And the fact that it happens is not the problem; it’s only inevitable. It’s a part of becoming an adult and growing up. It’s a necessary catalyst of maturation and it helps you to grow as a person and better understand yourself and what you mean to others. The trouble is how few of us decide to deal with it properly.

The first, and most obvious, response to a breakup is further destruction. And the majority of people deal with it accordingly. Their first response is conquest: a rampage to see how many people they can have sex with because it allows them to feel the immediate, if transient, satisfaction of revenge.

Sex is the battlefield, and they’re waging a war for body count. But there’s no winning in it. The more girls you amass, the more you drop, only serves to make the pain worse. And for women it’s the same, this is how sluts are triggered because they are trying to get back at an ex boyfriend. The process is sadistic in nature; it’s a game to hurt as many people as possible so they can feel the same pain.

The second approach is the rebound. The most dangerous part of this approach is the belief that it’s more rational than its predecessor. Instead of being a whore, a person slips into a mock relationship, divesting all the emotion for the ex in this new fling.

It’s a matter of missing intimacy, and the rebound will help ease the pain and fill that space. Apples aren’t oranges. And as soon as they stop pretending, they’ll realize they’ve only made it worse. You can keep wearing a mask to hide all the emotions, but one day there will be nothing under it.

The third option to avenging an ex is to fake happy better. This method is massively bolstered with social media. There are indirect (direct) tweets, Instagram photos with multiple hashtags, and the old-fashioned, stone age approach of a mobile upload tag in a member of the other gender’s Facebook album — so that everyone in your network, and every one of your mutual friends, can see how happy you are only one day after the breakup.

Let me clarify that these are pathetic means to revenge. Of course, we all fall victim to these, as childish and unsuccessful as they may be. Even I have found myself tangled in the mess that these reactions produce, but I quickly realized we’re going about revenge in all the wrong ways.

Disclaimer: this may shock you. Showing an ex how many girls you can bang or how good you look in an Instagram filter, isn’t the best means of revenge.

Instead, show them what they have missed out on. And what better way to do that than actually accomplishing things and building a legacy that just drips of success?

Think about it: five years from now, you have put your hard work in, sold your company and made it on the 30 under 30 list; is she going to be okay with knowing that she passed up a chance of being with someone who actually succeeded in life?

Of course not. She’s going to look over at her pedestrian boyfriend, who has a pedestrian job and works pedestrian hours, and realize the only excitement they get is when they go to an all-inclusive resort in Dominican Republic. Right there, she will hit her mid-life crisis at 26.

Sure you may say, Preston, you really thought this through, but that’s because it is the most rational way to get back at someone for walking out on you. It is showing them that you have become a better person without them and have actually grown to do great things in your life while they have stayed stagnant with theirs.

When we do go through a breakup, we experience anger. We must channel that anger into something that will help us in our lives and use it as motivation rather than retaliation.

Because the motivation of proving someone wrong, and showing them that they were an idiot for walking out on you, will be worth more to you than all the girls that you could possibly think of banging to get back at her—even her best friend (trust me that only makes the situation worse, I have been there before).

Success is the best revenge served to anyone. It’s a public display of how wrong they were. It’s proving to them that you can actually amount to something and it makes them feel miserable about themselves for ever leaving you during your humble beginnings.

Look at Mark Zuckerberg, the reason Facebook exists is because some Jewish girl from BU walked out on him. He then channeled his anger into creating “Facemash” which then sprung the idea of Facebook, which got a 100 billion dollar evaluation.

Picture her sitting in her 450 square foot apartment in Murray Hill; do you think she is not sick to her stomach with the realization of how much of an idiot she is for walking out on him? Of course she’s miserable and feels like a dagger just hit her. That ladies and gentlemen is what success does to your ex.

Of course this elicits the question: would you reach success if you weren’t motivated by the anger of the one that walked out of your life? Without that painful drive, you are already comfortable and content with what you have in front of you. So I ask you, would you rather still be with them and miserable or would you rather be enjoying the fruits of your labor while on top of the world?

I can safely say it’s enjoying the fruits of your labor; I can imagine the feeling of sending the 30 under 30 list, with my name included, to my three ex-girlfriends, who will inevitably only amount to being pedestrians that base their lives off “Sex in the City”.

Preston Waters | Elite.