People Chat About Their Riveting Revenge Stories

“My Soon to Be Ex-Wife was my high school sweetheart. We started going out in 1992 when we were both 17 (we’re both 45 now) and have been together ever since.

She’s the only woman I’ve ever been with my entire life. We married 5 years later at 22, fresh out of college. A year later, we had our 1st of two children, both boys. (22 and 17) 23 years I gave to her. Built her a house. Worked my butt off to give her the life she wanted. Sure, we had rough patches, but what marriage doesn’t?

Even in the worst of times, we found a way to pull through and come out the other side better. Which made the discovery of her affair that much more jarring.

Flashback to March 2020, when I 1st got the feeling something was ‘off’. For a good 2 months prior, we were in a funk.

I was on the mend from reconstructive knee surgery (blew out my ACL fall 2019) but still lacking in movement. At the time I only had about 55% range of motion on my knee. This took a toll on quite a lot in the house. I was out on worker’s comp, as I had been injured on the job, and I was unable to do my usual household duties, so a lot got backed up.

My sons would do what they could, but tasks only I was capable of doing had to be put on the back burner, or my wife had to do, which she wasn’t pleased with. Things also crawled to a standstill in the bedroom between us.

It had already slowed down before my injury, but in the state, I was in at the time it completely stopped.

During these months, she (we’ll call her Sue) was spending more time ‘hanging with co-workers’ after work. Between November 2019 to March 2020 it was a regular occurrence for her.

Naturally, I thought nothing of it. I’ve never in the 23 years I’d been with her had any reason to worry or not trust her. She has her friends, I have mine, and we have mutual. I’d go hang out with my friends all the time and there was no issue.

It was all above board. It was around January of this year that I noticed something odd. Sue started getting noticeably distant from me. Sure, we were in a funk, but she’d never deny me affection to that point. The usual hugs and kisses she’d give me came to a halt.

Her phone was attached to her hand long before my suspicion grew, but she’d always share and show me things she’d discovered on the web. DIY ideas and recipes on Pinterest, memes, all kinds of stuff. But she was now being guarded about her phone.

Even her interactions with me became more snippy as if she couldn’t be bothered.

So we’re now in March. 2020 happened. Our chosen careers fall under the ‘essential’ designation, so neither of us has to work from home. I’d just been recently cleared to return to work after 5 months on the shelf, and I was eager to get back after it, like 5 months on my butt rehabbing my knee and not being able to do physical stuff drove me nuts.

(For context, I enjoy physical activities. I’m an avid martial artist and I’m typically in the gym 4 days a week, on top of all of the home projects I did.) Within a week or 2 of the isolation, my Soon to Be Ex-Wife alerts me that she’s going to have to start putting in extra hours.

Again, I think nothing of this because of her field. Of course, I was under the assumption it’d be every other day, but no. It was every day. And not just an hour or 2. She’d come home 3 or more hours later, and go straight to the shower, spend a little time with me, a little time with our 17 y/o (22-year-old lives with his significant other crosstown), and then go to bed. As I’m able to support myself on my knee better, we started getting intimate again, but as you’d probably guess she wasn’t mentally or emotionally present for it, which I noticed quickly.

So by early April, the picture started getting clearer to me. All of the signs were pointing to the idea that she was having an affair. That’s when I decided I needed to find answers. So I scoured the internet on things I should be looking for.

Signs of infidelity in one’s partner, and sure enough she was pretty much ticking all of the boxes on such behavior. So then my search inquiry advanced to how do I find proof. I started with her social media. Looking at her social media entries from months prior, it’s pretty much the usual. Pics of us and our sons, pics with her and her friends, and more than a few pics of her nights out with co-workers.

In these pics, it’s a mixed bag of her closest friends from work, and a couple of folks I’ve never met from her work. But I see one recurring thing in a number of these pics, one guy. In every picture he is in, he is rather uncomfortably close to her.

His arm is around her shoulder, or his hand on her lower back. WAY too close for a guy I’ve never personally met. Needless to say, that put a sour taste in my mouth.

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

No, no, no. The worst was the fact that apparently, this dude is a friend of hers on social media and followers her on IG.

