Revenge
When hurt becomes a demand for the other to hurt too
The hidden cost of payback in relationships
It’s only been in recent times that people in the news are so publicly taking on those who have allegedly caused hurt, sometimes decades ago.
We are all now watching the testimonies of a Royal Family that seems to be ready to let us all know how much they have suffered from the apparently unfeeling actions and statements of those from whom they expected validation and understanding
These emotional turmoils could be played out in so many couples and families who come to therapy to ‘speak their truth’ – a phrase that is so unsettling. We all have our own inner script of any family or couple drama
The first type of accountability can be buried under years of unacknowledged pain.
Revenge can take on some subtle forms.
There’s the endless arguing in couples, where one feels humiliated or disregarded by the other.
The injured party can move from wanting the other to understand their injury to wanting them to experience an injury of their own.
“You hurt me, so I need to hurt you too”
Under these ongoing blaming rows and the seeming need to punish the other is often a plea to be understood. By not acknowledging their hurt, the other leaves them with the feeling that their pain just doesn’t matter.
Trust is a basic foundation of any intimate relationship and the feeling that vulnerability has not been held with care, can make people feel the need to cause pain by retaliation.
Now a relationship acquires a second injury and a couple can get stuck in a cycle of revengeful behaviour.
The past stays in the present
Couples can live with this system for years. They haven’t always got the language to see the despair under the resentment.
Intimacy can be used as a fearsome weapon and sometimes a lack of desire can be an unconscious way of wounding the other and causing the hurt to continue.
Withdrawing can cause the other to feel rejected and isolated. But sometimes these seemingly revengeful actions are a plea for recognition from the other. Do they hurt as much as I do? Can they recognise my pain? But this often then becomes a shared pain.
Therapy can unpick these old wounds and help couples show that retaliatory behaviour can be used as a protection and in sessions, this can slowly reveal how much the relationship really matters.
Anger protects against grief and vulnerability
Sometimes it’s necessary to accept that making another suffer can’t repair our own pain
Revenge is like taking poison and expecting the other to die.
Their suffering won’t give back what I’ve lost
The other kind of revenge can come as a result of a relationship ending unilaterally.
There are so many stories illustrating this.
The woman who cut off one sleeve of all her husband pricey suits and then drove around their village leaving bottles from his expensive wine cellar on all their neighbours’ doorsteps.
The partner who unscrewed the curtain pole (or bath panel) and then deposited frozen prawns there to slowly rot until the smell became unbearable in the partner’s home.
One partner in scenarios like this can seem to have moved on to a new life, leaving the other in a place of grief, shock and many unanswered questions which can lead to a profound sense of injustice.
Revenge can be an attempt to close the gap, by trying to come to terms with rejection, and the fear that they were never truly loved.
With no acknowledgment or explanation, they are left with a profound longing for recognition.
This can result in a mind that searches for an explanation to help promote some psychological order.
People can mull over past events and timelines to give clues. This is like having a mental court case in which the prosecution and defence are played out enclosed in the mind looking for accountability and hope but will offer no clarity.
It’s so much easier to feel fury rather than helplessness. And rather than buying frozen prawns, many people in this situation can resort to fantasy.
They can play out dreams where maybe the new relationship ends and the ex returns admitting it was all a mistake.
The need to be heard is paramount, but emotional timelines can be deceptive.
Two people can carry very different experiences of the same relationship and one may have begun grieving months or years before the final ending, leaving the other to only start this process at the finish.
The more obviously injured person often remains linked to a hope for response from the other, they wait for a confession or explanation to show that this relationship really mattered.
But without this, the need for some accountability can become the anger and need for revenge that keeps the injured partner feeling still attached to the other.
Many hurt clients will come to therapy after an unexpected ending saying that they can’t keep loading all these complicated feelings on family and friends. The therapist’s job is to try and move the centre of their emotional life away from the person that hurt them.
A strong feeling of loss that has nowhere to go is really grief, it’s dealing with a bereavement.
Where does the love go that used to be given to a partner who seems able to leave and start a new life.
If we feel the need for the other to really experience suffering, revenge can become an attempt to close the gap. Thoughts become repetitive going over any clues time after time hoping that something might change, and the other may hurt as much as they do.
Sadly there may never be the much-needed apology, but closure and explanation aren’t the same thing.
Closure isn’t something that another can always offer, the events experienced by the other aren’t as relevant as trusting your own experience.
Moving the centre of an emotional life away from the one that hurt you takes time and is rarely achieved by suppressing anger.
The work in therapy isn’t to shame the anger out of existence, but to acknowledge the grief and feel heard.
Making a life in which we no longer need the other to feel our pain is not surrender. It’s the gradual reclaiming of our inner peace.
As George Herbert, the poet said,
‘Living well is the best revenge’
Christina Fraser