Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun Unless You Share With Everyone
Nothing is sweeter than revenge, and this story is the sugar to the tea. This is a tale of betrayal as recounted by Reddit user “wafflesareforever,” who we’ll call Jason in this story, about the downfall of his once perfect marriage. When he happened upon his wife’s, who we’ll call Rachel, dirty digital secrets and heard her tell the truth for the first time about what she had been hiding for months, he knew he couldn’t keep it to himself – so he let the truth out in a way that hurt the most. Neither offending party was safe from Jason’s plan, and the fallout from their passionate choice was sure to last a long time. Prepare to sink your teeth into the juiciest act of vengeance you’ve read in a while with an ending that makes you grateful that you’re not in either offenders’ shoes.
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They Started Out As One Big Happy Family
When Jason and Rachel moved into their neighborhood, they quickly befriended Mark and Sarah across the street. The couple was like family to them and they all became extremely close. All of their kids were the same age and played with each other. The four parents even worked for the same school district their kids attended. They were like one big family. They hosted dinners at each other’s houses every week and took multiple trips all together too. Mark was the brother Jason never had, and Rachel and Sarah were like sisters. They could lean on each other for anything and felt that they could talk openly with each other about personal issues. There were no secrets among them – or so Jason thought.
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It Was The Day That Changed Everything
They had been close like this for years, until one fateful day, when Jason happened upon Rachel’s laptop. She had gone out running for errands and had accidentally left it open and logged into her email. Jason was just about the close it when she suddenly received an email. It was from her longtime therapist, replying to one of Rachel’s email. Moving closer, he noticed that Rachel’s original email stated that Mark would be joining her at her session next week “again.”
Cue the confusion. Why was Rachel bringing Mark along to a session without telling her husband? And “again?” How long had this been going on? Jason felt his heart drop and suspected the worst. Wanting to disprove what he thought was happening, he delved into her inbox, searching for answers. All he found were emails to and from the therapist, the first one mentioning Mark about two months prior to that day. Rachel had been going to therapy with Mark consistently for almost six weeks. Something definitely wasn’t right here. Jason did a little more deep digging and found something else that blew his mind.
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It Was Only The Tip Of The Iceberg
Jason then looked up his and Rachel’s shared mobile phone account and searched under her number’s text history. He was dumbfounded. Rachel had been sending hundreds of texts to a number he recognized as Mark’s every day – nearly 500 a day around the holidays. When he thought of the most recent holidays, Jason immediately recalled that he and Rachel had hosted both sides of their families over for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and Mark and Sarah came for both dinners as well. When he looked closer at the text records for those days and the times they would have been together, he realized that Mark and Rachel had been texting each other the entire time. Even though they were over at Jason and Rachel’s house and supposedly celebrating with their families, the two had been on their phones, messaging each other across the room.
Jason realized that they had been doing this for months, practically every time the four adults hung out together in addition to texting back and forth every day in general. What irritated him the most was that they were doing it right in front of their spouses, even in the same room. He couldn’t believe how blatant they were about their messaging. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t caught on sooner. Now, with the digital evidence right in front of him, it was clear as day. Everything in the past made sense now. All of Rachel’s excessive texting in the past was not to her friends in her big social circle or to her coworkers. It was her and Mark all along. She had been texting so much at that point that she was completely ignoring her husband and kids. Jason remembered that he even had to instill a “no texting at the dinner table” rule to get her to stop. She would, for a moment, and act all upset about it, but then eventually continued to text anyway.
Her recent odd behavior with Mark when they all were together made sense now, too. Jason had started to feel uncomfortable about their overly close relationship, and Mark’s wife Sarah agreed. They had even asked the two several times about their behavior and apparent closeness, and they had always denied it and chalked it up to “work stuff” and nothing else. They seemed sincere at the time, and Jason had believed them.
But now with all of these texts and emails before him, he knew for sure that they were hiding something more. So he built his case and prepared for the worst conversation of his life.
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The Truth Finally Comes Out
A few hours later, Rachel came home. As she settled in, Jason confronted her with the evidence. She immediately broke down crying and admitted that she and Mark had fallen in love several months ago when they had gone on a school trip together as employees of the school district. Something went down in her hotel room (she didn’t go into details), but they quickly realized that they had sparked a fire between them that couldn’t be put out. Rachel confessed that she had lost all feelings toward her husband and had instead found them all in her relationship with Mark.
