Why do these men have to be such trash?! These men took a fantastic relationship for granted and did the absolute most to shred it apart. Whether it was lying about an entire second life or transforming into downright predators, these women uncovered the monsters that their spouses really were. What happened next? There's only one way to find out. Content has been edited for clarity.
Losing Himself At Sea
“We got married when I was too young and he was a few years older. He was shipping off to sea, and he helped me to escape a bad home life. When he returned from his deployment, he wasn’t the same person anymore. After about six months, he gained weight on purpose to fail all of his physicals, so he would get kicked out of the Navy. Fast-forward a year, and I am working full-time while he is sitting at home all day, watching anime and drinking, when he was supposed to be applying for jobs. I was applying to a university when my laptop died, so I asked if I could use his laptop to finish my application. While I was working on it, a message popped up on his social media account. It was a topless picture of his ex that she had sent to him. I was shocked and opened it, finding out that they had been dating for a very long time. This actually began while he was at sea in the Navy. During that time, he would always tell me he was too busy to email me back, but had all the time in the world for her!
I confronted him, but he only made a bunch of pitiful excuses. I got my friends to come to my house that day and kick him out while I went to work. Over the next few years, he stalked me. He made numerous social media posts about how I was a coward. He sent me emails and called me from blocked numbers to tell me that ‘A restraining order is just a piece of paper,’ and, ‘Our vows before God made me his property’ and awful stuff like that. Then he bought a weapon, and he started telling our friends that, ‘If he can’t have her, no one can.’
My solution was to talk to my friends and tell everyone conflicting information about where I was going, and then I moved to a different state. I deleted all of my personal social media accounts and lived in fear for years, watching how he would make lots of memes online about how dutiful of a husband he was. We were in a sticky situation. He racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt. After I kicked him out, he got his car repossessed, and he fell into even more debt. If we got divorced, the debts would still technically be mine, since he had my name on his credit accounts without my knowledge. Filing for a divorce would be a long and expensive process, so it was easier to just ignore him until I met someone else. The only way to get a divorce was to hope that he would agree to it, because I could not afford a lawyer. By the time I filed for one, he was willing to sign off on a no-contest divorce, where he kept his debts and I kept mind. It took eight years for me to finally get an official divorce from him. The whole thing definitely scarred my idea of relationships, but I know my worth now, and I know what sort of red flags to be on the lookout for.”
The Woman All Come Forward
“After I broke up with him, a bunch of women came to me, saying that he had been cheating on me. It was enough for me to realize that the entire time we were together, he was probably messing around with someone else. This was something I had suspicions about, but could never confront him, as I never had proof. The last straw was this girl randomly coming into his life (probably via a dating app), and she would flirt with him online, over every social media post. He would flirt back most of the time. Me, thinking he’s just making himself look sleazy, tried also flirting with him. He deleted my comments. Every single time I commented on his post, within seconds, he deleted it. I confronted him about it, and he said he deleted mine because they weren’t funny enough. Apparently this other girl was a real riot. I friended this girl online. She accepted, and then he immediately blows up on me. I find out that he was also being just as flirty with her as she was with him. He blows it off as just joking around, and then he changes his story and says that he’s flirting with her to get free stuff out of her, and then he changes it again and says he’s doing it to keep creepy guys from hitting on her online. I did not buy any of it, but he promised that he wouldn’t talk to her ever again because I threatened to dump his butt.
A couple weeks later, he blocked me on one of his alternate accounts. I asked him why, and he claimed that he got hacked, so he blocked everyone. Sure. I let it go until we had a movie night. I saw that girl’s name pop up as a notification on his phone. He quickly grabbed his phone and turned it upside down, and I pretended not to see it for the rest of the night. The next day, I confronted him. He lies a bunch and accuses me of cheating because I’ve been taking my birth control even though we haven’t been hooking up. He also thought I came home late too many times, even though I’m an EMT, and I explained to him before I became one that I probably will never be home on time. I steer the conversation back on him. He never admits to anything, he just kicks me out of the apartment that I pay the bills for. When I come back very shortly after to gather my stuff up, he has that girl with him and they spend the entire time making mean comments under their breath about me, along with my brother and dad who came to help. A week later, a friend told me that he changed his relationship status on Facebook with her even though he refused to with me, because he didn’t think everyone needed to know our business.”
