I can't see myself taking care of someone so sick, in the long term. If you like true revenge stories, you found the best place for your vengeful needs. This episode contains heartbreaking stories of infidelity, but are countered with brutal revenge acts of the same level, keeping the balance just right. A loving man knows his woman will eventually need a wheelchair, so he rebuilds the house to meet her needs. But when he is diagnosed with cancer, she doesn't only abandon him, she actually cheats.  But when he's caught cheating, she obliterates the one thing he really cares about, and deletes everything into cyberspace. Leaving him with nothing to show for, but a shameful username. Narcissistic fiance cheated on his woman, but she stole his new girlfriend from him. Then she waited for five years, before ending him with a mortal combat knockout he deserves. A husband helps his wife to get rid of her alcohol addiction, but she and her counselor share more than just her feelings. So he filed for a divorce, and proceeds to show how he deals with his feelings. Before we start, be sure to exercise your vengeful devotion, by making chocolate-covered apples for everyone that came to your cooking party. When serving, emphasize it's rude for people to un-finish their treats you made with love, but instead of serving the like button a chocolate apple, serve it a chocolate onion. Naturally, viewer discretion is advised. These revenge acts might be disturbing to snowflakes. This has been four years ago, so the sting is gone and my revenge has been had. We dated for four years and had what I thought was a great relationship. We were both well-established professionals who both own homes in the same neighborhood and both with daughters in the home. Her daughter was eleven, and mine was sixteen when we met. We had actually planned to get married, build a house, and raise the two together as one family. We planned the house build because she had recently been diagnosed with a neurological disease that would eventually put her in a wheelchair, so she needed some adjustments to a house to make it more accessible and comfortable to live in. During the planning stages, I began doing landscape and construction projects on her home to increase the resale value. All in, I invested roughly $30,000 into the home, running everything through my side construction business for tax, permitting, and resale purposes. We had a contract that payment would be made upon the sale of the home. I produced invoices for each and every project, but never pushed for payment because of the prior agreement. Fast forward six months, we're looking at the property to develop and finalizing drawings on the home when I began feeling ill. I couldn't eat, constantly vomiting and passing blood. I began noticing that my abdomen looked swollen, which was odd because we were both very clean eaters and were in the gym every day. So I went to the doctor and began having tests done. During this time, she began having small cognitive issues. And the stress of her current position was exacerbating her condition, so she took a $20,000 cut in yearly pay, along with a lesser position inside the company. After a month or so of different tests and a biopsy, it came back that I had a golf ball sized tumor in my stomach and would need to begin chemotherapy. So I began chemo and radiation treatments, which made me, expectedly so, extremely ill. She was spending time helping around my place on the weekends and staying over more, to the point that they were both at my home, more than theirs. At this point, I suggested that we go ahead and put one of our houses on the market, and move in together until the new house was built. I have great supplemental insurance as well as a long-term illness plan, so using that coupled with the sale of one of our houses would push us through comfortably and help ease the financial stress on her. Shortly after this discussion, she became extremely distant. Her daughter wasn't coming down and hanging out with mine anymore, she had excuses for not getting together. She quit driving me to treatments and stopped staying over. She then dropped a bomb. A sentence that will forever be burned into my psyche. I love you, but I can't see myself taking care of someone this sick in the long term, and I don't think we should see each other any longer. She sent me this in a text. It broke me. I won't lie. This was the first woman I had ever opened up to and planned a life with since my wife died when my children were 1 and 3. However, I tried to be mature about it. I forced myself to understand her position and to accept what I could not change. I calmly, the next day, gathered all of her things, packed them neatly, loaded them in my truck, and took them to her house to leave on the back porch while she was at work, in order to avoid any awkward exchanges. Walking around the back and under the porch cover. I put down a box, and some movement within the house caught my attention. I saw her in her back living room, on the couch having sexy time with a man that she had introduced to me as a life-long friend. I had dinner and drinks with this man and his girlfriend. We had gone on vacation with them as well. I never spoke of the incident with her, and simply sent her a text later, explaining that I would leave her things on my side porch to pick up at her convenience. I discovered eight or nine months later from his now ex-girlfriend, that they had broken up due to him confessing that he