The first story is about a guy who got ghosted in the most extreme way possible. He met a stunning blonde in his last year of college, and they hit it off instantly. She was the kind of woman who could have been a model, with a warm personality to match. They dated for three years, their friend groups merged, and several of their friends started dating each other.
It was some of the best times of his life. He was working in finance, and she had a degree in contractual law. They were both successful in their own right. He admits he was shy and hadn’t had many relationships before her, but he was built from the gym.
The first night they met, they talked until dawn. Then it was daily texts and calls, then weekly dates, and after a year she moved in. He loved her family, and they loved him, especially her mother, who was an observant woman. Her father was standoffish with everyone, so that was no surprise.
After two and a half blissful years of vacations and hiking trips, he proposed. She said yes, and he was over the moon. She planned the wedding, and they talked about buying a house, having children, and all the trips they would take together. Then something shifted.
About a month after the proposal, she started acting distant, but only for a couple of hours at a time. He noticed because they were always so affectionate. It happened about once a week, then more often. He figured it was wedding stress, so he waited and observed.
After six months, with the wedding a year away, she was like that almost every night. The intimacy was still great, and her relationship with her parents was still great. But over Thanksgiving at her parents’ house, she was standoffish toward him in front of her mother. Her mother noticed.
She pulled her daughter aside, and he could hear arguing. When they returned, they carried on like nothing happened. When he asked about it later, she said she didn’t want to talk about it until they got home. He agreed because he loved her deeply and thought they could work through anything.
Back home, he pressed her for a week. Finally she confessed that a guy at her work was trying to get to know her better. She showed him her phone to prove she was being forthcoming. He looked through it and noticed that all the texts from the times she was withdrawing from him had been deleted.
There was nothing untoward in the remaining messages. He didn’t want to believe anything was wrong, so he turned on the locator on her phone since they shared a phone plan. He honestly thought it would prove she wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was wrong.
A few weeks after Thanksgiving, she had a company Christmas party. He planned to go but came down with food poisoning and had to back out. She had a girlfriend pick her up because they planned on drinking and had a designated driver. They were going out all night, so he told her to have a blast.
As he was throwing up and barely able to leave the bathroom, he grabbed his phone and watched her location. She went to a restaurant, then the company party, then a bar. None of that alarmed him until her phone stopped at a downtown hotel. He was miserable in more ways than one.
He finally fell asleep from exhaustion at two in the morning. At seven, he woke up and saw she was still at the hotel. At noon, she came home. She loved him up, and he asked about her night without mentioning that he knew her location.
She talked about the restaurant, the party, the bar. Then she said she went to her girlfriend’s house to crash. That was the first lie. For the next three months, she started working later and later, three to four days a week.
When he asked about it, she got defensive. He talked to her mother one evening when his fiancée came home late, and her mother admitted she suspected her daughter might be stepping out because she could read her body language. She also said her daughter had been distant with her in their weekly texts. He kept the worry to himself.
Two weeks later, he got a new project at his company that required him to fly to the Midwest Monday through Friday for the next five weeks. It came with a raise. When he told his fiancée, she was delighted. He didn’t think she was excited for the same reasons he was.
He ordered four motion-activated spy cameras. He put one in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom, and one looking down the hallway. They were tiny and connected through a hidden network so they couldn’t be spotted on the Wi-Fi. He secured them with a password and waited.
On his first week out, she had girlfriends over the first two nights and never worked late once. The third night, a guy came over. He sat in his hotel room, screaming at the monitor and calling her every name in the book. Then they went all the way, first on the couch, then in her bed.
They were intimate in ways he’d never seen from her. The worst part was when he called her to see how her day went. She heard the phone ringing, signaled for the guy to pause, and answered. He asked why she was breathing heavy, and she said she was at the gym working out.
The call ended, and she went right back to it. When he got home Friday evening, he ignored her and went to bed. Early Saturday, he went cycling. He was so upset he didn’t realize how far he’d gone.
He’d biked thirty miles before, but that day he went a hundred and five. Getting back, exhausted, he showered. They went out that evening with friends, had a lot to drink, and had fun. She was oblivious.
