Holding Grudges

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I was wondering if anyone else is notorious for holding a grudge. I am asking because I have found my self angry about two things for a few days. The first thing occured Friday at a football game. We (the band) were marching up the stairs as per usual when our director said in an annoyied tone of voice "Stop". We were not facing him and kept moving. I assumed that he was yelling at the drummers for doing something "tacky" like he normally does. Next he screames for us to stop and I freeze mid step and he turns and looks directly at me and says "I asked you to stop! Do you know what STOP means?" as if I were the only one still walking. I have refused to speak to him sense. The next occasion occured the next day. On the bus ride home (we went to a contest) a girl starts saying "Close the window." to seemingly no one in particular (quite a few windows were open at the time). I was two seats in front of her diagonally. I was listening to my mp3player so....there was no reason for her to assume that I could hear her. Then she says to someone near her I suppose ( I never looked back) "That girl is deaf. (Band director) was yelling at her yesterday and she didn't even notice. (to me) Hey ret*d, close your window!" I let it up, people laughed, and I was silent for the next hour. So...anyway. It's been a few days and I am still very angry about the whole thing. I can't stop thinking about it...wondering what I could have done differently or why I was singled out. I was just wondering if I was the only one who stayed angry over such things.

There are people I've refused to speak to for many years. There are many people I don't want to see again ever.

This isn't unique to aspies at all. I know plenty of NTs, including my own parents, who hold grudges. Considering the house I grew up in, my parents didn't speak to the people next door for nearly 10 years(when we moved out of the house) after an argument they had.

My mother has been holding a grudge against me for over 20 years for being turned down for a gifted program in school since 1 teacher out of 6 wouldn't sign the papers. I think this was just an excuse to treat me badly, since they started dealing out punishments big time when I was around 10 or 11 and seemed to enjoy it, they wanted to see me punished for the rest of my life. The fact I wasn't my perfect sister was also something they held against me most of my life, until they were forced to face the fact she wasn't the "little miss perfect" that I should idolize and devote all my energy to being just like.

Holding grudges is something aspies and NTs can, and often, do.

I don't hold grudges for very long.

I don't hold grudges at all. I have a hard time associating the action with the person who did it, I suppose. I can consider a person mean, but I can't be angry at them for what they did - just, I guess, think that they deserve to be punished for it if anything. But then, anger is pretty foreign to me in general. In the past year I have gotten angry only once, and that was over the most egregious kind of abuse committed against me.

Grudges ... yeah ... the best thing to do is to make yourself more successful than the person you hold the grudge against, outlive him or her, and then let all of your mutual acquaintences know about that awful thing he or she did, and that you'd sworn to never reveal while he or she was still alive ... even if you have to make something up.

In my case, a particular deceased person committed too much heinous crap while he was still alive to require my having to tell any lies about him - it's all true; every word.

I'm not aware of any grudges.

blackcat,
Both of those people were abusive to you. It is perfectly reasonable to be angry with people who abuse you. To remain angry for a couple of days is not 'holding a grudge'. However, to remain angry for a long period of time maintains an emotional attachment to those people, and can only do harm to your well being. Letting go of the anger, in time, does not mean that you have to forget what happened, or that you have to be friendly to them.

Lets see:

1. Grudge against God for making my Dad die when I was 8.
2. Grudge against my step dad who is now dead for always treating me like crap.
3. Another grudge against God for giving me AS and preventing me from having a reltionship.
4. Grudges against old companies I worked for for lieing to me and not treating me good.

I don't hold onto grudges, I keep them locked in the basement. I will never forget how they made me feel. Why let them go and forget about them? So I can let someone treat me like that again? I don't think so.

I don't know if I hold grudges particularly long or not. Certainly in sexual relationships I've sometimes astonished partners with the strength and longevity of my resentment at some old wound. But I've always felt that if they'd just properly acknowledged the harm they did and really taken on board the task of making sure it doesn't happen again, it could have been fixed.