had been sleeping with my significant other, dating back to about the time we were finishing drawings on the new home. Now I'm pissed. Revenge time. At this point, I had finished chemo and radiation for the time being and was feeling healthier. I was going through so much neglected paperwork when I ran across the file that contained $32,680 in unpaid, long overdue invoices, which were promptly sent to my attorney to begin lean proceedings on the home. It turns out that I couldn't have done this a moment too soon, because she was set to put her house on the market. Coupled with interest over the course of, what was then, 19 months overdue, the invoices were hefty. That, along with the agreement of settling them when the house was sold in attorney fees, left her with roughly $10,000 after the sale of the home and settling her current mortgage. She promptly had to back out of the purchase of another home and moved in with her oldest daughter, sister-in-law, and two grandchildren. She also had to leave her job and begin receiving disability. I ran into her a little over a year ago, and she looked as if she had aged 20 years, and was in the wheelchair we had talked about. We chatted cordially but briefly and I excused myself and went on with my day. A few days later, her younger daughter called me and spoke of my running into her mom, and if we could hang out sometime. I gave a vague answer, thanked her for calling and again, went on with my day. The ex then called me a week or so later, and began apologizing for leaving me as she did. Again, cordial but short, I thanked her for calling and hung up. She began texting and this went on for several weeks until she asked if I could ever see us rekindling what we had. To which I replied. I can't see myself taking care of someone so sick in the long term. Remember the box on your back porch? Did you think that, life long friend, brought that over to you from my house? Good luck to you, goodbye. I sometimes feel guilt over this, but not much, and not often. Also, I'm cancer free for two years now. The following story is told from the female perspective. My boyfriend and I, had met online well over six years ago through an online game by the name of Runescape. He was 14 and I was 17, but it had felt like we had been friends forever. We both played the game very often and connected through it, eventually leading us to start a long distance relationship. Things began to escalate as the years went on and we began seeing each other in person every few months or so. We were about 1,500 miles apart, so one of our main priorities for the future was moving in together and closing the distance. My job had prevented us from doing that, but we had finally set a date for me to move in with him in December in that specific year. Our relationship never had any serious issues and I was more than happy to have him in my life as he was happy to have me. As I got older, I began to play Runescape less and less. As work took up most of my time. He continued to play regularly, if not more than he had when I first met him. He could never really hold down a job and barely had an income, but I supported him throughout the years and even paid his rent from across the country after he moved out of his parents' house a few years ago. I never really minded it because he was a sweetheart. But we began to have problems. In November of last year, I couldn't help pay his monthly rent. I was short on cash after having to pay my own living expenses alongside car repairs and bills I owed to the state, and I just couldn't afford to support him at the time. When I called him one night to discuss it, he freaked out and started crying that he didn't want to live with his parents again. I tried calming him down and even suggesting that I could help him find a temporary job until I could start providing for him again, but he wasn't having it. He claimed his parents would treat him badly if he returned home, which I know for a fact isn't true because him and his parents have stayed with me several times. They're good people, they've given him the world. I eventually did calm him down but he remained passive aggressive the entire night and we eventually hung up. Because I cared about him, I reached out to his father the next day and informed him that he would probably be moving back home after his lease expired that month. I explained how I wouldn't be able to afford paying for his living for a month or two, and if there were any local jobs he could work in order to, you know, make an income. Apparently, a friend of his father needed help managing a small warehouse for his business and was looking to potentially hire my boyfriend for the season. It paid $15 per hour and was super easy, lifting boxes, sweeping the floors and taking inventory. I brought it up to my boyfriend that same night and he was not having it. Not only did he not want to work in a crappy warehouse, but he didn't want to work at all. All he planned to do day in, day out was play RuneScape. I brought up a few other job listings I had found in his area and he immediately shot all of them down as well. He then had the audacity to comment about how he thinks I should work harder and possibly work a second job. I kept my composure and simply argued against it until we eventually hung up. I collapsed on my bed and cried for a good hour or two afterwards, because of the intense emotional stress I was under. Not only do I work eight hours a day, six days a week, I'm also