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.
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?
Leave a Reply