I do have a problem with the whole concept of forgiveness. The term seems to imply it's possible to nullify in a flash all my ill feeling towards somebody who has harmed me. I don't see how it can be like that. If somebody hurts me significantly, it changes the relationship I have with them and closure can be very difficult. No way will I crank out unconditional forgiveness. It depends how the person reacts to me when I tell them what they've done. From what they say, I have to work out whether or not they're likely to do the same thing again. If they are, the conflict remains. If not, my resentment of their behaviour will most likely subside and we can return to normality. But some acts are just too harmful. If somebody physically attacks a loved one, no way am I going to play the nice guy or take the risk of trusting them again on that level.

It seems to be a cultural belief in a lot of people that forgiveness can be turned on and off like a tap. The only situation I can think of where that could happen is in bad parenting where the parent withdraws affection as a lever to frighten the child into submission. It's easy in that situation to restore love in a flash, because it was never really withdrawn, it was a bluff in the first place, and one that works only too well on young children.

I only forgive someone if they are GENUINELY remorseful, and ACTIVELY atone for what they did. I remember every single person who ever abused me in any way. I will never forget any of them or what they did. I will never forgive any of them because not one of them has been genuinely remorseful. However, I feel no anger toward them any more - I just feel nothing. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

i do not hold grudges. i know what they are, but i do not how it feels to have a grudge. i only know what i have heard others say.

i can lose my liking of a person permanently, but that is not a grudge.
a grudge seems to be where they want to return to the situation they are perpetually annoyed about, and almost deliberately continue the animosity.

i have 2 friends (i have only 2 friends and they are not close), and they both are NT and they have complained at length on the phone (when they ring me up) about "injustices" that have happened to them.

one is a girl. she lives with her mother and she always says "i am never speaking to my sister again!! !! blah blah blah" and "i want to make sure she knows that!".

all over a comment that her sister made about my friend not having children, or that her dress looks like it was bought at an opportunity shop.

she seems not to like her sister and i can not understand why she cares what her sister thinks.

i say to her "what she thinks is tiny electrical impulses that are sealed inside her skull. how can they affect you?"

that seems to calm her for a moment,where she will say "oh mark! that's right! why do i care? it can't affect me"

but invariably she will go back to her complaining after a small time.

she tells me things like "you know i was thinking about susan yesterday"
me: who is susan?
her: oh someone i knew about 10 years ago. that f****** bit*h accused me of stealing $10 from her you know? i was looking through my address book so i could ring her up and really let her know how i think.

good grief. i can not fathom what she is feeling.

my male friend is still on about an incident at a photocopier last year where some young lady about 18 said she thought he was weird to some other person.
he lost his block and got moved to another area and has since left of his own accord, but he still is burning to get back to her and let her "know" his thoughts.
she will not care, and her suspicion that he is weird will be proven.

"what an idiot" i think about him as i say "hmmm..." at his tirades.

this one is so absurd i find it amusing:

another associate i know held a "disgruntlement" for 20 years.
when we were 15, we were all at someones house and someone went to KFC. my associate asked him to get some chicken and gave him a $10 note.

the guy came back with his chicken, but did not get around to giving him the change. and he left unexpectedly.
the amount was $5.50 he was expecting in change.

so, many many times over the years, this associate would say "remember christian"? .
i would say "yes". he would then go on to recount that "rip off" and he said he will always be keen to see him again.

we did see that fellow again recently.

it was a chance meeting in the street in chatswood.

christian: hey guys how are you?!?! i haven't seen you in sooo long! (he has a thick german accent)
me: err christian is it?
c: yes!! my friend..don't you rrremember?

associate (peter): i remember you.

c: ahhh yes!! how's it been?
ass: yeah good mate. you?
c: wellll i haf been...
ass: yeah mate i'll cut to the chase. you owe me $5.50.
c: whaaat?
ass: remember the kentucky fried? you never gave me the change.

christian was looking like he was thinking we were both freaks (as we were still associated after all these years).

he gave peter $20 and said "keep the change. fare thee well"

peter was happy, but still started to calculate cpi indices and potential interest earnings to see if the full value was returned.

so grudges to me are similar to needs for retribution and needs for apologies and needs for restitution.

i have none of those elements in me.

i will however switch off my appreciation of a person like a light switch if they do very wrong to me.

