How long did it take you to stop hating someone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Take a few days and write it all out, OP. Imagine that you were sitting in a room with the person and a therapist/negotiator. Write out long-hand what you would say to that person calmly and factually. Don’t exaggerate. Just get it all down on paper including what you did wrong. Add extenuating circumstances (job burn out, exhaustion, lack of boundaries, etc). And then let it sit. Try not to go back to the written document for awhile. And stop yourself from thinking about what the person did wrong. It’s down on paper now - you don’t have to think about it.

Put away all pictures or cards/gifts from that person. Clear your space of him/her.

Pray and meditate for your peace before you pray and meditate on forgiveness for that person.

Change something in your life for the better - get in shape, organize your home, get a handle on finances, set a better sleep-cycle, spend a set amount of time outdoors, etc.

It can take a long time to let go. But these things really helped me after a severe friend betrayal.

All the best to you. And I am so sorry it happened to you.

I may try this. I'm not dealing with hate but disappointment over an acquaintance's rejection that I spend WAY to much time focusing on. Have to find a way to let it go. Thanks.

+2. Me, too. This is the best advice I’ve heard! Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Personally timely thread for me. I have a white-hot hatred burning since right before Christmas - almost a month to the day.

I want to get rid of it.

[Anonymous]

The word "forgive" is always thrown out when someone is wronged and feels contempt. It's such an elusive word to offer as advice. If you're deeply religious, then forgiveness is a foundational belief and can really be mess with one's mind. Chasing forgiveness interferes with moving on. Guilt is at play and you question your ability to forgive. For me, it hurts when my (almost never) intuition fails me. Being blindsided by someone you vetted pretty well. Other times, when my intuition is spot on and my physical energy about someone isn't at ease. This is easier because I trust it and move on.

If the person that hurt you asks for forgiveness and is truly sorry (all within reason, not talking about physical/emotional abusers) then you decide to forgive and continue relationship based on trust or you don't. But, if you are estranged as a result and no longer physically in their life, forgiveness is moot. Flip the switch and let your feelings naturally evolve so it no longer consumes you.

People have hurt me or others that I love. Some I've had to continue physically seeing (i.e. mil). The relationship must change and you accept it. I can do this seamlessly without someone even knowing. How people can forgive a murderer or sexual abuser, especially if the victim is a loved one is bizarre to me. I wish no harm to anyone. I don't have to forgive for my conscience to be at peace. I just feel what I feel and compartmentalize until it fades. I did this as recently as 6 weeks ago. I don't even think about it anymore and it was such a strange situation!

OP...very few people are selfless and empathetic. You must know this. I'm grateful that I'm not like them and have a better radar for people who are the real deal. Peace comes if you let it.

[Anonymous]

This is long.

My father is 94 and has dementia, which was diagnosed about 10 years ago. My parents divorced almost 40 years ago and my father remarried 20 years ago. For some reason, from the first time I met my dad's wife, she has disliked me. She has attempted to cut my father out of my life. The following are the most painful attempts:

1. Growing up, I was daddy's little girl. For 30 years, from the time my parents divorced, my father visited me frequently and called me at least once a week. All of that stopped 10 years ago when he no longer was able to make his own decisions. My father and his wife lived in Colorado. Her children lived in San Diego. She would often go see her children and take him with her. But when I would beg her to come visit me and my dad's only grandchildren, she would say it was too difficult to travel with him. Then in the next breath, she would tell me how they were going on a two week cruise to Europe. Just last week she bold faced lied to me. She told me the reason why my dad never visited me was because he wanted to travel to vacation spots and chose to do those trips instead of visit me.

2. My dad is a retired Air Force officer. Several years ago he was selected for an Honor Trip to DC. His wife NEVER told me. They came to DC for a week and I had NO IDEA they were in town. My father had not been to see me in two years, hadn't seen his grandchildren in four, and he was less than 10 miles away for a week. When I found out I screamed at her on the phone. She didn't even apologize, just said that since it wasn't her trip, she couldn't tell me about it. I realize they couldn't come to my house, but I would have been able to meet them at the Lincoln Memorial and walked around with them.

