Could you still hold a grudge against someone from primary school?

There are some feelings that you remember for life.
I can certainly relate to this topic.
I remember girls in secondary school who were supposed to be my friends but turned nasty if I got better scores than them in tests or was moved to a higher group.

Being called names or made to feel all alone isn't a nice feeling. These are girls I don't want to think about or meet, again.
Just because we are adults now doesn't excuse the behaviour of secondary age school girls who bullied other students because it made them feel in control or powerful. That is mean behaviour.

It is normally the act of one cruel person who turns the other girls against you. Its not easy to forget that.

It definitely doesn't feel like silly girls stuff when you are at the receiving end of it and also it is done deliberately at the time.
Your childhood is an important part of your life and because we are adults now, doesn't mean its easy to forget what happened years ago.
Unforgivable behaviour cannot be forgiven.

One of my best friends occasionally brings up rows & fallings out we had when we were 14 or 15. We’re mid 50’s now. She’s always deadly serious when she talks about it, and the expectation is that I’ll apologise, every time. Unfortunately our recollections of events vary, fortunately she’s fairly easy to redirect each time, so so far no rows about it, but yes-she still holds a grudge 😁

Oh, don’t start me about school reunions…. I have no idea why I went to a secondary school one but despite all the rejections flooding back I was horrified that one of my year who, on chatting to her, I discovered was now a Senior Consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital and spent 2 months each year doing voluntary work in hospitals in her (African) homeland was being ignored but another ‘Old Girl’ who was part of a production team on a TV soap was mentioned in speeches. Because ‘we all watch xyz, don’t we?’. 🙄

Yes.

Easily. I wont storm out tho.

No, to act like that as a mature adult because of what some 8year old did to you 30yrs ago...is wierd imo.

Yep....I think its more unusual not to care if you bump into a bully.

and I see the OP has not returned......

lol mine too

Oh do fuck off.

You will prise my grudges out of my cold dead hands.

This. I was waiting for a bus in college when someone who bullied me at school came over. He apologised and went on about how sorry he was and what he was doing now blah blah blah. The hold he still had over me was awful.

He might have walked away feeling better but he made me feel 100× worse doing that than I felt at school because he still had the power after all those years. He wanted to talk and I still didnt have the strength to tell him to piss off.

40 years later I am still angry with him for having audacity to do that and I'm angry with myself for letting him do that.

So yes, if he walked into a shop I was in, I would walk out.

Yes. I was bullied in the first year of seniors and can still, on the rare occasion, fantasise about wishing I’d laced her lunch with a strong laxative, and this was 1974!

I would never forgive her even if she gave me £10million as a sorry (I would accept the money though 😁).

Not from primary, but from secondary and I’m 54. I can think of a couple of people I would more than likely punch in the face if they walked in a room.

I can hold a grudge for ever.

100%. My childhood and school years haunt me some days, to the point I dream of those hideous girls. I feel hot and embarrassed when I remember those dreadful times."We were only pretending to be your friend" was a big one for me. Left me with ongoing feeling of inadequacy and probably the reason i've spent most of my life doing what I thought other people wanted me to do, and striving to be liked. Only in my 30s did I realise i'd missed a lot of opportunities to live my own best life because I was marred by that trauma. I am currently 18 weeks pregnant with my second, and part of me wants a DD to go with DS but the other is terrified of having my own little girl who has to navigate these trying times.

I remember, I would have been about six... a group of kids from my class were bounding around another boy shouting and I thought they were all laughing, so I laughed too and walked on. A little while later I saw the boy who had been in the middle crying, so I asked what was wrong but he seemed angry and shouted at me to go away, so I did. Later he told a teacher and it seemed they had been bullying him and he hadn't been laughing, but I truly didn't realise that. The teacher spoke to me about it and I told the truth, that I had thought they were all laughing and I would have told a teacher if I had realised what was happening. She believed me (I wasn't a bully and was an honest child) but he didn't and I really couldn't convince him.

Nathan, I really am sorry... I honestly thought you were laughing.

On the face of it no ,,but it depends on how you made her feel it may have had a profound impact on her and her self esteem what you see as squabbles she may have saw as bullying.

I'm not sure about holding a grudge as such against an adult for the child they used to be. However I do know that early negative experiences of bullying, teasing, isolation can have a profound effect on confidence and self esteem that can carry forward into adult life.
Obviously the 'right thing' to do as an adult in this case is to work through it. However, I can understand why for some people that would involve avoiding the trigger of a person they associate with it.

Being badly bullied? Hell yeah.. and I'm in my 60s.
I live very far away from the town I grew up in and often wonder what I would do if I bumped into them.
At the school reunion over 20 years ago I wasn't rude but I avoided them after the initial (very) short conversation..
It was very cathartic..

Did you bully her?

Yes. I was bullied at school at the age of 9, due to my mum dying of cancer. Yes, really ! I can still recall the exact classroom and who made the comments. 30+ years later, I still give the back of the guy the evil eye when he is stacking shelves at Asda, when I am in there doing the food shop.

Oh definitely - there was a girl at my primary who was just seriously nasty to everyone. Looking back it was just bizarre why she was so horrible! A few people from primary are still in touch (our parents are friends still) and not one person will speak to her now. And that's going back 30 odd years!
In fact, I had a panic that I saw her a few weeks ago and was very relieved when it wasn't her!

Well said.

There is only one person I’d recognise, I think: we were at primary and secondary together. I wouldn’t give the weaselly little bastard the pleasure of seeing how much I still despise him, 55 years after I last saw him, but obviously, yes, I bear a grudge.

I still hold a grudge against the girl who sat next to me at school when I was 6, AND the class teacher. The girl copied my work. The teacher, working her way around the class to check it, reached her first, then me, and assumed I'd cheated.

I can remember the teacher's name, but not the girl's name .I still hold that grudge though.