He was bursting inside, heartbreak, anger, rage, betrayal all swirling. She, who used to be so attentive, didn’t notice a thing. He finally confided in one of their mutual friends, who told him they all knew about the affair for months. Everyone felt sorry for him, but no one said a damn thing.
That’s why they stopped inviting them out. He could look back and see that about three months prior, they’d gradually invited them less and less. So he figured he would try to win her back. He planned an entire weekend of spoiling her, wine and dine, pampering, massages, talking about the future and how much he loved her.
He started to break through when, after her fourth glass of wine, she started to cry. He could tell the guilt was coming to the surface. He asked what was wrong, but she choked up every time. He told her that if she had something in her past or a conflict in her mind, she needed to speak to him.
He was more than willing to forgive and move on. All she could say was how much she loved him. It hurt to hear that since he had four separate videos confirming the affair. Over the next eight weeks of travel, he recorded over forty-one hours of footage confirming the affair with her coworker.
She never worked late once while he was gone. He tried every weekend to be extra attentive, and each week she got more distant. After eight weeks, he was done. He devised a twelve-step getaway plan.
He gathered evidence. He scheduled a two-week exclusive getaway for them at an all-inclusive resort in Barbados. She was ecstatic. A week before the trip, he claimed he had to back out and told her to take a friend.
He knew it was over when she showed no disappointment. She scheduled a coworker to go with her. He terminated her apartment lease, which would expire three days into her trip, and he was the sole signature. He found a job in another town with a slight raise.
He got an apartment there. Once she was gone, he took her to the airport, went home, and packed all her things that same day. He got a new phone and email, canceled all social media. He withdrew all the money from their joint accounts, closed them, and put her share in an envelope packed in her things.
He had movers pack up his belongings and ship them west. He took all her things to her mother’s house six hundred miles away. Everything fit in the back of his F-250. He gave her mother the evidence.
He made sure nothing of hers was missing. It was so hard to pack all her things neatly. He never cried so hard in his life. He’d read so many stories about people saying they’d never do it again when caught, but they don’t stop.
He hoped she would genuinely confess so they could forgive and move on. She never did. She came close, but her secret was too hard to reveal. Tuesday morning he left her apartment for the last time.
It took ten hours to get to her mom’s house. What happened when he got there, he was not prepared for. He arrived around eight in the evening, unannounced. Since they lived in a gated community, he had to buzz from the front gate, so she was waiting outside when he drove up.
He could tell she’d been crying. He asked what was wrong, and she hugged him, bawling that she thought her husband was cheating on her with a much younger, skinnier, prettier woman. Dumbfounded, he held her for what was probably ten minutes. She soaked his shoulder with tears and snot.
When she composed herself, he asked if they could go in and talk. She said her husband claimed he went fishing with his buddies at a remote cabin an hour away. Then she said, he hates fishing. She gave him all the indications she’d picked up on, and it had apparently been going on for about a year.
Doing a little research, they found a credit card charge for a five-star hotel only twenty minutes away. One call later confirmed her husband was there for a four-night stay with his mistress. Two peas in a pod, he said. What?
she responded. Two peas in a pod. Your husband is cheating on you and your daughter is cheating on me. That’s why I came here, to drop her stuff off and move.
He showed her the evidence, a binder of screen captures. After looking at the first few pages, she looked at him dumbfounded. They hugged and cried for a good thirty minutes. Then she stopped, looked at him, and said they couldn’t do anything about it tonight except knock out three bottles of Moscato together.
She grabbed two wine glasses and walked out to the pool deck, asking if he was coming out there or if they were going to get freaky revenge. He won’t go into detail, but that night and for the next three days, they were intimate repeatedly. Afterward, they passionately said goodbye, and he drove to his new destination. She kept him informed about everything that happened when his ex-fiancée got back.
The day she got back was epic. He canceled his phone that morning, so when the plane landed and she called for a ride, the number was disconnected. She had her lover take her home. He dropped her off and left.
When she came to the door, a strange couple, new tenants, answered. She freaked out. She called him repeatedly, but the number was no longer valid. She went to her girlfriend’s to stay because the coworker was already married.
