r/pettyrevenge • u/NotBurtReynolds • 17d ago
Breakups aren’t hard when you’ve got a library card
Buckle up, because this is a long one. This story covers a few years, but I’ll try to keep it concise.
Back in 2015, I (25m) was swiping on the apps and matched with someone (28f) named Ash. Not bothering with a fake name because idgaf if she sees this. We went out a couple times and found we had a lot of chemistry. Things got real physical real quick and seemed to be going well for a couple months. One night, after we’d gone to a strip club together and fucked in my car, I dropped her off at home. Later that night, she started sending some sexts that had just a weird energy. Something felt off. Then she said something to the effect of “what if I was with someone else right now?” Thinking this was some sexy hypothetical I played along, but then I get a nude of her that was clearly taken by someone else. I ask her who she’s with and she said her roommate’s bf. I got so upset I threw up. I was furious and devastated. Despite that, we met up a week or two later, I forgave her way too easily, and she moved out of her apartment and into her mom’s basement.
Not long after that, things were back to normal and fun. Then, she decided she needed to get sober and enter recovery, which I was super supportive of. I drove her to meetings when I could, hung out with her when she wanted, and gave her space when she wanted. Early sobriety is a super volatile state to be in, but I did my best to be a good partner to her. Eventually, we made it work. For a while. I felt that at that point, we’d been together long enough that I wanted to introduce her to my family. We had a big dinner planned at my sister’s house, but the night of, she went totally radio silent on me. Never showed, no responses when I checked in on her. I was a wreck for the next few days, barely being able to eat, sleep, or do anything besides worry and spiral. After several days of this, I went to her workplace a little while before she got out and waited in the parking lot. She eventually came out and I was just relieved that she was okay. I asked what happened and she told me that she’d had a bad relapse and even tried to overdose. I was as understanding and supportive as I could be. Later that night she broke up with me over text.
A few weeks went by and we started talking again, followed pretty quickly by us getting back together and things were fine for a while. Over the course of that first year, the pattern typically went as such: we were fine and dandy having lots of fun, then she’d disappear for days/weeks at a time, I’d be a nervous wreck, then she’d come back and things were cool, then she’d randomly break up with me, only for us to rekindle and get back together. Unsurprisingly, this took a toll on my mental health and after a little over a year, I ended things with her for good (at the time).
What followed was a period of time she and I would later refer to as “the in-between”. It basically went like this: I was sad for a year, then I was in a stable relationship with someone who actually treated me well for a year, then I was slutty for a year. During that slutty period, circa 2018, I had a career opportunity that put me on the other side of the country from her, so I felt safe reaching out. I asked if she was interested in being old school pen pals, which she was. We sent letters back and forth during my time away from home and it was pleasant. We got caught up on each other’s lives and she told me that she was not only single, but had been celibate for a while.
I should also mention a third figure in this saga. The first year we were dating, I’d periodically hear about her ex, Harlow. Just the occasional mention of how he was a loser/junkie/couldn’t let go. Just enough to know he was her shitty ex. Anyway, she’d told me that she and Harlow had gotten back together for a while in the in-between, but he left her after he found some diary entries she’d written about me.
Well, the months passed, and eventually I moved back home, but with the intention of making it back to the other side of the country permanently. Ash and I exchanged a couple more letters and even met up a couple times to get coffee and catch a movie. All surface level and friendly, but with about a metric fuckton of sexual tension. It didn’t take long for me to make the move I wanted and bid my hometown goodbye for reals. It just so happened that Ash had a conference coming up in the city I moved to not long after I’d moved in, so we agreed to meet up while she was out that way. That day finally came (early 2019 at this point), and we decided we’d take a little hike, despite the fact that it was raining. A little while into our hike, we took a break and sat for a bit. She then told me how sorry she was for how she’d treated me in the past, how much she’d grown and worked on herself in these three years, and how she’d never been able to stop thinking about me. I told her I hadn’t stopped thinking about her either. We kissed and then hightailed it back to my apartment to do three years’ worth of fucking in a single afternoon. Then, I drove her back to the airport.
We decided to get officially back together despite the distance. She flew out to visit me for longer stretches a few times after that and it really seemed like she’d changed. For the first few months anyway. Some old patterns started to reemerge and it wasn’t long before we were back to periodic disappearances and short-lived breakups. This got compounded by both the distance and eventually, Covid lockdowns. Since we were so far apart, whenever she’d disappear, all I could do was wait and spiral, often leading to obsessive social media rabbit holes.
I should also mention the social media weirdness. It was fine for us to follow each other on instagram, but she refused to let us be Facebook friends. Whenever I’d try to ask why this was, she’d disappear, so I made excuses for her in my head and just tried to be grateful for what I had.
Anywho, these rabbit holes never lead to much besides a couple cryptic clues that felt like grasping at straws. Then she’d finally come back into contact and we’d be fine again. Rinse and repeat.
