Who Are You Really Attacking?

Revenge can be subtle and quiet in its attack. In fact, those who profess to love one another are often the most vindictive in employing the tactics of revenge.

You will judge me as an attacker and set a retributive cost for my psychological attack and I will always evaluate the cost as not equal to my actions and magnify my reciprocating attack based on that perceived inequality. Thus, the circle of reactivity is maintained.

Justification is always forthcoming and easily invented. Your ego is righteous in its need to attack, as I am in attacking you, and soon the foundation of our relationship becomes righteous justification for attack.


Oh sure, we have moments free of attack. But they are always stifled by our defensive preparations and anticipation of the words that commence the battle. We know the words that commence hostilities as we’ve said them time and time again, always accurately predicting the results.

The expressions of battle always begin with one chief word, more powerful than all others… ”you.”

Yet, when you say these words, is it the real “me” you see or merely your own conceptual rendition?
Revenge must make an object of your opponent and this is a basic premise of war. To attack the enemy without guilt, the enemy must remain faceless and can have no feelings for which to confuse your egoic goal of attack.

In the moment of justified anger, I must become an object for you. No longer loved, but as an enemy I am eligible for destruction. What you seek to destroy is my psychological self, but only so that you may experience increased control. If I can be controlled, you have won.

For some this becomes a daily occurrence. When your most significant relationships are stifled by attack-defend-attack scenarios, is it any wonder that your engagement with the world loses its luster and joy becomes desensitized numbness?

The external world is an interior experience that you create within yourself through your relationships with others. If your most significant relationships are oppressed by revenge, and attack-defend-attack scenarios, is it any wonder why the world seems so gray?

Contrary to pop psychology, happiness is not a solitary pursuit.

The solution is in your mind. Do not expect it from the other, until you identify your own mental concepts of who the ‘other’ really is in the moment of anger.