My Boyfriend Slept With Every Woman I Trusted—Until I Introduced Him to the One Friend Who Carried a Secret That Would Change His Life – Part 3

She was flirty but not too eager. interesting, but not too available. She mentioned she was only in town for a couple weeks for work and was looking to meet new people. Derrick ate it up. Within 3 days, they’d moved from Tinder to texting. Within a week, they’d planned a date. I felt sick the entire time. What we were doing was wrong.

I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop it. Or maybe I didn’t want to stop it. The night of their date, Tiffany texted me updates. They’d met at a wine bar. Dererick was exactly as charming as you described. They were having good conversation. He’d already lied about his job and his relationship history. At the end of the night, Dererick invited Tiffany back to his hotel.

She said, “Yes, I didn’t sleep that night. I kept my phone next to me, waiting for Tiffany’s message that it was done.” At 2:47 a.m., my phone buzzed. “It’s done.” I felt a rush of emotions I couldn’t untangle. Relief, satisfaction, guilt, horror, all of it mixed together into something I didn’t have a name for. Tiffany came over to my apartment the next morning. She looked tired but calm.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t regret it if that’s what you’re asking, but I also don’t feel as good about it as I thought I would.” “Revenge is weird like that. Tell me about it,” I said, “He’s exactly like you described,” Tiffany continued. “Super charming, great at making you feel special if I didn’t know his history.

I would have fallen for it completely.” “I can see why you stayed with him for so long. Did he? Was he safe?” I asked, even though I knew the answer, Tiffany shook her head. “I brought condoms, but he said he didn’t like using them. Said he was clean and assumed I was, too.” “Of course he did,” I muttered. “I’m going to get treated this week,” Tiffany said.

“And then I’m going to try to forget this ever happened. But Madison, I think you need to forget about Derek, too. This whole revenge thing, it’s not healthy. It’s not going to make you feel better.” I know, I said. And I did know, but knowing and feeling are different things. Tiffany left and I sat alone in my apartment wondering what I’d become.

I’d orchestrated giving my ex-boyfriend an STD. That was who I was now. That was what Dererick had turned me into. I didn’t tell anyone else about what we’d done. Not Jessica, not any of the other women Dererick had hurt. It was my secret, my shame, my revenge. Weeks went by.

I didn’t hear anything from Derek, which wasn’t surprising since we hadn’t spoken in over a year. But I checked his social media obsessively, looking for what? A post about going to the doctor? a cryptic message about karma. I didn’t know. Then about 3 weeks after the date, I got a message from Emma, the girl in Austin who Dererick had given chlamyia to.

OMG, Madison, you’re not going to believe this. Dererick just texted me asking if I knew any good doctors in Austin. When I asked why, he said he needed to get tested for something. I told him, “Good [ __ ] luck finding a doctor who will treat him without insurance because apparently his company dropped his coverage when they fired him. Karma is real.

” I stared at that message for a long time. He’d gotten tested, which meant he knew, which meant he was presumably getting treated, which meant the revenge had worked in a sense, but I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt hollow. The thing about revenge is that it doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t undo the pain or the time you lost or the person you became.

It just adds more mess to an already messy situation. Tiffany was right. Revenge is weird. It gives you a momentary sense of satisfaction followed by a lasting sense of emptiness. I realized I didn’t want to be the person who gave her ex an STD. I didn’t want to be defined by Derek anymore, not even as the person who’d gotten back at him.

I just wanted to move on. So, I deleted his contact info. I stopped checking his social media. I blocked him everywhere I hadn’t already. And I made peace with the fact that Dererick would probably always be Derek. A charming, manipulative person who hurt people and rarely faced real consequences except for the gorrhea. He faced that consequence. Life moved on.

I started dating someone new, a genuinely nice guy named Ryan, who worked as a veterinarian and treated me like a human being. Jessica and I were closer than ever. My career was going well. I was happy, or at least I was getting there. Then, six months after the Tiffany incident, I got a Facebook friend request from someone named Rachel Morrison.

I almost ignored it, but something made me click on her profile. She was older, maybe mid-50s, and her location was listed as Los Angeles. When I looked through her photos, I saw one that made my blood run cold. It was a family photo. Rachel, an older man who must be her husband, and a younger man I recognized immediately. Derek.

Rachel was Dererick’s mother. I accepted the friend request, my heart pounding. Why would Dererick’s mom be adding me? Did she know about everything? Was she going to yell at me, threaten me? A message from her popped up immediately. “Hi, Madison. I know this is probably strange, but I need to talk to you about my son.

Would you be willing to call me?” I called her. “I don’t know why, maybe curiosity. Maybe some lingering need for closure,” Rachel answered on the first ring. Her voice was kind, but tired. “Thank you for calling,” she said. “I know you and Dererick had a difficult relationship. I won’t pretend to know all the details, but I’ve gathered enough from what I’ve seen online and what Dererick’s told me to understand that he hurt you badly.” Mrs.

Morrison. If this is about the social media posts, I No, no, she interrupted. I’m not calling to defend Derek. I’m calling to apologize. That threw me. Apologize. Dererick is my son and I love him, but I’m not blind to who he is. I’ve watched him hurt people his entire life, women, friends, co-workers.

