People Recount Their Dignifying Stories Of Revenge

“At the time of this story, I played division 1 NCAA basketball at a school so I traveled a lot (weekly in different cities and states) and my entire life revolved around this.

During the events of this story, I was in the early stages of a horrible substance and drinking habit.

Years after this story I ended up getting sober and joined a program whose name you can find at the front of almost any phonebook. I am sure many people reading this are also sober and will understand how we addicts can be. This story is an effort to explain a character defect that manifested from the events in this story that lead me down a very dark path, however, I don’t mean this story to come off in a ‘self-pity’ kind of way.

Lastly, I was always a good kid, I was never ‘troubled’. My upbringing was very difficult but I was able to keep an overall kindness in my spirit to other people and almost always ‘did the right thing’ or ‘took the high road’. When it came to being in relationships, I knew people could be unfaithful in relationships but at the time of this story I always chalked it up to other people ‘not doing things the way I did.’ I never really thought it would happen to me… I always thought that because I was a ‘5-star guy’ and my ‘amazing choice’ in women, infidelity would never be a part of my love journey.

I was naïve. I really thought highly of myself and also had a real arrogance like any guy in his early 20s I guess.

I was in my Jr year in University I had been single for about a year after my high school partner and I finally broke up after 3 years.

I checked that relationship off as my ‘learning experience’ and I now knew what to look for in my next significant other. The next woman I chose to have a relationship with I would most likely marry and start my future with. (I know I was young and dumb and thought I knew everything LOL)

I had my eye on this girl at my school (we will call her Lisa). I saw Lisa around the collegiate athletic facility (the university teams training grounds, and locker rooms). Lisa ran for the track team and was darn good. The various athletic teams often had parties and I knew that the first one I saw her at I would introduce myself and try to chat her up a bit and see where it led.

Soon enough I see Lisa at one of these parties and we pass each other on the stairs. We make eye contact and she smiled at me. I sparked a conversation with her and after going back and forth a bit we exchange numbers. We begin the classic American style of flirting where we constantly just hint things back and forth indirectly.

We slowly progressed the relationship in this manner for weeks. Sending texts back and forth hinting that we were interested in each other but also playing it cool to not let the other person know we had a crush on them.

At the time, she was on a break with her current partner who was a popular player on the football team.

She ended up leaving him completely to go out with me. This should have been a red flag obviously but remember, I had severe hubris. At the time her leaving him to go out with me just gave me a superiority complex. I was playing well in sport and if she was willing to leave this guy for me then she will never leave me for another guy.

LOL, I was an idiot.

I can’t express how much I was into Lisa. I was addictively attracted to her and had that weird feeling of ‘I can’t believe my crush is actually into me too.’ I really was so drowned by my crush on her I missed so many red flags but our relationship began progressing really fast. Because of this, I didn’t really do a proper inventory on why I liked her so much.

Fast forward like 8 months later.

We are together officially. Lisa has her own athlete’s dorm room but I was a couple of years older than her and was working during the summers full time and part-time during school/season and had my own apartment near campus and Lisa was basically living with me.

She even would stay there when I was out of town which was like 3 or 4 days of every week because we were in season and the team was flying all over the country. I and Lisa were deeply in love regardless.

At the end of the season, I had planned two massive back-to-back parties.

One was for my teammate’s birthday (Friday night) and then my birthday (Saturday night). They just happened to be one day after the other and luckily landed on a Friday and Saturday night. I and Lisa got wasted Friday night and slept together.

Lisa kept a period-tracking calendar app on her phone.

She was asleep and I vaguely remembered she always marked down in her calendar when we slept together so she knew if she should be worried if she missed her period. She missed her period often because she was an athlete. My inebriated brain thought she should put it in her calendar now because we would forget the next day since we were so messed up.

So I woke her up and said ‘can you put in that calendar that we slept together?’ At this point, it was like 5 am and we were that 5 am kinda tipsy where you’re mostly just tired. She unlocked her phone and opened the app and before she could even do it she fell back asleep.

So I took the phone while it was still unlocked and proceeded to try and figure out how to put it in her calendar myself.

Throughout our entire relationship, Lisa went through my computer and phone constantly. She was very insecure and always had her suspicions.

I didn’t care that she was doing this all the time. She never found anything because I never did shady things, ever.

Again, looking back at this it’s an obvious red flag I missed. Remember I thought this girl would never betray me.

