Have you ever been backstabbed by someone you loved?

Going Nuclear

First, I went after her darkest secret: the fact that Sophie had been involved with a married man for years. She had always sworn me to secrecy about it and I’d kept my word.

I never thought it was okay and would always tell her to find her own man, but that was always a sensitive subject whenever we spoke, so I respected her wishes.

That is, until she came to me asking for relationship advice one night. She said her and the guy had a date planned and the wife thought he was on a business trip. When the time was getting close to the date they planned at the restaurant he stopped responding to her.

She asked me what she should do.

I told her to dump him because there were plenty of men without wives or kids that she could date.

But she didn’t want to hear that. She had his location through an app and saw that he was out of town at the moment even though it was only an hour before their reservation.

She showed me the text messages between them and he said he was so excited to see her again. He also talked about how much he missed her.

She was completely ready in a beautiful gown and her hair was curled and Sophie rarely ever touched her hair.

Sophie also never was much of a makeup person until Drew, her affair partner, expressed how much he loved women who wore a certain type of makeup. Lo and behold, Sophie was wearing makeup that night.

She ended up calling him and he claimed that he would have to rain check for the evening because he had a flat tire.

I told her it was a sign just to leave the guy alone.

But Sophie was adamant. She checked his location and said she was going to drive to him. His location was an hour and 45 minutes away and he said he was at a nightclub. She asked me to come with her and I told her I didn’t want to involve myself in that.

She said that a true best friend would go with her to make sure she was safe.

I reluctantly agreed. Two hours later we pulled up to the nightclub and we saw Drew’s car. There was a long line to get into the club and we knew we’d be standing there all night to see Drew. Sophie flirted with the security guard and he let us cut the line.

She pushed through the crowd until she found Drew. When she found him he was in a section with multiple women and a few other guys.

She watched in horror as one of the women proceeded to kiss him and sit in his lap. She ran up to him and asked how he could do this to her after everything they’d been through.

Drew and Sophie had been seeing each other for about two years now and he even hinted over text messages that he would leave his wife for her as soon as he was financially stable enough to afford their mortgage by himself and she fell for it time and time again.

Drew looked shocked when he saw Sophie standing in front of him and tried to explain. Sophie told me to wait for her in the car.

That’s exactly what I did. When she came out she told me it was a misunderstanding and said that they were on good terms again. I never questioned her about that relationship or cared much about it after that night until now.

I went through old text messages, photos, and anything that could prove the affair. I don’t know why I never exposed her previously but I wish I had. Once I had enough, I anonymously sent it all to the man’s wife. The explosion that followed was bigger than I expected.

The wife didn’t just confront her husband; she made it public. She posted everything online and dragged Sophie name through the mud. Our entire friend group saw it.

People who had once admired Sophie turned their backs on her. She was humiliated, and for the first time in weeks, I felt something close to satisfaction.

But I wasn’t done. Next, I set my sights on her career. Sophie worked at a marketing firm, you know, the same one I had. Reputation was everything in her line of work, and I knew exactly how to tarnish it. I created a fake social media account in her name.

I bought followers to make her look legit. I then posted some of the pictures she had on her profile to the fake account and bought likes to look further less suspicious.

After having the account for a week, I started posting offensive and controversial comments all over social media. Nothing too extreme at first, just enough to raise eyebrows.

Then I ramped it up. The posts started attracting attention and soon people were reporting the account.

At the same time, I sent an anonymous letter to her HR department pretending to be a concerned coworker. I screenshotted the posts and claimed she had been making inappropriate comments in the office too.

The firm acted quickly. Sophie was called in and by the end of the week she was fired. I don’t know what exactly went down but I know for a fact that the rumors about her affair hadn’t helped either.

Her professional life was in tatters, and once again I felt that dark satisfaction. Watching her life go to shambles was exactly what I needed.

I didn’t have my job or my boyfriend or my friends anymore, and she no longer had her job or married boy toy. I leveled the playing field, but still wanted to make sure she knew she had messed with the wrong one.

Her love life was next on my list. On top of her boy toy, Drew, Sophie had been dating a guy named Ryan for a while. He was a placeholder until Drew would pop the question and finally leave his wife.

He seemed nice, but I knew that like most people he had insecurities. He was originally a friend of both of ours so I knew getting to him would be quite simple.

The thing is, Ryan was never online. He didn’t even have a social media account and he distanced himself from everyone of Sophie’s friends simply because he was so introverted. He didn’t even know about Sophie’s affair being exposed publicly so I was going to make sure he did.

Getting to him was hard so what I did was find his email, his only form of social media, if you can even call it that. That’s how I began planting seeds of doubt. I sent him anonymous emails and hinted that Sophie wasn’t who he thought she was. I even showed evidence of her cheating.

The text messages between her and Drew went straight to his email and I even made a little bit of evidence of her talking to other guys. Little by little, I chipped away at his trust in her. After weeks of this kind of stuff, Ryan finally broke up with her.

She was devastated. I remember seeing a post she made on Instagram, something vague about heartbreak and betrayal. It almost made me feel bad. She did like Ryan, but I always knew that she would have instantly dropped him if Drew ever gave her a chance, and that’s what made me feel better.

Any normal person would have been done by now, but not me. Finally, I went for the knockout punch: her home. Sophie lived in a nice apartment downtown, but I knew she was barely scraping by.

Whenever I would ask her to go out for brunch or if she wanted to do anything that involved money, I would have to pay her way. She told me she was barely making it with the cost of living downtown.

Her rent was eating most of her check, but she wanted to look good for her co-workers because most of them also lived in the neighborhood.

That was another reason she wanted the promotion. She said a few extra thousand a year would give her room to breathe while doing something she loved. She told me that she’d been laid on rent a couple of times.

I used that information to tip off her landlord. I sent him an email acting as a credit card company to let him know that her credit usage was high to make him think she wouldn’t be able to pay rent again this month.

I also spread rumors around her apartment complex about her affair and how she was mentally unstable. The neighbors started complaining and said they feared what she would do since she was mentally unstable, and the landlord, wanting to avoid any trouble, evicted her.

With no job, no boyfriend, and now no home, Sophie was left with nothing. She moved from couch to couch, crashing at friends’ places until even they started to distance themselves. I had taken everything from her, the same way she had taken everything from me.