Alex Buscemi
Breakups can be tough, but sometimes a little petty revenge helps ease the sting.
Whether it’s funny pranks or small acts of payback, petty revenge after a breakup can give you a sense of closure or just a moment of satisfaction.
It’s not about causing real harm; it’s about feeling like you’ve taken back a bit of control. While these actions may seem immature, they often serve as a cathartic release for feelings of hurt and betrayal.
Keep going for proof that a little humor goes a long way in healing.
1.
Not an ex but we went on four or five dates. He broke it off with a post it on my front door. I saw him a few years later at a party and introduced myself when he came over and pretended I’d never seen him before, when he clearly remembered me. Nothing hurts an ego more than to be forgotten by someone you remember.
2.
Not my breakup, my daughter’s break up. Her ex threatened to keep the kids after a visitation one weekend and she was scared and upset. I told her that he didn’t want them full time. He worked out of town, and he was a big on going to the bar and drinking. I insisted she go camping, out of cell phone reach for a couple of days. The next day he was calling me and demanding that I take the kids so he could get to work, he had to leave that night. I refused. After a couple of days, I did take them, but he missed a week of work. And he never did it again.
3.
So, back in the day when we used flip phones, you could set it to show a little message every time you turned on your phone. When my geeky programmer ex wasn’t looking, I set his phone to display “STARTUP ERROR 54EDGT4” (or some alphanumeric gibberish) whenever he turned it on.
He spent several weeks trying to diagnose the problem.
4.
My ex girlfriend from many years ago came home drunk one night and started a fight. She ended up punching me in the face about 10 times and I picked her up and threw her out of the house.
I invited her to talk the next day but got no response. I came home to a completely empty house; she’d come over with her family and taken everything out. It was mostly her stuff, I moved countries to live with her, but I didn’t even have a pillow to rest my head on.So the next day I went to the police to file an assault charge that got her teaching license revoked.
5.
Way back in the day, my fiancé got himself a side piece. So, I got mad and then I got packing. I had time to think while I was packing and decided to place an ad in the newspaper that I knew his grandmother read religiously with a photo of him and the girl he cheated on me with and everything I knew about the affair. His grandmother called me to apologize and called him a disgrace.
Best part? I charged the ad to his credit card.
6.
I guessed my exes password and cancelled his flight to Europe, but let him get half way there. He [ended] my cat, he deserved much worse.
7.
My ex cheated on me several times while I was pregnant with his child, while we lived in MY parents’ home.
I broke up with him and kicked him out. When I was able to get my own apartment, I took him back and he moved all of our furniture from my parents’ house in one city into the apartment in another city. And then I broke up with him again.
8.
After the breakup she said the towels belonged to her. There were 4 of them and they were really nice fluffy bath towels. I sprayed them with 3m scotchgard to make them waterproof before she came by to pick them up.
9.
My ex was on crutches and called me to help her carry somethings across campus. I was still in the “I will make this work as a friendship” phase and I agreed to help her. She spent the first half of the walk across campus informing how awful I was that I had started dating someone else. When she insulted my new girlfriend directly. I calmly set the boxes I was carrying down on a bench and walked away from her. She had a total meltdown and screamed every foul thing she could think of at me. I just kept on walking.
10.
I got dumped about two months before Christmas (years ago).
As we were talking, my mind was jumping all over and I said “I guess I’m going to return the Christmas presents I already bought you then.”
I didn’t even mean anything by the comment, I was just thinking out loud.
But then she asked me what I got her – and I said “No, they’re being returned and we’re not together so I’m not going to tell you.”
Anyway, I heard later from mutual friends that this drove her crazy for a while wondering what the gifts could have been.
Very small, very petty, and very unintentional revenge. But it did warm my heart to hear it drove her crazy lol.
11.
Outed his lying a*s at his family reunion in front of everyone. Then left, went back to our apartment where my father was waiting with a moving van and never saw him again.
12.
I took all the lightbulbs out of fixtures and took all the labels off the canned food. Good luck getting peaches or ravioli for dinner.
13.
