Hear me out: I get it. As survivors, even just the mental picture of slapping abusers (and their crew) in the face or watching their hideous true colors revealed in a public exposée can give us an instant dopamine rush. But in reality, many brave and beautiful reborn souls face a paradox of revenge that feels impossible to navigate.
If you decide to seek revenge after having done the inner work, there is no judgment. That is a purely personal choice. If anything, be wary of people who try to hold you back without caring about your healing or you as a human, and those who try to talk you out of it as if you were incapable. Especially if they are in that abuser’s network. Clowns don’t act alone; they run with an entire circus. You would never know what they have been saying behind your back (but nothing good, for sure). So, as a fellow survivor, here is an analysis based on what I have seen and learned. Not advice per se, but I hope it gives you a fresh perspective as you develop a strategy, whatever that strategy may be for.
Do You Really Know Each Other?
This is a brutally honest question you need to think about. If you seek revenge, you need to understand your subject first and plan accordingly. Honestly, the best revenge is to be happy without them, to rise above their level (which, in many ways, we already do), and to become completely out of their reach. But if your relief is rooted in justice (I hear you), the goal is to understand what hurts them the most, not what makes you feel better. This might come as a surprise, but those can actually be two very different things, because you are fundamentally different people. And that is where the problem begins.
First, we look at the world based on who we are, not who they are. Unless we are skilled at theory-of-mind (more on this later). If we are consistent and value thinking in a system, we connect the dots of their behaviors even though they might only act on a moment-to-moment basis. If we live with depth, we perceive the weight of their actions on our level. And more disturbing, because we are smarter, their purely impulsive behaviors are, to us, intentional and calculated. Well, that might be too many credits for them.
Similarly, we might think publicly exposing them is what wet their pants, but more likely, it is our own fear projecting onto them. Perhaps we are ashamed by their existence in our lives, or we are shamed as a failure because of that relationship, so we worry about our own public image.
Second, abusers know how to approach you by crafting a persona they believe is attractive to you. It may not reflect what you truly like at all. But they would build a narrative to morally or emotionally pull you into it. And to sustain these illusions and make them seem real, they selectively remember your words and behaviors and constantly adjust their tactics. They might push your boundaries and misread your irritation as interest. Or they misinterpret your silence as a defeat, a piece of proof that they were right to call you out on whatever in their delusion. That is why you can feel deeply disoriented: Half of who they present themselves to be are just fictional characters they fail to maintain or develop. And the truth that they are never your “type” is skewed in their narrative and their circus until it is even forgotten by you.
You can test them by asking questions in areas where they desperately try to measure up. Ironically, that is where they deflect you the harshest. And they often do something foolish to hide the fact that they’re faking it—and they know they are.
Third, the reason they trapped you is usually familiarity. It may come from your family of origin or from patterns within yourself. Undeniably—whether or not we want to admit it—we shared that pain to some extent, in some form. It may not look like it on the surface, but attraction rarely comes from nowhere. You can be attracted to someone because they show the disliked parts of ourselves, or the unresolved business. In psychology, this is called repetition compulsion—an unconscious drive to recreate and attempt to “resolve” early childhood trauma or family dynamics. We can’t really hate our family or ourselves, so they become an easy target to project. And they do the same, too.
Yet, the ultimate difference is that you are more decent. You think more clearly, cope better, are more mature, and are more self-aware. In a word, you are more intelligent, while they only perform intelligence. And they know it.
As a result, you dated their crafted persona because it mirrored your unresolved needs. Everything felt both familiar and inconsistent. So you started trying to make sense of it by connecting the dots. But you couldn’t because there is no real sense to make in the first place. You don’t truly share anything, and they’re often operating within a very different scope and capacity.
A Funny Story
An imposter once approached me with industry-standard pickup tactics: reaching out every day, inventing family sob stories, pouring his persona’s heart out. But it was obvious that anything he said that required knowledge or depth had come from me. And he knew perfectly well that he didn’t have real intelligence. So I casually dropped a bomb: I like smart people.
A few days later, he pulled up an online IQ test for me (he had all the answers prepared, of course). I don’t really believe in just any online test, so there was nothing serious in my act. I just answered on instinct, without a second thought, and went rapidly to the final, presumably most difficult group of questions. He watched me answer quickly and started to panic. His low-level manipulation was both disgusting and amusing, so I decided to mess with him a bit.
“Wow, that last group of questions was so difficult.”
He panicked even more. His first reaction was half irritation, half mock, “What do you mean, the last group? There was no group!” As I tried to hold back a smile (I must have looked far too entertained for someone who was supposedly struggling), he looked at the questions and gauged my reactions. But in hindsight, it was that silence—more than anything I reacted—that actually scared him. He’d probably just memorized the answers so he could redo the test for a higher score (as proof, sure) without understanding any of it. So the best improvisation he could manage at the moment was to stare at the screen and slowly say:
“You should look for the pattern of those shapes. Once you see the pattern, that’s the answer.”
“Of course,” I nodded. Because water is wet, you should find out whether or not water is wet; and once you know it, the water is wet. Why didn’t I think of that brilliant logic? I quickly clicked through with random answers just to finish the test, but I still landed somewhere in the 120 range. His face turned bright green with fear and shame. Still, the little guy tried:
“I got 130, though. But it was great that you got into the 120 tier… with MY help. Without me, you could only do like 90, right?”
