A relationship should be full of love and selfless acts, but that's not always the case. Many people in relationships step out of line, and end up cheating on their significant other, which is truly heartbreaking. In this piece, people share the heartbreaking circumstances where and how they caught their spouse cheating. These stories were edited for clarity.
Happiest Day Of My Life Turned Worst Day
“When my ex was giving birth to our only child, there were complications. They had to do an emergency c-section. When my daughter came out, she wasn’t breathing on her own, and they rushed her to the infant ICU. My ex asked me to take pictures for her, I took two before they took my daughter away. I went to tell our parents what was going on, they wanted to see the pics. I scrolled too far and found pictures of her with an old ex, from just a few months earlier. In front of both our mothers. Right in the middle of all of this. I find out she was cheating.
I then had to go back in the room, where my daughter was still getting worked on, and my ex was still cut open. I had to shut up and deal with it.
What should have been the best day of my life, turned out to be one of my worst.
Only a month later, I found out she had been with yet another ex. We broke up. And I paid her child support. We agreed to do the co-parenting thing with just us. Not involve the government. There was mistake #1. I had her 3 nights a week for the majority, and for 6 months of her first 2 years alive, I had her 6 nights a week. When I found out my ex was struggling, I started paying her an extra $50 a month to help out. In cash. Everything was cash. There’s mistake #2. She lost her job around the time my daughter turned 2. Because she needed money, she went to the state and told them I never had any custody, and I had never paid her any money for child support. Both being massive lies.
So my checks started getting garnished. They started taking back child support for the previous 2 years. Even though I always paid her more than what I was supposed to. My child support should have been $149, I paid $200 to be nice. They started garnishing $400 a month for back child support that had already been paid and was over double what it should have been, and $400 a month for current child support. I work in a call center. Car payment. Rent. Bills. And then I had to get an attorney, which turns out cost a lot. This crippled me.
The part that hurts, is trying so hard to be a good guy, even when you don’t want to, and still being treated like the villain.
But at the end of the day, I have a beautiful 3 year old girl. When I pick her up, the reaction I get…I can’t imagine anything like it. She screams, ‘Daddy!’ And runs at me like I’m a rock star or something. The best feeling in the world. It’s indescribable. My ex has made it hard, but my daughter always makes it worth it.”
Never Get A Name Tattoo
“I was away on Navy training in Texas. My wife called me constantly and had a lot of anxiety and depression due to the separation. It was only supposed to be 3 months. After a month in, I got a call from my neighbor back home saying she had to call 911 on my wife because my wife tried to kill herself. I literally went UA (left the military without being excused). The military wasn’t too happy with it. But I was going crazy at that point and didn’t care. When I got home, my wife was acting very strange. Very insecure. Always checking up on me. I recommended she should stay with her parents to kinda clear her head, and we could try to take things slow and overcome her most recent suicide attempt. Her parents saw we were falling apart, so they sent us to Vegas and paid for everything. They did this as a sort of ‘getaway’ and to help ‘rekindle the flame that was lost.’
While in Vegas, I got a call from my parents saying they wanted to talk to me and to swing by their place on my way home. I asked what was up, but they didn’t want to talk about it over the phone. Meanwhile, in Vegas, my wife and I got matching tattoos, our initials on our ring finger. I thought it would help make her feel more secure and resolve her lack of trust for me if I did this to show her how much I loved her. Our Vegas trip ends all happy and well, as I think we’re going to be fine. I swing by my parents’ place as requested with my wife. My parents, very calmly in front of me, told my wife they knew she was having an affair with another guy. She tried denying it before they could finish talking. They calmly told her they knew for a fact and to please not lie. She again tried denying it. I remember that moment very well. It was as if I was under water and everything was happening very slow. Time just sorta slowed down. I cut her off from talking and told her if she came clean, I would try to work it out. But if she lied and what they were saying was, in fact, true, we were over. She admitted to cheating on me.
She met a guy on Craigslist after only a week I was away for training. They met up in a Walmart parking lot on her work lunch break and did the dirty in his car. My wife went back to work and just couldn’t keep the latest escapade to herself, so she gossiped with her closest friend at work. My wife worked for my brother’s law firm. Eventually he had to lay someone off and it was the coworker my wife told that was getting the boot. My brother called in the coworker and told her she was being laid off. The coworker threw my wife under the bus to save herself from being fired. My brother called my parents because he didn’t have the heart to tell me himself. And that’s when I got the call from my parents while in Vegas.
