Vengeance Aforethought

You’ve heard of malice aforethought, but what about vengeance  aforethought, which occurs when someone has a conscious desire to get back at those who he or she feels are about to manipulate them? Usually nothing has occurred in these situations which are predicated on past behaviors. It's a little like prolepsis in which answers are offered to questions which have yet to be asked. There’s a way of looking at the world as a version of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in which lies and deceit are the lingua franca of society. Everyone wants something and you have no intention of being the stooge. This is about as far a cry from turning the other cheek as you can get since in anticipation of the wrong being done, you exact a preemptive act of vengeance, as if to show that your fortress is impregnable. You're heaving a bomb shell over at an enemy who has yet to attack, since you just can’t stand being a sitting duck. So what's the upshot? Watch out for what you want, for you may get it? The imagined offense, which was never that severe in the first place is punished and you have made an enemy or at least created six degrees of separation from someone who once regarded you as a friend. You have stopped a perceived aggressor with dubious intentions dead in their tracks and your putative boundaries will remain untrammeled. You have ended up pure, but alone.