an industrial meteorologist. If I remember correctly, that's a lot more work than playing RuneScape every day and using my Hulu account. I really considered breaking up with him right that moment, but I changed my mind and decided to give him another chance. Looking back on it, big mistake. I messaged him throughout the night and we sort of made up, but I was still a little uneasy about the entire event. He had moved back with his parents by the time December had come and I began to help him look for jobs while he wasted his life away playing video games. I eventually persuaded him to start working at a small retail store near his house and he thankfully began to make some money. I would still buy him video games and transfer him money like normal because I spoiled him, and our relationship began to feel somewhat okay again. Last month, both him and I put our money together to fly him across the U.S. to stay with me for four days. We hadn't seen each other in person since last summer, so we were both looking forward to it. He arrived and we had a great time for the first few days, because he could actually take me on dates for once with his new income. Everything was perfect until I caught a glimpse of his phone's locked screen while he was taking a shower. When are you gonna leave her? The Discord message read. I could have ran into the bathroom and snapped his neck in that moment, but I kept myself together as best as I could without doing so. I had never felt so used, disrespected, or hated in my entire life. When he came out of the bathroom, I gave him a fake smile, but I genuinely hated him from that moment on. He could have dropped dead on the floor and I would have spit on him. I spent the remainder of the night watching him play RuneScape and I remained very quiet. He took notice of this and asked me if everything was okay. I lied and told him I was fine. When it came time to go to sleep, I let that deadbeat climb into bed with me and he tried initiating sex because it was our final night together. I rejected as politely as I could, without tearing his banana completely off. He was disappointed, but went out like a light. Immediately after he went to sleep, I reached over and unplugged his phone and started digging through his messages with that girl. I feared that I had misinterpreted the message I had seen. But I was completely right after all. Not only had he been cheating on me, he had been doing so for nearly six months, leading me to believe that he hooked up with another girl directly after I couldn't pay for his living in November. I scrolled through probably 100,000 messages and wanted to vomit my insides out by the end of it.  When morning came, I had slept in because of how late I was up reading his messages. I woke up to find him on my computer playing RuneScape and eating my food. It was like all of our relationship had been wiped from my mind and he was now an evil stranger sitting in my house. I wanted to scream at him, I wanted to tear him apart and kick him out of my house onto the street, but I didn't. In fact, I gave him as much love and attention as I could muster that morning, because I wanted to leave things feeling normal between us. I dropped him off at the airport and we had a quick and somber goodbye before I left him forever, unbeknownst to him. I drove back home as calmly as I could before crying my eyes out in a mix of complete anger and emotional pain. I ended up kicking my bed frame so hard that the wood split and I had to buy another one recently. If only it were his face. I wanted to break his heart by the time he arrived back home, but I wanted it to really hurt. I logged into our joint RuneScape account that we had made several years ago, where him and I would work on training the same account and raising it almost like our baby. We had always joked that if we were to ever split up, he would take half of the account's bank contents and I would take the rest. I took my half and transferred it to my main account before taking his half and giving it away to random people throughout the game. Every last bit of it. Even items I couldn't normally trade away, I used a spell to convert the items into coins which I then gave away as well. The bank was now empty. It then occurred to me that I had the credentials to his main account, they were written down in my desk, as he would frequently have me train his farming skill every so often. I didn't hesitate at all and logged into his precious RuneScape account. At this point, he spent 14 years of his life on this account. I immediately took all of the contents of his bank and sold it all on the grand exchange, a marketplace in the game. It took an extremely long time to clear out his bank, but he would still be flying home for about another 4 hours so I had plenty of time. By the time I had sold slash destroyed everything, I had 4 stacks of coins totaling over 8.5 billion. Now we'll just spend it on.  