Sometimes, we get caught up in the moment and allow our tempers to get the best of us when someone hurts us. It's only after the fact that we learn the true gravity of our revenge. The people in the following stories shared how they later learn to regret the actions they took when trying to get back at a friend, spouse, or family member.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
“Why Don’t You Join Your Mom?”
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I blurted out, ‘Why don’t you go join your mom…in Hell!’ As soon as I said it, I regretted it. Years later in high school, I had the opportunity to apologize to her and she accepted. I really shouldn’t have said that… I still feel bad more than 20 years later.”
He Never Knew How Many Lives He Would Effect
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“I was dating this girl, and my friend saw her around town a few times, and humiliated her in an effort to embarrass me.
He would say things like ‘you’re banging (my name)!’ Or ‘When are you going to be sucking off (my name) again?’ Stuff like that, making a scene and embarrassing her in front of her friends or just strangers nearby.
I told him to stop bothering her, but he did it again.
I got him wasted one night and convinced him to call wildly insane and manipulative ex that he hadn’t spoken to in years at like 4 am, expecting her to tell him to get lost and him to humiliate himself. With the insane, slurred, stalker voicemail he left her, I couldn’t believe she even called him back.
Well, they banged and got back together for a while. And had a baby. Now they’re terrible single parents.
The kid is being raised by her extended family, so it has as normal of a life it can be with two absentee parents.”
In Hindsight, It Wasn’t Such A Great Idea
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“I had a girlfriend cheat on me, lie about it when I confronted her and gave her the chance to come clean and work through it, and stalk me after I broke up with her. We were quite young, so it was all very overdramatic, but I did love her a lot and was hurt by what she did. At the same time, I was very done and not interested in reconciling. She didn’t get the hint.
I asked her nicely many times, then not so nicely, then demanded she get lost. She would, for a while, but then she’d show up, try to pick fights, insult me, and be hurtful. I eventually had enough. I told a couple of choice people in her school (different to mine) what she’d done, with gory details (she’d sucked off her ex in his car). I thought she’d get dragged for it, and that would be that.
It turns out she was awful in all other aspects of her life, too. Apparently, she was loathed at school, and people jumped on this news like starving beasts on fresh meat. I had texts and IMs from people I didn’t even know asking to confirm the news, which I ignored because I was really done with the whole situation by that point. I eventually heard from other friends at that school that people had not let it drop and had even stuck posters around the school with pictures of her, announcing what she’d done, offering her services with her phone number and photoshopping bananas into her mouth. It was brutal, and she had to change schools in her final year.
I did feel a bit bad. If I’d known it would go that far, I might have rethought telling those people. At the same time, she hurt me badly, she refused to leave me alone despite months of chances, and the other students reacted so viciously because apparently, she was a total jerk to everyone in the school. I sure didn’t expect that, though.”
He Sealed His Own Fate
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“When I was about 18, I knew a guy from school (same age) who was in a rock band. He was a total jerk. One day, I came home and his car was in my parking place in my driveway at my parents’ house.
After seeing his car in the driveway multiple times a week I realized he was banging the 15-year-old girl next door while her dad was working the night shift. I confronted him about it, and he told me to get lost and mind my own business. I argued with him and told him it was wrong. Again he told me to mind my own business and to get lost. The next day, I came home and he was in my parking place again. I was furious. I went to my garage, found a bottle of concentrated muriatic acid used for cleaning stone, and poured it into his gas tank.
Afterward, I felt really bad about it, but it was done, and there was no undoing it. His car amazingly showed up for a couple more nights, then it stopped coming. I later heard that a series of failures occurred, the carburetor was completely destroyed followed by a leaking gas tank followed by gas lines. He junked the car. A short time after that, I heard he got my neighbor pregnant. To keep himself from going to jail, he agreed to marry her when she turned 16. Then they had another child a short time later. She caught him cheating on her, and she divorced him and she took him to the cleaners. He was in financial ruin for two decades.
After all these years, I still feel guilty about destroying that jerk’s car.”
You Have To Watch Out For Those Morality Clauses
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“I screen-capped photos from my wife’s lover’s social media and sent them to the school administration because he was a teacher, and posting pictures of your student’s test and then making fun of them, is not cool at all.
He was fired at the end of the year.
After his dismissal, I divorced my wife but decided that wasn’t enough payback.