The first step to defusing a grudge
You've got to spell out why you're mad. This is a little tricky, though. The real reason you're mad is almost certainly about more than the basic facts of what happened.
Hey there: I’m Danny O’Neil, and at some point in the past year and a half, you signed up for my newsletter on the dark art of staying mad. After some time experimenting with formats and content, I’ve gotten out the jumper cables to jolt this thing back to life. Hope you enjoy!
I did not set out to harbor a grudge against my stepfather for 20 years.
In fact, I made multiple attempts—most under the guidance of a therapist—to resolve or at least dilute the anger I felt toward him.
I wrote a letter to my stepfather, sealed the envelope and gave it to my therapist.
I wrote a letter to my stepfather, and burned it in the backyard firepit.
I participated in role-playing exercises where I ranted at my therapist as if he was my stepfather.
I participated in role-playing exercises where I played the part of my stepfather, reciting the things that (I thought) Young Danny wanted to hear.
None of this provided any sort of lasting closure, and in retrospect, I believe that was because I did not understand why I was so angry. I mean, I knew what he did. I can still lay out the exact sequence of events that led to so much pain within my family.
But four years ago, if you’d ask me to explain why I was still angry at my stepfather, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything other than point to the magnitude of his misdeeds.
Now, I understand much better why I reacted the way that I did, and I believe the first step toward defusing my anger toward him was to understand what it was that actually bothered me most.
Before I dive into that, let’s get to a pair of grudges that are a little more straightforward:
“So if you think you’re petty, I dated a Disney actor and former child star for about two years, and then I found out on Valentine’s Day that he was not only hiding a four-year, long-term relationship, but that he had multiple women.
“But because I hold onto grudges, I like to go on his imdb every couple weeks, and I make him shorter. So this month, he is 5-1.5.”
— _annamelissa on TikTok
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The rapper Cardi B waited years to get payback for a physical altercation. YEARS.
But when she did finally cross paths with her “opp” as the kids now way, it was not only in another country, but they were getting screened at the airport.
The Grudge Judge will lay out exactly what happened and provide a ruling on who was right, who was wrong:
OK. Let’s get back to my stepfather.
For a long time, I thought that a direct confrontation would be the only way for me to resolve the anger I harbored toward him.
Turns out I had that exactly backwards. It was only after I resolved my anger that I spoke to him for the first time in 18 years.
And in retrospect, I was only able to find that closure after I answered two questions:
What was I mad about?
What was I really mad about?
This may sound not only redundant, but a little bit silly. Bear with me because one of the most important things to understand about resentment in general and grudges in particular is that they operate on two different levels:
At the surface level, there are the actual events that occurred. The truth of what happened. What specific incident do you feel harmed you?
At a deeper level is the context in which that event occurred. This takes into account your own personal experiences as well as the history you share with the grudgee (i.e. the person whose action or actions you believe harmed you).
The surface-level acts are what we generally cite to explain the cause of our resentment. The context, however, is what actually gives a grudge its horsepower.
Let’s use the grudge I held against my stepfather as an example.
What was I mad about?
I was mad at what he’d put my mom through:
Cheating on her;
Lying about having cheated on her;
Losing his job as a public-school administrator in a very public, somewhat scandalous fashion;
Spending through their shared retirement savings after he lost that job;
Pushing to reconcile after they’d been separated for two years, only to inform her he’d then tested positive for HIV.
All of those things definitively happened and while the infidelity remained largely a private matter, the San Jose Mercury News wrote multiple stories about the spending indiscretions that occurred in the school district where he was superintendent. I have a copy of the 7-minute investigative report that aired on the Bay Area’s ABC affiliate.
It all hurt my Mom a great deal, which bothered me.
That was the surface-level view of why I was mad.
If those were the things I was really mad about, however, I believe my anger would have ebbed over time. My Mom tested negative for HIV. She finalized the divorce. While he didn’t wind up fulfilling the spousal support he’d agreed to, she was able to keep the house they’d shared and the car she drove. She continued to work and while she wasn’t wealthy, she was comfortable. She (eventually) cut off contact with him and toward the end of her life, she told me that she really didn’t think about him that much anymore, which I was pleased to hear.
Yet I not only stayed mad after she divorced him, it’s possible I got even angrier.
So what was I really mad about?
I was mad that he never acknowledged, let alone apologized, for the way he wronged my Mom specifically, but also the way he betrayed the trust that I’d placed in him even as I grew to dislike him.
I was 15 years old when they married, and he immediately installed himself as the authority figure overseeing my adolescence.
He was the one who disciplined me over my mistakes when I was a teenager, not my Mom. He would periodically summon me into his bedroom, close the door and spend a good 15 to 20 minutes lecturing me for something like a chore I failed to do or the way that I had spoken to my mother or my younger siblings. He would then contrast my behavior with the fact that he had always been there for his family both when he was growing up and now that he was married to my mom. It wasn’t just that he was strict, he was self-righteous and demanded an extreme level of accountability from me. I was selfish where he had been selfless.
He wasn’t entirely wrong. I was a pretty normal teenager, perhaps even a bit unruly. I did my share of stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things.
When we found out he had some stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things, though, he never was able to be honest about it with my mom, my siblings or me even when asked directly.
In November 2002, he’d been separated from my Mom for more than a year. He sent me a card, inviting me to come visit him in San Francisco some time before Christmas. He gave me an email address to respond to, and I sent him an email stating that there would need to be an honest conversation about what had occurred in our family before I’d visit him. I never heard back.
The next time I spoke to him was May 2005 when we both attended my brother’s college graduation at UC Santa Cruz. I knew he’d been invited, and my brother had told me I wasn’t expected to behave in any particular way.
I was standing next to my sister and two of my cousins when he approached me from the left and then opened his arms in expectation of a hug.
I felt my cheeks bloom red, the blood rushing to my head. It felt like a spotlight was trained on me. I was afraid to do anything that might cause a scene, I put my left arm around him.
I spent years resenting myself for that reaction. I felt like I was weak. Like I was a teenager again, standing there and listening to him explain what I was expected to do except I was 30 years old and knew that he was not nearly as virtuous and upright as he’d portrayed himself.
I spent years feeling ashamed for not having stood up to him either at my brother’s college graduation or the years that preceeded it. This was the deeper level of my grudge.
So looping back to the questions that started today’s newsletter.
What was I mad about? My stepfather’s betrayal of my Mom.
But what was I really mad about? The lack of accountability and the absence of remorse on his part. It made me feel weak. That I was unable or unwilling to stand up to him even when tit was clear he was in the wrong.
It turns out that this was a very important distinction. If my grudge had just been about what my stepfather had done, I believe my grudge would have faded over the years.
What really bothered me, however, was his lack of accountability, which meant that my anger actually compounded over time because he still hadn’t expressed remorse about what had happened.
His lack of accountability then became evidence of my continued weakness. I was a doormat. I had just let it happen. Even after it occurred I hadn’t stood up to him.
Honestly, I can still feel traces of that shame. But now it’s counterbalanced with some compassion for my younger self. A recognition that I was doing my best to navigate a very fraught emotional situation without adding to the pain that my mom and siblings were feeling.
The only way I could get to that point, though, was to realize what it was that really made me angry at my stepfather.