Cruel And Unusual Punishment
“My ex-husband and I were sitting down, when I hear a knock on the door which he answers. A woman I’ve never met or seen is at the door, sees me, and starts crying. I’m immediately feeling like someone had knocked the air out of me, while simultaneously feeling upset. It’s as if my body knew what was going on before my brain could catch up. My infant son was in my arms, and I’m just sitting there telling myself to stay calm. I asked what was going on, and he told me an old high school friend was in trouble. I thought okay, maybe I’m overreacting. But the two of them talk on the porch for nearly an hour. I go and look, and I can see him kissing her forehead and rubbing her back. I was devastated. This must have been the neighbor girl he mentioned having feelings for growing up, but nothing ever happened with her. He had always pined for her, but she was never available, until now I guess. He comes inside to tell me that this woman was moving into our two-bedroom home. I asked him why he didn’t discuss this with me and why he was kissing her. He told me that her husband had cheated on her and beat her up, and she had nowhere else to go. Yeah right, she lived in the next town over and could probably reach out to her parents!
I wasn’t okay with this, but my then husband told me I was being selfish and insecure, and he made me feel like garbage. He moved our son into our bedroom, found a job for his lady friend where he worked, and made it so they both worked the same shift. She would never sleep in the room that he furnished for her, never showered in our home, and she only showed up when it was time for them to go to work. This man got me to pack her lunches for work. Eventually, she left a note on her bed one day, saying that she couldn’t stay with us and didn’t want to give us a reason for it. She would be moving in with her mom. I questioned my ex-husband about it, and he blew up at me, telling me that he loved her, will always lover her, and that I needed to accept that. He told me that I wasn’t half the woman that she was. If I pressed any further, he would put me on the street and keep our son. This terrified me, so I didn’t push things. Later that evening, he came home with a broken hand and lacerations, because he was so upset that he punched some machinery at work.
For the next six years, he would cheat on me constantly, openly brag about women who wanted to sleep with him, and he eventually got into another relationship with a coworker at his job. I ended up fleeing the relationship with my son, and I am now remarried and so much happier. I was with my now-husband for seven years before we eventually got engaged. my ex-husband married his mistress two months after our divorce was finalized, and honestly, they deserve each other.”
Always Watching Her
“I never actually caught him, because I didn’t even try. I just got it some day. And in retrospect, he left a ton of clues. First there were the ads for dating sites that kept popping up on the tablet he had given me. Then he insisted on splitting my computer’s hard drive into two separate partitions, for absolutely no reason other than to ‘give each one of us their own space’. Then he started stalking me, even though he was the one who had the time and means to cheat, especially as he has to travel for work two to three days a week, while I was stuck at home with one, then two toddlers, when I wasn’t at work. He stalked me by following my every movement first via the ‘find your phone’ app he had installed on my phone, then by putting a tracking chip on my keychain.
Life with him was frightening, so I said I needed some space and time by myself. A friend who was out of the country for four months offered their place for me to stay at. We would share custody of the kids. On my second weekend without the kids, I went out with a group of friends (plenty of witnesses) and who did we stumble upon, sucking faces with a complete stranger? Yup, it was him.
My reaction was to laugh hysterically, because he had been whining and harassing me so much about my supposed infidelities and how they made me an awful mother, and there he was, having dumped the kids at his parents’ place and sleeping around after less than a month. My friends were so scared I might cry all night that they bought me plenty of drinks. I ended up absolutely wasted for the first time ever and had the time of my life! The separation became definitive, and we’re now divorced. After bragging about all his Tinder dates, he bragged to me about ‘settling’ for a single mom because of her high-end job. Good riddance!”
Dropping The Emotion Bomb
“It was an ordinary Friday. My husband kissed me goodbye and went off to work. I was cleaning the house for some company who was coming to stay for the weekend. The doorbell rang suddenly. It was a man who introduced himself as the husband of a woman that my husband worked with. He was here to tell me that my husband and his wife were having an affair. He had busted them about six months prior, and he told his wife that she needed to end the affair. He actually believed that she did end it, for about three months. Then the illicit couple started things up again. When he found out that they were at it again, he called my husband. On the phone, he told my husband to leave his wife alone, or else he would come to our house and tell me everything that was happening. Apparently, my husband thought that the man was bluffing.
