“Why should I forgive them? They did me wrong and they never apologized.”

We’ve all had these moments when we’re upset, we’re hurt, we’re angry, and we’re completely unwilling to let go of our hard feelings. Those feelings are justified and we know it, but they aren’t supposed to last. Here are four reasons to forgive people who’ve done you wrong.

Grudges take a lot of time: We can talk about how healing forgiving someone is in a second, but lets start with this, when you’re holding onto a grudge you’re spending way to much time on someone who probably isn’t spending anytime on you. Toxic people aren’t worth your time. You might rant about it some to friends, but when your not it will keep coming back up in your thoughts, and it does that for a reason, because your mind doesn’t like when emotions go unresolved, by not forgiving someone you are keeping their tab open in your mind, you have to tie up those feelings, and you can’t do that and keep a grudge at the same time.

It can create tension in your good relationships: Depending on who you’re angry at this one might apply a lot or a little, but it does apply to them all. Most friend groups are very interconnected, you have a bad relationship with one person and you end up having to be selective about who your hanging out with, or worse, you feeling resentful when other people for having a good relationship with someone who did you wrong. And if your angry at someone who isn’t interconnected with your group? You’ll still probably find yourself comparing them to people you like. We start looking for the warning signs that led to the problem and then we start sticking red flags all over people who won’t do us wrong.

It gives you a chance to try and understand: This one is a little tricky. I had this one bully growing up and I remember thinking that nothing could ever justify what she did to me, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve begun to understand why she was like that. I’ve figured out who she was trying to please, I’ve figured out what kind of situation she was raised in that lead her to not think bullying was a big deal. Was she still in the wrong for doing it? 110%. But there was a lot to be learned in that situation, and by trying to understand it so I could forgive, I’ve started to learn a lot about how to reach out to others who aren’t going down such a great path, whether they are the victim or the bully.

It makes you stop caring: Once you forgive someone, you have absolutely no reason to linger on the situation. So you don’t. You close the tab and you move on. You don’t need to linger on it because you understand, you’ve stopped caring about it, and you know it’s not longer relevant to who you are. That means that you’ve healed yourself. Congratulations, it’s a beautiful thing to be free.