Sure, a genius with an IQ of 130 couldn’t construct a coherent story, persona, or line of reasoning, nor could he recognize the pattern or grasp the underlying concept. Someone with a supposed mastermind intellect didn’t know what it actually means to have an IQ of 130 or 90. Someone who had “wealthy parents who had a helicopter and would arrange a marriage for him” actually grew up in poverty and survived by abusing women. Later, someone revealed that the best he’d ever gotten was an unpaid internship, and the greatest achievement of his life was ruining his own business with the money he “borrowed” from his sugar mommies through fraud (no surprise there).
Interestingly, the guy was neither handsome, tall, nor physically fit. He targeted better-than-himself women with trauma, which makes their emotional “weakness” more obvious. I used to call this kind of manipulation abuse. But seriously, when I tell the story from a more objective perspective, that situation guy is really just an embarrassing loser in my life. It was just a situationship, no major loss, and there were many complexities in my own life at that time. But this guy’s case offers a particular kind of educational value: emotional abuse can happen when you are not even emotionally invested, and you have seen through them all along. He is one of the people I remember whose personality traits and behavioral patterns tick all the boxes of a textbook narcissist. More on this later.
However, the danger is that you can see through it and still end up trapped in a dilemma. Their perspective is too narrow; you don’t really know how to respond. And most of us don’t even have that many deeply entangled interests and needs in other people. In both practice and emotion, we tend to operate on a kind of quid pro quo. We have our own sense of self and our own separate lives. Although we do care about our image as well because we’re humans, we don’t live for it. (Related: Leaving Small People Where They Are Is the Best Act)
But, Would You Want to Become Them?
Another option is to become them and beat them at their own game. Since we know how badly they need to prove a point, it should be easy to crack their façade.
Unfortunately, you’d probably end up disoriented too. Not because they’re mastermind chess players, but because you have to step into their minds to understand where they’re coming from. And that mind may be 70 percent delusion and 30 percent deep fear. Or, more likely, just hollow: tap on it, and you hear an echo. That’s how they mirror your behavior through their twisted filters to confuse you—and use the same trick to make you think “We’re so alike” at the beginning.
So you start trying to find their reasoning, which doesn’t really exist. As previously mentioned, the exception is if you have a strong theory of mind. This is the ability to understand another person objectively, separate from your own preferences, beliefs, personality, needs, etc. In that case, maybe you can treat them as a case study and develop a strategy to crack their mask and make them pay.
But, painfully, theory of mind is a subset of abstract thinking. And if you’re good at abstract concepts or big ideas, the paradox gets even more tangled. Even if you understand them in theory-of-mind terms, there is a discrepancy in experience (of abuse), sanity, human decency, maturity, cruelty, morals… Those are not areas where you can compete with someone who survives on low-end manipulative tactics. You’re essentially beating up a toddler-minded adult who doesn’t fully understand the weight of their actions and doesn’t mind rolling in the mud to dodge accountability. And all their cheap dramas will eventually embarrass you (and perhaps people who are really worth connecting with), not them.
In my experience, I ended up feeling ashamed of myself instead of getting that dopamine rush from revenge. Why would I pick on an idiot? Am I just in the wrong place in my life altogether? Did I bully them, actually?! You can’t reason with people who genuinely believe they are the victim (not just play it) when they’re treated the same way (or even half as badly) as they treat others.
Never argue with stupid people; they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Commonly attributed to Mark Twain (but no actual evidence)
The Non-Conclusion
Some people call me a dark empath. That sounds more figurative than literal to me. Whatever that means, I hope they are not confusing empathy with weak boundaries or a lack of strategy. I personally know what people want, but I don’t survive on manipulation. No interest in playing games either (unless someone started it to an extent that exceeded my threshold). But if I do push back, you’re unlikely to end up confused or disgusted by the weaponization of stupidity. And detachment will be the end of the game. No fight or drama. No validation needed.
The point of this article is that you’re not one of “them,” and you don’t actually know them—just as they don’t really know you. Before you invest your time, energy, and resources into revenge, this is something you need to carefully consider. A lot of so‑called narcissism content on social media looks suspiciously produced by narcissists themselves to flip the narrative. I personally don’t use definitive words to describe a pattern because science is evolving. How can we know what’s true? Just because someone studies psychology or holds a license doesn’t make them immune to narcissism. My main concern is that we increasingly turn to those online therapists, many of whom are not even practicing. And clearly, many of the so‑called “3 ways to” are oversimplified or even invented outright just to sell service, stripped of the many nuances these topics actually require.
*What is the Rebuilt Series? Like many adults coming from a dysfunctional family, having gone through an abusive early social group, and/or having survived SA and DV, I’ve heard too much unsolicited advice, judgment, and preaching when seeking support. So much more than understanding. Rather than reassurance, this series shares the vocabulary, strategies, and clarity that I’ve gained over time.
*Note: This series is for informational purposes only and is not intended to give advice. If you are in crisis, please reach out for professional help. Always prioritize your wellbeing.*