I gave up my dream job of being a Navy corpsman for a cheater, got a tattoo on my ring finger of the initials of a cheater, and my grandfather died on my birthday the day before I found out she was cheating on me.
My life was pretty miserable for a moment or two.
Tattoo was removed through laser treatment. Very expensive and painful. I still have a scar, though.”
Most Awkward Lunch Dates
“I was 22 and my girlfriend lived about an hour away from me (North Seattle). On a Saturday afternoon, she asked if I’d be around later that day. I sent her a text back saying that I wasn’t sure but I wouldn’t be around that evening. I ended up having some free time, so I went into Seattle to do some shopping and catch lunch with some friends. On the way home, I stopped into a bar my girl and I frequented quite a bit. I walk in to see my girlfriend and her ex (who famously broke her wrist and a bunch of her musical equipment after a fight at a concert she helped put on) having dinner and snuggled up to each other in a booth. Their expressions said everything.
What’s a 22-year-old boy to do when he catches his girl on a date with her ex? I walked up with a fake grin, said ‘Hey guys! I didn’t think I’d get to run into you two today!’ gave my [ex]girlfriend a long, open-mouthed, tongue-infused kiss-hug, and sat down. The awkwardness was palpable. Her ex didn’t speak for a good twenty minutes, until I got up and left. The shock in her eyes was almost precious. It was obvious what was happening. I could have caused a scene, screaming and foaming, throwing punches, but why would I? I just wanted to make a point. Sitting there, watching them wait for something horrible was more than enough satisfaction. After that nice, frightened silence, I turned to them both and told them to enjoy themselves because I was done with whatever farce they had.
Later, I found out from mutual friends that her ex only ever showed interest in her when she started seeing someone. Then he slipped into, ‘Now that we’ve moved on, let’s be friends’ mode; then he’d slip back into her.
I realized in that encounter how very little messing around on your girl/boyfriend has to do with one’s significant other. It does have everything to do with how weak and destructive the person cheating is. Until I showed up at the same random place as my girlfriend that day, she would have never factored me into what she was doing with her ex. Since then, I’ve seen the same kind of scenario unfold with some many people. For the rest of this post, please remember the more brazen the act of cheating, the more shallow and destructive are the people involved.”
Family Drama Always Takes The Cake
“Found out my wife was cheating on me with my brother-in-law (my sister’s husband – I have 5 sisters, this will be relevant later). I found out about it from one of my sisters’ husband. They had known about it for between 4-8 weeks and couldn’t handle the guilt of keeping it from me anymore. As the fallout began, I piece together most of the story which was that my wife and brother-in-law had carried on an affair for about 4-6 months, sometime after the miscarriage of our first child. They kept it a secret for about 4 years.
Eventually my brother-in-law cracked and told my sister (the other cheated-on spouse). She, for some reason, immediately circles the surrounding wagons philandering husband and proceeds to tell 3 of the other 4 sisters in my family about it in May 2014 in an attempt to paint my wife as the bad guy (and she was) and swears them all to secrecy. She claims it was because she needed their support as she processed her feelings. Uh huh. Then sister #5 and her husband find out about it in September-October 2014 (I still know nothing) because my brother-in-law spilled the beans to them. They all sit on it for weeks. Then, the cheated-on sister decides that she’s going to tell my 89 year-old grandpa, and parents before she confronts my wife about it. Literally 2 days later (and the day that my sister was going to confront my wife about this), my grandpa kinda randomly dies in the last week of November 2014.
So, all 6 of us kids (me plus five sisters), and my sisters’ respective spouses all travel to the wake/funeral. By coincidence, I happen to sit directly in front of my rude brother-in-law. There’s crying, there’s hugging, there’s ‘I’m sorry for your loss, brother’ from this guy. Everyone else knows what’s going on, they know I don’t know, and they can’t believe they’re seeing this guy do this to my face. Where it gets scary for them is they all know I conceal carry and apparently the family thought I would just shoot him if/when I found out (I wouldn’t have, but I guess I can’t blame them for being concerned). So my dad reads everyone the riot act before I show up and tells them that this is absolutely not going to come out during the funeral. So we get through the funeral and the next few days spent at my parents house are just awkward. Every time I walk into a room, the mood noticeably darkens. My sisters stop talking and just stare at me, it was so weird I finally ended up leaving early, still confused as ever about what was happening.