I logged back into my main account to reach out to a friend of mine that collects massive stacks of burnt food. For the unaware, burnt food in RuneScape has no use. You can't unbring them, eat them, or even sell them on the grand exchange. They are, however, tradable amongst players. I've always poked fun at this guy for collecting burnt food. But I was now more thankful than ever to make his acquaintance in my revenge. I asked him what the most obscure, unwanted item was of the burnt food variety was and he replied, burnt spider. Lo and behold, he had roughly 6000 of the item spider on shaft, burnt, in his bank that he was willing to sell me. Feeling generous with my ex-boyfriend's coins, I gave my friend a full stack of 2.147 billion coins and left a very happy customer. I dropped the 6083 burnt spiders in his bank, but still had about 6 billion coins left to spend. With the remaining money, I decided to treat myself. I went on to the grand exchange and ended up going on shopping spree. The first thing I bought were 100 bonds. If you're not familiar, a bond in RuneScape grants you 14 days of in-game membership. After trading all 100 bonds to my account, I now have almost 4 years of membership paid for me. I spent a majority of his coins on extremely nice armor and weapons, all of which went straight into my account. He still had about an extra billion, so I spent it on the supplies I needed to level up an expensive skill of mine. By the end of the afternoon, he was left with a measly 150,000 coins in his bank, all of which I gave away to a guy cooking pizzas outside of the exchange. Nothing was left, so I decided to pick up a pile of bones off the ground and leave it solely in his bank. It might sound petty, but I laughed for a while. Now, I know what you're thinking. This is so cruel, you ruined the tens of thousands of hours he had put into a game. Well, it was time he learned that I can be a Hellcat. I mean Hellcat. On top of spending every last coin he had ever made, I leveled his defense skill. This may not sound bad, in fact, it sounds like a good thing. I helped his account progress, right? Well, no. Unfortunately for my ex, he had what players commonly refer to as a pure account, meaning he never, ever dared to level his defense skill from level 1, in order to keep the lowest defense stats but have high offensive stats. Well, not anymore. Have fun with your permanent level 6 defense. Cycling through hundreds of possible forms of revenge in my head, I settled on getting rid of his house. It's quite an achievement and runescape to have a nice house of your own, in fact, he had one of the nicest I had ever seen in the game. In order to have built it, he must have spent well over a few billion coins. Too bad I had disassembled it all in a matter of minutes, deleting it all into cyberspace. And there's no insurance either, he's going to have to rebuy everything with his non-existent money if he wants a new house. Bye bye, costed a cheater. Scrolling through his friends list, I decided to act as him and pay a visit to his friends who were currently online, and admit that I had cheated on my girlfriend and was fully proud of it. If his friends hadn't removed him by that point, I removed them. All of them. Lastly, to add a beautiful little cherry to this revenge filled cake, I changed his username.  I obviously won't drop his username here, but I did the best I could to embarrass him with a 12 character limit. He should be able to reclaim his previous username in about three weeks, but if he waits too long, I'll be able to swipe it and slap it on a throwaway account of my own forever. He sent me a very hateful and aggressive message later that night, followed by pictures of him crying. I wrote him a sincere message officially ending the relationship, while also scaring him away by threatening to take him to court over sharing my nudes and possibly filing a cease and desist, if he were to contact me any time soon. I don't plan on doing any of that, I just don't want to speak to him ever again. The following story is told from the female perspective. My story is detailed, but trust me, it will be important in the end. And it's surely worth it, because of its emotionally eviscerating kind of revenge and karma. My story happened around 1999, when I was 20 years old. My friend told me that this was the juiciest karma he's ever heard of, and that I should share it with others. If you've ever been cheated on by someone you love, this is for you. I was single, and had finally mustered the courage to tell my junior high school crush, let's call him Chad. About the candle I'd been holding for him for the past seven years, ever since the first time we met. I was still somewhat new to the Pacific Northwest after leaving my home of Alaska, and figured, well he's in Alaska and I'm here, and never moving back, so I might as well let the unspoken thing be spoken, get the answer I'm sure is coming, and move on with my life. I was pretty sure that once I laid down all the cards, he wouldn't have wanted to be friends with me anymore. Or would have said something like, I am not into you that way. I was expecting, at most, an awkward conversation with him that may have explained my behavior over the years I had known him. Much to my surprise, he reciprocated my expression of sincere love. Chad and I had been friends for all that time. And though I never dropped hints to him about it, I did tell my closest friend at the time. He and I even kissed once during our first school year together, and even though I wanted to, I did never press the issue or pursue him further, giving him the chance to take the lead, which he didn't. His words to me were poetic and so full of promise, including him saying how he always had a thing for me and never knew how to approach me, and that he was so afraid I would reject him and he'd be humiliated, and so on. The same kind of stuff I had told him. Seven years later, having not the slightest clue that he was going to react that way at all, it made me question my decision