Over time, we’ve all probably felt hurt, angry, betrayed, and disappointed when our dreams, expectations, and agreements fell apart. After my marriage ended, I became resentful. Sold on the benefits of harboring that resentment, I spent years being angry at my ex-wife. It took me years to understand the cost of harboring resentment. And I begin learning to let it go.

Today, except for an occasional flare-up, I feel gratitude towards my ex-wife, the mother of my children. She’s now the grandmother of my grandkids, and I wish her and her husband every happiness.

What we decide to do with our past can either lift us and lighten our load—or weigh us down. The cost of harboring resentments, revenge, and blind certainty is great. Learning how to let go of what I call false promises opens the doors to possibility, opportunity, healing, and peace.

The most common of false promises is resentment.

Resentment can build up inside us like plaque when we hide, deny, and repress our hurt, anger, disappointment, and/or despair—or adopt it as a narrative and a defense mechanism. Allowed to fester, resentments can deaden and cripple our relationships.

There are, of course, people and situations that do not deserve our forgiveness, a second chance, or our trust. But some do. Holding onto even partially forgivable and resolvable grudges, transgressions, and betrayals can cast a dark cloud over salvageable marriages, sibling and parent-child relationships, and business partnerships. Ruminating, bickering, feuding, punishing, prosecuting, avoiding, and/or squandering opportunities for healing, forgiveness, and redemption are not productive, character-building approaches.

Holding onto resentment to ascribe blame, gain status, or protect ourselves from further pain and disappointment is often a one-sided explanation of who’s to blame for what went wrong. Harboring resentment after a divorce, as I did, we fail to see or own up to our part in what happened or didn’t........

© Psychology Today