It's always hard to get over cheating but sometimes the best thing you can do is just cut the cord. Even if that means divorce. These divorcees share the pivotal moment they caught their partner cheating.
It All Started With A Puppy
“Our marriage was falling apart to the point where I had moved into my own apartment. However, we were in therapy and things seemed to be getting better between us. She had to go to a conference in Atlantic City and asked me to stay at our (now her) house for the week.
We were texting back and forth pretty consistently throughout the week, flirty and overall positive conversations. But this is where the story gets a little confusing but I’d like to think this is also where fate begins to intervene.
I am a grad student and am able to work from home sometimes, so I was working on my laptop at the house while she was away. I must’ve been so focused on my work that I didn’t realize that my knockoff Apple charger was overheating and soon stopped working.
I asked my now ex-wife if I could use her laptop that was at the house. She said yes, so I continued working on her laptop. She had her laptop set up so that she could text from it. so as she was texting me and other people I saw a little notification in the corner and didn’t think much of it. At some point on her trip, she sent me a picture. I now know this picture was of a stray puppy walking along the boardwalk. I remembered her mom discussing that she wanted to buy a new dog, so I responded in some way that implied that I believed this was a pic of her mom’s new dog. She must have been recently texting her mom about this potential new dog and took my response as evidence that I was reading her text message conversations and proceeded to freak the heck out. I was a bit surprised by her response, especially considering the weird misunderstanding that preceded it. But I was well aware of how irrational and nasty she could be, and it didn’t take long for us to clear up this misunderstanding.
I woke up in the middle of that night with a powerful epiphany, of course, she was hiding something on her phone. So during a moment of weakness and lack of respect for her privacy I used her laptop to browse through her conversations and found a steamily detailed convo with her coworker.”
The Mail Lady?! Really?
“I came home very sick with the flu one day without calling my husband first. Exhausted, I went up to my bedroom and found a rather unfortunate surprise. My husband was in my bed with another woman…the mail woman…of all people. What? Even in my ill state, I was beyond enraged.
I told them both to get the heck out of my house. He argued that he needed sleep because he worked overnights. Give me a break. Then he complained like a baby that he needed his clothes and stuff and that I was being ridiculous. I shot back and told him he could retrieve all his clothes when I throw them out the window and the rest of his stuff in the garage where the garbage is kept. I take a shirt of his and some other items he needed and told him to get lost.
She could have him for all I cared, heck shower at her place. Take a shower at her house or work. I packed up his stuff in garbage bags along with the topper to our wedding cake, some mementos from our honeymoon, I was being passive-aggressive I agree, sure but how dare he sleep with her in our bed, in our home?
We had a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old. He was just wrong. He showed up a month later crying to me that she had broken up with him. I told him too bad, I didn’t feel bad for him in the least. I got the house( and mortgage) in the divorce. It was okay though because I wanted the kids to stay in their home and school and I made more money, the root cause of the problem. He felt inadequate because I was a senior manager and he was doing maintenance work. This was no issue for me, just for him.”
That’s One Thing He Shouldn’t Have Seen
“My girl (call her Molly and I were in college and had been dating for over a year. A room became available in the house where she lived (the house had been converted into multiple apartments for students) and the price was right.
One Sunday we were set to see a movie around 2:30 pm. I got off work at 2 pm and zoomed to the house I recalled something I needed from a backpack in her room, so I went over to fetch it. The day was gloomy and the room was dark, and the backpack was on the far side of the room. The light was on in her bathroom and I heard shuffling, so I thought she was getting ready. I started digging through the backpack and was about to turn on a light.
The bathroom door opened and light spilled onto the bed. She emerged without a stitch of clothes on and crawled onto the bed. I wondered what she had in mind, until one of my friends exited the bathroom, also not wearing anything, and joined her.
So there I was, standing in the darkened side of the room, and frozen to the floor. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly I had the presence of mind to grab my phone and record what I was seeing. I just couldn’t move, couldn’t react, couldn’t think. I was petrified. I heard them go at it. Every breath, moan, and detail. My heart slowly broke in the dark. Their little dance took about twenty minutes. One may well ask why she was doing this, knowing we had a date in few minutes. One thing was clear, they were experienced with each other. This was no awkward first-time thing.
