I mean to reply to this thread ages ago. Hope others will still be interested in its resurrection.
Holding grudges is definitely a problem for me. Not because it happens often – I usually keep my friends (or at worst we drift apart in a fairly amicable way). On the rare occasions when I’ve ended up holding a grudge, though, it has tended to be very bitter, interfering with my peace of mind, and long-lasting. Like, years.
There are a few factors that seem to contributing to me holding a grudge:
1) There has been a pattern of inconsiderate/bad behaviour from the person (before whatever the straw is that breaks the camel’s back), over a fairly extended period of time, and I have been letting a lot of stuff go without confronting the person.
2) It’s someone who I’m vulnerable to emotionally, like they’ve dumped me or have ignored or rejected my advances (or my non-advances, haha).
3) It’s a case where I feel that I have made a much greater investment emotionally/time-wise etc than they have, and I have not received much reciprocation.
4) The person hurt me badly and didn’t apologise. Or there was some sort of apology but I feel I have reason to doubt its sincerity.
5) Perhaps most importantly – some or all of the above has occurred and I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO TALK IT OUT WITH THEM. I think that is the worst thing of all. I can think of one or two occasions where I’ve received some sort of apology but still ended up holding a grudge because I was seriously hurt about stuff and for one reason or another (because of circumstances, because the other person refused to) I couldn’t talk it out with them.
It’s certainly true that some of this is my bad. I think I am slowly, slowly learning that making yourself a martyr to someone else (see points 2 and 3) is just going to end up making you resent them. And sometimes other people don’t know that I need to talk things out. Though there are other cases where they do know that, and they refuse to talk about it anyway…
Forgiveness is important for me for many reasons – as a Christian, in terms of having good relationships with others, for your own peace of mind, etc etc. So this is something I am working on resolving in my life, but it’s hard.