The best revenge is not to become them

‘The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.’

(Marcus Aurelius, Meditations)

For a long time, I misunderstood revenge.

I imagined it as a reckoning. The moment when the person who hurt you is finally exposed. When others see what you’ve seen all along. When justice arrives and everyone recognises who was really at fault.

Then I spent years dealing with someone who taught me a very different lesson.

Not because they changed.

Because I nearly did.

The person I couldn’t reach

As a communication coach, I spend much of my professional life helping people navigate difficult conversations and challenging relationships.

So when I found myself having to regularly work alongside someone who was consistently hostile, dismissive and undermining, I approached it as I would any communication challenge:

I listened.

I adapted my style.

I sought common ground.

I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

I looked for ways to build trust.

Frankly, I tried every technique I knew to influence.

None of them worked.

The problem wasn’t a lack of communication skills. The problem was that no amount of communication can help when only one party wants a civil, functional relationship.

This person had a ‘gift’ for making others feel small.

She stonewalled people; for years in several cases. She sent vindictive emails carefully crafted to wound, while preserving plausible deniability. She reported others to the police. She sent litigious threats. In one of her most deplorable descents, she claimed to be terminally ill, weaponising sympathy to wrest an apology that no circumstance justified.

There was a snobbery about her that seemed less about confidence, and everything about establishing superiority.

She elevated herself by diminishing others.

What made the situation so pernicious was that she knew exactly what she was doing. She was intelligent and cunning.

The hostility was rarely overt enough to challenge directly. It lived in omissions, implications, filthy looks, dismissive gestures, strategic silences and subtle exclusions. The sort of behaviour that leaves you questioning your own perceptions while steadily draining your spirit.

Many people before me had struggled with her.

Many, sad to say, have struggled since.

The only people spared were those willing to make themselves supplicants to her opinions.

I wasn’t one of them.

Communication has limits

One of the most uncomfortable lessons I learned was this: not every relationship can be improved through better communication.

Those of us who work in communication often carry a quiet belief that every conflict can be resolved if we find the right words, ask the right questions, or demonstrate enough empathy.

Most of the time - even 95% of the time - that’s true.

But not always, sadly.

There are a minority of people who are not seeking understanding.

They are seeking control. Status. Opponents.

When that is the case, communication stops being a bridge and becomes a treadmill. In my example, I kept investing effort, convinced that progress was around the corner, while remaining exactly where I started. I was Sisyphus, forever pushing a boulder uphill only to watch it roll back down.

Eventually, I realised I wasn’t dealing with a communication problem.

I was dealing with a character problem.

And it wasn’t mine to solve.

The day I became the problem

There is one meeting I still think about.

Years of accumulated frustration culminated in my losing my cool.

Not dramatically. Not spectacularly. But just enough for others to notice.

The truth is that what pushed me over the edge wasn’t even what she did to me.

By that point, I had grown accustomed to the stonewalling, the nasty emails, the aggression, the subtle attempts to undermine and belittle.

What I struggled to tolerate was the impact her unkindness had on other people.

Over the years, I had watched innocent people leave conversations deflated. I had seen confidence quietly chipped away. I had watched capable, decent people become tentative in her presence.

One incident sent me over the edge; she mocked a disabled colleague.

Not openly enough to trigger outrage. Not crudely enough to attract formal consequences. But in the calculated, deniable way that experienced bullies like her often operate.

The kind of behaviour that leaves everyone uncomfortable but unsure whether they should challenge it.

The kind of behaviour that leaves the target carrying the hurt while everyone else carries the awkwardness.

I remember feeling so angry, not only because it was exceptionally cruel, but because it revealed such a striking absence of empathy.

And perhaps that was the real source of my frustration all along.

I could cope with someone disliking me. It was uncomfortable to be sure, but I got used to it.

What I found increasingly difficult to cope with was watching her, repeatedly, diminish other people - and thoroughly enjoying doing so.

Then one day, in this meeting, after years of accumulated irritation and disappointment, my frustration surfaced. I wanted a public apology from her.

My voice rose and my composure slipped.

She, meanwhile, remained perfectly calm.