3. Her children live in San Diego and they finally convinced her to move to San Diego. I know she needs the help with my dad. She didn't tell me she was moving until about two weeks before they moved - they had purchased a condo several months prior and had sold their place in Colorado. When my brother and I tried to get their new phone number, she wouldn't give it to us. We finally had to get her son involved.

4. I went to visit them about a month after they got to San Diego. I was there a week. I met her daughter and told her I was afraid my father would pass away and I would get a letter from his wife a month after the fact (I'm totally serious.) Her daughter assured me she'd keep me posted. About a week after my trip, her son sent me a text telling me my father had been put into a memory care home. I don't disagree that he needs to be in the home and it is her decision. But the fact that she didn't say anything to me while I was there, or suggest I tour the place with her, was "unforgivable."

I have never seen her mistreat my dad. Quite the opposite, she is doting and takes very good care of him. It took their move to California for me to not hate her anymore. I realized that if I'm nice to her, she will give me bits and pieces of information about my dad. She sends me emails and photos of him or will call me. If I don't email or call her occasionally, she will send me a nasty email telling me how I don't care about family. I actually feel better when I do something nice for her whereas before, I would just be angry and couldn't sleep. So for me, the energy I was spending hating her was really eating at me and making me more miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am speaking about a friend who deeply wronged you and is no longer in your life. I have really been working on this - prayer and meditation to forgive her. I really want to let it go and I do succeed at it for about an hour or two and then my anger comes slamming back.

How long is this going to take?

I held a grudge for years. It wasn’t until I sincerely asked God to take away the hurt even if I never received an apology that I made any headway. I asked God to help me forgive because I couldn’t do it alone. Essentially when I asked God to intervene He did. When it happened it was like a weight lifted off of me. Hard to describe but it felt freeing. The saying that forgiveness is more for you, than the other person is so true.

[Anonymous]

Years. I, too, had a roommate situation junior year. I ended up moving out a few weeks before the semester was over, and in with a friend. My roommate was having some personal issues that she took out on me. She had made some bad decisions that were going to change the trajectory of her life. For years, if I saw her anywhere I would literally just keep walking. She sent me a Christmas card one year, and I knew she had to make an effort to find my address. But there was no type of personal note in the card. I think had she ever tried to reach out and apologize, I would have been open to it. It's been 20 years, and I hold no ill will toward her. But those first few years...I was pissed.

[Anonymous]

I’ll post back when he’s out of office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hated my cousin when I as growing up and into my 30s. I went to a lot of therapy and finally go to a place where I just didn't care about her anymore. That really didn't happen until all of her connected family was out of my life though which occurred when her father died. I just do not care about her anymore. You still care which is why you hate. If you didn't care, then it would have no effect on you anymore.

This. The anger keeps you connected. I was deeply wronged by a friend, and it took a lot of time to get over it. Maybe 5 years? I don't even think about her anymore.

I could have written this. I unfollowed and blocked that person on all social media and completely seized contact. I would deliberately avoid places/events where we could bump into each other (I know it might be kind of hard to do if the person who wronged you is family or a current colleague, but, in my case, she was neither). Now it's been something like 5 years and I completely moved on from my hurt. Now, if I ever do bump into that person, I would just walk by with no emotions whatsoever. I might even say 'Hello'.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I had a roommate in college who was the only person who ever truly bullied me. She physically and verbally intimidated me the entire time we lived together. She caused me to drop out of school for part of a semester because I couldn’t take it any more. Getting away from her was the most freeing event of my life. I wouldn’t say I hated her (I can’t think of anyone I hate), but my negative feelings towards her were very strong for a few years. I haven’t given her much thought in many years.

Guess who tried to friend me on Facebook recently? Now I find myself thinking of her for the first time in years and ruminating over the question of why she would reach out. I feel vaguely insulted. Does she want me to admire her life? Is she playing a mind game like she did back in the day? Is she clueless? Is it possible that she had a total personality change and has an apology to offer?