I broke up with a live-in boyfriend who promised to move out Jan 2. Fine.
I told him I didn’t want to do a big fuss at Christmas so I was going to take my dog and go hiking, stay in a hotel, eat room service, and watch Hallmark movies. He somehow convinced me to stay home, so I ended up making my traditional Christmas dinner – a small standing rib roast, mashed potatoes with gravy, asparagus, home made bread and pie. Not for him, for me, because that is what I wanted to eat. He was doing something in the basement so I gave him a thirty minute warning, a fifteen minute warning, and then told him dinner was ready.
“I’ll be right up!”
This dude was king of passive aggressive bt, so I fixed my plate, ate my dinner, drank my wine, and then swept the leftovers into the trash. All of it, including the bread and pie. By the time he came up, expecting me to be fuming and the food to be cold, I was nearly done with the dishes. “Wow, smells great! When do we eat?” “Oh, I already ate.” Opens the fridge. “Where are the leftovers?” “In the trash.” “What am I supposed to eat?” “I don’t know! There was food available an hour ago but you needed to play s**y games. Well, you won a sy prize. I think Denny’s is open today. McDonald’s if you can’t afford that.” He grabbed his keys in a huff and left.
After he left, I called his step-mom, the only family he had in town, and let her know he might be showing up, what he did, and that he didn’t deserve a peanut butter sandwich. Apparently she chewed him out for being an a*s and didn’t feed him either. 🥰
Maybe you should learn to cook, baby bird.
14.
We had moved 1,200 miles away from home and after I caught him cheating I couldn’t pack up much in the compact car I’d be driving home. I took all of the knobs and handles off of everything. TV, dresser, stereo (etc), packed up the remote as well.
15.
My ex put his hands on me one night. That was it for me. He left for work the next morning and I moved out. I scratched every CD he owned, took everything from the house including shower curtain, toilet paper and soap. I left the waterbed, but I poked a large hole in it before I left. Never talked to him again.
16.
He was cheating with someone he met on WoW and was then trying to pass me off to his friends. I took everything I owned out of his apartment, all the towels, sheets, and cookware. I then logged into his WoW account and gave away all his gold and items to random people in the starter zone and deleted all his characters.
17.
I dropped him off at his mom’s house and didn’t tell him I wasn’t coming back. Changed my locks and phone number.
18.
My mom found out her husband was cheating with the babysitter and washed his underwear with pieces of fiberglass in the wash. Just his underwear, then put it all back in the drawers. He itched for MONTHS but thought he caught something and took antibiotics and kept itching.
She also signed him up for every “bill me later” magazine sub she could get her hands on (it was the 90s). He was dealing with that for years.
19.
After we broke up he started dating Girl 2 pretty much immediately (maybe even before the breakup idk). Couple months later he threw her over for Girl 3. Girl 2 and I got together to talk s**t about him when she realized she still had a key to his place, so she went and grabbed the bottle of Dom Perignon he’d shown off to each of us and told us he was saving for his wedding day. We drank the whole bottle on her porch as a toast to our new friendship.
20.
My ex lived with me and was on the lease. Despite me paying virtually all the bills, I couldn’t legally kick her out since her name was on the lease.
I am a good cook and also did most of the cooking around the house, especially dinners.
I decided to make her miserable. I put locks on the master bedroom and bought a s****y twin mattress off Craigslist for her to sleep on. No sheets or pillows or anything. Then I bought a hand truck from Home Depot and moved the fridge into my bedroom. I cooked delicious meals every day for 2 weeks and kept the leftovers in my bedroom where she couldn’t have them. The only things I left in the pantry were s**t like rice and instant noodles (the only things she knew how to cook).
I changed the wifi password and Netflix and all other things I paid for and refused to tell her. Her windows, Adobe, and multiple other software subscriptions were tied to my accounts as I worked, at the time, for Microsoft and got them all at discounted or free pricing. Canceled all those.
After about 2 weeks of this she finally left on her own.
21.