about never moving back. I mean, really never? After the phone call professing love for each other, it just felt right. I thought about my decision, maybe I could have the opportunity for the relationship I had wanted for so long. I had a really great perk with a family member who was a pilot, and was able to fly on a buddy pass slash standby ticket pretty often. So I decided to fly up to Alaska every couple of weeks to see Chad. Once the news got around, everyone in our circle of friends would exclaim. OMG you and Chad. I always hope you two would end up together, you are the perfect couple. I thought it was super cheesy and romantic, but it actually felt validating and nice because that was what I had envisioned and hoped people would say about us. I was always very careful to avoid dating or even flirting with anyone I went to school with, for the sake of avoiding interpersonal drama and gossip at school, which would have disrupted so much more than my education. After several months of traveling to see him every couple of weeks, he asked me to marry him. I said yes, and then without hesitation, started planning to move back to Alaska to be together and start our life there in our hometown. I made my plans for the move, packing up all of my belongings and parcel shipping everything I owned. Thankfully it wasn't much, because I was still so young and didn't own any furniture. Chad and I were going to live together at his place, where he had a roommate, let's call him John, who I will never forget, and the reason why is coming up. In the scant number of days before my final flight back up to Anchorage, I started feeling kinda icky and gross, and after several days of that, followed my intuition and took a pregnancy test. I found out I was pregnant. And I was so overjoyed that I called him one evening to tell him about it. There was already a party going on at his place. I spoke with Chad briefly and said, I have some news I wanna share with you, and he interrupted me saying, but first I have to tell you about this really cool artist chick. And he told me about this girl who came to the party. Let's call her Christine. I was irked by the way he was talking about her, and realized this is not the time for a big reveal. I think I said to Chad something like, don't do anything you'll regret. He asked me to call him later on to tell him whatever the news was, so I said I would, and then I did. Hours later, whoever answered the phone said that Chad was there, but couldn't come to the phone right now. I had this awful stomach sinking feeling, because I already had an intuitive feeling about what was happening. Chad never called me back that evening. I called him the next morning, no answer. I was heartbroken. That evening I finally got to talk with him and reminded him. I still had news to tell him about, but he interrupted me to say that he had to tell me something first, and my stomach sinking feeling was now turning to nausea. He admitted that he cheated on me with Christine. During the time I was trying to reach him the night before. I hung up the phone on him and threw up. He didn't call me back to ask what my news was. I called him back later on to verbally upgrade him, and all he could do was ask for forgiveness and tell me that it was a mistake, and that he still wanted me to come there. I told him there was no chance that I would marry him after that. That was not a mistake, buddy, that was a choice. I said I would be up there to get my things and that I'd be gone for good. It took every ounce of my emotional strength to verbalize my thoughts without screaming. I miscarried the pregnancy that week. Add that onto the absolute devastation that this person I had longed for after all these years didn't actually intend on a committed relationship after proposing to me, and then I had to deal with the immense pain of losing my first pregnancy. And then to top that off, I had to fly up to Anchorage weeks before Christmas, to pick up all of the stuff I had already parcel-shipped there, wait for it to arrive, with nowhere else to go but Chad's home. I had to face him and be around him, after having my heart thoroughly crushed. I knew also that all of our mutual friends, and our families, would either learn the truth, or would be told lies, if Chad tried to save face about his mistake. I didn't know Chad to be that kind of person, but then, I didn't know him to be a cheater either, so all bets were off when it came to an educated guess about what course of action he would take. So I got on the plane, flew up North to Alaska, and of course, Chad didn't remember he told me the day before that he'd picked me up at the airport. Or, he didn't think it was worth it. Whatever it was, it was the most awful feeling to be forgotten about, and left there stranded. Even more humiliating, was when an elderly couple at the airport saw me waiting alone, picked up my lost girl vibe. And asked me if I was okay, and I lost my calm demeanor, broke down in tears at the airport.  