So I go to look up his social media account and wouldn’t you know it, I’m blocked. Why in the world am I blocked from seeing this guy’s socials media account, but he’s friends with her on social media. Yep. Now I’m in Batman detective mode.

At that point, I wasn’t even trying to deny it. I knew she was being unfaithful to me with this guy. My mission was to find out for how long. And over the course of April and May, that’s what I did. You know I never had any clue the depth of info you could secure from phone, text, and email records up until then.

We have a family plan cellphone package, and I was able to pull up quite a bit of data. My Soon to Be Ex-Wife’s data history was telling. The 2 most frequent numbers she had interacted with from October 2019 to April 2020 were my own, and a number I had never seen before.

Take a wild guess who’s number it was? A quick google check and I confirmed it was the dude from the photos who blocked me on social media. (We’ll call him Jerkface, cuz that’s what he is.) Again, the picture becomes even clearer at this point.

But a lot of their messages and texts were disjointed, which meant she was deleting a lot of them. I knew she was sneaking behind my back with this guy, but nothing in the data could serve as a smoking gun. I needed more evidence.

It was at this point that I tell my best friend Oz what I had found. He asked me did I confront her with what I had, and I said no because I felt like it wasn’t enough. That’s when he told me about an app that I could download to apparently spy on her communications in real-time.

I won’t say the name as I don’t know the rules on that here. I got it installed, sync up my data plan, and waited. Within days of doing so, I finally saw it. A text string between the 2 of them talking about how much fun they’d had the previous night, and making plans to do it again that weekend.

Boom. Gut punch. To say I was completely devastating was an understatement. I guess that moment counts as my ‘D-Day’, and for the next 2 days after I was just broken. I actively distanced myself from her those 2 days immediately after d-day, which she was noticeably shaking by.

She’d try to console me and ask me what was wrong, but I’d brush it off and leave her presence. I couldn’t even look at her. This woman, who I gave 23 years of my life to. I have given everything I could and more to them as a husband, and she stepped outside of our marriage for a guy just 5 years older than our eldest son.

By the 3rd day, I wasn’t even sad anymore, I was angry.

I contacted Oz to let him know my suspicion was confirmed, and he asked me had confronted her yet. My answer was no, and I told him I wanted payback. I didn’t want to just divorce her, I wanted to destroy her.

I wanted to leave her life in shambles and ruin her. It was going to take time to do so, and I devised a plan. In my readings and research on infidelity, I had seen a quote that resonated with me that went ‘the enemy of infidelity is unpredictability.’ Or something to that ilk.

That was going to be the basis of my plan. I was going to make her life miserable on wheels, while also secretly planning my exit strategy.

So we’re now in early June, and I’ve still got the app installed. Pretty much every night, I’m gathering as much data as I can seeing their back and forth messages.

They were talking like it was a full-blown relationship they’re in. Naughty texting, lovey-dovey romantic stuff, naughty photos, the whole bag. At that point I had stopped looking at any of it, I was just collecting info and cataloging on my private FPS server. Meanwhile, I start doing things ‘out of the ordinary’.

I start going out at odd times. I start coming home even later than she does. In her presence, I’m on my phone a lot more than usual and when she asks ‘what are you up to?’ I just simply say ‘just stuff’ and put my phone away.

I had also changed my log-in info on everything, so she couldn’t access any of my stuff. Mind you, for our entire marriage, we’d never hid anything from each other. But right around I’m assuming the start of her affair, she’d changed her password on social media, as well as on her phone stating ‘she had to because of the security breaches in recent months.’ Yea, a really nice cover for hiding your affair from your husband.

Anyway, I’d clued Oz in on my plan, as well as telling my older (and only) sister and two more of my closest friends what was going on. These are people I trust with my life, and I swore them to secrecy. (For context, Oz and I have been friends since we were kids.

The other of our friends Joey and Nina we’ve known since High School. Make note of Nina, she comes into play down the road.)

July comes, and my Soon to Be Ex-Wife is in full paranoia mode. She’s texting and calling me a lot more frequently now, asking me if I’m going to be home when she gets home, when am I coming home while she is and I’m not, asking me what am I up to, the works.