I was literally the last to know. My husband never came home that day, or ever again. I got an Airbnb and a lawyer. We had been together for twenty-four years up to that point. I still hurt. What really twisted the knife was that my husband had a best friend who was in this exact same situation. Except this friend was man enough to tell his wife about his own affair. My husband was so unbelievably self-centered and cruel that he let this complete stranger drop this bomb on me. To this day, my ex-husband wonders why we can’t still be friends?”
His Entire Second Life Unravels
“Okay, get ready for this one. Hanging out with my boyfriend one day, I saw a message thread while he was on his computer, where he gave his Snapchat to a group of friends. I noticed it was not the same Snapchat I had for him. I didn’t say anything at that moment, but I remembered the username. Since seeing it, I had a terrible feeling. Later, I decided to try to log in to his account, and voilà, the same password he used for everything worked. I immediately saw HUNDREDS of chats with different women, multiple unopened messages from just the past few hours, and a ridiculous Snapchat score. I scrolled through the many, many messages and realized they went back for three years. We had been dating for four and a half years. I even found messages and dates from my birthdays and our anniversaries. These were days when he spent the entire day with me and still managed to do this behind my back.
I called him and demanded he come talk to me. He drove over and I got in his car to confront him. He panicked and immediately started apologizing. I was young and livid, took his phone and drove to my best friends house. There, I looked through his phone and found that he had signed up for every dating site available, with messages with multiple women on all of them. He even responded to local online ads asking to hook up. I found a secret email account too and tons of nudes photos of women in there. I’m sure there was more, but by then, I had seen enough. He desperately tried to redeem himself, changed his number, cleared his phone, and got a terrible little flip phone, but you can’t come back from that kind of damage. I had absolutely no idea too. He never did anything sketchy, we rarely fought. I was so in love with him. Turns out, of course, he was just great at hiding everything. I never saw it coming and the weight of it all absolutely crushed me.”
Slowly But Surely Reveals His True Nature
“My now ex-husband casually mentioned that his coworker (a woman) was having marriage difficulties. The info he knew about her marriage was not casual info. This was the kind of stuff you only tell someone you could confide in. This set off my radar. I told him at that point to be careful, because she might be using him as her reason to end her marriage. Maybe a month goes by and he decides to go on day-long road trip just to do his own thing. He sets his alarm to wake early and he showers and shaves. On his way out of the house, he asks me, ‘Do I look okay?’
That day he spent ‘doing his own thing’, I searched and found a key logger that I put on his PC. Two days later, I get the info that he and the coworker were together that day, plus he was telling her about all the nice things he wanted to buy her when they were together. So, I called the coworker’s husband and we chatted. He filed for divorce right away. I, on the other hand, tried to work it out with my husband. Several years later, my now ex-husband starts needing a lot of alone time. He starts staying up later after I go to bed, gets up before me, and works longer hours. Again, I get those concerns that he’s cheating. This time a key logger won’t work because it is his phone I’m worried about. I check the phone calls on the bill, and there are so many calls to this one number. He talked to this person more than he talked to me.
This time I didn’t try to work it out. He had been unemployed for the previous two years, claimed he was looking for a job, and did zero work around the house. I mean, zero. He didn’t want to mow the lawn, but when I said to hire a landscaper to do it, he would begrudgingly do it himself. He denied the affair, but I just said it didn’t matter and I wanted a divorce. I believe he moved in with her as soon as I filed. Good riddance. He’s her problem now. Last I heard from his sister, he still doesn’t work and lives with his wife off of some settlement the wife received. The lawns probably look terrible. That loser even had the audacity to ask my lawyer for alimony. Like no, you loser, you have a degree and once had a career, and it is not my fault that you choose to stop working!”
Unexpected Ally
“Funnily enough, the girl he was cheating on me with actually told me. She messaged me at three in the morning, asking if I was still with my ex and I said yes, he’s asleep next to me, why? She told me what happened, sent me screenshots and I grabbed his phone to confirm. I believed her, but I just wanted to see it all for myself. I left the room and looked through it all, he really didn’t even try to hide it. I went back into our bedroom and threw something at him to wake him up. I confronted him, and of course he played dumb. He said he didn’t know who I was talking about, and blah blah blah. Then I pulled out something that I thought would jog his memory. It was his cellphone. The look on his face was priceless. He knew that it was all over. I screamed at him, calling him every name under the sun, so he ran out of the house. This all happened about a year ago. A few months ago, he tried to reach out and tell me how much he misses me. It was so pathetic. I uprooted my entire life to move completely across the country for him, and this is how all of it ended up.”