I finally got a cab and went out to his place. Banged on the door outside and waited until I couldn't feel my fingertips anymore, and the racket finally woke up John. Who lit me inside? Chad was in his room passed out on his bed. I went to the living room couch and waited. I didn't know exactly how to confront him, so I didn't. He already knew how I felt based on our phone call following his confession. I acted like I no longer cared about it, because the last thing I wanted to be seen as was a crazy ex. There was no way I was going to let his behavior and choices besmirch my reputation, so I acted cool and dispassionate as if it were all just a matter of fact end to a relationship. I kept to myself as much as possible. Chad must have taken that as some sort of sign that we were just friends, as if we never had a relationship, as if he had never asked me to marry him. And he had the bright idea to invite Christine over to meet me. As it turned out, Chad told Christine that I was just a friend and he never told her about our relationship, engagement, me visiting frequently to see him, me moving there to be with him, etc. It was like I was just erased and discarded. Looking back, this is a very clear case of a narcissist's relationship pattern of idealize, devalue, and discard. Every moment between arriving there and leaving felt like it was just me crying and feeling so incredibly hurt that it broke my whole world. I had sacrificed my family, who had all moved to the Pacific Northwest by that point. I left my job, so that I could move back to Alaska and be with Chad. I was so into the idea of a relationship with him, it didn't even feel like I had sacrificed for the sake of our relationship. But, I did. And it hit me that I sacrificed family and job who had never hurt me, at least not in the way Chad had hurt me. I regretted leaving them to be with Chad and his empty promise of love. When the news spread to our mutual friends and his family, no one could understand why Chad and I were split up. While everyone understood why I was crying and upset, no one really knew what to do with the constant stream of tears. I maintained my composure as being the not crazy ex to the best of my ability. This all happened in front of people who knew both of us for years. They were dumbfounded about Christine and what she was doing with Chad. They put the puzzle pieces together themselves, I kept my mouth shut, and only stated facts when I was asked. Yes, Chad would rather be with her. So he is with her. I'm here waiting for my things to arrive so that I can ship them back, and then I'm getting on the next flight out of here. One day out of the total two weeks I was there, John, remember?   For some reason that made me feel better about the whole thing. Johnny was a muscly badass to a young woman like me, and for him to say that made me feel like the world wasn't such a cruel place after all. I still had not told anyone about the pregnancy, or the loss, because even though I was grieving and in pain. If I mentioned any of that, I knew that I would be treated like a crazy ex who was making up stories to make him feel worse or make it all about poor me, and I just didn't need any more bullshit on top of that. I suffered in silence and perfected the art of crying without making a sound so that I wouldn't draw anyone else's attention to my grief. Over those two weeks, Chad invited Christine over frequently. He probably thought it was no big deal to me. He was not thinking about me or how his behavior was affecting me. I was in a state of shock. I never thought he would treat me like that, after I had known him for so long and had never seen him behave in that way. I stayed on the couch while the two of them had their fun in Chad's room. Within earshot. A move like that is such a crappy thing to do, that I am still surprised it didn't instantly place his likeness in the dictionary under the definition of sociopath. I didn't have the energy to confront Chad or to argue as to why doing something like that was cruel and heartless. If he didn't know that already, me telling him wasn't going to teach him the basics of empathy. I was so angry at him that I wanted to hurt him even worse than he had done to me. Before I left, I concocted a plan to poison his new relationship with Christine. This is where the revenge plot comes into play. I am bisexual, and I knew that Christine was at least flexible in that regard, and obviously she was willing to move fast with someone. So, at yet another party night, a seemingly regular occurrence at that house, I got Christine all to myself before she got drunk, for long enough to seduce her. I shut both of us in Chad's room, meanwhile, everyone else was getting too drunk to get that anything could have been happening in there. Chad was occupied with the guests and may not have noticed we were missing. After we were finished, I told her why I was there, and told her about my history with Chad. With an icy and dispassionate apathy that illustrated how much Chad was dead to me I told her, if he cares about me enough to propose to me and then do what he did with you, after I've known him for years, just imagine what he'll do to you. Suddenly she understood why I had been so somber when I was introduced to her. She had no idea that I was anything more than an innocent friend of Chad's. She didn't know why I was there in Alaska, or why I was waiting for boxes, she didn't know anything. She felt profoundly guilty and regretful, despite the fact that she didn't know any better. She had been deceived and I had been too gracious to lose my cool or cause a scene at a house party or in front of anyone else, as would have been expected. When I was in private with her, I told her everything, including how I had pined after him since I was 12 years old because my adolescent hormones didn't know better. Chad walked in on us and must have assumed that nothing was wrong, only because nothing violent or terrible was happening in the moment. That was either hubris, or drunkenness on his part. There was no confrontation, again. The party went on, and Christine left. The next day, Chad asked me what I was doing with Christine.  