I suppose I can always rebuild my career & reputation & I'll always have my integrity. Right now all he has is anger & resentment & that's got to blow up in his face at some point right?
The long answer: I've got a decade of distance between me and my ex, and the only contact we have today is through our son. DS12 is a sensitive kid who is torn up over his ever-deteriorating relationship with his father, but he's finally at an age where he can process that and put the anger at the correct target and not turn it inwards.
But ten years later, I can tell you that there isn't much that's changed for my ex. He's still using and abusing his current wife, mistreating his kids, holding them to weird, confusing, and arbitrary house rules and expectations, denying them small joys and comforts out of a bizarre need to control them, and manipulating money and favors out of anyone he can find who is overly-permissive with loose boundaries. It's easy to imagine what's in for him down the road -- another divorce and wackadoodle custody battle, weak or nonexistent relationships with his children, a mediocre career, etc. He has a ******, empty life, and it's one entirely of his own making.
I used to fantasize a lot about exposing him or putting him in his place, or finding a way of making him realize how awfully he treated the people around him, including me, who I thought should have an exalted place as the mother of his child. That would obviously never happen. After a few years, that dwindled to me fantasizing about him realizing the error of his ways and turning himself around for DS12, whom my ex always purported was the light of his life. That never happened either. Finally, a couple of years ago, it finally hit me that all the energy I sunk into wishing and hoping and scheming about my vengeance needed to be spent on cleaning up the mess I'd left my son in. Because while I was stuck in that negative revenge fantasy loop (which I'd thankfully kept to myself), I'd hung my son out to dry emotionally, who was left to wonder what HE had done to deserve all the emotional chaos.
That's where I am today. I don't think about my ex much at all except for when we have visitation disagreements, which cause some resentment flare-ups sometimes. I try to view him with a sense of humor -- because after ten years the consistency of his dysfunction is still surprising and amusing -- and from a distance, because I don't want NONE of that anymore.
The short answer is that yes, all this malevolence gets back to them eventually. My hope is that you won't notice because you're busy with your own fabulous life.