It's something we all fear, being betrayed by the one we trust the most. These redditors have seen the worst and are still here to share their stories. After experiencing betrayal of this magnitude, it'd be a miracle if these unlucky lovers could ever find themselves falling in love again. Please note that some have been edited for clarity.
Understandable Anger
“I caught my new bride having a work place affair while I was receiving cancer treatments. It was not a pleasant time for me….
This happened about 25 years ago. It really sucked at the time. The day I found out I was a few months into both a major surgery and then daily radiation treatment, I was down to about 118 from my normal 155lbs. But, as it turned out, it was really a good thing. We did not have a house or kids and the divorce was rather simple. I went on to get married again and have three incredible kids I would never have had otherwise. The entire experience taught me a lot about the power of forgiveness (admittedly, it took me too long to learn this lesson) and I have a pretty great life today.
We tried the whole marriage counseling thing after I caught her. The marriage counselor, however, was my wife’s personal therapist. We had one meeting and the therapist asked to meet with me privately. She subsequently reported to my wife ‘Um, Nika seems to have a lot of anger…..’ Ya think! I had just lost over 20% of my body weight, I was still going through treatments, and I found out my wife of less than a year was sleeping with a co-worker.”
Texting Who?
“I got married in late May, by August or September I found out from my dad that my husband (now ex) and my brother’s wife were sending explicit texts to each other. She was also a bridesmaid at our wedding. She felt guilty and told my dad who had to tell me. I forgave him like a moron, and about a year and a half later I found pictures of him sucking two different dongs in our house and also wearing quite a bit of my nice makeup.
All of this was AFTER we moved to Washington from Florida. It’s been wild. We’re obviously divorced now.”
That Is Brutal Revenge
“We were dating about six weeks when his grandfather passed. I did feel a bit guilty, but I didn’t attend the funeral. I had finals and had never met his family and couldn’t afford the plane ticket. He seemed disappointed but understanding.
Flash forward to three years later, and we’re on our honeymoon.
He pulls out his phone while we’re laying in bed and says he wants to show me something. It’s a video of him banging a girl. And then another video. He has a bunch of pics and videos of him banging different people.
He tells me he has never loved me. He was so upset that I didn’t support him at his grandfather’s funeral that he wanted to hurt me. So he planned on getting me to fall in love, revolve my whole life around him, marry him, and then reveal it was all just, so he could break my heart.
It worked. My heart was broken.”
What Was She Thinking
“Not me, but my brother. We grew up on a ranch. My brother’s girlfriend comes from the city, but during visits to the ranch, she dives right in, helping our mom around the house and participating in all the stuff we do – horseback riding, ATVs, etc. – and claiming (and appearing) to love it. He was so happy his city gal is compatible with the ranch lifestyle he grew up in and loved that she was able to connect with him that way and more importantly, with his family.
They dated for 18 months, made many visits to the ranch, and all was well. She insisted that she wanted to have her wedding at my parents’ home, my folks were all out, had both families there, and everyone has a great time.
The next morning, we had a send-off breakfast for the couple, they headed to the airport for their honeymoon. My mom and the bride’s mom were visiting afterward and the bride’s mom mentioned that she was glad my mom had no hard feelings that her daughter and my brother will no longer be coming out to the ranch. My mom was like, ‘What do you mean?’ The bride’s mom said, ‘Oh, I thought ‘Laura’ told you that having the wedding here was her gift to you to have your son home one last time with all his family here.’
My mom went white as a sheet. We were all stunned. We were confused whether my brother knew this, and more importantly, had agreed to this. My other brother (who had his own history of family drama) texted our big brother saying, ‘Is it true that this is your last time visiting mom and dad?’ My older brother texted back, saying, ‘What are you talking about?’ My middle bro just said, ‘Ask your new wife.’
Needless to say, the honeymoon never happened. It turns out that his wife had been hiding her belief that that man leaves his family behind and becomes part of the woman’s family. It was fully her intent to never visit my parents again, to spend all holidays at her parents’ home, to have any future children only have relationships with her family, and on and on. My brother literally had no idea these were her beliefs/desires. To this day I don’t know if she was evil or just clueless. They remained married for about a month until the divorce was final, but my bro never saw her again after the day-after-wedding-day.
Forced To Have Kids
“He begged me to have kids, I wasn’t ready but I thought he loved me. We had money, insurance, he was my high school sweetheart, had spent seven years together, and it was our first year married, why not?