But it was daylight savings time-change Sunday, and she hadn’t set her clock ahead an hour. She thought it was still one o’clock, and so did he. He mentioned that he was going to meet his girlfriend’s parents at 2pm. He arrived at 3 pm and they forgave him. (tell you how I know this later)
I thought any minute they will look up and see me standing there, but never did. When they were done, he got dressed and left, and she went back into the bathroom to shower off. My stomach was in knots.
Around 3 pm – she thinks it’s 2 pm, she came to my room and I told her I was sick to my stomach – and I really was. I only had six weeks until graduation, and enough money to move into another place for that length of time. But what happened next is really mind-blowing. Keep in mind she and I had agreed to wait for each other to make love on our wedding night. My heart has been broken ever since.”
Apple Devices Exposing Cheaters Once Again
“I suspected that was something was going on in marriage earlier but nothing seemed solid so I never brought it up. But it wasn’t until I accidentally got a look at his phone that the truth came to light.
The poor idiot didn’t realize that Apple devices get synced together, and one day I was using one of the devices for something and messages started popping up in real time. I got to read their conversation as it was happening, as well as past messages. It was gut-wrenching because neither of them cared. We had been married for years and now I was watching it all disappear into thin air.
If I remember correctly, they were talking about a past hookup and how I had no clue and his response was ‘YOLO.’ Are you serious? You cheat on your wife and the thing you can say is ‘YOLO’. I can’t believe I was ever married to that loser.
I confronted him about it that night and you can bet he blubbered like a baby. He begged and pleaded for me to stay and even got on his hands and knees. He also tried to convince me they never actually hooked up when I had seen the messages with my own eyes. Does he think I’m that stupid?
Next, he tried to convince me it was just a big mistake on his part and said that I mattered more than her. But in the end, I knew I could never stay. How could I stay with someone who reduced long-term cheating on his spouse to ‘YOLO?’ All the begging and pleading was empty and I knew it. I had to cut the cord. And boy was the look on his sniveling face worth it.
I felt sick for a long time. Moved out. Got therapy. I was poor, really poor. But honestly, I was much happier after getting out and getting help. And I’ve been happier ever since.”
That’s A Pretty Awful Way To Find Out
“I was pretty oblivious to it all for a long time. Keep in mind that we lived in a fairly small town (5000 people) so people ‘know things.’
I was actually bragging up my now ex-wife to a coworker. Saying how proud I was of her for finally getting a job that she loved after being a stay-at-home mom for about the last eight years. I was talking about how she was working as a ranch hand on a few weekend-long cattle drives, staying in the bunkhouse of the cattle ranch. My coworker said she knows that ranch, only lived a few miles from there and that there is NO bunkhouse. The only residence is a single house that the ranch lead hand lives in by himself.
That really confused me. I asked my ex about it and she denied it up and down and had an explanation for all of it.
Fast forward a few more weeks and another person I know in town is talking with me and I mentioned my ex-wife being at home, which surprised them and me. They thought my wife and I were divorced? They told me that they thought we have split up apparently because they’ve seen them with another guy. Turns out the guy she was fooling around with, was this person’s cousin. Their cousin had told them all sorts of graphic details about what he and my ex-wife had been doing, and now they were sharing them with me as I kept saying things like ‘no way’ and ‘they must be talking about someone else.’
Faced with this new information I confronted my now ex-wife again just outside our house as the kids were inside (we lived rurally). She initially tried denying it again, but then finally came clean. I was absolutely gutted. I was a grown man crying uncontrollably in my laneway, and she got in her truck and drove off to be with him again that night, leaving me and the kids at home.
I could barely eat or sleep for days, the only thing that kept me sane during my waking hours were my kids. I focused on keeping everything as calm and stable as possible for them every day. They saved me.
It’s been about 9 years now. I haven’t been in a committed relationship since. I don’t know if I ever will be again.”
Til Death Do Them Part, Part I
“I caught her fair and square. I put a security system into our home with contact alarms on every door. I also installed light hidden cameras on the front and back porch.
