What Do You Do With Your Want For “Revenge” After Leaving A Narcissistic Relationship
The urge to burn it all down around you.
Revenge fantasies are par for the course. We’ve all had them.
Someone wrongs us, and we want vindication. We crave it. Gotta have it!
Where is that line in the sand when you have dug yourself out of a narcissistic relationship? At what point do you hang up all your flags (the red and the white) and walk away, leaving everything about them in your rearview mirror?
What about your retribution?
Sense Of Justice
This is where most of the feelings lie when revenge is high on your bucket list.
Narcissistic abuse is a terrible experience, and none of it was fair. It doesn’t matter if you were abused for weeks, months, years, or a lifetime. It’s never a fun ride for the victims.
Often, it seems as if the narcissist is getting away with everything. They damage you and cause destruction to anything in their path… then they walk away scot-free, off to wreak more havoc on their next unsuspecting target.
There seems to be no right to balance the wrong that happened to you. You are left picking up broken pieces while they keep swinging their wrecking ball haphazardly.
This sense of justice is not something unique to humans. It’s a basic animal instinct. If you placed an unequal amount of food in front of your dogs, the one who was shortened would demonstrate angst at the unfairness of it. Even monkeys get upset if you don’t equally reward them for equivalent tasks. Read more about it in this research article.
We are wired to find reason and symmetry in all things.
Unfinished
When things don’t have a natural finish, there is a crack left exposed.
That crack is like a basement and can be filled with all sorts of thoughts and feelings. Incomplete things aren’t normal to our minds. They can lead to confusion and interpretation. We wonder what it would be like if things were finalized.
Think about a statue that has chunks missing from it. We can assume what its final form once was, but do we know for sure…
And wouldn’t we like to see it completed in all its glory?
Look at the statue in the image above. Look closer at its eyes. They’re unfinished. The details would make this complete, but instead, we are left with an almost finished piece.
There’s something wrong when things get left nearly complete. That lack is felt deep down.
That’s what happens when it feels like the narcissist has gotten away with their campaign of terror. The energy loop didn’t close. Things are left almost finished. Just shy of the goal post.
Closure
This is one of the thoughts behind the craving for revenge. Like the rings on a fitness app -> We want to close the circle.
No one wants to remain hanging around like a ghost waiting for their unfinished business to end. It’s a haunting for our souls.
A narcissistic relationship requires you to swallow parts of yourself. You have to push down your wants and needs so they can thrive. Those bitter pills never metabolized. Instead, they remain stuck in place, waiting and festering.
Revenge seems like a good dissolving agent. (As if the pain would disappear if they finally got what was coming to them.) It may close the circle for a specific wrong that the narcissist committed, but does it close it for everything? Narcissistic abuse is repetitive. They do a lot of damage in various ways.
Will there ever be a point where they get enough justice?
Validation That It Was Real
Another reason for a revenge fantasy is for the validation of your pain.
Especially if that justice is handed out by legal authorities.
The actions a narcissist takes are often criminal in nature, yet they have an almost uncanny way of skirting past authority. They may be great at threatening people to keep them quiet, or they could be so incredibly deceptive that people don’t know they have been conned.
For whatever reason, they seem to get chances (time and time again) to continue their nonsense. It just works out that way.
That can often lead to their victims feeling like they are overlooked, as if what they went through didn’t really happen. Even if it’s acknowledged that it did happen, nothing came from it, as if it didn’t matter.
Naturally, revenge thoughts would bubble up.
What Does A Quest For Revenge Do For You?
This can be a useful space for you. Narcissistic abuse can leave you feeling helpless and broken, stuck in place.
Anything can be a tool if you use it correctly. A revenge fantasy is no different. A revenge fantasy is a great way to utilize anger to stimulate growth.
BUT -> You can’t get lost in it and forget all reason!
Using anger may seem counterintuitive, but it’s part of the grief cycle for a reason. It’s natural. Anger is heat. It can light a fire under your butt and force you to make moves. The question becomes -> Which moves will you make?
I’m talking about actions, not thoughts. Your thoughts may be stuck in revenge mode for a good bit, but what will you do in real time? Everyone has dark thoughts that we never intend to perform. Will your actions be toward revenge, or will those thoughts live only in your imagination?
I highly recommend leaving them in make-believe land.
Revenge is time-consuming, but more importantly, it’s energy-consuming. Do you have the time or energy to commit to it? Do you want to?
When you go down that path, you tie a tether from yourself to the narcissist until your revenge is complete. Why would you want to be attached to them any longer? You’re so close to escaping!
I’ve heard revenge be described as a jailer and a warden. You’re spending your time trying to keep them from escaping, which means you have to be stuck there beside them, always waiting in the wings. Neither one of you is free to move on.
The Best Revenge Is Taking Back Your Control
Instead of acting on the revenge thoughts about them, refocus on acting on the revenge thoughts that involve your future.
The future that you want to live.
5 years down the road, where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? What would you love to be doing?
Does it have anything to do with the narcissist?
Use the anger of what they did. Take the power push and put it toward yourself. Feel the disgust at what happened, and when you get an urge to act, act in your best interest.
Reclaim your choice. It was stolen from you before, but it’s all yours now. Revenge thoughts naturally dissipate over time.
Some ways to do this:
For every revenge thought — come up with 2 things you can do for yourself
When you get the urge to cause damage — create something (doodle, paint, garden, cook, sculpt, build legos, put together a puzzle)
When the rage and disgust bubble up in your mind — write down all the ways you are better off now and goals you have for your future.
When your mind races and you can’t sleep — Stand up, drink a tall glass of ice-cold water or eat a nutritious snack
These are all ways you can begin to turn your energy and focus back onto yourself. That’s where it belongs. It’s your energy. Keep it!
Revenge Doesn’t Work Out
As much as that seems like a solution, it won’t solve the problem of -> what now?
What do you do with the residuals? Where do you focus your energy now? What happens after the revenge has been completed?
These questions need answers.
Not all justice is revenge. Sometimes things that are normal can feel like revenge, even though they don’t fit the criteria. Stealing their dog in the middle of the night- that’s revenge. Planting images on their work device to get them fired — that’s revenge.
Going to the police and reporting a crime they committed is not revenge.
Filing for child support is not revenge.
Telling people the truth about what they did to you is not revenge.
If you feel like a typical response is revenge, that is usually a latent effect of the abuse. Narcissists are enabled and protected by the people who love them. We do it without even realizing it because of the abuse. Our perception of right and wrong gets warped and turned around. We become temporarily as delusional as they are. (hopefully temporarily)
It’s easy to feel like you are causing their pain when you finally begin speaking up about what you know. You aren’t. They wouldn’t be feeling this pain now if they hadn’t done those things. You aren’t handing out revenge, you’re just finally stepping to the side and letting natural consequences happen.
And there’s a nice sense of justice in that.