Drive the few hours back home. Tell my wife all about it. she plays dumb. THEN she tells me that she’s pregnant (with #3). A few days later, in December, as I’m buying my wife’s Christmas presents, I get a cryptic text message from sister #5’s husband tipping me off. It wasn’t much but it was enough info for me to start my own little investigation and start wringing information from people.”
From Cop To Registered Offender
“Seven months after my ex and I got together, he got accepted into the Memphis Police Department. It was a very difficult thing for both of us to go through. I was pregnant, and he was making good money, so he told me I could stay at home and just focus on being fat and cleaning. Which, of course, I had no problem with. Well, he graduates the academy and became a police officer in November 2010. Our daughter was born in January 2011, we moved into an awesome apartment, and I got a day job. Well, one day my friend Sophie told me that she had seen my ex at Starbucks flirting with some girl, and the girl says ‘Baby, when are you going to take me home?’ I immediately began going through phone records, emails, everything. Once I had enough evidence, I confronted him, and he confirmed that this girl was only a friend. Well, I called the girl and got the full story. He told her that when I gave birth, I fled the hospital, and he nor my daughter had seen me since. I moved out, broke his Xbox, and bleached his clothes. I snapped and it’s something I’m not proud of.
Three days after I move out, I forgive this ignorant prick ‘for the sake of our daughter’ and move back. I still didn’t trust him though, so I was constantly checking texts and emails. April 2010, I find an email from Sophie’s daughter (same woman who told me something was up previously) in his inbox and it’s a picture of her lady parts. This girl is 15, so I immediately tell her mother, and we confront the situation. Turns out, my 25-year-old police officer ex was sending lewd pictures back and forth to a 15-year-old girl. He got arrested DURING roll call, lost his job, and now he’s a registered offender.”
Caught In The Act
“I had a job delivering the local paper with my neighbor. We lived in an apartment complex that was in the shape of a hollow square with a courtyard in the middle. She lived with her husband and two children on the bottom on the corner of the building and I lived with my husband and two very small kids in the apartment directly above her. Across the courtyard on the bottom floor was a woman my husband had been spending a lot of time with after her husband left for a fishing job in Alaska for the season. He swore it was just a friendship.
One night my neighbor and I are out doing our route at about 2 am when we needed to stop by the apartments. We didn’t normally stop at home so no one would have expected us for another couple of hours. We pull in and both head for our apartments. When I entered mine I quickly realized that my two small children (both under 5) were asleep and alone in the apartment. I figured my husband was downstairs hanging with the neighbor’s husband as he regularly does. I go downstairs and ask if he’s in there. When they said no, I knew. I turned around 180 and my eyes zeroed in on her apartment.
I stormed over there and banged on her door. No response. I banged and banged, then I went around the back and banged on what I knew was her bedroom window. I was yelling the whole time. I went back to the front and continued to bang on the front door until finally she opened it. I could see all the way through the apartment and into her bedroom where I saw my husband pulling up his pants, they both clearly had just woken up. I was more upset at the time that the kids were home alone while he was asleep in some other trashy girl’s bed, that’s what I screamed at him about. Told him to get back to our children. I then turned around, got my neighbor and went back to work. He denied they did anything, just ‘fell asleep’ while hanging out. ‘Whatever bunghole!'”
Positive Test Results
“Positive test for chlamydia.
I found this out just days after she dumped me (I was tested before the breakup). I was faithful to her, and two doctors confirmed that there’s only one way to get chlamydia so in this case, cheating was biologically obvious. She said she was clean prior to meeting me and I realize she could have had it for years with no symptoms; but I’d been having unprotected relations with her long enough where the doctor said I’d have started showing symptoms earlier if I’d have contracted it earlier.
She DID report to me about a month later (she was in such denial that she didn’t even get tested right away) that her results were negative and I ‘should contact whoever I was sleeping with.’ Ugh, LIES. To accentuate the level of denial I was dealing with: my ex is a licensed nurse.