When on a business trip, one of the back door contact alarms tripped and the camera’s motion sensor caught her lover’s coming and going on record. At 5 am when the kids were still asleep. The next visit was the following night. When the back door tripped again, I turned the camera on (from my iPhone) and made it continuously record. An hour later I caught the whole ‘exit scene’ on record thanks to the camera’s night vision.
So I confronted my wife with the evidence. She stared at me for a long time. Her face was like a stone.
I left her to gather her thoughts and went to the other room to watch television with the kids. I texted her once to see if she needed anything. She didn’t respond, and none of the home sensors went off, so I knew she was still inside.
What on Earth was she doing in there? I sent the kids to bed but stayed up for a long time, thinking about what to do next.
I finally went back to the bedroom and found her curled up on her side of the bed, snuggling a box of tissues. I asked her if everything was okay, but she didn’t respond.
After I got into bed, I told her we needed to talk. She was unresponsive so I talked to her about a lot of different things. She didn’t respond to any of it.
That’s when I noticed she wasn’t breathing. I snapped out of the bed and raced around to her side. Eyes partially open, cheeks sunken. She was dead.
The coroner said she died of a heart attack. Her blood was filled with signs that she had stressed out right before the attack, had gone into a seizure, and the heart attack finished her. He said she didn’t feel any pain and died quickly. How can he know that?
I waited for her lover to text her again. When he did I told him to come back for more, and when he arrived, to come on inside the house.
He came over and I set up her side of the bed with pillows to make it look like she was curled up and waiting for him. He tip-toed into the bedroom, stripped off his clothes, and slid into the bed next to ‘her’.
When he realized it was just pillows, he laughed and called out to her, like she was hiding somewhere. He went into the master bathroom and our walk-in closet, and I took the opportunity to gather all his clothes and stuff them under the bed. His iPhone was readily available so I put it on the foot of the bed.
I own a .38 and had it with me. When he came out of the bathroom, I turned on the bedroom light…”
Til Death Do Them Part, Part II
“Let me say that by this time I thought I had everything together enough to confront him with this. But it was all I could do to keep from pulling that trigger.
When he saw me standing there with the weapon, his whole body shook and he urinated on his feet and the side of the bed. ‘Don’t kill me,’ he pleaded.
I told him I wasn’t going to kill him – as long as he picked up the phone and called his wife.
Shaking his head, he obeyed. Tears ran from his eyes and he had this painful grimace. I told him to put it on speakerphone.
She answered and I told him to take a picture of the bed then to send it to her. He did so.
She asked who was in the room with him, and he told her that I had a piece aimed at him. She lost it and started screaming at him.
I assured her that I would not kill him if she would come and pick him up at our house. I gave her the address and she stayed on the phone with her husband all the way over.
I told him to walk to the front door and to leave his clothes behind. Something he would have to do anyway if I had walked in on the two of them
He stood at the front door until his wife showed up, opened it, and stalked to her car without a stitch of clothes on. She stood in the doorway staring at me. She was average-looking. Nothing to make her stand out in a crowd.
I told her to come back tomorrow and pick up his clothes. She did so, and I showed her where I had stuffed them. I told her about my wife’s heart attack and death. She asked why but I said it was just so sudden, nobody really knows when our time will come. I felt that if I told her it was because I had confronted her with evidence, and shocked her system, she would tell her husband and who knows where that could go?
After all, if my wife’s condition was really that delicate, who’s to say one more romp with this lover wouldn’t have sent her over the edge?
Her life insurance policy paid out enough to pay off our house mortgage. I gave $20k of it to her lover’s wife so she wouldn’t be so strapped starting her new life again. She was thankful but I didn’t expect anything back for it.
I’ve remarried to a great gal and we’ve launched the next phase of life four years ago. She had a tempestuous past with a deadbeat husband.
She knows all about everything – except for the part about confronting my wife, leading to her death. I don’t know if it was the catalyst. I feel a little weird about not checking on her the night she died. Not sure it would have mattered. I’m not certain I will ever tell my new wife the whole truth. After all, if she knows I have cameras and contact switches in the house, she might find a way to hide her clandestine activities should she ever cheat on me. Why give away that advantage?”