Anyway, not hate, but those buried memories and negative emotions weren’t too far from the surface 25 years later, given the right trigger.

This sounds terrible. But out of curiosity why didn't you just switch to another room? Why would you feel the need to actually drop out of school to get away from a bad roommate? That sounds really drastic, so drastic, in fact, that it makes me wonder if you had a lot of other things going on in addition to what was happening with this roommate.

It's fine to hold her accountable for what she actually did do, of course.

I moved into an apartment my junior year with one of my oldest friends and this woman, who was a newish friend of hers. We were all on the lease, and we all stretched to afford it so unfortunately it wasn’t as simple as moving to another room. There was nothing else going on, outside of what was a timid personality on my part and a borderline personality disorder on her part. I was a pretty drama free person who never had anything resembling an enemy, and didn’t see that train wreck coming.

O.k. you made a bad choice in roommates. It happens. But for you to totally drop out of school like that was extreme. Couldn't you have spent time studying in the library and maybe hanging out with other friends? I've known people who have quite literally had a 2+ hour commute to and from school every day. They basically go home to sleep. If school is a priority, you do what you gotta do.

NP here. It sounds like PP did the right thing by dropping out for a bit and getting some help. It's not crazy extreme and I assume she still graduated. Who cares if PP extended college by some months. People do that all the time. Good for you, PP, for taking care of yourself.

I had an abusive roommate in my 20s. It took a while for me to realize what was happening. Sometimes it sneaks up on you. It shocks me that I had allowed any of it. My roommate was so "charming" around others. He still is charming to others but truly has something wrong with him. It was my first and only brush with psychological abuse. I have more empathy now for people who find themselves in those situations.

I'm just trying to picture myself GAF about my mean roommate and I just can't quite see me doing that. At that age I would have switched rooms or hung out with other friends. If the roommate was damaging the apartment I would have brought the apt manager in to bust her.

I knew lots of students who had roommate problems. Sometimes they hung out in my room.

I'm the poster with an abusive roommate in my 20s. If you would have asked me then, I would say I never would put up with any crap. When I found myself in an abusive situation, it was hard to see clearly. It took a new boyfriend coming into the picture to say, "wtf, what are you doing?" to open my eyes and I got myself out.

As the PP made clear, this was an apartment, not a dorm. You think you know what you would do in such a situation and you may be right. But, you don't really know.

I had shared rentals and if I had run into serious problems with a roommate I would have avoided that roommate like the plague and talked to the landlord about what I could do to get out of that lease. If there was no way out of the lease I would have stayed gone a lot and not given that person the opportunity to abuse me like that. And I would have counted down the days until the lease was over. I would not have just dropped out of school completely and left like that because doing so does not solve your problem. You still have to finish out the lease. Might as well store your stuff there.

I’m the pp who dropped out, and I agree that I didn’t make the best decisions at the time. With a few more years of life experience I would have handled it differently. But I left those “shoulda, woulda” self recriminations behind years ago. I was basically a kid who was overwhelmed and frightened and just needed to get away from that person before she physically harmed me or spit in my milk again.

I totally get you! The important thing is that you realize that you could have handled your crazy roommate better and you would never allow yourself to be treated like that again.

Wtf is wrong with you PP- are you the old abusive roommate? Good god, this girl made her own decision to get out of a toxic situation. Stop nit picking how she dealt with it, just because you would have done it differently! FFS. And she didn’t allow anyone to treat her badly, it was the awful roommate’s fault her their own actions! Don’t put that on her.

To the woman with the abusive roommate, I’m sorry you went through that, and you did nothing wrong! don’t accept her friend request, it will add unnecessary stress to your life. I’m sorry you had to deal with this poster, what happened to you isn’t your fault and whatever decision you made was the best for you at the time.

You have to learn how to stand up for yourself and you also have to learn that other people have problems, too, that sometimes make them miserable to be around. While the pp was young when she was dealing with this bad roommate, the bad roommate was young, too. PP probably should not have dropped out of school, there were other ways that could have been handled. it's like having an argument with a friend, getting into your car to drive away only to crash because you were crying so hard. You can't blame the friend that you were arguing with for your decision to get into a car and drive it while you weren't capable of driving safely.

