Let’s Start Holding Grudges Again

When it comes to holding grudges, the cultural script is familiar: be the bigger person, let it go, and smile while doing so. The problem? That script often prioritizes social comfort over self-respect. In practice, “forgiveness” can become a fast track to erasing harm and reopening doors that were closed for a reason.

On The Bad Broadcast, host Madi Murphy embraces the taboo rather openly, making it clear that “sometimes it just feels good to hold a grudge, okay? It doesn’t harm anybody. You know that old saying, ‘holding a grudge is like drinking poison’? No, it’s not. It’s actually fun.” (For context, Murphy is referring to the popular meme that says “holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”—a quote that is attributed to everyone from Nelson Mandela to St. Augustine and Guatama Buddha, but whose exact origins are unknown.)

Rather than being social taboos, perhaps we need to reframe grudges as boundaries with a memory. Why are we (especially women) constantly pressured to forgive and forget, even when doing so comes at our own expense?

Let’s Start Holding Grudges Again

Why the forgiveness reflex can backfire

Contemporary “forgiveness culture” borrows heavily from Judeo-Christian ideals that often misunderstand the concept of “turning the other cheek.” Rather than applying it as intended (which is to turn the proverbial tables on those who would do us harm in fair and equal measure), “turning the other cheek” has become a trap where women are praised for absorbing harm and penalized for naming it.

Murphy’s conversation makes room for nuance. When she reads a listener’s story about friends who vanished after a birth, she cuts to the marrow. “You really never, ever forget how people treated you in the middle of hard things,” she opines. A grudge, in that light, isn’t poison, but a label on a file you don’t want to misplace. When we’re pressured to forgive prematurely, we risk distorting our own experiences and overlooking valuable insights into other people’s character.

To put it simply: It’s okay to want, and even demand, justice. It’s not okay to swallow injustice in the interest of “keeping the peace.”

The key to healthy grudge-holding

The healthy side of holding grudges lies in understanding the difference between protective memory and consuming resentment. A right-sized grudge can be a guardrail. It says, “I remember what happened—and I’ll act accordingly.”

Murphy keeps it human and, yes, funny. After a dating disappointment triggered by gossip, she shrugs, “So obviously holding a little bit of a grudge there,” before zeroing in on the tattling that cost her trust. Elsewhere, she admits she still teases her husband about an early “rejection” and adds, “I still can’t let it go.” These aren’t vendettas—you can remember certain behaviors without necessarily wishing harm on others.

Even her most pointed bit is tempered with clarity. “With all the people I hold grudges against, I wish them well. I don’t want anything bad to happen to them,” she says, before adding with a grin that she wants those memories to “keep them up in the middle of the night.” It’s deadpan, but it also protects the line between accountability and relationship-destroying obsession. It’s one thing to demand, for example, that your abuser be held accountable, and another thing to pull a Kill Bill and put yourself in harm’s way to achieve the other party’s destruction.

How to know when to let go—and when to hold on

The decision point should be pattern recognition rather than pursuing perfection from others. When people show you who they are around your most tender moments, you believe them—because your nervous system already has. Meanwhile, reflexive “forgiveness” can set a trap: make the apology, push for closure, and re-enter the same dynamic unchanged. That, put simply, isn’t healing, and a calibrated grudge keeps you from doing that dance.

Remember: An apology without changed behavior is manipulation. Demand accountability, demand changed behavior, and cut them out of your life if they can’t give you either one. And most of all: never trust words or isolated actions. Always trust patterns.

Holding grudges as self-respect

When a culture tells women always to be agreeable, where female fury is labeled “hysterical” while male anger is seen as justified—the demand for endless grace becomes another way to police women’s emotional responses. In that light, a grudge is simply a record that you refuse to falsify. At the same time, that record doesn’t require cruelty. Boundaries require memory, while accountability demands a voice.

So, if forgiveness fits, use it. But if it feels like a costume you’re squeezing into to make other people comfortable, it’s okay to leave it on the hanger. Keep the grudge that teaches you, release the one that shrinks you, and let humor be the solvent that takes the sting out while the lesson stays put. Murphy sums up the mood best when she waves off the poison cliché and reminds everyone that, sometimes, a little grudge “is actually fun.”

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