So this wasn’t one of those stories where I went through her phone looking for something and subsequently finding it.

In this case, I was innocently trying to navigate this darn period calendar while I was wasted and I was not suspicious at all.

When I looked at the period calendar app on Lisa’s phone, I saw all kinds of little markers on different days of each month.

Each marker was a different color so I opened one to see what the color-coding meant. I saw that red was obviously symbolling her period and then there were also black markers that showed when she hooked up.

This is when my heart sank into my stomach.

This calendar was PEPPERED with black markers. It looked like a checkerboard with only a hand full of red pieces left and ALL the black ones… There were black markers on days that I was in a different city playing basketball… I proceeded to open all of the black markers going back for our entire relationship.

She had written the names of the guys she had slept with within the notes section of the black markers. There was a total of 4 guys throughout the entirety of our relationship that she slept with. Some months there were almost dozens of those black markers.

Sometimes there were TWO in one day! Looking back on this I wonder if there were more unlisted men that I didn’t see.

In almost every story I hear of infidelity, it involves the discovery of text messages, being informed by a friend, or the classic coming home early and catching your partner red-handed.

I, on the other hand, discovered a well-documented LEDGER of almost every time she slept with another guy.

Amongst the 4 guys I discovered, one of them was her ex that she originally left to go out with me. Going behind my back with him was a common occurrence.

There was some other unknown guy she was also clearly sleeping with regularly. The last 2 fellas looked to be just a one-time thing.

I sobered up real quick. I proceeded to look through Lisa’s texts and calls and found nothing. However, at the time Android phones had a folder where you can see deleted texts but not the contents of the messages.

She had THOUSANDS of deleted texts and calls but I couldn’t see what they said but I saw the numbers and did a quick internet search and matched one with her ex in addition to something like half a dozen other random dudes. The worst part was I found TWO of my teammates… one guy I was actually pretty close with.

I just put the phone down after a few minutes. The evidence was overwhelming. The more I looked at the phone the more my insides began to hurt.

I felt so defeated. I can’t fully describe the feeling but I’m sure anyone reading this that caught a significant other in a lie knows what I’m talking about.

I felt so stupid for trusting her and having no suspicions of her.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how I regretted all the times that I had an ‘opportunity’ to betray her and remained faithful to Lisa. I felt like an idiot for not betraying her when I could have.

My loyalty felt like a waste. I know it sounds ridiculous and irrelevant to the fact that she was unfaithful. I think I obsessed over that because if I had betrayed her as well I wouldn’t have hurt so much at that moment. All I could think about was how much I was hurt.

I would do anything to not feel the pain and embarrassment anymore.

I proceeded to leave my apartment and go for a long walk. I had never felt the emotions that were coming up and didn’t know how to process them. My ego felt like it was literally dismantled in front of me.

I wasn’t sure what to do and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. My sadness quickly turned to anger. I knew I was gonna get my revenge I just didn’t know how yet.

I was SEETHING with rage and wanted to make sure she never recovered from this.

My roommate/teammate/best friend was sleeping on the couch in my living room (we will call him Bono, an eastern European kid who stood 7 foot tall and was as Russian in demeanor as you can imagine. He also had an equally ridiculous RL name hence: Bono) well, Bono called me shortly after I started my walk.

I answered and he asked where I was. I asked him to keep this between us and told him what happened. He stays on the phone and goes into my room and I hear him in his Russian accent yell at her ‘yo girl, you two-timed OP?’ Then I faintly hear her inaudibly say something in the background and him yelling at her to get out of the apartment.

After hearing some scuffling Bono gets back on the line and says ‘yo! she’s gone, come back, and let’s talk.’

I head back home and I and Bono go over what had happened. Things don’t get sappy because we are both complete alpha males who both come from cultures where ‘men don’t cry’ and neither of us really knew what to say or do in this situation.

He makes his best attempt to comfort me and says: ‘tonight is your birthday, we’re gonna get wasted and find you some women. Screw her! I never liked her anyway’.

Oh ya, this day was my birthday… forgot about that part.

I and Bono go out for breakfast. I am still a little wasted. My phone is blowing up with calls and texts from Lisa.

I tell her I saw everything on her phone and I can’t stand to speak with her or look at her. She keeps trying to convince me to let her come to my birthday party and I make it clear I don’t want her there.