I have to confess, I didn't see her that way. I said it like that because it was the most emasculating thing I could think of. The look on his face seemed to suggest that his vener schnitzel had shriveled and inverted into his body. He looked more mortified than I've ever seen him. I still played my poker face. He didn't know what to say after that, so he said nothing and changed the subject. I made him feel just as small and insignificant as he had made me feel. Mission accomplished, or so I thought. There's more. I got my belongings finally, and shipped them all straight back to where they came from. I got myself on another flight out of there a day or so later, didn't ever see Christine again. I didn't hear from Chad again for the next five years. Five years later, I was married, and had just learned that week that I was pregnant, with my first child. I got an email from Chad, he tracked me down through social media back in 2005. He said that he wanted to catch up with me, so I obliged him with a phone call, thinking I was gonna gloat about being married and having a kid or some stuff. Chad told me all about the karma that went down after I left. He said, you didn't go crazy while you were here.  He didn't say that word for word, but close to it. I think he used the word cancer in there somewhere. Perhaps my intentions to avenge my dead fetus invited my guardian angels, demons may be more likely, to intercede in the situation. Karma, in order of appearance. Christine cheated on him with his best friend, and then moved in with the dude only two weeks after I had left. Ouch. He got fired from his job on Christmas Eve. His boss was another mutual friend who heard about what he did to me. Decided he didn't want the guy working at his video store anymore. Ouch.  He didn't have enough money to get it out, since he lost his job, he lost his truck too. Ouch. That is pretty bad when you live in a place like Alaska, in the middle of winter. His family caught wind of what went down with me and disowned him. Ouch. I thought that was pretty extreme, I never found out what they heard or were talking about, but just chalked it up to Karma. After Christine was gone, his remaining friends, unsurprisingly, threw another drinking party at his place.  He took refuge with a neighbor, but later on he had to leave the state because he had been shunned by all his remaining friends, had no family or job or truck, etc. and was now single, without even a Christine to lean on. When we spoke, he had been living in Texas and rethinking his life, and wanted to know how I was doing after our engagement friendship ended. And that was when I decided that the time was right to tell him about the baby we could have had. And then, distinguished guests, was when he started to cry, and I told him how much it sucked for me, to feel like I couldn't have told him about before.  He was sobbing on the other line, and couldn't stop apologizing. He said, I had no idea you were pregnant. I felt a momentary indignant rage, and sublimated it with another poker face moment, in my matter of fact, emotionless response. We had sex, so it's not like it was impossible for that to happen. I tried to tell you.  You didn't have any idea that I was pregnant because you didn't care to know. You didn't even ask. More sobs on the other end of the line, and more apologies than I've ever heard in my life from anyone.  I wanted to say I pity you, but held my tongue. So I told him, things are better for me now. I'm married, and we just found out that we are pregnant with our first child. Anyway, it's really been nice catching up with you, and finding out what happened with your life. Sorry to hear it's been difficult. Let's keep in touch. He didn't. I don't know why he bothered contacting me in the first place, because he must have had some idea how that call was going to go down. But he probably wasn't counting on finding out that he could have been a father, and we could have had a family together, if only he hadn't crushed the heart of someone who actually cared about him. In hindsight, that relationship was nothing more than me confusing his charm, his words, and my infatuation and pining away, for actual love. I spent so much time wondering and questioning what I had done to deserve him doing all of that to me. What I didn't realize was that he didn't do any of that because of me, or to punish me for any reason. He did all of that, because the only person he had been thinking about was himself. It took me many more years before I would learn how to identify narcissistic behavior, and now looking back. I realized that I had narrowly escaped getting myself stuck in Alaska and romantically committed to a person who has little capacity for empathy, and doesn't feel remorse when he wrongs someone. I learned how to get revenge by maintaining my grace and composure, stating only the facts, keeping my emotions to myself and my demeanor together, just long enough to plant doubt in the heart of the new woman. Five years after he crushed my heart, he cried enough to fill a bottle with his tears, and my satisfaction poured it over the flowers on the grave of our tiny, passed away fetus. I'm sorry, baby. No introduction, I'm gonna dive right into my story. When I got divorced, my alcoholic wife