Dressing for Revenge

I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about revenge lately.

Okay, maybe not quite the way you would anticipate, before you ask who did me wrong or start saying things like “big Scorpio energy” or whatever other response may be on the tip of your tongue.  Rather, lately in my work revenge has come up.  While the petty person in me wants may gleefully listen to someone share their desire to balance the scales of injustice, that is not nearly as productive as we want to believe.  So, in therapy we may have that desire come up, and we may even see the way we just want something to happen, whether it comes from us or from some sort of karmic, cosmic, invisible hand pushing their finger down to ensure things are returned to a point of balance it is really normal to want that.

For many of us, the desire for, or even the notion for revenge stems from a toxic or abusive relationship.  We may have given far more energy, time, money, or grace in a relationship only to have that returned as indifference, anger, or some other hurtful emotion, and maybe even culminating in the end of a relationship.  For many of us, the feeling of being blindsided by someone we thought we knew is where these sorts of fantasies begin.  We may have seen the writing on the wall, or anticipated the worst when we were in the still moments, but we continued to show up and be present, only to have the rig pulled out from under us.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get reimbursed for investing our energy, love or assorted good feelings we invest in someone. 

This is the place where revenge starts to come out in therapy and that is a great starting point.  We likely knew all throughout our relationship that things were imbalanced, and we were putting more in than our partner.  We may even have gone on to call it out only to have a partner tell us we were mistaken, or for them to offer an excuse, or maybe even on occasion they would show just enough energy to string us along further.  In the worst case, we would call it out, have it ignored, and eventually internalize that as us simply needing to try harder.  All of those are fertile starting points for us to want something to make us feel whole again, to feel like we did not get suckered and taken advantage of.  But it does not work that way.  Believe me, I wish it did some days…or maybe even most days.

I hear countless stories of the efforts people have made for another person.  So many of these are things a big segment of the population would kill to have done for them, yet for all these individuals they did these things for people who took it for granted, or maybe just took is the better phrasing.  These people come to therapy, and they feel so many different things, but universally there is still some amount of love for the person who did this to them.  You see, the hardest part of these abusive and toxic relationships is that many of us were taught somewhere along the way that we must give to receive love.  We were made to believe that if we give al of ourselves then maybe someone will give us a little of that same energy back.  We think our value lies in what we do for others, and so we show over and over that we have all this *gestures around* to give, freely and lovingly.  We think that defines us and means maybe this person will stay.  Occasionally, it does indeed work that way, hell maybe with someone else who brings the same energy.  However, often those who are givers wind up giving all they have only to be left feeling empty and fully drained.  Then in therapy they have sadness, grief, anger, resentment, but also still feel conflicted about these sudden revenge fantasies because they do still love and care about the person who took and took from them.

So, what do we do with the desire for revenge?  We validate it.  Of fucking course you want revenge.  Hell, so do I.  But we are going to channel these feelings and process them rather than cutting tires, keying cars, or posting and tagging proof of how horrible our past partner was and likely still is.  We are not reaching out to their new partner to warn them, because they are going to likely be just as blind as we were.  So instead we are going to focus on the best revenge. 

Being healthy and whole and having boundaries and self-respect with a healthy dose of self-worth.  Look, I did not promise that this was going to be glamorous nor flashy.  However, the greatest thing we can do to get our sense of revenge is find the ways we need to grieve that relationship.  For many, it takes some months of talking about and sifting through their feelings around it, while noticing the places we overextended ourselves and lacked boundaries.  Then, in due time we reach the place of being ready to “confront” the target of our revenge.  This is not a real confrontation where we wait for them somewhere, but rather where we sit down and pour all of our thoughts and feelings, every word we need to express to them, out on a page.  We write a letter to this person who harmed us on a deeply emotional level.  Then we treat that as the first step of our funeral and letting go of them.  We get even by outgrowing them, by leaving them in our past and growing to a place where we are fulfilled, feeling joy, and experiencing much more rewarding relationships because of the work we did on ourselves.  They may have thought they won by leaving the burned-out husk of a house in their wake, and while initially we want to return the favor in kind, what we do instead is rebuild a sprawling and pristine mansion of ourselves from those ruins.  The bones were good, and so we keep those.  We are not going to stoop to their level of taking advantage of someone else and their feelings, nor are we going to diminish how wonderful we are by seeking to harm them.  Rather we are going to rise above and find the success of joy that enables us to shine our beautiful, brilliant light.  Anyone who has to harm or diminish someone to feel whole or right is the worst kind of ugly, and we can express our beauty by not losing sight of the inherent goodness we had, even when someone was taking advantage of us. 

Hopefully, as we barrel on into this new year, you can dress for revenge.