Leandro and Katie: Revenge – a dish best served cold?

23 November 2012

Leandro and Katie

They say revenge is a dish best served cold – in other words, planning some form of retribution when you’ve had a while to emotionally detach yourself, rather than acting on impulse through hurt and anger. Which is exactly what Leandro Penna did this week to Katie Price. Having split up with the glamour model/business woman over a month ago, he has waited all those weeks to launch a stinging attack on her in a woman’s weekly. Having accused her of being jealous of her pal Danielle O’Hara’s WAG lifestyle, obsessed by her own image and describing her as shallow and talentless, he has managed to hit her just where it’s likely to hurt the most…

Many of us have experienced something similar ourselves. We split up with a partner, on what felt like an amicable and civilised basis, only to find that just a few weeks later, he has started to bad mouth us to our friends. Or indeed, once the shock of someone dumping us has worn off, we feel the need to get some of justice or satisfaction for the unfairness of it all and may have embellished stories about our ex, just to make us feel better for being wronged.

In psychological terms this type of revenge is known as the ‘psychology of retribution’ while our own feelings about it are known as the ‘revenge paradox’, as instead of making us feel better, it can often make us feel worse about ourselves.

Studies have shown that while people who exact revenge might feel worse after they have done it, they actually felt better just having the opportunity to do it. Which implies that plotting the revenge can be a good feeling in itself, but actually doing it is often a mistake!

Wreaking revenge on an ex – whether that’s a short-term reaction or a longer-term plan – makes us feel that the situation is important and proves to ourselves that it was not a trivial, passing fancy. But the actual act of revenge itself, while exorcising those feelings, doesn’t always provide the closure that we need. In fact, it often fuels the fire, keeping that anger and resentment burning for far longer than it needs to.

So why do we do it? It’s a question of fairness. Society tells us that sacrificing our own well-being to punish those that have misbehaved, means that we ought to feel better after we have done it. Revenge is there, available and tempting to apply – whether you’re doing it on impulse or after a considered and planned amount of time. But given that the chances are it will make you more unhappy and is more damaging to your sense of self-esteem in the long run, my advice is to think about it, draft it up, then delete, take a deep breath and move on…