Breakups of romantic relationships can be devastating, but there’s a special kind of sting when someone you considered a friend really betrays you.

When you find out they aren’t who you thought at all, well…it can really hurt your heart.

OP had a long-term girlfriend in high school who cheated on him with his best friend.

James and I had been friends since we were about ten or eleven and we got close, to the point that we felt more like bothers than best friends. He was really supportive of my relationship with Jane and would constantly talk about how glad he was that she made me happy.

Though when I look back on it now, he had a habit of constantly talking about how gorgeous she was, how s–y she was and how I was such a lucky guy.

I understand the last one but he was a bit excessive when he talked about how attractive Jane was but I was young and naive at the time and didn’t think anything of it.

That was, until I caught them.

I’m not much of a writer but essentially I noticed that they were both becoming pretty possessive over their phones, they’d randomly disappear claiming to be feeling ill or having to get some project done and, I know it sounds stupid, but I kept noticing that the condoms I was buying wee going missing, I always liked to make sue we had enough for precautions.

I wound up going to Jane’s house one day when she’d bailed on me claiming to have a migraine. I was partly worried for her health and brought some painkillers, food and some bottled water in case she genuinely did feel ill but I also had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that she was lying to me. I don’t know how to explain it, I just knew.

Sure enough, when I let myself in with the spare key she’d given me, I found her in bed with James. I was heartbroken. The two people who I cared about most in the world and who I thought cared about me went behind my back like this.

I was furious, we had a major argument, Jane begged me to listen to her whilst James yelled as me and I eventually just stormed out.

He also worked with this “best friend,” who ended up trying to blackmail OP about his questioning his s–uality.

I wanted to go and tell everyone what they’d done and shame them for it. But that’s where the problem arose.

Remember at the start where I mentioned that I was questioning my orientation?

James knew about it.

Of course he knew I’d never leave Jane to sleep with a bunch of guys but he was fully aware that I’d figured out that I was attracted to guys and girls.

More like just Jane in particular as I don’t really feel any attraction towards girls anymore.

And he used this against me. He knew full well how terrified I was that my parents would disown me and he made sure to remind me that if I didn’t keep my mouth shut then my parents would find out.

At the time this was absolutely terrifying though I now know that they accept me 100% and still love me.

So I kept my mouth shut.

I was stuck having to work with James at his father’s garage as I couldn’t come up with a way to explain how I was mad at him without letting everyone know what he did and risking getting outed to my parents.

Besides, I needed the money and there weren’t a whole lot of other jobs I could apply for.

Also I really should mention that James was going out of his way to harass me at work, calling me a bunch of slurs whenever he got the chance, pushing me around and just generally reminding me that he could tell my parents at any point.

OP made a gay friend (at the time) and they kept meticulous records.

I got really low at this point and the only time I actually felt sort of content to just let myself relax and be myself was when I’d go to the local gay bars.

There was one club in particular that I loved to go to, a drag club, where I met my boyfriend Alex. He was a drag queen there and helped out behind the bar and stuff when he was needed. To save any confusion I’m just gonna use he/him pronouns for him though they do switch when he’s in drag.

We flirted for a few weeks before gradually becoming friends with benefits. He is amazing and I know it sounds cheesy but I was the happiest I’d ever been when he agreed to be my boyfriend.

But that’s skipping a little bit ahead,this revenge happened before we started dating and we were still just friends who’d hook up every now and then.

After a few months I finally worked up the courage to open up to Alex about what happened with Jane and James and that’s when an evil look fell over his face.

See Alex is the sweetest guy you could ever meet but if you make him mad he can and will turn into an evil genius.

Around this time James had been bragging to me that the ladies loved him and he could get any girl he wanted, I really doubt that. He’d always been kinda like this but he upped the bragging in an attempt to annoy me.

He also told me how any girl that I dated would leave me in an instant to sleep with him. So, Alex suggested we put that to the test.

Cue the revenge.

We started off small. See James had given me his email address a few years prior and, just as I’d thought, he couldn’t be bothered to change it.