She clearly was concerned about exactly what Bono suggested to me earlier when he and I chatted.

Lisa’s entire reputation and popularity revolved around the fact that she was going out with me. I think most people didn’t like her in the first place but put up with her because we were together.

She knew that if I acted single at my birthday party and she didn’t show up everyone would know something was askew. I think Lisa was more worried about being embarrassed than our relationship.

I don’t remember much of what happened that night. All I remember is sitting on my chair at the pregame for my party.

Two girls were sitting in the arms of the chair and I still have a photo of that moment and I remember it vividly. We were preparing to head out. I had a few tables downtown at a popular nightclub. The drink and substances were the only things that made me feel normal. I had my sunglasses on and clearly had that happy loaded grin on my face.

The longer you look at the photo of me on that chair, you can tell I’m hiding a huge amount of hurt.

Sitting on that chair, the substance starts to take effect. This was the first time I ever used substances not to ‘party’ but to feel better.

To make me feel normal.

I remember thinking: ‘I want to feel this way for the rest of my life. I am never going to hurt like that ever again. With this thing, I have control and no one can hurt me again.’ Oh, how ironic that turns out to be years down the line.

I told my teammates and friends that I and Lisa were done when they asked why she wasn’t at the party. I didn’t tell them why though. I also didn’t show them that I was affected by it in any way and just played it cool.

I tried to focus everyone on the party ahead of us.

So this is one of those revenge stories where it was only half planned. I knew I wanted to get revenge on Lisa for hurting me so much. But I kind of just improvised as opportunities came up.

My original kind spirit had died on my birthday on that chair. All my morals went out the window. I never two-timed in relationships therefore I believed I would never get two-timed. I realize now how dumb that is but that’s what I thought at the time.

I didn’t care what collateral damage I caused as long as my mission to hurt Lisa as much as possible was accomplished. So continued every day of my life with this new selfish mindset.

I was sitting at my computer later that next week skimming social media when I saw the profile of one of her track teammates on my feed. That’s when I had my first vengeful idea.

I decided I was going to attempt to get her teammates to bite the bait that I was about to cast out into the water. Though I didn’t have proof she hooked up with my teammates, she was clearly trying to hide conversations between them.

So I was going to see how many people who are close to her I could ‘passionately hug’. Luckily I had more options than she had when two-timing me. A women’s track team is much larger than a men’s basketball team. Also much better looking.

Lisa’s teammate I originally spotted on my social media account had a significant other but I thought: ‘clearly everyone acts unfaithful, let’s see if it’s true.’ I proceed to do the little flirty social media dance with her. You know, the one where I like a couple of her photos, she likes a couple of mines back.

I shoot her a message and BAM! she’s at my house in my bed about a week later. I proceed to do something similar to other teammates of hers. All on her 4×4 relay team coincidentally.

2 of the 3 girls I ‘passionately hugged’ had significant others and subsequently two-timed them with me which gave me some real mixed emotions.

It stroked my broken ego and also made me bitter and sad. Giving me one of those ‘women ain’t worth it! none of them are loyal’ attitudes.

This is such a typical story of while fighting monsters I became a monster.

This actually became my go-to strategy because it accomplished two things in my messed-up mind.

It exposed a liar but more importantly if they were willing to betray their men they would:

A) be more secretive about it which meant the drama that would ensue when it came out would be elevated and

B) it made me feel better about Lisa because it proved it wasn’t me that was the problem.

It was women that were the problem. (I know it’s messed up but that’s what I thought back then.)

I started to collect something from every girl that I hooked up with, like a bra, a pair of undergarments, or some jewelry, etc.. (not for some creepy reason, but this is important later and was a part of my plan).

Sometimes I didn’t even have to try. One girl left a pair of very distinguishable shoes. I knew Lisa would know who’s shoes they were. They belonged to the girl that Lisa’s ex rebounded with after Lisa and he broke up which highly upset her because it was her friend.

Now it would upset her more because that same girl slept with both of her exes. I especially tried to collect items if it was something that I knew Lisa could distinguish like a sweater from the women’s track team with her teammate’s name on it.

After some time I had collected a boatload of things.

After a couple of months or so, one of Lisa’s teammate’s significant others found out about me and his girl and it started a big beautiful dramatic explosion of series of events with her and her teammates.

This led to all of them finding out about one another. The drama was MASSIVE. Even their coaches had to get involved it got so bad.