I’m still pretty bitter about it but I shouldn’t be; the disease is gone, and it’s kinda funny how science so simply confirmed gut feelings that I’d had for months.”
Clean Up Better Next Time
“The girl I was dating for 8 years went out on a ‘girl’s night out’ with her friends. She called me at 2am to come pick her up from the bar. The whole time, getting handsy/flirting with me, telling me she can’t wait to get home, etc. Get her home, start stripping down, to find some other dude’s baby chowder dripping out of her and down her thigh. She said she thought she cleaned that up. Haven’t seen her since.”
Cousin? I Think Not
“High school girlfriend. I live in Ohio, she lived in Pennsylvania with her mom but her dad and best friend, who I was also friends with (which is how we met) lived in the same neighborhood as me, so we were doing the long distance relationship thing for a few years.
Anyways, her aunt passes, I take time off work and drive myself and her cousin to PA to attend the funeral. I arrive at her aunt’s house where all of her family from out of town were meeting and staying for the funeral the next day. There is a guy there that she is hugging when I walk in the door, but she tells me not to worry, he’s a cousin she hasn’t seen in a couple years. No worries, I understand I tell her.
Fast forward to the next day, at the funeral home. She is being distant and basically ignoring and avoiding me but every time I find her, she is with this guy that is supposedly her ‘cousin.’ I chalk it up to her being upset, she was close to her aunt.
At one point, a cousin that I’d taken with me from Ohio asked me to go out to my car and grab the cell phone he left in the glove box. And there I find her, giving her ‘cousin’ head in the back eat of my car. So, not only did she cheat on me, she cheated on me with someone she told me was her cousin, in the parking lot of the funeral home, at her aunt’s funeral, in the back seat of my car.”
Dedicated To His Wife?
“I was in a relationship with this older guy for almost two years. It was on and off–we were exclusive, then suddenly he’d decide he didn’t want that, back and forth. He never had any real reason, just he felt he wasn’t ready for a big commitment. We always hung out at my place because he worked in my city but lived over an hour away. Even though he had a long drive, he rarely spent the night, and I didn’t raise the issue because I didn’t want to push him further away. I could never figure out why he was so distant and non-committal since he seemed to really enjoy my company. I was young and stupid.
He and I are both writers and I helped him edit his debut novel. After it was published, he sent me a link to it on Amazon because I got an acknowledgment that could be viewed in the book preview. At this point, we were exclusive.
There was an about the author section that read: Mr. McPrickface lives in Springfield, Illinois with his wife Jane and their two Jack Russell terriers.”
Dinner For One
“I surprised my wife with dinner on the back patio – salad, main course, beverages, candles, and moody music. She came in the door and saw the setup, but I could tell something was off. She stood for about 30 seconds in silence, then just blurted out, ‘I’ve been seeing [our daughter’s gymnastics instructor] for the last month. I don’t want to be married anymore.’
This was absolutely unexpected. We occasionally fought like any other couple, but no screaming matches, and we always resolved our issues within a few days. If you had asked me about my relationship, I would have said it was the strongest of all our friends.
She admitted as much. She said, ‘I realize from your point of view this is like moving from A to Z, but it’s not. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time but I never told you.'”
Xbox Hides No Secrets
“My ex and I were in a long-distance relationship, but did a lot of Skype dates and games over the Xbox 360. One night I was having trouble with my game, so he offered to log into my gamer tag to do the fight for me. I guess he wasn’t thinking, and he gave me his gamer tag, so I could watch the fight and see how he did it with my chosen character. Only for me to get distracted by him getting a message from someone. You know how it is on the 360 it shows you part of the message…well I see a ton of messages from a few ‘chicks’ along the lines of ‘I love you too! Had fun spending time with you last night etc. We should totally Skype again, that was hot!’ Yeah…I asked him about it after we had switch back, and he got mad at me for snooping. And tried to play it off that the messages were old from before we started dating. Um, the 360 only holds messages up to 30 days and after that it’s deleted. He and I have been going out for 6 months. I also pointed out that one of the recent messages was just from 10 minutes ago. He flipped the script, saying I broke his trust by snooping through his messages. We ended up breaking up. But not before I logged back into his gamer tag on my PC and send a mass message to all his friends about him having multiple girlfriends. And gave the names of the chicks, etc.”