Happy Birthday To Me!
“It was the day before my eighteenth birthday. My boyfriend told me he had planned to take me out in his Mazda pickup truck, which we named Sparky, and get some food from a bigger city down south. We would make a whole evening of it. The day before the celebration, I went to school and had a good day. Nothing was off. I came home and waited. Called and no answer. More waiting. I got home from school at three-thirty in the afternoon and it was nearly ten at night before I gave up. I got on the computer and found out through a mutual friend from school that he was at this other friend’s house. We were friends with her, and her home life wasn’t the greatest (her parents were nasty people who treated their children like punching bags), and this mutual friend had been talking of moving out with her little brother in tow. I got in my moms’ car, drove over there and found them doing it on the living room couch.
So I went home and told my mom he wasn’t allowed in the house. I wasn’t accepting his calls, and I was going to bed. I told her what happened, and that I just wanted to deal with it in the morning. The next morning, he came over like nothing had happened and greeted me. He tried to hug me, and I backed away. He asked me what was wrong, and I told him that he had missed my birthday night out because he wanted to get his ding dong wet with another girl! He accused me of stalking him and cheating on him. Apparently, I was being too controlling, and he accused me of gaslighting him. I told him that I was done. He made his bed with her and now he gets to lay in it. Because he liked her better, obviously they needed to be together. I told our mutual friends that we had broken up due to some disagreements, but he still made for a pretty awful birthday.
Everything Changes In An Instant
“We were ordering food and I was playing a game on his phone, when he received a message that said, ‘You make me so happy <3’ He tried to explain it away, but I knew. I saw that was just one of four recent messages from the notification header. I finished ordering food, and I asked for an explanation. He said he had been helping her with drama about her ex and they were just good friends. I took some time to cool off, but I couldn’t drop it, and I came back and asked to see the messages. He said they were too personal. We ate, and I kept trying to let it go, but I told him I needed to see the messages. He refused, so I said he had to explain a lot better. He explained to me that they had been talking about him breaking up with me. So we broke up that night. There was lots of crying, holding each other, and apologizing for things we had both done or not done.
The next morning I moved out, but not before I confirmed that he was cheating. I was only able to move a third of my things out, as it was pretty painful to pack the last seven years of my life into bags, so I came back the next day I had off and got everything else.
Once I had all my belongings out, I sat him down and told him I knew he was cheating. He apologized for emotionally cheating on me, and he noted that he hadn’t considered it cheating at the time. But he’s not that dumb, and it wasn’t just emotional. He still wants me in his life, but I’d rather never see him again. I don’t blame him for the breakup, but I can’t condone how he went about it. He pushed me away, neglected me, ignored me, lied to me, and proved in so many ways how he had no respect for me. I should have known.”
It Needed To Happen For A Reason
“My ex thought he had deleted the texts. I didn’t usually go through his phone at all, but I had this suspicion that he was seeing someone else based on his behavior, his hiding his phone, and by staying late at work. I was actually really hurt, but mostly angry at myself for being stupid enough to date him. I had been warned that he was no good, but I wanted to fix him, and I ended up getting hurt just like all the others. My reaction initially was to merely ask him for an explanation. He tried to cover things up and lied to my face. I immediately told him to get out of my house, and so he did. Which he responded to this by saying some very personal things about me on Twitter. It was a really bad time for me, and I hadn’t done anything wrong. But I picked myself up, got the courage to apply to a job at a larger company a few hours away, and ended up moving to a bigger city. It was there that I met my now husband.
A couple years later (when I was first dating my now husband), my ex messaged me, trying to make amends and said how he missed me. I ignored it, and honestly it felt so good to be able to say no to him. I’m blessed actually, he sprung me forward and helped me more than he knows. Because if that hadn’t had happened, I don’t think I would have applied for that job, would not have left my hometown, and I don’t think I would have met my husband. The universe has a funny way of making things work out, in the end.”