I can see the seed planted in her head the month prior is starting to sprout, especially in her communication with Jerkface. She’s confiding in him her doubt and confusion. Telling him that I’m getting cold and distant. The nerve of this woman!!! In the interim of these interactions with Jerkface, she suggests that maybe they should stop meeting up at our house because she has no idea if I’d just show up, confirming that yes, she’s had this idiot in my home.

Thanks, Sue! Jerkface asks her in that specific communication was worried about me potentially being unfaithful to her, which actually annoy her. I can’t even begin to describe the level of joy and how many laughs I got out of reading that exchange. My lying wife arguing with her affair partner over if her husband could be lying to her.

Oh, the irony. Now bear in mind, I’m not hooking up with anyone. When I leave, I’m usually at Oz or Joey’s throwing back some booze, watching fights and spending time with my bros, or at my big sis’ house hanging with her and my brother-in-law, who’s like an older brother to me.

My sis is 52 and her hubby is 58. She had told him about my Soon to Be Ex-Wife’s infidelity, but not of my plan. Couldn’t risk it as he’s a bit of a blabbermouth.

We’ll fast forward now to October. That’s when things seriously pick up.

I’ve been in my ‘faux affair’ for 3 months now, and Sue is hyper-aware of the fact that I’m actively pulling away from her. It’s been as long as the day I enacted my plan until the day she ‘confronted’ me, October 20th, 2020 that I’d even touched her.

No hugs. No kisses. No initiation of intimacy. Nothing. Not like she needed it, she was still with Jerkface, just at his place or at motels. So that afternoon, she calls me at work, which wasn’t rare before all this began, but certainly hadn’t happened in a while, and asked me to come straight home after work saying she had ‘something important to tell me.’ I’m not gonna lie to you all, I half-believed she was going to come clean about her infidelity, but she of course didn’t.

Instead, I get home to her asking me was I unhappy with her. The. Nerve. She sights the fact that I’ve been spending way too much time away from home, I don’t show her affection anymore and our intimate life has completely died. She tells me she’s worried I’m pushing her away because I was resentful of how she treated me the months I was rehabbing my knee.

And then came the punchline. She asked if I was having an affair.

Folks, I fell out on the floor laughing hysterically. And when I say hysterically I mean Joker laughing gas hysterical. On the surface, it looked like (to her assuming) it was me laughing off the notion of being unfaithful, but it was of course actually me laughing at the sheer irony of what was happening in front of my eyes.

I’m tearing up, pounding on the floor in complete hysterics for a good 2 minutes before I compose myself enough to answer. I sit up and look her in the eyes for the 1st time in months shaking my head, but I don’t give her an answer.

I stand up, brush myself off, kiss the top of her head and go about settling in for the night.

Later that night, as I’m in my office I decide you know what? Given the brevity of what happened, I wanted to see what she was telling him.

So I fire up the app and sure enough, they’re actually texting in real-time. She tells Jerkface ‘I know he’s lying to me. I asked him tonight and he literally laughed in my face. He fell on the floor and laughed for like 5 minutes. (It wasn’t 5 minutes obviously.) He doesn’t even care how I feel anymore.

I don’t know how or why, but he’s gone. I know I’ve lost him. This is karma, I know it.’ The smile I had on my face reading that must’ve resembled the Cheshire Cat. She was breaking. Jerkface attempted to console her, saying that if I cared enough for her, she wouldn’t have had come to him to give her what I wasn’t giving her, but the tone of her responses told me she was having doubt now.

She had the nerve to step out of our marriage because I was unable to fulfill my role as a husband due to legitimate injury and kept the affair going for at that point nearly an entire year, but the idea of her losing me to another woman was enough to make her waver?

What a weakling.

Now, during all of this, I was also exacting the 2nd part of my payback plan, getting all of my affairs in order financially. In September, I had met with a family attorney to get the ball rolling on divorce paper, with the mountain of evidence I’d piled up to that point.

New York is an ‘at fault’ state as far as Divorce, and the overwhelming amount of proof I’d gathered displaying Sue’s infidelity pretty much solidified I could nail her to the wall in a divorce case. My lawyer instructed me to get all of my financials in order in preparation for whatever division of assets might come as result.

I went one better than that, secretly pulling all of my funds out of our joint account and putting it in my personal account. I also started shopping around for an apartment as part of ‘phase 2’.

