I. That doesn't mean I forget. I do make sure the situation will never happen again.

I hold a number of grudges, but not to the point of obsessing over them.

Holding a grudge or resentment leads to all sorts of discontentment and spiritual disease. Personally, I cant afford to have them, they eat me up inside. Funny thing is, my resentment doesnt affect the person I'm resentful at one tiny bit, but it can destroy me. I work to identify them in myself and be rid of them.

Depends on what was done. Some things are unforgivable

I can't say as I've ever held a grudge, per se. One of two things happens: I either forgive or I simply remove them from my life. In the latter case I simply never think of them anymore.

If you hold a grudge against somebody you're letting them live in your head, rent free. Who needs that?

I dont let a grudge take up my time or effort. However, I do have a long memory.

I hold a grudge against the person my widowed mother married. It doesn’t drag me down or occupy any of my time I simply refuse to talk to him. I haven’t said a word to him in 5 years and I never will again. Quite honestly, it was a relief deciding to do so. He earned it. It’s really messed up my relationship with my mother whom I love dearly but it’s still worth the peace.
So a grudge is only a bad thing if the offense continues to eat at you. I got rid of the offender and I breathe easier for it.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
<snip>
If you hold a grudge against somebody you're letting them live in your head, rent free. Who needs that?

Well said. OTOH, revenge is a different story.

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
If you hold a grudge against somebody you're letting them live in your head, rent free.

If this is the case, then you are doing it wrong.

I have not spoken to one of my brothers in almost 40 years because of what he put my family and specifically my dad through. I can not remember the last time I have thought about him.

The point of holding a grudge is to keep the cause of the grudge out of your life. Forever.

Depends on what you mean by "grudge". There is one person I still wouldn't piss on if he was on fire, but I don't waste energy being actively pissed off at him all the time anymore. Right after he fucked me over, hell yes I was fuming.

There's no simple answer to your question and there's no single, all-encompassing answer to your question. There are far too many variables involved, ranging from the specific circumstances, to existing conditions, to the personality traits and behaviors of the people involved and their individual perspectives, understandings and assumptions, as well as completely random factors and occurrences which affect a given dispute. Add to all of that, the fact that most people do change over the course of their lifetime, and you're left with "it depends."

Speaking for myself, yeah, I can hold grudge for a very, very long time, corrosive to myself and destructive though it may be. But, it has to stem from something really bad which happened, and with the belief that the other party or parties was/were clearly in the wrong.

I use to hold grudges, then I decided to write their obituary. They are dead to me and I learned not to think of them anymore.

I held on to a grudge against a neighborhood kid that picked on me when I was about 8 yrs old. He was three years older and 40 lbs heavier. I promised myself that when I got to be a teenager, I would give him an "ass-whoopin" to even the score. (I would have settled it sooner, but my old man frowned on using sticks and stones in kid's fights.)

Lost track of him until about 30 years later. Lo and behold I went to use an outdoor county waste disposal convenience center and there he was, operating the garbage crusher. I noted his arthritic back and bad knees, along with having to endure the heat inside his little un-airconditioned hut he worked out of. He didn't recognize me and I was ok with that. I dumped the grudge along with my other garbage and was a better man for it.

I decided to accept the degree of punishment that God and Life had bestowed upon his pride and his body and called it even.

There are people who piss me off if, for some reason, I'm reminded of them. There are a couple people who I'd like to hurt, whatever that means. One was a sadistic dentist.

I'm m so good at holding a grudge, I have custom made handles!

Quite a while back I realized that I held grudges when I felt powerless.
Once I figured out how I could pay someone back, as long as they were touchable, I was fine with letting it go.

Finding that out was a big thing for me.

I think Para nailed it. There are nuances in play here.

All of my life I have been a man who believes in "what goes around comes around". You help me with something...I will always be there to help you. For example, one of my nieces, in her mid thirties, got married a while back to a nice guy who is an independent contractor. In other words, he does odd jobs for folks.

He came by the house a while back and told me he got a concrete job at some lake home and asked if I would drive down to a supply store way south of Springfield. He only had a day or two to get the job done and couldn't do the drive himself. He also asked if he could borrow some of my shovels and my large wheelbarrow. These tools were all like new. At the time I was working on replacing the gutters on my barn and he said when he was done he would come over and help me with the job. Heck, I said that would be great so I did the four hour drive to pick up his materials and took them to his job site.

Long story short, he ignored his promise to help me and returned my tools two weeks later still caked with concrete and now rusted. I guess he was tired and just threw them in the lake for a few days until he could get to them. I was not a happy camper.

So, recently we had a family gathering at a restaurant and he tracked me down and asked if he could borrow my tractor and brush hog for a few days. That would have meant I loaded it all up on my trailer and delivered it to his job site. I just looked at him and said, "son, that is so not gonna happen", and turned away. Of course the wife heard it all and whispered to me that I could have just turned the other cheek and helped him out again. I just looked at her and she turned away never bringing it up again.

Do I carry a grudge? Hell no. Just a belief in what goes around comes around.

“All that hates gonna burn you up, kid.”