This made me feel so powerful in such an evil yet satisfying way. I fell in love with the destruction I was causing.

(The most awesome part about all of it was that same week, the Athletics PR team had put massive posters of me all over campus promoting the next game. They were EVERYWHERE. Some of the posters took up the entire side of buildings). So Lisa and her friends had to see me all over campus every day while this drama was erupting all around them.

I felt like a triumphant dictator. It was glorious and pathetic at the same time.

Their coach even proceeded to have a ‘serious’ meeting with the compliance department and my team’s coaches. My coaches literally laughed at her saying ‘this seems like an internal issue, but OP hasn’t done anything illegal or broken any school policy so there is nothing we can do’.

This infuriated the women’s track coach. Their team had fallen apart. Their national ranking began to plummet. Then Lisa’s coach even got in trouble for being caught tearing down some of the smaller posters of me on campus in raging temper tantrums.

I loved all of it.

I continued to add fuel to the fire. Posting photos of myself with girls, smiling, being happy every chance I could on social media. But under it all, I was bitter. I was so deep into my new mindset I had already forgotten the kind-hearted naïve kid I use to be.

I hated my old self because I let some girl emasculate me. I was so full of self-pity looking back, it’s depressing. No one really knew though because I played the cool guy attitude in front of people.

There was even a girl on campus on one of the sports teams who claimed that she was pregnant with my kid after I pretended to like her the same way I did with all of the other girls on Lisa’s team and soon as we ‘passionately hugged’ I moved on.

It’s a long story, but it turned out she wasn’t pregnant but the news or ‘press’ that came from that further dug the knife deeper into Lisa’s side. I left a trail of women I deceived and relationships I destroyed. I feel bad now but at the time I didn’t care because they were equally at fault in my eyes since they were two-timing their men or sleeping with their friends’ ex.

Quickly, girls became weary of me. Plus I was running out of ‘potential targets’ (Yea, I was an awful human being then, the way I was thinking) and I was going after girls that weren’t even friends or on the track team with Lisa but were just around her in daily life.

For example her classmates and as well as her own family. I even flirted with her sister who was married to a kid and I almost succeeded. She was down but she and Lisa’s dad found out about it and stepped in and put a stop to it all before we could do anything.

Her sister was ostracized as the news spread within the family.

I wanted Lisa to know I was everywhere and constantly remind her how she messed up. In my eyes, this was all her fault and she unleashed this fury of chaos upon herself. She should never have messed with me like that.

Lisa had to take an extended medical leave because of the depression and mental health issues she was experiencing from the whole situation. She even had to go on medication and lost TONS of weight. She began to look extremely unhealthy. The whole mess was torturing her and the more she hurt the better I felt.

At this point, I had already inflicted more damage than she did to me but I had become addicted to the feeling of power… I spent 0 time processing my own emotions or moving on from what happened. All I wanted was more revenge and I couldn’t stop.

After weeks of ignoring Lisa’s texts and calls she finally gets ahold of me by showing up to my apartment unannounced late at night. She was there to pick up some stuff she left from when she lived there to take home. She was actually a local and her parents lived close by.

(She was still on her medical leave and no longer staying on campus but rather with her parents). I told her I would bring her stuff to her parent’s house that weekend but I couldn’t let her in because I had ‘company’. Which I did but it wasn’t one of her teammates or friends, unfortunately.

I then took all the items I had collected from all the girls over the weeks. There were probably like 8 or 9 things from different girls including her teammates and threw their belongings in along with Lisa’s stuff into big black trash bags. I took the bags to her house and then called Lisa’s dad.

I told him I left her stuff on his porch and to inform his demon daughter. My and Lisa’s dad actually really got along and he even took my side after Lisa and I broke up. But after all these events transpired he obviously had a negative opinion of me.

15 minutes after I get off the phone with Lisa’s dad, I get a call from Lisa. I answer because I want to hear her reaction to having all these other girls’ things mixed in with hers. She was sobbing uncontrollably. It sounded like that half crying half mumbling thing people do when they are hysterical. She wasn’t even angry, just desperately begging me to stop my tyranny.

I just smiled and baked in the glory of hearing her hurt. I responded, ‘why were there other guys in our relationship? You mixed them into our relationship like I mixed other girls’ things into your things. It’s a perfect little ironic metaphor.’ I thought it sounded cool at the time and was really proud of myself.

