Do You Get Excited???

I've been involved with several SOs that had sadistic tendencies, and really seemed to enjoy hurting people. It always seemed to me that they were reversing their role in prior relationships, to take back power and feel in control, doing to me what their ex had done to them.

This really enrages me, because it's hypocritical, makes no rational sense. How can you complain about how you've been treated and then turn around and do it to somebody else?

And while being mistreated or abused makes me want to see them suffer, I don't want to be the source; I want karma to kick their ass. Probably because I think what most of us want is for our abuser to understand they've done wrong and be genuinely sorry.

Inflicting revenge negates that possibility, because the abuser feels retroactively justified in whatever they've done: "You retaliated against me for hurting you, which means you deserved it in the first place," never, "Oh, I guess if I hadn't done those bad things to you, you wouldn't be responding in kind."

Also, I don't want to be anything like those people.

It's hard, though, not to feel some satisfaction if, say, your ex screwed you over and you find out their new partner is screwing THEM over.

Oh yes. I do relate to this.
Just because I need to feel that people do care/still care about me.

I don't particularly enjoy inflicting suffering on others, but when I feel that I've been wronged, I will seek revenge. I'm not good at proportional responses; if I feel I've been wronged, I'll go full force against whoever it is. Fortunately, I realize this and can go quite some time before I snap. When I do, though, I lose all sense of reality or consequence and focus solely on retaliation.

This is the one symptom/criterion I don't relate to whatsoever. I never think about revenge. If someone bothers me, I just start pretending that they don't exist. When I hurt others with my actions, my anger is at myself and I hate myself for being crazy and bothering people. I never want to physically hurt anyone, ever. Well, maybe that's a small fib, sometimes on the road I wish so bad that I could just ram into some a-hole who doesn't know how to drive as perfectly as I do.

Oddly, I do like physical pain. I find it arousing. I also find violence arousing--not myself committing it, or it being committed upon me, but someone doing it to someone else. For example I liked a guy and he was telling me about a fight he got into with his brother, and how angry he was and how he followed his brother into a house and beat down the bathroom door where his brother had gone. I wanted to be all over him (I couldn't because we were just friends).

Pretending someone doesn't exist when they've upset you could be a form of revenge. They hurt you, so now they don't exist to you. Being angry at yourself when you think you've hurt others could also be a form of revenge. You did wrong, so you must be punished.

Then again, I may be looking too much into the notion of revenge, just speculating really, not accusing you of anything.

Yes, good point. I don't do it with revenge in mind though. I ignore people to protect myself, so that they can't hurt me.

But now that I have thought about it some more, I do sometimes passive-aggressively manipulate others into feeling bad about something they did. Or I try to. I have a deep desire for someone to just care. That's where that comes from.

I do sometimes want to get back at someone. Like at my last job, there was this woman I could not stand. And though I never said anything to her or did anything to her, she picked up on my hatred of her and so when she would leave work she would make it a point to walk to everyone's desk and loudly say goodbye to them by name, skipping me of course. And I just wanted so bad to bring in a particularly smelly piece of dog poop and hide it in a far corner of her cubicle under her desk. What stops me from acting out on thoughts like that, though, is the knowledge that it will start a never-ending string of back-and-forth retaliation, and that's just not worth it to me.

I took a few days off the forum to take care some stuff and clear my head on a few things, the way I feel about this is one of those things...

I do love revenge and it takes me to place of instant pleasure. I was beginning to feel guilty about my love of the feeling and the impulsive craving I have to seek out ultimate pain and degridation of those offend and hurt me. That took me to a dark place within myself, the guilt...

It's still there, the guilt of loving this feeling; but I'm learning to accept that I do enjoy hurting people and it's somehow lightened the load (hard to explain, but it has) it's almost as if because I've accepted the fact I love it so much, I've removed some of the blame I place on myself for loving it- I can't help that I love it and that I enjoy it, but I don't need to hate myself because of those things; I need to beware of myself because I love those things (if that makes sense).

Basically- I am who I am and have become this way due to the traumas and sbuses in my life.
I don't have to like the way I am, but I do have to accept it on some level and begin there- acceptance.

As 'Valuria' would say, "Love myself, warts and all."
This is indeed a big ugly wart, and I don't have to love the actual wart itself, but I can still love and accept me even though I have this hidious monsterous growth on me.

there's a lot about myself I don't like, but accepting it and loving myself despite these things in the first step in my healling... and hopefully, once I love myself, I won;t love hurting other people anymore- hopefully...

Thank you everyone for your input and positions on this topic and situation. It's helped me in ways I can't even begin to describe
~Alice