Afterwards, I felt I needed to apologise to the group for raising my voice.

As I did, I remember catching a smirk. She was amused.

At the time, it felt unbearably unjust.

For years, I had experienced the stonewalling, the undermining, the calculated unpleasantness and the casual cruelty.

Yet in that moment, I was the person who appeared unprofessional. I was the one apologising.

She was the one looking composed.

For a while, I obsessed about that meeting.

I replayed it. I wished I had handled it differently. I wished others had understood fully what had led to it. I wanted people to see what I had been seeing for years.

But with distance, I can see something now that I couldn’t see then. The real danger wasn’t that I raised my voice.

The real danger was that I was becoming someone I didn’t recognise.

The hidden cost of toxic people

We often talk about the damage difficult people do to our confidence, our wellbeing or our productivity.

But there is another cost that receives less attention.

They can change our character

Not overnight, usually. But gradually.

We become more suspicious because they’re untrustworthy. More cynical because they’re cynical. More combative because we’re constantly preparing for battle.

We spend hours replaying conversations. We mentally rehearse arguments. We begin measuring our success by their failures.

Without realising it, the person hurting us becomes the person shaping us.

That is a far greater victory for them than any argument they could ever win.

Looking back, I can also see that part of my anger came from a misplaced sense of responsibility.

I believed that if I could only find the right words, challenge the right behaviour, or make the right argument, I could somehow protect other people from its effects.

But some battles cannot be won.

Sometimes, all we can do is support those affected, maintain our own standards, and refuse to participate in the culture a bully is trying to create.

What distance has revealed

The passing of time has given me something I didn’t have while I was living through those years: the wisdom of perspective.

What I once interpreted as confidence now looks more like insecurity. Her superiority now looks more like unhappiness.

I don’t say that to be patronising or dismissive.

I say it because genuinely content people don’t need to diminish others to feel significant.

People at peace with themselves don’t spend years creating misery for those around them.

The need to constantly establish status, to undermine, to control, to exclude and belittle often reveals a profound dissatisfaction that no professional title, social standing or intellectual ability can resolve.

For years, I wanted vindication.

Now, mostly, I feel something closer to pity. Not because her behaviour was in any way acceptable.

Because living inside that toxic mindset must be exhausting.

Marcus Aurelius was right

Marcus Aurelius understood something that is as relevant in modern workplaces as it was in Ancient Rome.

The greatest challenge posed by difficult people is not what they do to us.

It is what they tempt us to become.

When he wrote, ‘The best revenge is not to be like your enemy,’ he wasn’t offering a handy slogan.

He was offering a discipline. A daily decision.

To remain honest, when dishonesty would be easier. To remain decent, when pettiness feels justified. To maintain your standards, when someone else abandons theirs.

To refuse to let another person’s character determine your own.

This is not passivity.

It does not mean tolerating bad behaviour. It does not mean avoiding consequences, accountability or boundaries.

Sometimes the healthiest response is to calmly confront, report or leave.

But whatever action you take, the challenge remains the same:

Don’t become what you’re fighting.

The only victory that matters

I never got the moment of vindication I once imagined. There was no grand reckoning. No dramatic exposure.

What I got instead was something less satisfying, but much more valuable.

The realisation that the most important relationship was never the one between her and me.

It was the one between me and myself.

The greatest victory was not changing her.

It was recovering the parts of myself that years of frustration had begun to erode.

I think Marcus Aurelius was right, all those years ago, when he wrote down the thought:

The best revenge is not to be like them.

And sometimes, after years of wrestling with a difficult person, simply remaining yourself is the most hard-won victory of all.

P.S. If you’re looking to refine how you communicate in high-stakes situations, I have worked as a communication coach in a range of high-pressure environments, supporting individuals as they prepare for court proceedings, government select commitee appearances, and media interviews. This experience has given me a deep appreciation of how effective communication can influence outcomes in critical moments.

My approach combines actor training with psychology and behavioural science to develop clarity, presence and authority when it matters most.

If you’d like to explore that further, you can get in touch to book a relaxed chat to see if I can help.