We’re now in November, and I’ve not changed my behavior.

In fact, I’ve ramped it up. This is where my friend Nina comes into play. For context, Nina and Sue have never been what you call ‘close’. I met Nina freshman year of high school 2 years before I met Sue. Even way back then, Sue has seen Nina as a ‘threat’, as she’s my closest female friend.

There’s always been an implied ‘I don’t trust her’ from Sue regarding Nina. She’s never addressed it directly, but it’s obvious to anyone who pays attention. Conversely, Nina’s never been a big fan of Sue. Early in my and Sue’s relationship, Nina called to attention to me how Sue was pretty much imposing herself into our little ‘square’ of friends, whereas I didn’t do the same with Sue’s set of friends.

That irked Nina because she knew why Sue was doing it, her. Among Sue’s circle even now, there are no male friends… aside from Jerkface. Whereas Nina is the only girl in my ‘square’.

Nina had been ‘stuck’ overseas due to the health crisis and finally returned to NYC on November 3rd.

Oz, Joey, and I decided we were gonna celebrate her return with a night at Joey’s house for dinner and drinks. (There were only 5 of us, Oz, Joey, Joey’s wife… who is also Nina’s sister, Nina, and myself). Nina, being the evil mastermind she is, comes up with an evil idea to trigger Sue.

She suggested we take some photos in the same vein as the photos I discovered of Sue and Jerkface months prior… and post them to my social media. And that’s just what we did. It wasn’t until the 5th that Sue got wind of it, as I’m guessing a few friends noticed my updates and saw how ‘uncomfortably’ close I was with Nina.

This really messed her mind up, because she still believed I was having an affair, and I can almost guarantee she ‘wanted’ to accuse Nina, but she knew that Nina had been stuck in Europe for the majority of the year. Still didn’t stop her from attempting to dress me down that night for being so as she said ‘handsy’ in the pics.

I saw this as a golden opportunity to deliver the lead jab for my knockout blow. I say ‘So what about the pics with you and Jerkface from last year? He was pretty handsy in them. But did you see me get bent out of shape over it?’

Deer in the headlights. It was the 1st time I even mentioned the dude’s name throughout all of this. The hamster wheel in her head started reeling in real-time as she tried to explain away those pics. To that point she hadn’t even known I saw them, that’s how little I use social media.

When I actually do post something it’s like an event to people, which is why the pics with Nina specifically got so much traction among our circles. And explain away she did. ‘He’s that way with everyone.’ ‘He’s just a really friendly guy.’ ‘I can see how it looks, but there’s nothing there.’ ‘I’m sorry if those pics hurt you.

I’ll delete them.’ No, no… the pics aren’t what hurt me. The year you’ve been sleeping with the dude whilst lying to me that you’re working extra hours and hanging with friends is what hurt me. But vengeance, as Lt. Comm. Warf from Star Trek: TNG so famously said ‘is a dish best served cold.’ From that night, Sue was being extra-specially clingy and attentive to me.

Like, annoyingly so. She’s trying to initiate affection and intimacy with me and I’d stonewall her at every chance. All the while, I’m still archiving everything she’s saying to Jerkface. Mind you by this point I’d long since gone numb. Any desire I might have had to save my marriage was dead.

I’d checked out the day I enacted the 1st phase of my plan.

She’s confiding in him that I’ve gotten worse. That she doesn’t know what to do, and she feels like I absolutely hate her. (I do.) Then comes the bombshell. She says she can’t see him anymore.

The guilt is too much for her, and she feels like karma is suffocating her. She can’t risk losing me. She says that she loves Jerkface deeply, but she is ‘still in love’ with me, and she has to save her marriage before she loses me.

No, my dear… you’re about 8 months too late for that. Jerkface loses his mind, saying such lovely things as ‘He doesn’t love you the way I love you.’ and ‘You’re making a mistake, you can’t just throw me away like this.’ That text chain would be the last they’d have until about 3 weeks ago.

Throughout the remainder of November into December, Sue is tuck in limbo. She’s trying to gauge where my headspace is and is still unable to tell if I’m actually being unfaithful. Meanwhile, Jerkface is steadily blowing her phone up daily, but she’s not responding to him.