Then she called her mother in a panic. Her mom told her he’d dropped off all her things and all her money, six hundred miles away. Her mom didn’t tell her they’d become intimate, but she told her she knew about the cheating. She told her he had a new job, a new place, a new career far away, and that her mother was separating from her father due to infidelity.
Apparently she cried for days and took a week off work, but she found comfort in the arms of her married lover. Her mom never let her know where he was. They completely cut off that part of his life. The only link to the old life was the ex’s mother, and she kept the secret.
The fiancée was ghosted the most. The second story is from a guy whose marriage blew up in 2017. He and his wife Rebecca were college sweethearts, married in their early twenties. He was in medicine, she was in accounting.
Despite being married, she acted like a free bird, and there was marital neglect on her side. In 2016, she joined his college buddy James’s company as an accountant because it paid well. He was happy about that because James was a friend. Slowly, she started complaining about everything.
She didn’t like where they lived. She had problems with everything he did. She didn’t like food she used to love. He’s a great cook, and she used to love his meals.
Their fights intensified. She called him good for nothing, said she earned more than him. Then things took a drastic turn. Rebecca and James were hanging out with their set of mutual friends.
It seemed off. He confronted both of them, and they said it was a sudden plan. Coincidentally, it happened the same day he was out of the city. In 2017, their bedroom became completely inactive.
He was paranoid, and whenever he tried to address things, she shut him down. He’s not a saint, and he constantly yelled at her to tell him what was going on because something was off. That year they were at their financial peak because her debts were paid off. His friends and he decided to open a medical shop as a side venture.
One of the friends, Saladin, proposed they celebrate at a pub. When they got there, he noticed a girl who looked exactly like Rebecca dancing with another man. He got a closer look. It was Rebecca and James dancing hand to hand.
He wasn’t much bothered because they were friends. But he texted her asking where she was. She told him she was already at home. That was a red flag.
He told her to stop lying. She got paranoid and said she was on her way. She left the pub. That night he asked her about James.
The look she gave him was as if she’d seen a ghost. That look told him something was definitely up. He tried to snoop her phone that night, but the password had been changed. The next day he saw her unlock it and went through everything.
There were hundreds of thousands of texts, countless explicit messages, intimate photos, and degrading comments. They had vowed to be transparent with each other if either ever needed to explore something. She broke that vow too. He cried that night and confronted her the next morning without the evidence.
She yelled at him, stormed out, and told him he was abusive and insane. She told all her friends he was abusive. That afternoon, they created a group message where everyone ganged up to troll him. When she came home that night, she told him she was in love with James and wanted a divorce.
He asked her to talk first, but it turned into her berating him. He yelled at her, and she called the cops. He was asked to spend the night elsewhere. When he returned the next morning, James’s car was in the driveway.
Nothing more needed to be explained. He saw a lawyer. They didn’t have a prenup, and she’d already filed a complaint about him being abusive. It didn’t look good.
She never apologized. The law in their country didn’t count infidelity as a fault, so she was entitled to half of everything. A few days later, while he was still at his sister’s, she texted him saying they should get divorced. Twelve years of relationship, four years of marriage, ended with a text.
He lost his job, his house, and his reputation. He had to move to another city to restart. Saladin helped him get a decent job and became a close friend. His dating life was over.
He couldn’t trust anyone. At the end of 2020, his life was actually good. His pharmacy venture had returned huge profits. Then he heard from a friend that James and Rebecca were done.
James cheated on her and left her. She had a child with James, but he hadn’t signed the birth certificate. She was raising the kid as a single parent. Part of him was happy, but he still missed her.
He sent her an email asking how she was doing. They reconnected. When they met in 2021, she looked like crap. She’d gained weight, lost her charm, and looked exhausted.
He wanted revenge. Life had already done part of the job, but he wasn’t done. She told him about James and said she was sorry. She said James had poisoned her mind against him.
He told her he’d forgive her if she came clean and cleared his name. She did, losing a lot of friends. His name was clean. Then she wanted them to date again.
He told her he’d agree, but they needed to date and marry first. Only then would he legally adopt her child. Here’s the truth. He was already seeing someone.