Cheating Got Violent
“I owned a house with my fiancé. I woke up in the middle of the night, and he wasn’t in bed. I went searching. His truck and another vehicle were in the driveway. Then, I went upstairs and found the guest bedroom was locked. After barging my way in, I found him with another woman in bed. That bed happened to be my childhood bed. He forced me out of the room, literally grabbing me by the neck and pushing me out and closing the door back. I knew I couldn’t do anything at that point, so I called his parents, who lived a few blocks away. His dad showed up and another fight broke out. He was pretty terrible, but I stayed because we owned the house together. I tried talking to him about our relationship, and he would always make me feel crazy for even thinking something might not be right. I actually used to have very high self-esteem when we first met, but over the years he really drilled it down. To this day, I still get pretty high anxiety in some situations that never used to affect me. I ended up leaving and staying at his parents’ place until dawn. I had been dating their son for five years at that point, and I was close with his whole family. But his parents never reached out to me after I moved out. It was like I didn’t exist anymore. I moved out that weekend and let the house foreclose.
Nine years later, it’s finally off my credit report, I’m happily married to an amazing man, and we own a beautiful home together. Yeah, it used to really bother me. He had me at the prime of my life, ages 21-26. I spent the rest of my twenties being really messed up and not able to seriously date. But, I got married by 30, and what they say about your thirties being better than your twenties definitely has been the case for me. I ended up talking with the woman he cheated on me with a year later or so, because he cheated on her too. She told me that he convinced her that him and I were just roommates and were living together, just because we owned the home together.”
Imagine The Worst Time To Uncover The Truth
“I was eight months pregnant with our second child at the time, and he wanted to go visit his brother for the weekend. I asked my doctor if it was safe for me to travel, and she said it would be fine. I told my husband I could go, but he said he was really hoping to just have some time with his brother. I understood because a new baby really makes it hard to spend quality time with anyone, but I asked if he could take our older son (who was three at the time), so he could see his grandma and cousins. He said they were planning on drinking and whatnot, and he wasn’t sure it would be a good idea. I agreed and he left for the weekend. After he left, I get a call from his best friend, telling me that he’ll be in town for the weekend and he wanted to meet up with the two of us. It wasn’t weird that he called me because my husband was terrible at answering his own phone. I told him unfortunately my husband was visiting back home, so it was bad timing. His best friend then said he would call me back and hung up very abruptly. Turns out my husband and his friend’s wife had been caught by his friend a few months previously, and he gave them a chance to make it right. I don’t know why. He didn’t tell me, but threatened to do so if they didn’t stop. Well, they didn’t stop, so he told me. I think the worst part was that my husband’s family knew and never once thought to tell me. I never saw any shame or remorse from my ex-husband, I think on their end, the reasons for the situation were that they were meant to be together. It’s lame, I know, but no apology ever. But they both acknowledge my parenting and do their best not to question my decisions. We only argue about pick up and drop off dates now, and not even that much anymore. I’m pretty sure they’ve both already cheated on each other, but they don’t seem to care. It’s just who they are. These people were my family for five years and then nothing. It’s been almost ten years now, and I’m so much happier, but it was definitely an eye-opening experience.
What’s even better is they’re still together to this day. She’s my kid’s stepmother. I know it sounds odd, but I’m glad my kids never had to deal with their dad dating, she’s been there most of their lives. We all tolerate each other now, even get along to an extent. I learned there’s no point to hold a grudge, it just would cause more drama. I guess in the long run, I just didn’t want to deal with the nonsense. I became a mom when my kids were born, but it took him a bit longer to grow up. I’m so happy with my life now that I just saw it as another thing I had to deal with to get to this place. It was a weird epiphany. I wanted to be happy and present for my sons. I definitely went crazy after he left. There were phone calls and screaming, and at one point I told him he’d never see his kids again. At another, he all but told me our second son was a mistake. He took this back quickly, and I could tell he was only trying to hurt me. Once I realized I was angry due to his decisions, something changed. I became a more present mom and a better friend. I cut him off from my emotions and only dealt with him when the kids were involved, and I was ALWAYS civil. I never let my boys see us fight, and because of that we just stopped fighting.
It’s still hard sometimes dealing with him. I actually speak to his wife more, which is odd. I’ve had two great loves since my divorce and am married to one of them. I got lucky, but I think I would have been fine alone too. Finding happiness is hard, but it will happen. Some of the children know, but I think they were given a different story about the situation. She had kids of her own too. My boys don’t know, they were too young and that’s my ex’s decision if he wants to tell them. I don’t speak badly of him in front of them ever, he’s their daddy and that’s the end of it. No one in his family turned against anyone. My ex’s mother still chats with me and even sent a gift for my new baby. It’s weird, but they’re all insanely friendly people, but just sneaky. The friends he made when we lived together are now my friends, but there’s no bad blood. I know it’s weird but it’s all behind us now.