Two miscarriages later, I caught him sending explicit messages to his best friend’s girlfriend. As I read through the messages I noticed the first one started with how horrific my miscarriages were. He thought I was infertile and was looking for a way out. Turns out there were issues on his end not mine.
I talked to him a decade later, and he thinks god punished him for what he did to me and that’s why he never had children.
I have a daughter now. Karma.”
He Had To Send His Mom To Do The Deed
“This happened to a college friend of mine…
She was a preacher’s daughter, and so she and her fiancé decided to abstain until marriage. They get married, go on honeymoon, consummate the marriage. A week after they return home, my friend’s mother-in-law showed up at her apartment to let her know that the husband wanted a divorce.
Turns out while she was being celibate, he was getting it on with one of the bridesmaids during the entire engagement. Even uncontested, it took her three times as long to get divorced than they were actually in the relationship.”
He Is An Awful Human
“The day after we got married he slapped me across the face (hard and completely out of the blue). No argument, no conversation leading up to it, nothing. He said it wasn’t that hard of a hit, he was just kidding around, and I was being over dramatic. He had never gotten violent with me while dating, but as soon as we got married it was like a switch flipped, and he was a COMPLETELY different person. It got worse very quickly, and I ended up filing for divorce 73 days after we got married.”
A Murder Plot
“I guess the first time it got physically abusive. It took me a while to realize there had been subtle emotional abuse for a while. As it always does the abuse escalated. It ended up being a horrible situation. My ex fit the text book definition of a narcissist. I would watch YouTube videos of interviews with criminals and other people suspected to be narcissist and almost be able to predict what they’d say based on what I thought my ex would say.
Then the cheating started. I know of two others for sure but I suspect many more.
It culminated with me uncovering a halfhearted plan to murder me for my life insurance. Would they have gone through with it? Probably not because the plan was terrible, and they’re not THAT stupid, but it was there. I had a complete break down, quit my job (my insurance was through them), sent my kids to live with their dad temporarily l, and ended up in the ER. I called my mom who lived two hours away and said come get me I’m done.
That was almost a year ago. I’m still technically married because I’ve cut contact for me and my children’s safety and don’t have a current address for them. It’s been a long uphill battle coming back from losing everything I owned, my job, my kids, my sanity….
However now I have a great job, kids are back with me, we have a great home in a wonderful part of town, and I’m enjoying getting back to being me.”
A Whole Lot Of Hurt
>>>A couple of weeks into our marriage, the love making started to physically hurt. I went to my OB and after a test or two, she informed me I had contracted chlamydia. That’s when I knew. Turns out, my newlywed husband had been banging his coworker for months.
>>> She decided she was in love with her step-brother a month after we got married.
>>>She went out for girls’ night and met a new friend named Nicole at a bar. Started texting her a lot, then going to hang out now and then. We had a baby at home, and she kept trying to go hang out with this girl from another town over with no last name whom I was not allowed to meet. His real name was Wesley
>>>She came home one night about four months in and said she didn’t like doing it and never wanted to do it again. Later we ended up discussing an open relationship, so I could still get satisfied. Turns out she just didn’t want to have relations with me anymore.
>>>Originally tried to divorce 9 months in, ended up staying 2 years. I knew it was a mistake when I caught her banging the ‘therapist’ I sent her to after she said her first fling was caused by severe depression. Stayed due to family tragedy. Don’t regret it, but wish I’d gotten out earlier.
>>>Not long after getting married. She was extremely lazy and addicted to pills. Ended up coming home on my lunch break, she and her stuff were gone. I called her mom and she told me she had been seeing an ex and was with him. I was divorced within a week. We had been married a couple weeks too long for an annulment.
>>> She accidentally sent me a text intended for her coworker that she had apparently just started an affair with. This was three weeks after our wedding. It said ‘He thinks i’m at my mom’s’
>>>When she cheated on me a week in and told me she never loved me on my birthday. She cheated with my best friend. Did I mention she told me all of this on my birthday 10 days after we got married?
>>>When I caught her with my dad at our reception.
>>> “I had a small courthouse elopement at the end of August. He went out the same night to a party I wasn’t invited to. He was full-on cheating and asking for a divorce by Christmas. We somehow lasted 2 years, but that’s only because I was desperate to make it work.”
>>>I came home from fixing my car on Halloween, and she was sitting on the couch waiting for me. Said she cheated with my best friend. Tried to make it work after that but I should have left. Her only motivation was to tell me before my best friend could. The best friend said it was all my fault. We had been married for 6 months.