I’d see her check her phone often, they quickly put it away. Meanwhile, phase 2 of the plan was now officially complete. The divorce papers were done. I’d found myself a studio apartment in Co-Op City (New Yorkers will know the area) and signed a 2-year lease on it.

All of my money was in my personal account. I was ready to throw my haymaker.

So we’re now at Thanksgiving. My oldest and his significant other were hosting a small gathering of our immediate families. So them (Oldest and his significant other), Oldest’s significant other’s parents (she’s an only child) myself, Sue, and our youngest. We have a great night.

My oldest’s significant other is studying to be a chef, and she did all the cooking herself. The girl can cook lemme tell ya’. As I had to keep up appearances of nothing being wrong between Sue and me, I initiated affection with her several times that evening.

Kisses on the cheek. Cute lil’ hugs. Wrapping my arms around her shoulders from behind. The gestures didn’t go unnoticed by her, as she reveled in them. Bear in mind, this was the 1st time I touched this woman since I kissed the top of her head the night she ‘confronted’ me in October… so just about 2 months.

Not gonna lie, I felt repulsed doing it. But I had to. I couldn’t risk the plan, and me being distant to her in the face of my boys, my oldest’s significant other, and her parents would set off alarms. So my youngest decides he wants to stay over with his big bro for the night, so Sue and I head home.

On the drive home, she thanks me for being so good to her, and says ‘I don’t know what you’re going through, baby. But I’m here for you.’ I had to hold off busting out in maniacal laughter again and responded by saying. ‘I know.

I just need time.’

So for the 1st time realistically since Springtime, we were intimate that night. I figured screw it, with what I’m about to do, may as well get some action before I delete her from my existence. No cuddling or anything after.

I just got up, showered, and went to go sleep in my office. To her confusion though, I used protection. For the 1st time in decades I did. She was definitely perplexed by it, but she didn’t ask questions. I wake up the next day and check my handy dandy spy app, and for the 1st time in weeks, she responded to Jerkface.

The dude went full novella. He professed his love for her. Said she was wasting her time trying to rekindle a flame in me that died. That she’d been ‘in a prison’ with me for 23 years and deserved to experience the love and affection of a man who would cherish her.

Mind you, this dude is 27 years old. Five years older than our oldest son. And he’s THAT sprung on a 45 y/o married mother of 2? She chose to blow up our marriage and destroy the home we’d built for this dude? Pretty boy with a ‘soft side’?

HAAAA!!!

She responded saying pretty much the same thing she said when last they talked. That she loves him and enjoyed their time together, but she can’t lose me. I’m still the love of her life, but she’ll always have a place for him in her heart.

That they can still be friends if he chooses, but the physical relationship between them is over. He begged her to see him one last time that week, and yep… you guessed it, she said yes. One more for the road, right? Who am I to say anything, that’s what I did to her the previous night.

Of course, I added all of that to the archive I’d compiled. December 4th is when phase 3, the final phase of operation ‘Shinobi Ghost’ started. The divorce papers were in hand. My new place of residence was set up. Now I had to slowly start moving my stuff out of the house.

But 1st, I had to break the news to my boys. I called my oldest to the house that Friday night had them join me in my office… and laid everything on that table. Not the specifics, but that their mother had been lying to me for over a year, and I was going to be filing for divorce soon.

My 17-year-old was especially shaken up by this because he had recently experienced his 1st taste of infidelity. Yep, his 1st significant other had lied to him just 4 months prior. Seeing his heart broken a 2nd time at the idea that his own mother was capable of doing this hit him hard.

My oldest took it a lot better and suggested taking his brother in to live with him until this blows over, to which I agreed.

We packed up some of his stuff, and he asked me was I gonna be ok. I told him ‘Yes, son.

I’m going to be alright. And so are you. We’re going to be alright. I promise.’ And then they were off. The hardest part was now over, and it was now time to arm the nukes. Over the next few weeks, day by day Oz would help me get a little of my most sensitive stuff out of the house.

