When Healing Isn't Enough
One woman's plan to immortalize how evil her ex was to her in a magnum opus that will outlive everyone involved
Content warning: This essay contains mentions of abuse, sexual assault, domestic violence and the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard trial.
I often tell my therapist that I want revenge. I soften this confession by acknowledging how toxic and immature that sounds. My therapist primarily works with survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. I know I don’t have to justify even my nastiest feelings to her, that she’s heard it all before. But it’s been deemed so uncouth for women to be angry at what they’ve been through that even in a private therapy session I find myself apologizing for my hard feelings. I’m supposed to be focusing on my personal growth, not plotting and scheming to ensure my ex gets what he deserves, but the TikToks hit a little too close to home — healing simply doesn’t feel like enough.
“Healing isn’t enough, I need him to know my friends congratulated me when we broke up.” “Therapy isn’t enough, I need to physically fight him.” “Healing isn’t enough, I need him to know he never made me finish.” Chrissy Chlapecka’s “He is not the love of your life! He is literally just a guy! Hit him with your car!” audio has been used in over 100k videos.
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Many of my friends, specifically those who date men, have similarly confided in me the horrible things they wish upon their ex-boyfriends. A mature adult is supposed to advise someone to get a hobby instead of obsessing over their ex’s downfall, but I always assure my friends that their feelings are not uncommon. After a breakup, you’re allowed to be sad for a prescribed period of time before you’re expected to move on. Any emotional response that strays from this norm, especially anger in anyone who isn’t a man, is quickly shunned. But we don’t get to choose our feelings and I never wanted to know it was possible to feel this much rage. What could be so controversial about that?
As a disclaimer, I am writing this as someone who was in an emotionally abusive relationship with a cisgender, heterosexual man, and it’s important to maintain a distinction between how we respond to abuse and how we respond to other interpersonal issues that stem from patriarchal oppression. However, having witnessed how much emotional devastation can be brought on by relationships with men, abusive or not, I question who it really benefits when there are such strict delineations between abusive, toxic and unhealthy but still generally acceptable behavior and how we’re allowed to react to it all.
It’s important to note that these behaviors aren’t exclusive to any gender (discussions of patriarchy online often become tinged with bioessentialist misandry and I strive to steer clear of this), but those of us who date men are consistently subjected to behavior that might not be considered abusive but is nevertheless harmful and traumatizing. “the pain gap” by Rayne Fisher-Quann is an incredible essay on this, one that inspired me to start writing essays of my own. Fisher-Quann notes that “the letter of the law exists not to enforce what is moral or good — rather, it exists to provide men with a line to toe.” I struggled a lot with identifying my relationship as an abusive one because of these lines, because of my lack of education about where they were and because although I was exhibiting clear signs of having been deeply violated, I’d never been assured that my feelings were enough evidence that a line had been crossed.
In my pursuit of retribution, I’ve never felt the need to punch my ex in the face or show off how happy and successful I am now that I’m free of him. Frankly, the relationship drove me completely out of my mind, and I didn’t see the point in pretending I was doing well when I was actually more traumatized than ever. I didn’t want to glow up, get a rebound relationship, post the breakup carousel of endless Instagram stories of me having the time of my life. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs about what happened, and it’s been a great strain on me to refrain from doing so.
It’s not as though publicly speaking ill of an ex is some unbecoming fad brought on by the advent of social media. The internet may have made it that much easier to overshare our most unhinged and unfiltered thoughts, but artists, intellectuals and everyday people have been using their creative work and other public channels to covertly gossip about their enemies for as long as humans have been telling stories.
Nora Ephron’s autobiographical novel Heartburn was published in 1983 and has seen renewed popularity following Isabel Kaplan’s ode to Ephron in The Guardian last December and the novel’s 40th-anniversary reissue earlier this spring. The novel and subsequent film adaptation are based on Ephron’s real-life divorce from journalist Carl Bernstein following his affair, discovered by Ephron when she was seven months pregnant with their second child. Women today still find Ephron’s story relatable, but more importantly, we find her courage to very publicly and immortally expose her cheating ex-husband inspiring.
Unsurprisingly, Ephron was mercilessly criticized when the book and film were released, even though many scandalous romans à clef written by men had long been celebrated as literary masterpieces. Ephron was publicly accused (by a pseudonymous columnist) of child abuse, claiming Bernstein’s infidelity was “banal” in comparison to Ephron publicly humiliating the father of her children. Bernstein even threatened to sue Ephron but never did. Perhaps the novel was too cogent for Bernstein to ever build a successful defamation case.
Some make the appeal that if we condone too much self-pitying melodrama over bad relationships, it will cheapen the reports of those who have experienced serious abuse, an argument I find ridiculous for its implication that abuse allegations are generally taken seriously in the first place. Victims of sexual assault and domestic violence are constantly accused of falsifying reports, and it’s actually misogynistic to claim it’s because women are always getting hysterical over the slightest wrongdoings of a man. It’s a dog-whistle intended to silence women who are trying to hold men accountable for their actions, a practice which would only help victims of abuse speak out about their experiences.
Throughout the horrific Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial, this was a common justification of Heard’s online assassination. For anyone still unsure about the Heard-Depp case, I recommend “The Bleak Spectacle of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp Trial” by Michael Hobbes and “who’s afraid of amber heard?” by Rayne Fisher-Quann, as well as the Binchtopia podcast episode “Trial by TikTok”. The narrative that we believe victims, but Amber Heard isn’t one, and her lying about her abuse makes real victims look bad allowed many women to partake in the brutal public humiliation of a victim of sexual and domestic violence while maintaining a facade of human decency toward women they might deem respectable enough to deserve sympathy.
It’s often women who police the hardest for the patriarchy, even women who have suffered patriarchal violence themselves. I believe many such women actually have good intentions, but don’t realize what they’re asking of other women when they invite us to step down from our desire to avenge ourselves. I’ve often asked myself if those who tout an all-encompassing grace for even the most heinous men are in on some spiritual secret I’m not enlightened enough to understand. It’s exhausting to carry so much rage and grief; forgiveness is a tempting panacea. Unfortunately, it’s one every cell in my body rejects.
Healing doesn’t feel like enough because it isn’t actually healing as long as I abandon the emotions I’m told I shouldn’t pursue. Anger is our protector — my anger only exists because of the love and respect I have for myself. This isn’t petty vengeance, it’s a journey to feeling human again after a dehumanizing experience. I hope someday soon my friends will be able to say of me what Mike Nichols said of Nora Ephron: “She’d won, and every betrayed woman in the world knew it.”