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.)
He Ended Up Losing More Than A Fiancée
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“During a rough patch with my (now ex) fiancé, he admitted to me that he had been cheating on me and was involved with someone else. At the time, he was the General Manager of a company that was being sold, but none of the employees knew, as the company needed to be up and operating through the sale, at which time everyone would be out of a job, including him. But he was getting some big money for his efforts.
When he came clean about the cheating, I went out and had drinks with a friend. I came home that night and called everyone’s voice mail and left a message with the details of what was happening to their jobs and the company. It was a complete mutiny the next day.”
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.”
‘Where’s Your Dad?’
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“There was this kid I went to school with, let’s call him B, who used to be my friend when younger, but would pick on me every chance he could get after middle school. He became the typical bully that though he was better than anyone. B would do things like wait for me to leave my backpack unattended and empty it off the second-floor hallway, run by and stab me with pens or pencils, as well as insulting comments. B never knew his dad either which used to make me feel sorry for him.
So halfway through my junior year of high school, B started making fun of the fact that my grandmother recently passed away. ‘She died to get away from you,’ he would say. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I finally said, ‘At least her final words to me were that she loved me. Where’s your dad? Oh, that’s right, he purposefully left you.’
He got angry and jumped on my back. I tried to get him off of me, and a few of my friends even came in and tried to help, but he wouldn’t get off. Eventually, a huge crowd gathered and I was getting more embarrassed and more frustrated. I got an idea. I got up on top of these huge picnic tables the school had and just grabbed his hands around my neck to make sure he couldn’t get off and told him to have fun before I fell backward onto the ground. I’ve never heard those sounds before.
He ended up breaking ribs, bit part of his tongue off, broke his arm, and lost a bunch of teeth. I was fine except for a bruise around my neck.”
An Affair To Remember
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“A married female coworker I was sleeping with accused me of violating and harassing her when she thought her husband might find out about our affair. We had been friends for over a year before the affair started and I thought I knew her pretty well. There wasn’t anything over the course of our friendship that led me to believe she would accuse me of that. In response, I had the letters and pictures she had been sending me anonymously sent to her husband.
She ended up getting fired and her husband tried to take her two kids away. He literally showed up at our workplace, threw the pictures and letters in her face, and dragged their kids away crying. She was estranged from her family living far away from where she grew up and her husband and kids were basically all she had.
Seeing the terrified look on her kid’s faces made me think maybe I went too far.
I was sent home for a few days but did keep my job. I never saw her again after that. I heard from friends of hers that she did manage to spin the situation enough to keep her kids but beyond that, I’m not 100% how everything went with her. That was definitely enough to scare me 1st to never sleep with another co-worker and 2nd to stay away from married women.”
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 hag to everyone in the school. I sure didn’t expect that, though.”
Don’t Handle Rejection Like This
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“I was interested in dating a guy in high school. We made out a few times at parties but he didn’t want to be my boyfriend. Apparently, he was more interested in my friend. I was really angry about this, so when his parents went out of town, and he threw a party, I decided it would be funny to teach him a lesson, and invite a bunch of random people to crash it. His house was totaled. Walls were smashed in, there was graffiti everywhere, carpets had paint thrown on them. Needless to say, this wasn’t what I had in mind. I thought a few groups of extra people rocking up would be a hassle for him, maybe the cops would get called, but not what happened.
Monday rolled around, and I saw him standing at the local shops carrying a suitcase and his skateboard. His parents kicked him out of the house.
I never told him what I did and I never found out who the people were that trashed the house, but I always remembered and always regretted putting out the open invite.”
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 so rude to everyone 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 guy’s car.”
From Best Friend To Jail Bird
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“My best friend slept with my son’s father while I was pregnant. I was in a relationship with my son’s father at the time and we had been dating for about three years before this. Obviously, that ended as soon as I found out.
Then she got hooked on speed and went to prison. I had been helping her mother care for her daughters, writing her each week, visiting her twice a week, putting money on her books… everything.
I wrote her and told her when I had found out and then cut all contact. The only thing I continued to do was help care for her daughters. I cut off all emotional support when she needed it the most. Even when she was transferred to the federal system and went states away. I returned all of her letters and refused all phone calls.
She was released a year or so ago, and I did not pick her up as originally planned. When she showed up at my house to collect her daughters, they were afraid of her. Now, I feel like I may have been too mean. She wasn’t thinking properly when she decided to sleep with my son’s father, and I wasn’t a very good friend when it counted. Either way, we are speaking terms again, but I keep her at arm’s length. We mostly just communicate for her children’s sake.”
When Red Hot Tempers Explode
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“I was 11, my older brother was 16. We would fight and argue, but one time I was running up the stairs away from him and he whipped the back of my legs with a long rubber chew toy. It left a pretty big, figure-8-shaped welt on my legs. I knew he was faster and stronger than me, and I knew if I tried to attack him he’d stop me. So, I grabbed a flathead screwdriver and held it over the stove until it was red hot. I ran up to him and very openly went to stab him, knowing he’d stop me. He grabbed my wrist to stop my thrust (as anticipated), and I pushed the red-hot head of it into his forearm as hard as I could.
He had a scar for years. I will never forget the sound of his scream; I felt terrible.
Man, I was awful as a kid.”
It Kind Of Snowballed Into A Disaster
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“My first serious long-term girlfriend cheated on me. We both knew her mom was cheating on her dad, but she was closer to her mother and never told him.
One day, I was angry and believed she only cheated on me because her mom was doing it, resulting in me texting her dad telling him that his wife was cheating on him. He didn’t tell her at first. He caught the guy and his wife together, almost killed the both of them, and went to jail.
