Revenge Or Not?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay, floating around here are a couple of threads (and there’d be more if it hadn’t been for The Great Devouring of Threads that happened) about a certain female who, led me on to believe that I could have a relationship with her, only to drop me once she found someone more to her liking. (And would promptly look me up once thing’s fizzled out with that “soul mate.”) I haven’t heard from said female in several months. I come home tonight, and low and behold there’s a couple of messages from her on my answering machine, asking me to call her.

Now, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I have no intention of falling into her trap yet again. However, the tempation is there (oh, so strongly, there) to avenge my broken heart upon her. And I’m reeeeeaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyy tempted to give her the kind of screwing that she gave me. Only problem is, I don’t know if I should, or how to go about it.

So, I’m turning to my fellow Dopers for advice. What should I do?

2

Tuckerfan, pal, I’ve been there. Walk, man. There is no reasonable scenario you can construct wherein pursuing this for the stated purpose will culminate in a satisfying (to you) outcome AND, if you’re human (despite your best efforts to disguise such, I’ve detected evidence thereof), you are quite liable to forget why you’re playing this game once more and get burned again.

Ultimately my friend, just appreciate that she kept you onher call list and move on.

Good luck!

3

[Homer]Don’t say revenge. Don’t say revenge.

“Ummmmm…revenge?”

That’s it, I’m outta here.[/Homer]

Seriously, though…taking revenge on someone can always come back to bite you in the ass. My advice is to listen to the messages and hear what she has to say. While it’s possible, as you may suspect, that she sees you as a “backup plan” for her failed relationship, it’s also possible that she’s realized what a bonehead she was and wants to make amends. Keep your cool and see what she wants. As long as you don’t get yourself into a trap (if the pattern repeats), any manipulation on her part will be exposed pretty quickly.

Hell, something similar happened to me recently. My ex, who dumped me in January of 2001, instant messenged me out of the blue last month. It was a completely random “Hey, how are you, I miss you” kind of thing. She asked if she could call me, I said yes. She never did. I largely suspect she chickened out. Her loss, and I didn’t do anything wrong.

4

Ignoring her is the best revenge.

5

You’re already on to a lot of your answer.

That’s because you’ve so far been straight with people. My first impression is that you don’t want to change that. Don’t devote a lot of time to learning how to deceive people.

ResIpsaLoquitor says give her another chance. Well, OK, that’s your call as you know the situation far better than I. But that’s a far cry from going back into it expressly to fuck her back.

Don’t make that part of your repetoire.

Again, good luck!

6

I agree.
The opposite of love is not hate.
The opposite of love is indifference.

Don’t avenge yourself. As others have pointed out, it will not improve your life.
Avenging yourself will possibly set you up for a retaliation of some type. Ignoring this woman will get her out of your life once and for all.

7

No, my dear Tuckerfan. Do not seek revenge. You will not like how it feels.

Take the high road. Release her with love.

8

Eh. So I’m evil.

Screw her brains out and leave before she wakes up the next morning. Ignore her ever after.

9

Revenge is sweeeeeet.
ENJOY :smiley:

but make sure that (at the end of your games) she TOTALLY understands that you have messed with her head for FUN, otherwise she might wanna come back for more!! :eek:

10

Obviously she is better at playing games than you are Tuckerfan. Do you, as an amature, want to play mind games with a pro? Realize that you are out of your league and if you do this you will ‘punch the tarbaby’ and you will never be able to leave. Also you will have to carry inside your head the knowledge that you are capable of doing this thing.
Remember when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back.
or

Once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny.

11

Break out of the tractor beam now bro, lest she’ll pull you into her deathstar.

12

spooje and worldeater both articulated my feelings beautifully.

13

Weighing in on the side of taking the high road. I suspect that the very fact that you are asking if you should take revenge is an answer to the question. It is tempting, but I suspect that you will kind of rotten if you go through with it. Also, don’t rule out flat out honesty (I am a big fan of “closure”, call her back and tell her how she hurt you and why you will not be calling again.

14

My advice to you is to listen to the messages, then delete them. Don’t call her up, don’t seek revenge. Life is to short to waste time on people who have jerked you around. She’ll most likely take the hint, and if she calls and you pick up, then politely explain the above and leave it at that.