Having a bad roommate sucks. It truly does. But dropping out of school when she had the option to stay and just minimize contact with that roommate was probably not a great choice.

[Anonymous]

^FWIW, I don't blame my older college boyfriend for my own failure to go to class or partying too much....those were things that I did and I own them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’ll post back when he’s out of office.

Same. Though I'm likely leaving before either of them. But I'll post back then.

[Anonymous]

There's an old expression:

"When you hate someone, you chain yourself to them".

Hate is so toxic, it will eat away at you & seep it's way into every other manner of your life without you even realizing it's happening. It's like a thick, heavy, dark cloud looming over everything.

Your hate will ALWAYS affect YOU more than the other person, because chances are that other person doesn't care anymore & they never think about you anyway. Isn't that just adding insult to injury knowing that they're hurting you not once but twice?

You're allowing this person to rent space in your head for free. You're allowing them to have control over you and control over your feelings & emotions... that would honestly annoy me FAR more than whatever this person did to me.
Doesn't it just piss you off even more knowing that this person could be living their very best life, and here you are... still hanging onto this negativity... still allowing it to permeate your life & if that's happening, you certainly are NOT living your best. You can't be.

Forgive.
Forgive.
Forgive.

Nobody is saying you have to forget what they did & you certainly don't have to reach out to that person & inform them that you've forgiven them. Simply forgive them in your head & never think about them again.
You owe this to yourself, as the only person this hate will continue to affect negatively is you.

Why do you think forgiveness is one of the important steps in the 12 steps of addiction? It's because SO many people start using in the first place to numb the intense feelings of pain, sadness & hate that they have from somebody hurting them. It's a lot easier to get through the day when you don't have to relive all of those feelings of negativity, which is why drugs are such an easy crutch for someone who probably could benefit from therapy.
To forgive is to release all of those negative feelings, which will hopefully be one less reason for them to use.

Forgive, OP.
You owe it to yourself.
You get one life to live, one... only ONE
Why waste another second of it letting poison control you?

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh, but I'm really trying to give you a wake up call for your own sake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do you want to stop hating the person? I'm not sure what benefit a person gets from putting so much WORK into trying to force forgiveness.

I suggest practicing radical acceptance, not forgiveness. Accept that the person is worthy of your hate. Accept what the person has done to be worthy of it. And then try to focus on other things, not on forgiveness. Focus on putting your attention elsewhere.

The only person I hate is my SIL because she emotionally and verbally abused my brother before his suicide, and she is now emotionally and verbally abusing my nephews and refuses to let us see them. It breaks my heart that I can't protect them from her. On the rare occasions that her mood changes and she allows us to spend time with them, I have to put on a totally false face and pretend that I don't wish that she would drop dead. The effort it takes to dance the tightrope with her moods exhausts me for weeks, and yet I know that I have it easy because I don't have to live with her cruelty and capriciousness every day as the children do.

I don't try to forgive her. What she did to my brother was unforgivable and what she is doing to innocent children is unforgivable. How she treats me is unforgivable. I can't help the hate, and I don't fight it. I'm now working on acceptance and trying not to torture myself by putting my head in her emotional buzzsaw all the time in order to try to see my brother's children. I feel guilty EVERY day that I can't protect them or be more of a part of their lives, but I can't.

What I don't expend emotional energy on, though, is forgiveness. I don't see the point.

CPS??

[Anonymous]

I would say about 5 or 6 years. I was so upset and finally realized that it was spoiling my life. I just put her in my rear view mirror. It felt so free. It is her loss. She now wishes she had me, my family and my children in her life, but she cannot. This is a relative so I still see her now and again at family functions. I just keep moving forward and keep my amazing husband, children, and grandchildren happy by being happy and not consumed by her meanness. Yay for me!

[Anonymous]

For me, never. I’d like to be able to move on, but a just don’t know how. Truly. And I think it’s particularly hard when you have to continue to engage with the person.