So I decided to be very generous and sign him up to a premium subscription to several gay websites and decided to be courteous and agree to receive emails about notifications, new offers and other things he may be interested in, just to be nice and make sure he had some variety.

Oh, did I mention that this was the email address he allowed his father to use? Oops.

It cost me a fair bit of money but I made sure that he got the best offers, Alex was more than happy to chip in to help me. It was worth it.

When we were working in the garage and his dad stormed in and asked to speak to him. Now his dad didn’t really give a crap about his kid being gay but he was mortified that his son would order this much “content” and put in their “shared” email address.

He genuinely thought for months that James was a *** addict, we may have signed him up for a bit more than we thought. I logged into the email after the first two weeks of him being signed up for the subscriptions and he had well over one hundred emails about his accounts.

This is when, like we’d hoped, James started getting more aggressive. He’d barge into me, screw up my work to get me in trouble and send me disgusting messages as well as threatening/insulting me in person.

I took note of everything. I kept a notepad to log the dates and times of the incidents and kept a detailed description of everything he did, every insult and every threat.

I’d screenshot all the messages from him and record every insult and threat that he’d hurl at me on my phone.

Alex helped me organise all of this onto files and then we saved it all onto a hard drive. This would be important for later.

They also set up the friend to look as if he was the one hitting on another man.

This is when we decided to move onto the next phase of out plan. The girlfriend. And no, not Jane. Also I should mention that he and Jane split up only a couple of weeks after I found out about the affair. They were never gonna last.

See Alex passes extremely well when he’s in women’s clothing, being ‘feminine’ already makes it a bit easier. His voice isn’t all that deep and he can sometimes be mistaken for a girl with a slightly deeper voice.

He usually exaggerates his makeup and clothing but for this phase of the plan we decided to get him to tone down the makeup slightly to make it appear more natural and a mutual friend of ours took him aside and gave Alex some of her clothes to wear.

We then created a fake Facebook account for my new “girlfriend” and Alex and I posted some cute couple photos on this account and my own personal Facebook account, posting all your usual lovey dovey stuff that you see on couples social media. then we put our plan into action.

Alex would come to pick me up from work a couple days a week. Dressed as an extremely beautiful girl, if I do say so myself.

We’d chat, hold hangs, hug and kiss and just generally act like a couple. James obviously noticed. He took the bait and began chatting to Alex when he was waiting for me to finish up and eventually wound up sending him (or our fake account) a friend request which Alex was all too happy to accept.

It took a few weeks but after a while of just talking about work, school, TV shows and music, James finally started to edge his and Alex’s conversations into more s–ual territory. Which was exactly what we were looking for, Alex answered accordingly.

He had tried to send Alex nudes hoping to get some in return but we deleted those straight away, we thought that would be a little too far, even for this douche bag.

This continued for a few weeks until we had everything in place. Alex made sure to screenshot the messages and then we went ahead and changed the name of the Facebook account to Alex’s name and deleted the couple pictures on it.

I sent the screenshots of the conversations with Alex to Jame’s friends. They were petty accepting and usually were the ones to call James out when he was being a jerk and they took great pleasure in mocking James for it.

The look on James’ face when his friends mentioned his “little boy toy” was absolutely priceless. I’m not sure he’ll ever live it down.

The people he picked on at school even snapped back at him that he’s the one who was s–ting another guy so where the heck did he get off calling them a “f—-t.” This made him mad to no end as he knew that they were right, even if he hadn’t known Alex was a boy at the time.

James also had the sort of expected reaction and started sending Alex a bunch of hateful messages and threats, only helping our case as we’d screenshot the messages and add it to the folders on the hard drive.

OP made sure their boss – the friend’s dad – knew about all of the blackmail and threats.

Once I had what we thought was enough evidence I decided to take it all to James’ dad (mine and James’ boss) and explained everything that was going on.

From the cheating with Jane to the blackmail and threats, he just sat there and listened, allowing me to show him the proof I’d gathered.