As she tried to explain the reasoning behind her choice, Jason could barely move from shock and sadness. He couldn’t even look at her. Rachel then went on to say that they had already planned to eventually move in together and divorce their spouses. Apparently she and Mark had been going to therapy together to find the gentlest way to break this news to their families. When Jason confided in Sarah about this later on, they both agreed that the cheating couple probably weren’t going to reveal their secret at all. They were most likely going to find some ridiculous reason to divorce their spouses and then “discover” their feelings for each other several months later.
Shortly after this conversation, Rachel moved out with all of her belongings. Jason was completely heartbroken, crying constantly at the loss of someone he used to completely trust. He was also anxious about how this would all affect their kids. But he realized that he was not, as he quotes in his post, “a shrinking violet” when he felt that he had been wronged. In this case, he had definitely been very wronged.
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How It All Got Started
So a few years prior to this big discovery, Mark had decided, out of the blue, to run for a seat on the local Board of Education. Jason was instrumental in organizing the campaign, and Rachel, who was a well-loved employee of the school district, used her popularity to her advantage and urged everyone she knew to vote for Mark. The final votes were close and, much to everyone’s surprise, Mark won the position.
Mark’s new spot on the board became his whole world. He was actively involved in every committee, including Rachel’s. This then eventually led to their affair, as they were constantly attending school events and meetings together several times a week. However, this wouldn’t be the case for long.
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The Perfect Plan Is Born
Once he stumbled upon the affair, Jason quickly acquired an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. Then, in a “lightbulb” moment, it occurred to him that an extramarital affair between someone on the Board of Education and a school district employee would be quite the political scandal and could even go against district policy. What made it even more scandalous was that Rachel was, at the time, running for an administrative position that everyone was convinced (due to her popularity) she would get, along with the position’s higher salary. The principal and the superintendent encouraged her to finish her master’s degree in school administration, making the open position an almost guarantee for her.
Now was the perfect time to execute the grand plan.
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He Was Forced To Step Down
Jason had compiled plenty of evidence in a file: texts from Rachel and Mark in which they admitted to cheating in their marriages with each other, text records showing their excessive text exchanges, and emails with the therapist about spilling their secret. His first plan was to simply email all of this to the Board and the superintendent, but he figured that they may see him as a crazed, grieving husband rather than a credible source.
He then hatched a second plan, in which he made up a “furious friend” who was going to storm into the next Board meeting and call out Mark and Rachel for their affair in front of everyone. Jason ran to his former wife and explained the situation and that he had tried to convince his “friend” to calm down, but he was pretty sure that this person would storm the meeting anyway and shame the cheaters publicly. In a frantic rush, Rachel spread to word to Mark, who then decided that it was best that the news came from himself and admitted to the Board about the affair. All was going according to plan. After this, the superintendent told Mark to resign from his position. When Jason followed up with Sarah a couple days later to see how Mark was doing, she reported that her husband was crushed and unable to get out of bed.
But what happened to Rachel was almost worse.
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Her Chances Were Ruined
When rumors began to spread throughout the school district about the affair and Mark’s resignation, the superintendent called Rachel and basically broke down crying, explaining to her that it would be politically inappropriate to promote her to such a prominent administrative position with all of the gossip. He then continued to say that they had recruited an outsider to fill the position she had dreamed of taking. The entire district was shocked – they were pretty convinced that Rachel would get the job and were confused as to why she suddenly did not. The day after she got the news that her dreams would be crushed, she and Jason, despite the fact that their marriage was falling apart, had taken their son out to breakfast for his birthday. While they were eating pancakes, a parent had stopped by their table to congratulate Rachel on her promotion. She faked a smile, waited for her to walk away, then snuck away to the bathroom to cry for several minutes.
Jason let the recent events marinate for a few weeks, and then, right before Rachel’s move-out was finalized, spilled his little plan to her and Mark – that he invented the “furious friend” who was going to expose them. It was just Jason all along. But the damage didn’t stop there.
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Their Lives Were Forever Changed
Because they all lived in a fairly small town, word of all of this spread like wildfire. Mark had lived there all of his life and Rachel had worked there for nearly 20 years. Now they could barely show their faces in public. Rachel refused to talk to Jason about how her job continued after failing to receive the position, so he sought information from people he knew who worked in the district. They reported that her formerly squeaky-clean reputation was now completely tarnished. Mark’s name had also taken a major hit. A former socialite who frequented local neighborhood events and parties, he had now holed up in his house all day, barely sneaking out to mow his lawn. He eventually moved out from across the street into a cheap little townhouse he could barely afford due to having to pay Sarah for child support.
Rachel and Mark continued to claim that their relationship was still going work, even after everyone knew about the affair and shunned them. “I wish them lots of luck with that,” Jason asserts as he concludes his post, “I’m sure it will be a lot of fun to show their faces together in town.”
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