of 18 years had started another affair, this time with her addictions counselor. My lawyer and I laid a trap for them, though. Just in case you don't know, intimate relations between a counselor and patient are very frowned upon by the regulatory bodies. And I was more than pissed after putting her through rehab, $25,000, which I didn't have to do, only to have her fall back into her old behavior. Surely before the divorce was finalized I filed a complaint with the state body licensing health professions. Knowing they were in some peril, because of their unprofessional relationship, I had already gotten him fired from a major teaching hospital. She had backed off her exorbitant demands during the divorce. I paid her a very modest settlement, kept the house, got custody of the three teenage kids, plus got child support. Her lawyer naturally included a clause in the divorce, where I had to agree to not say anything negative about her lover and their relationship. But the lawyer messed up big time and never asked if I had already filed charges, and thus didn't require me to rescind them. Her lawyer had assumed I was just bad mouthing them to neighbors and friends, and it never occurred to the lawyer that we were doing much more. When the board of health professions responded to my complaint shortly after the divorce was finalized, I told them that it would take a subpoena to get me to testify, this subpoena would trump an agreement in a divorce settlement. They were happy to oblige. They stripped his license, and placed him on a register of sanctioned health professionals. He never worked within his field again. They were broke in a handful of years and she divorced him when the money ran out. It took longer than expected, due to his mother leaving him a fair size to stay, but it run out nonetheless. Oh, and the frosting on the cake was that his wife and a traded notes, notably hotel receipts from the time of their affair, that helped each of us in our respective divorces. Justice was served. Thank you for enjoying this episode, which was made with artificial love. Subscribe to receive future episodes, and tickle the like button for good karma. Do you have any experiences surrounding this topic? Share yours below, I'll join the conversation. And I'll be seeing you... in the next one.


Very often in science, you make a discovery that you were not looking for. In 1934 Enrico Fermi was bombarding the large nucleus of uranium with the recently discovered subatomic particle called the neutron. He knew that the uranium sample had changed in some way but couldn't determine how. He had wanted to see if moderated neutrons would pass through the nucleus. In 1938 this work was repeated by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner. So Hahn and Meitner had discovered that a captured neutron causes fission, a word they borrowed from cell biology which described the process when cells split apart. They predicted that a chain reaction was possible as new neutrons cause more fission which raise the possibility of a new source of energy. Upon fission of a single nucleus of uranium you can see we get both barium and krypton, also called daughter nucleites, along with three neutrons. An atom of uranium will rarely undergo fission without first capturing a neutron. Then where does the energy that Hahn and Meitner referred to come from? Let's look at the mass change during fission. There is a very small mass loss on fission of the nucleus. So where has this mass gone? Here we need to look at the work of Einstein. E equals MC squared. This must be the world's most famous equation and links mass with energy, where E is energy measured in joules, M is mass measured in kilograms and C is speed of light which is 3 times 10 to the power of 8 meters per second. On fission about 0.1% mass loss is observed. So if 1 kilogram of uranium 235 underwent fission the energy transfer would be E equals 0.001 kilograms times 3 times 10 to the power of 8 squared which equals 9 times 10 to the power of 13 joules. To get this amount of energy from burning coal you would need to burn 2000 tons. That's a million times the mass of the uranium. On fission and subsequent chain reaction a lot of energy including gamma rays will be released. For a chain reaction to be self-sustaining there needs to be a minimum amount of material present. This is known as the critical mass. Below this critical mass too many neutrons are lost from the metal surface and so take no part in the chain reaction. The discovery of nuclear fission was only the beginning of the nuclear age. It was Enrico Fermi who built the world's first nuclear reactor named Chicago Pile 1 which went critical in late 1942 showing that a controlled chain reaction was possible. The Manhattan Project then led to the rapid development of fission bombs based on uranium and plutonium in 1945. In a fission bomb two sub-critical masses of uranium or plutonium are quickly pushed together using conventional high explosives which results in an uncontrolled chain reaction with an almost instant release of huge amounts of energy as heat, light and gamma rays. In a nuclear reactor the controlled slow release of energy is used to heat up a closed loop of coolant which passes to heat exchangers which then boil water to provide steam to turn electrical generators. The output of the reactor is altered by raising or lowering the control rods in the core. These rods absorb neutrons and so determine how much fission is taking place.