He’s charming and intelligent and completely self-centered. And a lot of that is my fault. I don’t understand, I said. Rachel sighed deeply. His father and I divorced when Dererick was seven. His father cheated on me repeatedly, flaunted it, and never faced any consequences. He’d charm his way out of every situation and I’d take him back every time until I finally couldn’t anymore.

Dererick learned from watching that he learned that charisma can get you out of anything, that people are disposable, that consequences are for other people. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve tried to talk to Dererick about his behavior over the years. Rachel continued, I’ve begged him to go to real therapy to understand why he does what he does, but he won’t.

He thinks he’s fine. He thinks everyone else is the problem, and I’ve enabled that by always being there to help him when his life falls apart. Why are you telling me this? I ask. Because I want you to know that what Dererick did to you wasn’t your fault. None of it was. And I want to thank you for finally making him face some consequences.

The social media posts, the job loss, all of it. It’s the first time in his life that his actions have really caught up with him. I don’t think any of it made a difference, I said. Honestly, he’s still out there doing the same things. I know, Rachel said sadly. But at least now there’s a record.

Other women can Google him and find out who he really is. That’s something. And maybe eventually he’ll look at himself and realize he needs to change. I doubt it, but I have to hope. We talked for about an hour. Rachel told me stories about Dererick’s childhood, about his father, about her own regrets as a parent.

It was sad and strange and oddly healing. By the end of the conversation, I felt like I understood Derrick better, even if that understanding didn’t excuse anything he’d done. “I hope you’re doing well, Madison,” Rachel said before we hung up. “You seem like a lovely person.” “Don’t let what my son did define you.” “Thank you, Mrs. Morrison. I’m trying not to.

” After that call, something shifted in me. I realized that Dererick was a product of his environment, his upbringing, his father’s behavior. That didn’t excuse his actions, but it contextualized them, and it helped me finally let go of the anger I’d been carrying. I never told Rachel about the gorrhea.

I figured that was a secret I’d take to my grave. Only Vanessa, Tiffany, and I knew, and we’d all agreed never to speak of it again. Life continued. Ryan, and I got serious. We moved in together. I got another promotion. Jessica got engaged to the guy I’d met her with at the grocery store. Everything was falling into place.

Then, almost 2 years after the Tiffany incident, I got one final message about Derek. It was from a woman named Lindsay. She’d seen the website Christina had made and wanted to thank me for creating it even though I hadn’t. Christina deserved all the credit for that because of your website. I was able to avoid Derek completely, Lindsay wrote.

He tried to match with me on Bumble, but I Googled him first. When I saw everything, I not only didn’t match with him. I screenshot his profile and shared it in a local women’s group to warn others. Several women said they had also encountered him and had similar experiences. We’ve basically blacklisted him from the dating scene here in Denver.

Just wanted you to know that your bravery and speaking out probably saved a lot of women from getting hurt. I read that message three times and for the first time in years, I felt like maybe, just maybe, all the drama and revenge and mess had been worth something. Not because Dererick had been punished, but because other women had been protected, because speaking out had created a ripple effect that went beyond my own pain.

I never heard from or about Derek again after that. I have no idea where he is now or what he’s doing. Maybe he moved to another country and started over. Maybe he finally went to therapy and worked on himself. Maybe he found someone who could tolerate his behavior. I don’t know, and I don’t care. What I do know is this. I wasted two years of my life on Derek.

And I spent another year consumed by revenge. Three years total that I’ll never get back. But those three years also taught me about myself, my strength, my weaknesses, my capacity for both forgiveness and pettiness. They taught me what I will and won’t tolerate in relationships. They taught me that revenge might feel good in the moment, but rarely provides lasting satisfaction.

And they taught me that the best revenge isn’t giving your ex an STD or ruining his career. The best revenge is living well, moving on, and becoming someone who would never tolerate that kind of treatment again. Though I have to admit, the gonorrhea thing was pretty satisfying, too. Ryan proposed last month. We’re getting married in the fall.

Jessica is my maid of honor. Vanessa is a bridesmaid. Even Christina is flying out from LA to attend. We’ve all become this weird little support group of women who’ve dealt with toxic men and live to tell the tale. Sometimes when we’re all together, someone will make a joke about Derek. We’ll laugh about his ridiculous lies or his terrible tattoo or the time he tried to claim he’d invented some tech thing that already existed.

The jokes have lost their edge now. They’re just funny stories about a guy who turned out to be a disaster. And sometimes late at night when I can’t sleep, I wonder if Dererick ever thinks about me, if he ever regrets what he did, if he ever got that gonarrhea treated, or if he’s still out there spreading it around like he spread his lies.

But mostly, I just don’t think about Dererick at all anymore. And that more than any revenge I could have planned is the real victory. Though, if I’m being completely honest, I still check the website Christina made about once a year just to see if there are any new comments. The most recent one from 3 months ago was from a woman in Miami who wrote, “Derek Morrison tried to match with me on Hinge.

Thanks to this site, I dodged a bullet. Keep fighting the good fight, ladies.