15

I have a friend, (seriously its not me) who is getting jerked around like you wouldn’t believe. She’ll ignore him for days, and then call him to make him come over and change a light bulb, then kick him out again. He must be glutton for punishment, because we have done everything possible, short of smacking him in the dome with a 2x4! I told him, that the past 6 months he’s wasted could have been spent meeting tons of women that …god forbid, may like and respect him. He always agrees with me, then goes home and calls that bitch. If you can make a clean break, make it now, it’s a pathetic lonely waste and a fruitless endeavor.

16

Resentment always grows and festers, if you hold on to it. Face it, you can NEVER GET EVEN. Either your revenge will seem inadequate in your eyes, or it will seem to her that you went too far. Then she’ll have to get even, etc. Let go. Walk away. Resentment will poison your daily thinking, and you have better things to do.

17

Yeah. Or you could just write a big “L” on your forehead.

18

Forget about it! Spend your energy on something that is right for you, may be another relation ship.

19

I think the fact that you posted the question indicates you have some doubts about the wisdom of taking your revenge. That should tell you something.

Now, I don’t know how bad she led you on, but I have to admit that I was dropped as well, and I didn’t appreciate it, either. She went on to date someone else, then looked me up when that didn’t work out. She had even stored a marble table at my house to give herself an excuse to call me up, so she was pretty cagy about this.

The relationship failed and she called.

We’re celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary on Labor Day. :smiley:

So I may be a little biased when I say leave it alone. You’ll be the better for it.

20

Well, I called her back. I did this for two reasons:
1.) The last time she was over, she left some DVDs and I wanted to give them back to her (partially to forestall her from asking for them at some point, and partially because they weren’t that good to begin with).
2.) So that I could tell her that she needn’t bother to call me again.

When I call her, she tells me the following things:
1.) She hasn’t talked to anyone in months, because she’s needed to put herself back together. (Possible, but totally untrue for reasons below.)
2.) That she’s “more [her name] than ever!” (My thought? Thanks for the warning!)
3.) That she’s going to be moving in with a gal she works with.
4.) That she wanted to meet me at her favorite place for a drink.
5.) Not to bother calling her at home, because she’s never there.
I told her I couldn’t meet her that night because I was busy doing things. She asked if we could meet tonight, and I said okay, figuring that I’d show up, give her the flicks, tell her I wasn’t interested in her and blow. She said she’d give me a call today and we’d take it from there.

Okay, what she doesn’t know is that I knew she was lying to me. Not merely because of the inconsistencies in what she said to me over the phone, but because I’ve driven by her favorite hang out (almost took a date there not too long ago) and saw her car there. (I didn’t drive by the place looking for her, I happened to be going past there on my way some place and I looked for her car. When I almost took the date there, I thought it’d be a cool place to go, then when I saw her car there, I suggested someplace else to go and explained to the date what had happened.)

After I got off the phone with her, I found out that my brother was coming in from out of town today, and realized that I’d better see him since I didn’t know when I’d see him again.

Today, she calls me and leaves a message on my voice mail, to remind me about our “date” and says that she’ll call back. What she didn’t say, and that I was able to piece together from the few things she did say and the background noise that I could hear on the message was that she was already at the place and had borrowed someone’s cell phone to make the call.

So, I couldn’t call her back to tell her that I couldn’t make it. :smiley: Of course, she never bothered to call me back.

The main reason I’ve never tried to screw her back (or anyone else for that matter) is I’ve always been worried about the karma I might incur from doing so. I’ve actually only dumped one girlfriend in my life, though I’ve gotten hints from others that they were planning on dumping me long before they ever did. Part of it is the whole, “Ride it out until it goes to shit in hopes that things will work out differently.” and part of it is because I figure that if I dump them, it’ll be even longer before I meet someone else.

In reality, I know that I can never hurt her as much as she hurt me (that would involve her actually caring about someone besides herself), but the Dark Side of me would like to at least see her suffer a bit at my hands (since she hurt me for no reason, at least my other exes can claim I did a few things wrong at times).

Now I’m curious to see if she’ll bother to call me to see what the hell happened to me. I’m betting she won’t. In any case, I ain’t gonna be calling her! (I purposely ditched her number so that even if the temptation arose, I wouldn’t be able to do it. :smiley: )