Thanks for the ask, Sean Kernan.

I’ve witnessed some savage revenge when couples decouple.

High school.

There was the lass who discovered her boyfriend wasn’t always playing Warhammer 40k when he said he was, so on a weekend when he was supposedly playing it at a friend’s house she went to his house and gave the mini-figures an acetone bath. Dissolved all of them.

There was the lad who discovered his girlfriend wasn’t entirely faithful about a week before her 18th birthday. She had a charm bracelet, the ones you put little pendants. He got her a 24 carat gold charm for her birthday and handed it over in front of her friends and family. She then had to explain why he gave it.

How does one explain the gift of a 24 carat by bicycle charm?

University/college years.

There was the idiot who had his thesis trashed (and I mean trashed) two days before having to hand it in. Hard copies were shredded or burned. Or both.

The laptop containing it? Thrown into a bath while powered on. The network share it was backed up to? Erased as he’d shared his user ID and password. The Zip drive? Found with a bullet hole.

This may seem excessive, but I’d imagine being told you’d got an STI when the only person you’d been with was that one person, the one you were engaged to, might have tipped the scales. (It was one of the nasty ones. The kind that can make ladies infertile.)

So called adult life.

The lass who shared nudes of herself in chatrooms online and had online affairs behind her hubby’s back? He found out and forwarded them plus the torrid conversations to her family, friends and coworkers. Not a good look in a religious company that promotes their values.

The lad who discovered his partner of twenty years hadn’t been faithful for any of that time who spoke to her family and as a result their prenup couldn’t be found during the divorce?

All of the above seems pretty savage. I get that emotions run high in break ups, I do. Trust me, I do. Smashing things could be seen as cathartic I guess? It makes you look a bit unhinged, though.

The absolute savage revenge I’ve witnessed though? That’d be deciding the divorce settlement wasn’t enough, so they spoke to their boss and invented a tale politely asking that the IT dept of their company never ever hire their ex as they’re abusive, manipulate, unhinged, violent etc.

Said boss then calls the recruiters the company uses and says “never pass this person’s resume on to us, they’re abusive etc and we do not want them”.

This goes around, through the recruiters in that field, through departments. That name becomes radioactive. Don’t hire them, don’t give them an interview, don’t even let them know why.

The idiot in that tale? They found out when job hunting. One of the recruitment agency employee’s let them know off the record over a coffee.

Destroying someone’s life to the point where they’d have to move countries to escape your revenge?

That’s savage.