By Smitten, Glamour Magazine
Friends don’t let friends do dramatic breakup revenge schemes. No matter how good of an idea it seems at the time, or how satisfying it feels in the direct aftermath, it’s always going to bite you in the bitter butt. Let’s take a look at just a few of the reasons why it’s basically the worst idea since hooking up with the ex you once wanted revenge on:
1) It might just make your ex feel justified for whatever he did.
Because now he can act like you’re the crazy one. Ugh.
2) For that matter, it really does say something about your ability to handle a crisis. I’m not calling you crazy, but…I’m not calling you mature and well-adjusted either
3) It will become a part of your history too. Do you really want one of your Google results to be “Ex-Girlfriend Superglues Man’s Penis To His Barca Lounger To Punish Him For Laziness”? I mean, it’s great for me if you do that, because it’s a story. But it’s not so beneficial for your future career prospects, I’d guess.
4) It makes you seem undateable to other people. Norah Ephron once said “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from,” and you don’t want to be that guy (or girl). No matter how bad the previous situation, it’s going to make people question how you’ll behave in the next breakup.
5) Consequences might be way higher than you intend. Maybe you really believe he deserves some humiliation, but some crazy revenge schemes can go way further than you might have intended. People can get injured, or lose their jobs over personal situations, or worse. You might be think what you’re doing is basically harmless (or be too mad right now to care) but if it really causes damage, you’ll eventually regret it.
6) You could hurt other people. Speaking of the consequences you might not intend, you probably won’t just hurt your ex. For example, in the Craigslist ad example, the kids of that ex-couple in the Craigslist ad. Ouch, do they really need to have their parents’ disintegrating marriage memorialized on the Internet?
7) It sets you up for personal failure. Yes, after a breakup, you might need to spend some time being furious. That’s fine and can help you move on. But if you concentrate all your energies on hate instead of healing, you’re going to become a person you don’t like very much