~
Overall A Terrible Human
“About eight months in, my friend called me early in the morning crying and rambling about one of her acquaintances bragging at a local bar the night before about how they were having an affair with my husband. The bragging acquaintance had just had a baby with someone else about a month prior and so that meant it was going on while she was pregnant.
I didn’t tell him what my friend was saying on the phone. I simply walked up, took his phone, and locked myself in the bathroom. I found explicit pictures of her inside.
Turned out my (ex) husband and this chick had gone to the same Catholic high school and dated. (He comes from an affluent and well-known Catholic family in town.) Turns out, he got her pregnant at 15/16 and his parents paid for her to carry the baby and then give it up for adoption to a relative and to never talk about it. It was a huge secret. (Still is.)
That was just the beginning of my reality. He was banging my very best (married) friend and at least three other girls who didn’t care that he was married. They would be super friendly to me whenever I saw them around town. I had literally no clue. I was blind to his manipulation and narcissism.
Hard lesson, but I found my value through the pain. The marriage was short, but the impact (positive and negative) will last forever.”
Even Had A Dog
“I was blindsided by it. We lived together for a year about an hour from my hometown. We relocated, upon her request and desire, to my hometown prior to our marriage so that when we had kids, it’s best to be close to family. We had a house we loved, a dog we loved, jobs we both loved working in…or, so I thought. Married in October.
She goes to visit her sister over the next Labor Day weekend and I can’t attend due to work. Comes back the Tuesday after Labor Day and tells me she’s living a lie and someone else’s dream, and she needs a divorce. I had no idea.
Divorce finalized in January. She married some dude that her sister was friends with, and she met on that trip I was unable to attend, this September.
Life is wild, sometimes.”
Karma Is Coming For You
“Looking back I would say I knew from the beginning, but at the time what made me end it was the fact that I fell in love with someone else. It was love at first sight, and I concluded that if I could so easily love another person, that it meant my husband wasn’t the right one for me. He eventually found out I had fallen for another person, I can’t even describe the pain he was emitting, it broke my heart.
He was an amazing guy and I never wanted to hurt him, I don’t know if I will ever forgive myself for ruining his life. I made him wait years before even starting to talk about kids, being a father is all he ever wanted. He spent so many years building his future thinking I would be the mother of his kids. He’s now way past the age he wanted to have kids at, he’s single and hasn’t found anybody else since I left. I’m still happily living my life with the other guy I fell in love with. It’s so unfair and I’m honestly just waiting for karma to get back at me at this point.”
Camping Trip Was The Final Straw
“It was just after a year, but close enough I think it still counts. He and I had a lot of issues, but we had decided we loved each other despite them and were willing to work through them. We were together about five years before getting married but had broken up once before.
It was a combination of things that finally pushed me too far and made me leave. He had cheated on me multiple times since our wedding. All with ex-girlfriends of his. I tried to let that go considering the sticky situation that made us break up before was due to cheating on my part. So I thought ‘well fair enough. I won’t give upon us over it’ but it happened repeatedly. I started to get paranoid about it. I saw signs of him cheating on me again everywhere. And I would be right and he’d confess. Then he started hiding it and gas lighting me. Making me think I was crazy and feel guilty for suspecting it of him.
I became a depressed and anxious wreck. I didn’t have energy to do anything other than play video games and draw. They were the only thing that brought me joy. One day he became angry with me over who knows what I hadn’t done, dishes or laundry or something. It turned into a screaming match and at some point he hit me. And then during another argument later he hit me again after he’d apologized profusely and cried and said he’d never do it again.
I was already reconsidering my marriage at that point. Then I lost my father. It was very sudden and unexpected. We had had a rocky and tenuous relationship but I still loved the man. When my husband told me he’d gotten a call about it I will never forget his words. ‘Hey your Uncle called. Your Dad bit it.’ After I flew a few states over with my brother to handle things, we were informed we were the beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. We didn’t even know he had one. When I was talking to my husband about it, he said ‘Oh for real? How much are we getting?’ And I just hung up on him.
Sometime after that, he was going on a camping trip with his childhood best friend. It was supposed to be a ‘boys’ trip and I didn’t mind. Not even a day into the trip a mutual friend sent me screenshots of MY best friend’s Facebook. He was on a trip with her. Just her. And she had posted the photos on Facebook of them together.
I called my mom, gathered my things, and left that day.”
On Christmas??
“She stopped replying to my texts and told me she ‘needed a break’ two weeks before Christmas.