Gave him a list of all of the definite stuff to grab while Sue and I were at work and left him the spare key. This was all stuff Sue wouldn’t notice was missing unless you told her it was gone. I’d also gotten a new phone and phone number, and told everyone who needed to know (Oz, Joey, Nina, My boys, big sis, and my mother) my new contact info.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping up the rouse with Sue and she’s none the wiser. Trickling bits and pieces of affection to her just to keep her off of the trail, whilst she’s still in contact with Jerkface. Not to the extent that they’d been prior, but there’s still an emotional thing happening.

The fog is faint, but it’s still there. All the while, I gather everything, and I do mean everything. Every bit of data I’ve archived since I started the plan, call logs, texts, pics, emails… everything, and start making printouts. Folks, I must have spent over $1500 on staples supplies.

Printer ink, paper, binders, the works. And I cataloged everything in order, from the beginning of the affair until that last bit 2 weeks ago, December 16th in the binders. 14 of them.

I then put each one in a box, and gift-wrapped each, addressing them to various people.

My mother (my father passed 7 years ago), her parents, her 2 sisters, her brother, her HR department (Did I forget to mention that Jerkface works for the same company, and there’s an expressed rule against inter-company relationships because of the nature of what she does?), several of her friends, Jerkface AND Jerkface’s parents.

Lugged all of those idiots to the post office and shipped them all out on December 16th. ETA for delivery, December 22-24th. PERFECT. So we’re now on Christmas Eve. Sue comes home around the usual time, no idea if she’d seen Jerkface, I’d stop tracking her on the app on the 18th.

Figured I’d gotten all the mileage I needed from it. As per usual, she showers, hangs out with me a bit, I blow her back out on the living room couch (I know, I’m a jerk) and she turns in for the night.

The final phase was upon me at long last. The nuke I’d been arming since June was finally about to launch.

In the middle of the night, I woke up and wrapped up one of the 3 remaining binders, with the divorce papers taped to the inside cover, and set it on my side of the bed with a note that said ‘Merry Christmas’ on it. Next to it, I left my old phone and the business card of my lawyer.

I packed up the remainder of my most needed items, enough to fill 2 backpacks, and I left my home… that I spent 23 years in, for the last time.

That my friends was one week ago. To Sue, I am completely off the grid. Gone. Shadow ghosted. She’s blocked on social media, but still hasn’t blocked me for some reason, so I’m keeping tabs on the fallout.

It’s absolutely glorious. My packages have reached everyone I sent them out to, and Sue is getting crucified. Her youngest sister completely dressed her down. Both of her parents have condemned her. My mom absolutely destroyed her. Like holy cow, I know my mom has a mean streak… but the things she called Sue were unholy.

She’s been frantically trying to find out if anyone knows where I am, but those that are due, aren’t saying a word. All over her social media feed, she’s desperately trying to reach me because I’m guessing she knows I’m likely looking. But I’m not saying a word to her without my lawyer present.

That’ll be the next time I share oxygen with her. She’s got no way of spinning the narrative to paint me as the bad guy because I’ve exposed her to everyone who matters to her. And from what a mutual friend who works in the same company as her, she and Jerkface apparently are being put on administrative leave as of tomorrow, so yea… chances are she’ll be going into 2021 unemployed. As for the final 2 binders, well… one has been turned over to my lawyer as my final bit of evidence for my impending divorce, and the last one I put in my storage unit to be burned in Joey’s fire pit when the divorce is final.

Do I feel guilty about this? No. Not even in the slightest. 23 years I did right by this woman. I gave her the home she wanted. I gave her the family she wanted. I gave her the life I felt we both deserved, and I loved her unconditionally.

Never have I faltered. Never have I strayed. Never have I even entertained the notion of breaking my vows. When an issue came up that I felt was affecting our marriage, I came to her and told her, and we sorted it out as best we could.

She opted to find comfort in another man’s bed. Rather than come to me and say she was unhappy with our intimate life at the time, she decided to step out with a young punk who gave her the tingles. So no, I have no sympathy for what I did, or for her.

The most I stand to lose is my house, a car, and maybe a couple of hundred bucks a month in alimony, but seeing as the divorce is filed under the statute of adultery and NYS is At Fault, that might get waved with the insurmountable about of evidence I’ve provided. As far as I’m concerned, she’s dead to me and I’m never looking back.”