He was cheating on that woman with Rebecca. Rebecca lived in a different city, so he played it well by saying he had business trips. He was only getting her hopes up to crush her like she crushed him. He pushed her to therapy.
Everyone commented on how much happier she was with him. She would praise him and apologize, doing little things she used to do when they were married. Her birthday was coming up. He took her ring shopping, and she picked out her favorite ring.
He had it wrapped. She was elated. That night she cried and apologized for hurting him. He felt no feelings for her except indifference.
On her birthday, he drove her to their favorite spot from when they were married. The woman he was seeing, Lisa, was already waiting there. He introduced Lisa to Rebecca as his girlfriend. Rebecca went white.
He introduced her to Rebecca as his ex-wife, someone he’d been casually seeing. He proposed to Lisa with that ring. Rebecca went mad and started yelling. He told her she nuked them, and he’d never date a dirtbag like her again.
She asked again and again if they meant nothing. He told her sleeping with her was compensation for the pain she put him through. Lisa was holding him back because she saw Rebecca was hurting. He told Rebecca to leave.
She told everyone he cheated, but this time he took it as a point of pride. She cheated on him and made him pay a high price for a falsified abuse claim. Now she wanted him to raise her kid and date her? No.
They last connected in December. She wrote him a letter saying how sorry she was, that she couldn’t imagine putting him through the pain she’d caused. She had to live a better life. He heard she was completely uninterested in dating and looked terrible.
As for him, he and Lisa stopped dating. There were differences between them. The third story is about a friend, the most decent guy you could ever call a friend. He got what some might call nuclear revenge, but really he just lived his best life.
We’ll call him Buddy. His ex-fiancée was Alyssa, and the hapless best friend was Rick. They all met in middle school in a suburban high school. They were inseparable band kids.
Buddy played the French horn, Rick played the tuba. Alyssa played the flute, because that’s a cliché. Buddy and Alyssa were boyfriend and girlfriend, and Rick was a happy third wheel. As they got older, Buddy and Alyssa explored the physical side of their relationship like normal high school kids.
Rick was happy to be a player. He was decent looking and had no problem getting action, occasionally making use of the professional women in town. That would be important later. Buddy and Alyssa went to a prestigious public university.
Rick dropped out but wound up with a decent career in tech. Buddy graduated college early with honors and proposed to Alyssa at his graduation dinner with a small diamond because he’d put himself through school and that’s all he could afford. She accepted. Buddy got a job at a fancy consulting firm.
Alyssa finished college. During her last spring break, she flew up to visit and interview for a job. She got pregnant. She flew back home and told Rick she was in trouble.
He took her to a medical appointment to end it. Neither of them ever told Buddy. Alyssa realized she couldn’t marry him, but she wasn’t brave enough to break it off. Instead, she ghosted him and turned down the job without telling him.
Buddy called Rick, and Rick said, Dude, I’m sorry, but it’s worse. Alyssa and I are now a couple. You can punch me in the face next time we get together. Somehow, Buddy and Rick decided Alyssa wasn’t worth destroying their friendship.
They stayed best friends. Alyssa wasn’t happy about that, but Rick told her if she made him choose, he’d choose Buddy. Buddy took about a year to get over it and started dating. He met Jen and fell madly in love.
In less than six months, they were engaged. Now, you have to understand that Alyssa was drop-dead gorgeous. Big blue eyes, long lashes, shiny dark brown hair, an exquisite face, a terrific figure. Being beautiful was really important to her.
Jen was pretty enough, but regular, and she genuinely didn’t care about that. Rick traveled without Alyssa to meet Jen. He and Jen got along great. He reported back to Alyssa that Buddy was happy and Jen was awesome.
Alyssa got jealous when she heard about Jen’s Ivy League education, but Rick pointed out that Jen was nowhere near as hot as Alyssa, so she should stop sulking. Alyssa pitched a fit when the wedding invitation came and refused to go, but Rick went anyway. It was a small, low-key wedding. There Rick reconnected with an old high school friend named Ray, whose date to the wedding was actually someone else’s wife.
Ray had a thing for married women. Buddy and Jen lived their best lives. Buddy got an Ivy League MBA. His career took off.