We were both enlisted military (yep, I’m one of those guys, but in my defense we dated for almost two years) and I had just changed duty stations. I specifically picked a worse station, so we’d have a better chance of being stationed closer together when the time came for her to pick orders.
I was stuck in a frozen hellhole for three years because of that stupid mistake. After she ghosted me I drove 14 hours nonstop in a snowstorm to find out what was going on.
Found her at work, no ring. She cheated on me multiple times since I’d been gone, with people I knew.
We were married four months.”
That’s No Excuse
“It was over when I slept with another woman. Completely stressed from work, baby had just arrived, new house just built, driving two hours a day for work, new position as manager. Staff member diagnosed with brain cancer. It was all too much. I cracked, slept with another woman. So much disappointment in myself for not asking for help. I disappointed and upset a lot of people. I still struggle with what I did.
I have come to realize the relationship I was in was something I found myself in rather than wanting. And the one I am in now is much happier. I just went about things a messed up way.”
It Worked Out Well At Least
“My friend’s sister got engaged eight months into a relationship and got married four months later. Everything went well the first five months, but the husband started acting different, he wasn’t chatty, and his good morning/goodnight kisses became dull.
Her sister would ask if everything was okay, and he would say, ‘I’m fine’ every time. Her sister didn’t want to push him, so she waited for him to talk about what’s bothering him.
One evening after eating dinner, the husband said he wanted to talk about their relationship. Before he could talk about it, he started crying. This lasted for a few minutes and then told her he’s gay.
The sister filed for divorce and after the divorce was settled, she wasn’t really mad at him anymore, so she went to see him and forgave him. They became good friends and the sister helped him become comfortable with his new identity. She even helped him come out to his close friends and then to his family.
Five years later, the sister is now engaged to another man and expecting their first child. The ex-husband is now very happily married to a man for almost a year now.”
Could Have Seen That Coming
“I was in my late 30s when I got married. Shortly after she asked to have her name on all of my assets (a few rental houses, current house, and some financial instruments, the cars). Not a problem as we were married I thought, but on a Wednesday she insisted it be done by that Friday. I didn’t have time to do that because work and a deadline, I could start it the next week I said.
She pitched a fit and said if I loved her I would do it by Friday. I found this strange and decided not to start it and see what happened. She moved out of our bedroom into a guest room. Got cold around the house, told me she would move back in to our bedroom when I finished getting everything done.
At this point I thought ‘bull’ and told her so. I went to my family lawyer to seek advice. She advised me not to put anything in her name at this point. Gave me the name of a marriage counselor.
She didn’t want to go to counseling, she continued to live in the guest room, I took my lawyer’s advice and did nothing about the assets.
The long and short of it was after a year of marriage, on our anniversary, she told me I didn’t have her in my heart, I thought to my self, ‘this is ridiciulous.’
About a week after that I told her if this is the way it’s going to be, I’m not going to be married like this. She then told me, ‘Ok, so what are you going to give me?’
I consulted my lawyer on what a judge would come up with regarding community property for the past year. Number came up to $20,000. I took that number and added about $20,000 and proposed that to her, so we can make it easy. I was going to spend more than that in lawyers fees if it got ugly.
It got ugly.
A week later, I got served with papers, with all said in the complaint, when added up, she was going after $750,000 for a year of marriage. One year of divorce proceedings and two years of property settlement proceedings on what should have been a two-hour problem.
I ended up owing her what would have been the community property (about $20,000), but the judge awarded me attorney’s fees. So in net, my ex owed me about $30,000. Even though I came out OK financially, it was an emotional train wreck to have this happen.”
Just Like That She Changed
“My dad got back from his honeymoon and went back to work. He came home and something felt off when he walked in the door.
His wife wasn’t there when he got home from work, which was very odd for her since she got off work earlier than him and was always home when he got back. When she got back, he mentioned that it was out-of-the-ordinary that she had been out and asked if she went somewhere. He wasn’t accusatory, just curious because it never happened, but she dodged his questions at first. Eventually, after he got suspicious of her dodging a simple question, she admitted that she’d quit her job, and when he asked why, she said she didn’t need to work. So she was planning on using him as her cash cow.
He doesn’t remember how the conversation went exactly since it was 30 years ago. He tried counselling and asked her to get her job back, but she always brushed him off and never took him seriously. He threw in the towel seven months later, and she started trying to fix things, but it had been seven months of him trying to fix things, and she had no interest.
He filed for divorce and went on to achieve his lifelong dream: he dated and then married his middle school crush, my mom… 28 years strong.”