My husband cheated, then divorced me. A few months after it was final, I noticed I was still receiving his army reserve newsletter, which told me he had “forgotten” to update them on his new marital status. (Soldiers get paid more if they’re married than if they’re single.) I called the local office and gave them his forwarding address because “I wouldn’t want him to miss any important communication from them just because we divorced.”
Yes, it’s petty, but you asked.
22.
I caught my ex-husband cheating. Lovely. He was obsessed with his band T-shirt collection. He kept them in a glass cabinet. I neatly placed them in a large bin bag, then popped in the massage oil bottle he’d been using with his girlfriend. With the lid off. Tied it up and passed it on to him to collect. He was devastated haha.
23.
Brought my ex to court for not paying her part of a loan I cosigned. My lawyer said it wouldn’t do much because “you can’t get blood from a stone.” Between my lawyer, her lawyer, family/friends, few randos, and the judge I provided evidence she was cheating on me while coercing me to cosign the loan. Now it’s on public record she’s a cheating, gold-digging b***h. Still didn’t get what I wanted but vindication felt good.
24.
My ex was abusive, controlling, and a cheater. When I moved out, all the bills were in my name. He asked about transferring the power, gas, and internet into his name. I told him that’s fine, I can do that. He also said that he would use the gift voucher to an electronics store I gave him for his birthday months prior to buy a modem (side note: when I gave him this voucher, he made a big deal out of it, trying to give me the money back, because he was being self-pitying and trying to make me feel bad about not having much to spend for his birthday at the time, even though I also said I’d take him out for a nice dinner which he told me he didn’t want to go out to dinner with me).
So, when I’m moving out, he says he’s leaving for the weekend to “make it easier for [me]” but really he was a coward. I had the power and internet transferred to my new house and the gas cut off on the Sunday, the day after I moved out (the services were connected at my new house though) and the gift voucher? I spent $99 of it, leaving $1. He didn’t come home till the Monday, no internet, no gas, no electricity and he said he tried to use the voucher for a modem and there was no money left on it. I said, “there’s money on it” and blocked him.
25.
Added a new college class to his current semester without telling him.
26.
I caught my ex cheating on me about 10 years ago. After I caught her in the act, she tried to deny it while standing naked in front of me, then left for a week because I was “acting crazy” by not buying her bs.
In that week I emptied our rented house (almost everything was mine). I’m talking the beds, dining room table and chairs, nearly everything in the kitchen, etc., put it all in storage and arranged for a transfer to another state.
I left her a single bare mattress, one each of a plate, bowl, cup, fork, knife, and spoon.
She came back a day early to try to reconcile. When she came in, the color stained from her face and she asked where “her” stuff was. I just laughed, reminded her that she brought literally nothing to our relationship, walked out the door, got in my car, and left a day earlier than planned.
27.
When I called the house he was sharing with coworkers overseas, and the woman who answered the phone identified herself as his live-in girlfriend, I called the bank and canceled the credit card he had on my account by declaring it stolen. Then I called the airline I worked for and removed his benefits. He got stranded very, very, very far away with no return ticket to mommy’s and had to spend the night in jail for using a stolen credit card. I met my husband two months later and married him within a year. The ex called and called until hubby told him to have some dignity. It’s been 25 years. No regrets.
28.
I was contributing to his mortgage and taking care of his son. He still didn’t think I was doing enough.
I left him 3 years ago and still use his Amazon account (he added me as a family member, so he can’t see my purchases) and changed his Costco membership address, so I’d get his annual rewards check.He’s too lazy to check any of these things.
29.
After telling my ex I was going fishing for 3 days (not) I confirmed she was sleeping with a good friend. I went home and spent the night drinking tequila and piling her stuff in the middle of the driveway in front of the house. Had the locks changed and cut her wedding dress into little pieces and put our frozen piece of wedding cake on top. I waited until they showed up about mid-morning. He was afraid to get out of the car. Best decision I ever made!
30.
We both played French horn in the high school band and he really wanted to make the all-city band, so I practiced the music they wanted us to perform in tryouts for hours every night for months to take his spot from him. I ended up getting last chair and he got first alternate.
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