When Chloe decided to use her fiancé’s computer, she stumbled upon shocking and intimate emails between him and another woman. As she confronted him, she realized her whole world was shifting—but she wasn’t content to just walk away. Instead, she first decided to tamper with his belongings.
Standing in the midst of our shared living room, the burden of betrayal weighing me down, I resolved that my exit would not be a silent one.
I was determined to assert myself. I wanted Dale to experience just a fraction of the pain that was gnawing at me. I was going to disrupt his daily life at every opportunity.
The discovery was accidental. I had forgotten my laptop charger at work and needed to make an urgent online transaction—so, I borrowed Dale’s laptop.
What I found were emails filled with explicit details that no partner should ever have to read.
While Dale was in the kitchen preparing our meal, I was unraveling the affair he had hidden.
“How much chili should I add?” Dale shouted from the kitchen, unaware of the bombshell I had just discovered.
“You decide,” I managed to reply, my voice hollow, as I shut down his email and turned off the laptop.
I debated whether to confront him then and there. We were supposed to be married in six months—our wedding invitations had already been mailed.
Entering the kitchen, Dale was there chopping vegetables, humming along to the music playing from his phone.
Suddenly, he appeared as a stranger to me—a shadow of the man I was supposed to spend my life with.
“So, Mandy, huh?” I blurted out.
Dale froze, turning to face me with a look of confusion.
The next half-hour was filled with heated arguments. Dale tried to dismiss his infidelity, claiming that Mandy meant nothing to him.
“Mandy was just a way for me to realize what I have with you,” Dale said, retrieving a bottle of vodka from the cupboard.
“And you think that’s a valid excuse?” I responded, astounded by his attempt to manipulate the situation.
Ultimately, Dale packed a bag.
“I’m going to stay at my brother’s place,” he declared. “We need some time to cool off.”
“Give me a few days, and I’ll clear out my things. I’m finished with this,” I stated firmly.
Dale left without further protest.
“A week, Chloe,” he said, grabbing his bag and heading to the door.
That night, as I lay in bed, my mind raced with all the tasks ahead, starting with canceling the wedding.
My custom wedding dress, nearly ready for final fittings, now seemed like a symbol of wasted dreams.
The following morning, I sipped my coffee while gazing out of the kitchen window, feeling a mix of anger and heartbreak. Dale was supposed to be my forever.
But a simple breakup wouldn’t suffice—I felt a petty urge bubbling within me.
My first act of vengeance involved Dale’s beloved tablet, which he’d accidentally left on the kitchen counter the night before.
With a few quick adjustments, I switched all the device’s settings to French. Dale hadn’t bothered to learn the language, despite our plans to honeymoon in Paris.
But I didn’t stop there.
Knowing Dale’s meticulous nature about our home’s temperature, I swapped his digital thermostat for one programmed to fluctuate wildly throughout the day.
The new settings would see the house at a chilly forty degrees in the morning and a sweltering eighty-five by evening.
I couldn’t help but smirk, imagining his frustration.
Next, I meddled with his morning coffee routine by replacing his regular beans with decaf. I also swapped his sugar for salt, anticipating the shock he’d get from his first sip.
As I packed my clothes, thoughts of our shared moments filled me with both sadness and a strange relief. Despite the heartache, I was freeing myself from a relationship built on deceit.
My friend Rosa came over to help with the wedding cancellations, offering both logistical and emotional support.
“We’ll split the list and get everything sorted,” Rosa assured me, helping me to see a path forward through my turmoil.
Before I finally left, I sabotaged Dale’s entertainment system, blocking all his favorite channels with a parental control PIN.
Walking through the house, I said my goodbyes to each room, leaving behind the memories of what could have been.
Dale’s texts started arriving soon after—first confused, then progressively more desperate.
“Why is it so cold when I wake up?” one of his texts read.
“Check the thermostat,” I suggested curtly before eventually deciding to block his number, severing the last of our connections.
As I settled back into my parents’ home, reflecting on the whirlwind of the past week, I realized that while my actions were driven by hurt, they marked the end of a painful chapter and the start of a new, hopeful one.
Would you have done the same?