They had kids. Jen quit her career to be a stay-at-home mom. They were rich, still crazy in love, and blissfully happy. Rick and Alyssa got married.
Buddy and Jen weren’t invited. But the wives got along okay, because Jen got along with everyone, and Alyssa was happy because she was thinner and prettier than Jen. Around 2008, Rick told Buddy and Jen a hell of a story. He and Alyssa had continued to hang out with Ray, the friend with a thing for married women.
Ray had turned his eye on Alyssa, who even after three kids was hotter than she was in college. She’d leaned into the milf role. Rick had had enough of her nonsense and decided to divorce her three times, but each time she cried and got pouty. They’d had one last time of unprotected intimacy, and she got pregnant.
That was their third kid. Ray went in hard with his seduction routine. Alyssa cried to Rick that she couldn’t stand it and asked if she could just have intimacy with Ray. They did.
Rick watched and went in for sloppy seconds. Their marriage entered its suburban swinger era. He gave Buddy and Jen every gory detail over a two-hour conversation while they were killing wolves in a game. During their next visit, it was obvious Rick wanted to join in fun times with Buddy and Jen, but they weren’t into that.
Rick told Buddy the reason they were into swinging was that he got off on watching Alyssa be degraded, and she got off on making him feel inadequate. The marriage wasn’t happy, but Rick wanted to stay because Alyssa was hot and had a solid career, while he was a mid-level tech guy with a GED who worked from home while raising three kids. He’d never do better. Things got worse.
Alyssa had, in her words, met the love of her life. She’d moved on from Ray and the swinging scene and was having an affair with a guy from the accounting department at her job. She stayed out all night and ignored the kids. She didn’t want a divorce because she’d lose the kids and have to pay child support.
She wanted Rick to let her live whatever life she wanted while he did all the cooking, cleaning, and childcare. She also complained endlessly about how she could have married Buddy and been like Jen, a stay-at-home mom in a huge house with a pool. Buddy had also gone through a glow-up, from a nerdy band kid to a silver-haired, super-confident executive. Rick was still working from his basement in sweatpants, covered in Dorito crumbs.
Alyssa was jealous and blamed Rick. Buddy told Rick to leave her. Rick’s marriage was a disaster, and Buddy told him it was the last conversation they’d ever have if Rick didn’t get out. Then Buddy got a call at work.
It was Bob, Rick’s dad. Rick had gotten intoxicated, woken Alyssa at three in the morning, told her he’d never loved her, that she’d never been enough of a woman for him, that he’d been visiting adult performers during most of their marriage, and that he hoped she would go to hell. Then he took his own life. When the ambulance arrived, Alyssa was sitting on the curb screaming, I don’t want to live either.
It’s all my fault. Later, Bob called Buddy to say Alyssa specifically said Buddy wasn’t welcome at the funeral. Bob and Linda took in the three kids, who did nothing wrong. Alyssa did nothing but work and drink.
About a year later, Buddy flew down to put flowers on Rick’s grave and visit his parents. Bob and Linda had taken Alyssa in as a daughter because her own mother was dead and she was no contact with her dad and stepmom. Bob asked Buddy, Why did Alyssa say it was all her fault? Why did she ban you from the funeral?
What don’t I know? Buddy thought for a minute and decided it would help Bob and Linda understand the tragedy if they knew the full story. So he told them everything. Bob and Linda continued to do everything for the three kids and continued to treat Alyssa well because it was best for the children.
But the clock was ticking. Alyssa had remarried, the kids were old enough, and Bob and Linda planned to tell them the whole story once the youngest turned eighteen. It would be soon. Buddy’s revenge wasn’t anything he did actively.
He stayed friends with the guy who stole her. He moved on and married someone smarter, nicer, and less pretty. He had a hell of a successful career. He had a massive glow-up.
He had a terrific marriage. And he respected her boundaries when she banned him from the funeral, which led Bob to ask the fateful question. Living well was the best revenge. But it cost him his friend.
Rick was the kind of guy who would come to your house when all hell broke loose, clean your fridge, and make you a five-star dinner with whatever he could find. Nuclear vengeance wasn’t worth the cost. Buddy is still grieving.