He did find the petty revenge with Alex in drag petty funny but the rest of the time his face was just kind of blank, with a hint of anger in his eyes.

He thanked me for the information and went off to speak with his son.

It didn’t go well for the friend.

James got fired on the spot. I agreed not to go to the police as this could end up with some pretty bad press for his dad’s company and his dad was a pretty cool guy.

I knew he was all talk so there was no real threat of danger. I received an amazing reference from James’ dad for a job I desperately wanted and eventually got, no doubt helped by said reference.

James’ parent flipped out with him. They refused to give him his job back and made him go out and actually put in the effort to get and keep a job. He had gotten used to being able to slack off as his dad owned the place and “technically couldn’t fire him”.

They also sold the car they’d been letting him use and told him to pay for a new one with his own money. It took him about two years to save up enough money to buy his new car.

It all eventually came out about James and Jane’s affair. As for the threats of outing me? Alex kindly reminded James that he had absolutely no proof of me doing anything whilst his friends all knew about the s—-l messages James had sent him, you know, another guy. It would look like he was just pointing fingers because of a little petty revenge.

James’ father had also assured me that my secret was safe with him. So the threats of blackmail were now nonexistent.

When the guy continued to be a prejudiced jerk at college, OP decided he wasn’t done.

James got into college on a scholarship and started hanging out with a bunch of other douche bags. I found out through a mutual friend that James was still a jerk at college and was terrorising a couple of LGBT students as well as making disgusting threats against a lesbian girl in his class.

None of them wanted to do anything about this however. Why? Because James had been lying to them and saying that his dad was one of the higher ups in the college or something, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention and I can’t remember exactly who he said his father was but it was enough to make these poor kids worry that they could be kicked out of college for speaking up about this.

I decided to lend a helping hand, with the help of our mutual friend, I emailed a bunch of the disgusting screenshots, recordings of a some of the threats and some of the horrible things he’d posted on his Facebook page, which he had deleted before the college could see them, to the higher ups in the college.

They were not happy with what they saw. They eventually revoked his scholarship after a few of the students, with some encouragement, spoke up about the harassment and threats.

I honestly have no clue why he turned out like this, his parents are absolutely lovely, open minded people. It’s crazy.

He truly wishes him well, though.

James’ parents kicked him out after that, he stayed with his friends for a few months before he managed to get an apartment.

Last I heard he was working in a fast food restaurant, working to get into another college.

I genuinely hope he bettered himself and that he can do well in his life, everyone’s capable of change, right?

Oh, and he had a little treat in store for the ex-girlfriend, too…

I’d also like to clarify that I didn’t care all that much about getting back at Jane because, yes she did have the affair, but I was getting some revenge on James for the blackmail and threats that came after it. Jane had showed me proof that she’d tried to prevent James from blackmailing me and told him to just let it go.

If they’d both just stopped speaking to me after the affair then this whole thing wouldn’t have happened. I’d have been hurt and maybe a little awkward at work but I wouldn’t have went out of my way to get back at him.

Though I did fill Jane’s mother in on what actually happened and sent her some screenshots where Jane admitted to the affair. This was after I found out that she had told her mother that I was the one who cheated with a bunch of guys and girls, instead of the “we just grew apart” version that we’d agreed to tell our parents.

From what I heard her mother was not all that pleased with her. I also sent a few of the texts where she admitted to having an affair to her new boyfriend, needless to say he wasn’t happy to find out that he “abusive ex” was actually just an ex who she’d cheated on.

They’re still together from what I heard so all I can say to that guy is, good luck my dude.

I eventually did end up coming out to my parents and they were surprisingly supportive which was amazing and Alex and I got together a year or two after these events and we’re still very much in love.

Does Reddit love this tale of revenge? Let’s find out!

The top comment is definitely a fan.

They’re going to stay on OP’s good side.

People are also loving how the friend’s parents took action.

Everyone is happy that OP is happy now.

This was quite the tale, honestly.

I quite enjoyed the cathartic revenge.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.