- “It’s you—I can’t do this anymore.” The sentence dropped at 2:47 a.m. Yoon-su left the chat with that single line, and I sank to the floor. An hour later, an Instagram story flashed a heart-shaped sparkle: a diamond ring on a hand that was unmistakably not mine—on skin far too bright. The caption was serene: “He promised me forever. Proposal accepted!” Only then did I finally understand what I had been: the dress rehearsal. A prop discarded before the real stage was set.
That Night, Why I Couldn’t Put Down the Glass
“They’ll end up just like me—stripped bare, drenched in tears and snot.”
Yet why did that thought taste sweet? Why did I crave her ruin? I wanted her future to replay my past—no, to crash even more catastrophically. It wasn’t simple vengeance. It was deranged arithmetic: only if someone else endured the exact magnitude of my humiliation could my wound be declared legitimate.
I stared at her profile until dawn. Her smile was the kind I’d never once received—gleaming teeth, crescent eyes, shameless happiness. I wanted to tear it apart. I needed every tiny crease at the corners of her eyes to crumple. Only then, I believed, could I breathe again.
Two Rumors Told Like True Stories
First Story — Ji-sung & Soo-jin, both 29
Ji-sung spent four years with Soo-jin. From college club seniors to lovers, he’d even joined her parents’ Sunday lunches. Last December, he suddenly cited a “company transfer” and ended it. Soo-jin knew the transfer was a lie; the real reason was Hye-ji, a 26-year-old from the company soccer club.
Ten days after the breakup, a post appeared on Hye-ji’s married-women’s club forum: “He proposed on the field today! Exactly three weeks after our first kiss ♥” Soo-jin watched the video members uploaded: Ji-sung in cleats, holding a MARRY ME? banner at midfield, shouting lines he’d never shown her—“Hye-ji, I’ll run every soccer field of my life with you!”
Soo-jin replayed the clip 47 times, then deleted it. From that day she followed Hye-ji’s every post; Ji-sung always looked ecstatic. Eyes stinging, Soo-jin waited for Hye-ji to make a mistake. “She’ll be ripped open too. Time guarantees it.” That single belief kept her awake night after night.
Second Story — Min-ah & Jun-hyeok, both 32
In March, Jun-hyeok introduced Min-ah to her: “Min-ah, I’m dating someone. You’d say she’ll last six months.” Min-ah understood. For six years Jun-hyeok had called her “just a friend,” and Min-ah had accepted it.
Yet one month after meeting her, he proposed—drones lowering a ring above the Han River bridge, textbook cringe. Min-ah received the video via Kakao—not from Jun-hyeok but from a mutual friend. She drained four bottles alone in a bar that night.
Next morning she texted him:
“When you kissed her on that bridge, were your lips hotter than the ones you pressed to my forehead six years ago?”
No reply. Two days later Min-ah slid into her Instagram DMs: “Jun-hyeok once attempted suicide. Pills, ER, the works. Did you know?”
A lie. Still, Min-ah hit send like casting a curse. That night she spotted a highlight on Jun-hyeok’s feed titled Our 100 Days. She hovered over it for seventeen minutes, then hurled her phone under the bed.
Why Do We Long to Shatter Their Happiness?
Psychologists call it “comparative obsession.” When a partner’s new joy erases our past, we fight to resurrect that past—under the delusion that only by reviving our wounds can our existence be validated. Studies show the obsession actually stimulates the brain’s reward circuits: imagining an ex’s misfortune can temporarily restore self-esteem by 12%. A small figure, yet in moments of despair that 12% is as sweet as any drug.
The deeper craving is evidence that “I was special.” But when he proposes faster, more extravagantly, to someone else, it proves the opposite—that I was never special at all. So we dissect the new relationship, a last convulsion of relational power, a selfish hope that my influence lingers even after I’m gone.
Do You Still Check Their Happiness at 3 a.m.?
Why are we the lone stragglers at the after-party of a finished relationship? When will the mantra “They can’t be that happy” grow tiresome? Perhaps what we truly want isn’t their unhappiness but a future in which we are never discarded again. Maybe we yearn to be the last for the next person, to offer the certainty we once begged for.
Right now, you may be zooming in on their first-anniversary photo. If so, let me ask one thing:
“Do you want their misery—or the version of yourself who will never suffer this humiliation again?”