i do not hate them or want them even to know how i feel.

i do not care if they are sad they lost my liking.

that may be worse than a grudge. at least, as far as i can determine, people with grudges have a negative "love" for who they can not forget.

i just dump them all without regret.

i will create a simile:

if i am liking a person more and more, and then they steal from me, and lie to me and i find out that they are using me, it is like picking up a loaf of bread at the shop that looks yummy, and you inspect it and are liking it more and more, and then you turn it upside down and there is a big mould patch. eek!
you simply dump the bread down and move on without regard for that loaf, and it is not ever considered by me again. it is totally out the back door of my mind.

i do not "hate" that loaf, but it is not coming home with me.

a few years ago, i had a girlfriend called melinda and she seemed to like me a lot.
she was NT but she laughed a lot at my attitudes and behaviors in public.

i was not sure of the "joke value", but it made me feel that she was not embarrassed by me, so i liked her because i thought she was brave to be able to admit she was "with" me.

anyway she drank too much and popped sleeping pills that did not work anymore and she went bad in the head (long story not pertinent to this topic).

one night while i was asleep, she stole my atm card and went out to "star city" casino (after calling her "ex" boyfriend (a big latin greasy gelled haired, mirror glasses wearing lover (more macho and desirable than homely me )).

she blew $11,000 approx before she passed out from drunkenness and my card was retrieved from her by security.

i should have seen it coming.
i noticed that melinda always drooled over people who's skin was saddle color or darker.

she always was not interested in fairer skinned people.
my skin is light amber, and not in the saddle brown region at all.
i ignored that little "niggle" i noticed.

well after the theft, i said goodbye to her and i was not angry with her per se.
i think she may have a mild antisocial personality disorder.
i know she will never have the means to repay me, so i just counted it as an accident.

here is another simile (i find it easier to say things sometimes with similes) that is how i perceived what happened:

it is like noticing a precarious branch on a tree above where you park your car.
you think "one day i will get that removed" .
then a storm comes and the branch falls on your car and crushes the roof in.

yes you hold your head in dismay, but do you "hate" the branch? or the wind? or anything?
no.
you have to say it was an accident and take the loss.

i wish no harm to come to melinda. i hope she has a happy life.

she has a mouldy base and she is still on the shelf though.
poor her.

Excellent analogy!

Sounds like a good time to talk to the band director and tell him (in a polite and rational way) you don't appreciate his rudeness. Stand up for yourself. Don't ever be afraid to stand up for yourself.
As for the kid on the bus, that's just typical kid behaviour. You could play along or just ignore. If it keeps happening again and again and it bothers you be honest and say so, to her or the band director, whomever.
If it bothers you tell someone.

i don't hold grudges i think, i haven't got time for it, i find it stupid and life's too
short! i sometimes think that people hold grudges against me for something i've
done but not realises. certianly saying things caused by my aspergers upsets certain
people, but that's offending without knowing. i only realise later that i may have upset that person.

I've stopped holding grudges, a couple years ago. There's no reason for me to hold them.

a grudge seems to be where they want to return to the situation they are perpetually annoyed about, and almost deliberately continue the animosity
I don't know if that's technically a grudge or not, but I've seen a lot of it. I think it's called "rehearsal" though it follows the actual event rather than preceding it as in rehearsing a performance. Often when I get treated to an earful of that stuff, it seems bound up with an implicit request for me to reinforce their prejudices or to feed their ego via the cheap trick of appearing to side with them. Best solution I've found is to challenge them, ("why don't you talk to them about it if you're so annoyed with them? What good can I do?" or more coldly, "what does this have to do with me please?") though I don't do it anything like enough. Friendships get more interesting when there's a bit of challenging going on.

I'm always sad to dump a friend, though I'm sure my independent nature has perplexed a number of people when the time comes for me to move on. My father used sometimes to speak of having the "power" to cut people dead if they annoyed him too much. Like father, like son, I guess, and I've enjoyed the upper hand it's sometimes given me when dealing with difficult people, but somehow when it happens I also feel there's got to be a better way, and these days I'm very loathe to cut anybody dead just like that.