I’m pretty sure they finished up their divorce recently and the husband still has some legal issues.”
“Why Don’t You Join Your Mom?”
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“In middle school, my good friend’s mom died. We lived in a very religious town, but her family was not particularly religious.
A few weeks after the funeral, my friend started acting strangely towards me. She would call me a see-you-next-Tuesday when she walked past me in the hallway at school. She’d give me the finger and she started turning everyone against me. I had no clue why.
One day, my best friend and I were walking home after school and this friend almost hit me with her bike, started calling me names and swore at me. Before I could even think, I blurted out, ‘Why don’t you go join your mom… IN PURGATORY!’ 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.”
A Little Payback After Years Of Abuse
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“My sister used to beat me up on the regular. She had major anger issues and would go berserk over the littlest things.
One time, I turned the light on while she was trying to sleep, she beat me up, and I ended up going to prom covered in bruises. All through the years, I never hit her back. I was a super sensitive kid.
After I graduated, she calmed down a bit, but still had issues. Coming back from a small party one night, she was back to her old games, just getting mad over something stupid and going totally crazy over it. We got home and got out of the car and I said that I was driving home. She kept saying that I drank too much even though I’d only had a few drinks. She grabbed the back of my shirt, and I so angry that I turned around really fast with my fist out to hit her. She immediately let out a blood-piercing scream and dropped to the ground. Blood was spurting everywhere. She left a trail as she ran inside and woke up our mom and dad.
I broke her nose pretty bad, but my mom and dad kept saying it couldn’t be that bad because I had done it, and that she must have really been messing with me for me to have done something like that. I felt awful. I cried and tried to say sorry, but she ended up going to the hospital.
I don’t feel too bad now because she purposely never paid the bill, thinking she could bully me into paying it, and she never let it go. She always says I’m the reason her credit is bad, and that she still has collections agencies calling her over the medical bills.”
You Have To Watch Out For Those Morality Clauses
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“I screen-capped photos from my wife’s lover’s Facebook and sent them to the school administration because he was a teacher, and posting pictures of your student’s test 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 and got her removed from her position at a daycare because it was a church-based facility with morality clauses for employment. All it took was a conversation with the pastor and she was phased out at the first available opportunity.”
He Totally Misjudged This Situation
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“A friend of mine joined this group of social justice warriors that made it their mission to make fun of anyone that never agreed with them; they saw everyone in town as a bunch of hillbilly rednecks. He always joined in with the taunting and verbal abuse when I met with them, which sucked even more as our lockers were together. He reasoned to me that because he came out of the closet, he should not be with a negative crowd and that he joined the new group because they accepted him for who he was. I have no idea what he meant with a negative crowd, but I think it was because we weren’t treating him like a hero for coming out, as we knew several gay classmates and we even had gay teachers.
I gave up talking to him, and a couple of months later, I got a job at this restaurant in a mall; the owner was a bit racist and a gigantic homophobe. I never cared about it; I just wanted money for an XBOX 360.
Summer came and the owner needed more employees because of increased customers. He was holding a resume of my former friend. I later noticed that there were also resumes of his new friends. The owner saw me looking and asked me if I knew any of them and I said yes. This is the moment I regret and I wished I could go back and redo differently, I hated myself for doing it and I always blamed my naivety and stupidity for being so malicious.
I told the owner that he was gay and his friends were also trying to apply. The owner immediately threw the resumes out. After going back to school, I learned that they were trying to raise money for a trip. It never happened and I always knew it was because of me. We never talked again and it pained me to have done to him.”
He Didn’t Mean For It Turn Out This Way
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“I had a big group of friends when I was a teenager. When we were 17, one of them stole my girlfriend.
He got her wasted and shagged her at a party. He said to my face that he didn’t care. ‘Tough luck, mate.’
It was her fault as well, of course. She wasn’t passed out or anything like that, she’d been leading him on, and was sober enough to consent.
So from that point on, our group of friends just cut this guy out of our circle. We stopped inviting him to stuff. If he tried to hang out, we told him to bug off. Mates that had been friends with him since Primary School just ignored him.
Initially, I was proud of this show of solidarity from my friends. My best mate was actually dating my now ex-girlfriend’s best friend, and he split up with her because of her attitude about the whole thing.
So, first summer back from college, we saw him in a local pub. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to try and be cool about it and go up to say hello. He told me to get lost. I guess he blamed me for all his friends cutting him out of his life. I didn’t get the chance to explain that I in no way asked them to do that, they just did what they saw as the right thing.
Two weeks later, we were in the same pub, and I saw his younger sister. She was 17 now, and very, very attractive. I started a conversation with her about her brother, and how I feel bad about what we did. She said that it hurt him, but he had new friends and was still with my ex. He wouldn’t talk to any of his old friends, which I think was a shame. He had known some of the guys since we were 5 years old.
One drink led to another with this girl, and we ended up back at her house. Her parents were away, her brother was staying at my ex’s flat, so empty house. We ended up shagging. The next morning, her brother came back just as I was leaving. The look on his face as he worked out what happened was priceless. He went from utter despair to absolutely mental in about half a second.
Eventually, I had to leave. His sister finally managed to explain to him that it was nothing to do with ‘revenge’ or anything and that I was genuinely sorry for how we treated him. I don’t know if she told him the whole conversation we had about how I’d feel bad as I didn’t want to upset him anymore, and she convinced me to come back to her place by saying she was her own woman, could make her own decisions, and he wasn’t due to be home at any time. If he hadn’t had randomly turned up, I hope he’d have never known.”