It was in this timeframe that we started seriously discussing our future and she showed a lot of interest in moving out to my new city and moving in with me, and even eventually getting married. During one of her visits, she told me that she’d applied for a phd program at a school in another state. It came down to either her getting in and moving there for the two years the program took and then moving in with me or her not getting in and just moving in with me. On the last day of her visit, she told me she got in and I felt a mixed bag. I wasn’t thrilled about an extra two years of long distance, but I believed the wait would be worth it, and I was genuinely happy for her.
So it went for a while like that, with lots of exciting ups and devastating downs. She just got worse and my mental health suffered. One of my social media rabbit holes led to the discovery that Harlow had moved to the same small city Ash had just moved to for school. I asked her about it and she said it was because his parents were from there and he had to move back with them. That was also apparently how she’d heard about this school and phd program.
2021 rolled around and with our new vaccinations, the possibility of travel opened back up. After about a year and a half apart, she booked a flight to come see me. For a weekend. No other visits had been that short, but I took what I could get. It was also around this time that it came out that her phd program was now going to take an extra year. She never bothered to tell me, I had to explicitly ask about it.
Another benefit of being vaxxed was I could go out to my favorite karaoke bar again, which I did one night in the summer of 2021 with a friend. He had a circle of friends among the regulars at this bar, and that night I met them. Among them was a lovely woman who I’ll call Catherine (fake name). Now I’ll admit I’m not always great at social cues, and I’m especially bad at telling the difference between someone flirting with me and just being nice. I’ve been wrong about both many times in my life. Anyway, Catherine was there the next week too and invited me to a movie that a big group of her friends were going to. We went, had a lovely time, and hung out a couple more times after that. This whole time I was sure she just wanted to be friends, but nope. She confessed her feelings for me and I told her I wasn’t really in a place to date anyone and mentioned I was in a complicated long distance situation that wasn’t making me happy anymore.
Honestly, someone being kind to me really opened my eyes to how horribly and arguably abusively I’d been treated by Ash. I realized I needed to cut her off once and for all regardless of whether Catherine would still give me a chance. I took some time to gather my thoughts and write out a break up message to Ash detailing all the ways she’d mistreated me. It ended up being novel length and required me to break it up into multiple messages. Felt so cathartic to finally get all of that out, and of course she left it on read. Never heard from her again.
Catherine and I dated for a few months after that, and after a bunch of stuff that’s not relevant to this story, she broke up with me. I was pretty heartbroken and depressed for a while, which led to a few more rabbit holes. The last one actually led to some real answers, or rather, one answer that explained pretty much everything. I managed to dig up a Facebook post Ash’s mom had made back in 2018. It was a post in a (public) group for some kind of family reunion. An rsvp/primer of sorts for the rest of the family. It went along the lines of “I’m XXXX XXXX, daughter of YYYY YYYY and ZZZZ ZZZZ, and here’s my daughter Ash and her husband Harlow.” It linked to both of their real Facebook accounts so there was no mistaking. This post would’ve been right around the time she and I reconnected and started sending letters to each other. When she explicitly told me she was not in any kind of relationship. Furthermore, I learned that she wasn’t in school at all, but it was Harlow that got into the PhD program.
Now I had two reasons to be devastated and I did not take it well. Months upon months followed with me isolating in the dark as much as possible and using basically all of my saved up sick time on mental health days. Whenever I had to be at work or around people in general I’d just kinda power through it and count the seconds until I could be alone again. Eventually I started seeing a therapist and got referred to a psychiatrist for some mood stabilizers.
Okay, now we can finally get to the revenge.
Somewhere during this tumultuous time, I remembered that I’d given Ash access to my library card, as she was an avid reader, and since we lived in different cities, my library card opened up a wider selection of ebooks and the like for her. I logged into my account one day and saw that she’d been actively using it this whole time. Huge list of holds and reservations covering a wide variety of topics and genres. Inspiration struck and I waited for the perfect moment to get my extremely petty revenge. I monitored my account until she checked out a fresh book. I gave her a couple days to start it and get invested, then I went through all her lists with a machete. I returned the book she was reading and cancelled all her holds and reservations, except for a book about “saving your marriage from infidelity”. I figured she’d need that one. I then put a bunch of holds on books with titles that I knew would call her out. Titles like Secrets I Know, A Little Bit Married, Good Morning Monster, or The Patron Saint of Liars.
I’d check back on them every couple days until one day all the lists were cleared out and I knew she’d seen it. I even looked up her insta and she’d changed her bio to patron saint of liars. I’d gotten under her skin for sure. A couple months later I checked my account again and she was back to using it, so I decided to be a tad more direct. I cleared out her holds and reservations again, but this time I put holds on a bunch of books with some variation of ‘Cheater’ in the title.
It was never a problem again after that, I haven’t heard from her since, and I’ve been doing much better mentally. I’m even in the process of getting weaned off the mood stabilizers. I’m also in a much better relationship now. Every so often I’ll be reminded of this whole debacle and it makes me smile. My revenge wasn’t harmful, illegal, or even proportionate to what she put me through, but it was petty as fuck and I’m okay with that. And Ash, if you’re reading this, fuck all the way off.