(facepalm)

I later found out from one of Lisa’s friends (who knew she was going behind my back during our relationship) that Lisa was convinced I WAS THE ONE two-timing her because ‘I was always out of town.’ This doesn’t make sense since I was out of town because of basketball, a very legit excuse.

Not just randomly on my own accord. You could literally see my schedule on the school’s website. I kept in contact with her constantly when I was gone but obviously when I had practice or team meetings I couldn’t be on my phone. But she didn’t have the logic in her brain to figure this out I guess.

I assume it’s just an excuse she made to protect her insecurities about the whole fiasco or to keep face with people who knew what she was doing.

Months go by and Lisa comes back to school from her medical leave and we bump into each other at the physical therapy center in our athlete facility building.

I see this as yet another opportunity. It had been a while since I did something that hurt her and I was still hungry for more vengeance. I proceed to pretend like I want to rekindle things with her. She is cautious at first but eventually bites after about a week.

We start to mend our ‘relationship’. We proceed for about a month but I wouldn’t call this a relationship. I forbid her to have any male friends nor is she allowed to go out and party with her friends. I also need full access to all her accounts and her location at all times.

It was more like a hostage situation. It gave me a sense of control.

Meanwhile, I’m not being faithful at all. This was my plan all along. Finally, she finds out about me sleeping with a girl in one of her classes and we have a nasty ‘breakup’.

I told her that she literally knows what it felt like to be me when we last were together. Yet again, I felt triumphant. It was just another chance to hurt her and I did.

After this, we don’t speak for YEARS.

I graduate from university and move to Central America.

She messages me while I’m there about a year after I moved and about 2 years after we last spoke. At this point, my life has become that of a real degenerate. I was doing copious amounts of substances on a daily basis and about 75% of my life was involved in some sort of illegal or nefarious activities.

But I still blame her for me becoming the dark soul that I was and taking no responsibility for my bitter immoral nature. I hadn’t had another relationship since her and always had trouble because I couldn’t trust women in any capacity anymore. Even after years had passed, I saw this instance of her messaging me as yet another opportunity to hurt her.

We begin to talk as friends and even getting flirty with each other over messenger. Mind you there are literally many countries, states, and an ocean between us at this point. I was planning a trip back to my old university to visit some friends.

However, what I told her was different: I explained to her I was moving back to the city for a new job I was just offered. We decide to meet up when I get back and see if there is anything worth saving between us.

I had put on my best acting hat and try to seem like I’ve put our past behind us. However, I’m just as vengeful now as I was years ago. She’s finishing up her last year at University and I make the trip back to the USA.

I meet Lisa at a coffee shop when I arrive. We spend the entire night together. From her point of view, it really looks like we had moved past our differences and what happened. We could actually work things out.

However, I’m not moving back obviously like I told her.

I am only staying 2 nights. She doesn’t know this. After hooking up a few times and spending 2 days together, without mentioning anything to her about me leaving, I pack my things and get back on a plane back to Central America.

I blocked her on all my social media and communication outlets.

This time I could only fantasize about what happened to her when I disappeared after she thought I had moved back and supposedly was ready to give our relationship another try. This time however it wasn’t as satisfying as my previous plots of revenge.

My unhealthy habit and lifestyle only got worse every year.

I was never sober a full 24 hours after the day that I went through that period calendar.

Looking back, as much pain as I might have caused her with my vengeful life, my new identity that consumed my old one was so tainted with a dark spirit at heart.

I think I honestly did more harm to myself with my actions and led me to down the road where I had no morals anymore. Though I spent the entirety of this story telling everyone how I kept getting revenge at my ex for two-timing me, as satisfying as it was, I wish I would have spent an equal amount of energy healing myself from the incident.

If anyone reading this is experiencing the pain that comes with betrayal, a good revenge story can bring you some satisfaction but I hope you don’t make the same mistake I did. Rather spend MORE time healing yourself from the hurt and moving past it.

The revenge won’t heal you. It will be a separate journey but could distract you from putting yourself back together.

Luckily I got sober and am sober now for 4+ years. I even had another significant other of 2 years two-time me before I got sober but this time I didn’t take revenge.

I spent my time healing. I changed and only focused on myself and that was way more satisfying than the revenge I got on Lisa.

Now I’m married almost 2 years to a woman who is sober and man do I have a good life. I have a dream job and a dream marriage.”