Resentment isn't a belief, or an emotion. More of an attitude, or stance, or orientation.
And it's related to grudges, spite, bitterness, & grievance. (And blame, and entitlement, and being offended.)
None of these words *is* the thing (map≠territory) but there's a thing here.
Conversation
And, like many people who recommend forgiveness, I hold that resent is not beneficial for anything. There's a well known quote, “Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
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Note that even if you think that punishment makes sense, say for game-theoretical reasons*, resentment and punishment are totally separate things.
You can punish someone without resenting them, or resent them and not actually effectively enacting any punishment on them.
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*I mostly don't think punishment makes sense, but that's a tangent here. See this thread for clues on that (click the tweet below then scroll up)
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Replying to @Malcolm_Ocean @cosimia_ and @Conaw
Important
Not all consequences are rewards/punishments. If you're trying to catch the bus and you make it (or miss it) that's not a reward (or punishment).
(This confusion is common, which is making me think just now that it must be part of the pattern, not a coincidence.)1
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I do, however, believe that sometimes someone might act in such a way that you don't want to spend more time with them, not from a stance of punishment but for the same reason you don't do other activities you don't enjoy (eg you usually don't put on music you don't enjoy).
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This, you can also do without resenting. It will actually be much much more effective for _you enjoying your life,_ in fact, if you can do it without resenting the person.
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It isn't easy—consistently taking a post-resentment stance basically requires an entire mental OS upgrade.
But it's worth it—that upgrade allows clearer thinking, including making sense of about ppl's expected future behavior, & making choices about how you engage with the world
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Clarification 👀
There is a huge difference between the mental act of forgiveness and the *speech act* of forgiveness. I'm not talking about the latter at all. The question of "when does it make sense to tell someone you forgive them for something?" is a whole different thing.
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There are contexts in which that can be worth doing. The obvious one is because they've apologized and you want to recognize their apology. But I think that often the impetus to say "I forgive you" actually comes from an urge to assert power over someone.
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Also here's a very old blog post of mine on this topic, that's still relevant:
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Replying to
When I was struggling with intense daily rage, people kept telling me to forgive my dad. "What does it mean to forgive him?" I kept asking, but nobody could answer me satisfactorily.
I’ll try to approximate an answer this by repurposing some of my experience in a tangential sorta way
for me, practical forgiveness is about reframing
it’s not about “what you did was okay” - it’s more like. “what you did was cruel, senseless, destructive - and it’s a shame...
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