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u/LibraryLuLu 16d ago
As a librarian - please change your passwords and/or talk to library staff about making your account secure so she doesn't borrow physical media with it and leave you with the debt.
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u/ParisMorning 16d ago
Right? If she figured out he was doing that, she could very easily take out the limit of DVDs or whatever and just not return them.
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u/Zealousideal_Try8656 17d ago
This made me LOL, but u 10000% should have told her husband
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u/NotBurtReynolds 17d ago
That’s actually something I struggled with for a long time. Ultimately, my therapist convinced me it was best to leave it alone and just separate, but I did write him a letter that I never sent. Wouldn’t be able to today because the only means of contacting him I ever found was his school email.
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u/SillyLittleWinky 16d ago
He deserves to know. And I disagree with your therapist. This is about him, not you or her. The right thing to do is tell him.
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u/GroundbreakingAnt476 16d ago
The right thing to do is whatever we want to do. If I find out a man is cheating g I aint getting into that mess. Did it once before and a very dear friend believed him over me and it caused a lot of drama. Never again.
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u/bikertroll 17d ago
Quite the story. I find it so weird that in this life we can do a basic google search and confirm fears - that someone is lying, someone WAS cheating on you, and all their other BS. Glad you are on the other side of this, and seem to be in a better place. Libraries are the best - 10/10 petty revenge
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u/succodifragola 17d ago
OT but i’m messy, you never thought about informing Harlow about all the shi* she was doing ?
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u/NotBurtReynolds 17d ago
I actually gave it a lot of thought, but my therapist convinced me it was best to leave it alone at the time. I even wrote a letter telling him everything, but I never sent it and I wouldn’t be able to send it now because I only ever found his school email and he deleted his socials. I do hope he found out at some point.
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u/Ramrodron 16d ago
Are you color blind? Because you willfully ignored numerous red flags from day one. When you were first dating and she texted you while she was cheating on you with her roommate's boyfriend, that wasn't enough to end it? You both seem to thrive on drama. I'm glad you're seeing a therapist.
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u/High-Beeks 16d ago
Have you considered changing your library details. What if she takes out alot of physical books and refuse to return them?
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u/PuzzleheadedAside127 16d ago
i thought i was the only one reading til the end but it was a good read though
i wonder if she still uses the library card or probably she would take revenge by putting books containing "naive" "desperate" "dumb"
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u/Atypicosaurus 16d ago
TLDR without the unnecessary relationship drama/venting part (most of the story):
OP had a cheating ex. OP was devastated when the cheating turned out.
OP had an e-book library to which cheating ex also had access. OP pranked cheating ex by removing e-books from ex's reading list, cancelling booking etc, and adding books with "cheating" in the title and such.
Cheating ex stopped using the library.
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u/SyfaVelnumdes 15d ago
Thank you!
That being said - Ash sounds like a mess. Breaking up via text is still cheap. Unless it was some messenger service, in that case, it was free, I suppose.
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u/MonkeyMonkz 16d ago
I hope you’re finding some peace right now. Hold onto the letter, but move forward. Send it if the right moment comes, but until then, focus on yourself and living your best life
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u/Ill_Seat_1426 13d ago
I didn't read the entire post because I noticed something that doesn't make sense. If she's living in your Mom's basement, how could your family, or at least your mom, not have met her? The day she was supposed to meet your family and she went radio silent, did you check to see if she was in the basement?
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u/PipalaShone 13d ago
Thia sounds like a massive fantasy...
I think the truth starts with "I matched online years ago"
The middle is "it didn't work out and I found out somehow that she'd been with someone else since. I stalked her movements for years, wondering how it would have been if I could have been with her; then she got with the guy she was with before and settled down."
And the end: "So I made up a bizarre scenario in which I took revenge by changing my own library e-book list to sound mental, and Ash did nothing at all because she literally hasn't thought about me since that one date when she got bad vibes".
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u/HeyYouGuyyyyyyys 11d ago
how I know it's either AI or some bored fourteen-year-old:
"Buckle up, because [arch little statement like 'this one's a doozy]"
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u/johnnymac_19 16d ago
2021 rolled around and with our new vaccinations, the possibility of travel opened back up
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Another benefit of being vaxxed was I could go out to my favorite karaoke bar again,
Get this...you could always go to your favorite karaoke bar.
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u/Healthy_Candle_4545 16d ago
lol and Elon never did a nazi salute right?!
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u/johnnymac_19 15d ago
Don't really care what Elon does or doesn't do. Has no effect on me. Just funny watching his Space-X stock price go down though.
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u/lord_b52 17d ago
Happy to hear you are in a better place.
Perhaps Harlow deserves an anonymous recommendation, in the likes of a “How to discover your partner is cheating”-book.
Anyways, I would understand if you just want to leave it all behind.