So as the idiom goes “Revenge is sweet“…….but is it really? Maybe it depends on the situation, so I can’t even sit here and say that I myself wouldn’t dream of taking taking revenge on someone if for example, it involved my daughter, so again it probably depends on the situation……but, it doesn’t mean it’s right!
However, let’s have a look at my situation or even yours, if you find yourself in a similar one. So your relationship has been tarnished by dreadful infidelity and you want to make it work. If you have read my blog, you would know by now that my husband cheated on me for four years, notwithstanding that he had promised he had ended it after a year but simply carried on for a further 3 years, so he is on his last strike, because YES, I gave him another chance.
But what were the emotions I felt when I found out in both instances? Besides anger, humiliation and intense sadness, I felt a powerful need to take revenge, I wanted to hurt him back, I wanted to see him and her hurt and humiliated. I dreamed of this revenge, and for some reason always in the shower…….why is it always in the shower or at 3am that we seem to have our most insightful internal fights?
I dreamed of exposing them both to the public, I dreamed of placing her disgusting face on billboards on the busiest roads with the words “home wrecker” next to her face, I dreamed of telling his family, my family and friends in detail of what he had done. I dreamed of telling his mother what her darling boy had done, I dreamed of flirting with other men, in fact I even dreamed of cheating on him too to have him feel how it feels to be hurt, betrayed and humiliated. I dreamed of exposing her and her lies to everybody that she knew, I dreamed of her losing everything in her life. I dreamed of her getting locked up for harassment and stalking (seeing that she did threaten to wait for my daughter after school to tell her what her Daddy did……yip story for another day). I dreamed of leaving him, finding a man that truly cares for and respects me and seeing him all alone, I dreamed of physically assaulting him, destructing his car, her car, her house, hurting her…..Oh wow……the list goes on and it is nasty!
Did I pursue any of these dreams? I sure did at 3am or in the shower, but not for real. As much as your dreams and fantasies have happy and satisfying endings, I’m afraid life does not work that way. It’s not always that easy and it certainly is not as satisfying as you think.
Taking revenge was amongst others one of the top thoughts in my mind at the time and I’ll openly admit that taking revenge on her still sometimes surfaces for me (yes, I have not been able to forgive her or even accept her as a part of our history, I hate that reality). I really thought through practical ways to get both of them back, to get a sort of “tit for tat” scenario, it consumed me and I know now that it was my anger talking, but once I was able to look past my anger and maturely evaluate the situation, I gained some perspective and realized that taking revenge was not going to get me anywhere, in fact it was probably going to ruin everything I had worked so hard for. Taking revenge would most likely see me have egg in my face and ultimately we would all end up alone. So here I was trying to fight for my husband, take him back, fight for my marriage but at the same time working on a plan to ruin it all……….a little contradictory don’t you think?
I understand now, that the urge to take revenge comes purely from your anger, a very raw emotion that you have the desire to act on, you think you may feel better and that once he or she has felt the pain you have felt everything will go away, it won’t, its happened, so now its time to look ahead.
So why should you rather focus on the here and now than keep looking for ways to take revenge that can only end up bitter:
- Taking revenge will only hurt you more, your pain won’t go away, you’ll only add more raw emotions to the basket case of emotions you already have to deal with.
- You may succeed at hurting your partner or the third party, but what then, you look like an idiot for acting so immaturely and now suddenly the focus is on you.
- The revenge you dream of taking will highly likely not yield the results you wish to achieve, your reputation, which I believe you would like to uphold would be tarnished and so you would also be an additional scandal to the scandalous story, you want to stay clean in this dreadful situation, you want to be the better person.
- I know I may have said this before but I must re-iterate WHAT THEN???
As I said before, I spent a lot of time on my own thinking and trying to look past my anger, I tried to focus on that silver lining, I confided in my Mom and I reminded myself that I am better than this, I reminded myself that I would try and I would rise.
In summary, how do you stop yourself from pursuing this revenge:
- Channel your anger – I found that outplaying the revenge like I would want it in my dreams helped a lot, so I didn’t fulfill that urge in real life but I got to imagine that deep humiliation and pain as a fantasy and I made it as ugly as I wanted it, nobody was there to judge me or criticize me. Find a way to express yourself privately, write your feelings in a journal, sing out loud in the car, talk to your trusted person. You are allowed to feel the way you feel, no, you are entitled to feel the way you feel, so own that emotion and work through it.
- Think about what it is you want – do you want your marriage to work, do you want your children to maintain their positive view of their parent, do you want to be the better person? Don’t lose focus of your end goal. What kept me from pursuing so many wrongs was the beautiful rights we had, how compatible we are, how perfect our daughter was growing up. Why mess that up?……..focus on the realistic and the positive……make your finish line one to be proud of…..revenge certainly won’t be something you’ll be proud of.
- Communicate – keep talking, just opening up is so powerful. Confide in your partner, its important they know what you are feeling. Confide in your trusted person.
- Work on the here and now – rebuild the trust, rebuild the communication, make the effort – revenge will most certainly break that down.
- Think the worst case scenario through – I was very practical, I would think through my revenge scenarios with satisfying endings (which helped my psyche) and I would think them through with the crappy endings. It always dawned on me that the crappy ending would highly likely be the reality – ask yourself if that is the reality you want to live with.
Taking revenge is something you must live with for the rest of your life, you should never have to answer for yourself but rather be proud of what you have achieved in fixing your relationship. Remember, your spouse already has a lot of self reflection to do(if there is remorse of course), don’t make it worse. Make it count!!!
Just saying…..
The secret life after infidelity 