She Gave Him The Cold Shoulder Alright
“She woke me up in the middle of the night to grab the extra blanket off the bed. I expected to find her disgruntled on the couch alone the next morning. I found her in the guest bed with another woman – both uncovered. No forewarnings or clue-ins, just despondent betrayal.
I woke her for answers and got a whole lot of mumbles. I decided to split for ‘space.’
That weekend, we both ended up at the same bar on the same dance floor. I thought she had followed me there to make amends. She brought the same girl and completely ignored me when I called out to her. When I walked up to her, she pretended I was a stranger. I told her I was not going to play any games and didn’t know what was going on. She said she didn’t want to be married. I gave her the ring back and went to tell my friends goodbye that night. I didn’t want to tell them why, I felt so embarrassed.
She saw me talking to my friends and decided to make out in front of us with her new woman directly on the dance floor eight feet away from where I stood while everyone stared.
Looking back now, I realize she probably was scared to come out. I can give her credit for that. But she was an awful person for the way she did it and for never having the courage to say to my face whatever she was feeling. I thought we were best friends. I thought we were going to be together forever. She asked me to marry her.
Now, I’m just grateful for not being with a liar and a coward. I’ve made a fresh start. Sold everything. Traded my entire wardrobe and style to feel like I’m in a new life. Sure, I’ve lost more money than I ever thought imaginable. And the dog… I just keep optimistic that I’ll find someone who deserves my time. I don’t focus on the past and I have faith in God and the future.
Whoever I marry next will be grateful for a man like me and loyal. But until then I’m gonna enjoy the single life again and just play.”
His Kids Had His Back When Their Mother Didn’t
“Prior to this, there were no infidelities or large problems.
We have four children: a pair of twins (boy and girl) 20-years-old, a son that’s 19 and our youngest daughter is 15. I filed for divorce in mid-December and had her move out of our home and back with her parents. Got a lot of voice mail left and emails and even hand-written letters about how sorry she is about what she’s done, but I never replied in any way.
When it finally dawned on her I was really going through this and there was nothing she could do to stop it, she attempted to end her own life. In all likelihood, she would have died had her parents not stayed at home to keep an eye on her.
From what I’ve been told, she tried to overdose on pills, but no one knows where she got them in the first place.
Her infidelity apparently became fully physical only recently (late November or early December), but even before that, she was emotionally cheating for at least a few months before that. I don’t care to find out how long since it wouldn’t really help me in any way. Since it was a married man with whom she had the affair, I’d notified his wife, so he’s getting divorced too.
Add to that, they’re co-workers, which is how they met in the first place, and I assume they used work time to start the affair. For those that are going to ask ‘How did you find out?’ the answer is ‘I didn’t.’ Our son and daughter (the twins) did. They saw their mother kissing with the other man, in public (the place in question isn’t somewhere where any of us usually pass through), and then they proceeded to inform me. I started digging around and found more than enough evidence of a prolonged affair. To cheat is to take a dump on all the time you spent together, to take a dump on your shared lives.
It’s nothing more than selfishness and cruelty.
I’m just telling you so you can understand me a bit better. Maybe, but that’s a really, really reaching ‘maybe’, I could have tried to look past this if it had been a one-time thing and she immediately came to me, contrite and remorseful. But she wasn’t. I mean, she only started sobbing and bawling once she got caught and that to me is utterly worthless. It’s easy to cry once your dirty laundry is put into the spotlight, but before all this? I’ve never noticed anything remorseful about her or any sign of guilt. I just can’t live with someone like that.
Thankfully, all of the kids were supportive and understanding when I told them I was going to divorce their mother. Our youngest cried more than I did, but said I was doing the right thing, for all of us. She did ask me if she could live with me and I told her she didn’t even have to ask.
I think that’s the best thing in this situation overall, just having the kids there showing me not all of those years being with my wife were a waste. Whatever she’s like now, I can at least be grateful for our children, if nothing else.
I love them more than anything.”