The worst part of any relationship is usually how it ends, but it's even worse if there is cheating involved. These people share the sad and frustrating times they caught their partner in the act of infidelity.
Broken Fingers And Broken Marriages
“I thought my wife of eight years was cheating. She had joined a tennis club and would leave every Wednesday night to go play. Said she was meeting female friends for it. We had one child, and someone had to stay, so for the most part I let her have this time.
I became increasingly disturbed that she might be cheating, just a nagging doubt. I asked a friend about it – ‘in behalf of someone else’ and he gave me the name of a counselor. This guy was good and gave me ten questions to ask my wife, and how and when to ask them, and to do it in the order they were listed. Not use them as a questionnaire, they required a little setup. Each one had ‘textbook; guilty answers, and ‘textbook’ innocent answers. It said to accept only her first answer, and not to ever try the question again. Interesting rules, but I decided to play. If she was cheating, it was a big mind game already.
We were in a quiet moment, and I asked the first question. Silence. The instruction said to expect silence, but to count the seconds so as not to be tempted to interrupt, with ‘did you hear me?’ or other. Let the silence hang, and it did, for 27 seconds. Try sometimes to watch a clock for 27 seconds to get a feel for how long it is when asking a question like this. She answered, ‘Why are you asking?’
Which was a textbook guilty answer. Instructions say I can use one of the follow-up questions, but not answer any of hers. If she presses, simply say – It was a simple yes or no question. Yes or no?
It also said that if she asks any questions like this in return, answer in the negative, without qualifying it. Not ‘No, because blah blah’ because the conversation will derail from there. Once you say no, ask her the very same question. Anything other than a yes or no is still your answer.
Bottom line, she failed every question, and I recorded every answer. I took notes on them and discussed them with the counselor. All of them? He was stunned. I still had doubts. He gave me another set. She failed all those, too.
She was failing with the textbook failure responses, not even remotely creative about it.
The following Wednesday I took our son out – after she left – and we went to the tennis club together. I told him we were going to watch Mom play. He said he didn’t want to go, so I left him at his grandmother’s house. By the time I got to the club, they were in full force playing on five courts, with some members sitting in theater-style bleachers. My wife came off the court and sat with her female friends. Moments later, all of them fluttered off to the courts and left her alone. A tall man came off the courts, walked to where she was seated, and bent to kiss her, and she reciprocated. Now I’m glad I don’t have our son with me. That’s when I noticed, however, that she wasn’t wearing her rings. She was attending this tennis club and presenting herself as single.
She and the lover went onto the court and played against each other. I went down to her bags, looked through and found the rings in a Ziploc baggie, and took them with me. By this time I had the presence of mind to turn on my phone’s camera and get video. They came off the court and kissed, sat down and kissed, and were generally affectionate toward one another. They kissed passionately before they parted. I thought I would wretch right there in my chair.
I sat in the shadows of the seating (this was all at night) and waited for them to leave. She left first. He left second, and I followed him out. I followed his car at a distance until he pulled into his driveway, and took note of the address. By the time I was at the end of the street, I realized I could easily find out who he was. In our state, the property appraisals are public and online. When I got home I looked up the address and learned his name and that he was married.
My wife told me she’d been cleaning her rings at her mom’s house and must have left them there. She was frantic about them all week. She yelled at her mom for losing them. I think her mom was covering for her, or she was talking on a phone with nobody on the other end.
The following Wednesday evening I waited for her to leave before getting in the car and going to the lover’s house. I had the phone ready to go. When his wife opened the door, I hit play. The blood ran from her face. I mean, I thought she was going to faint flat. She called to what sounded like her daughter and closed the door behind her.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. Okay, let’s go.
We went to the tennis club and sat in the back. My wife and her husband were on the court. This woman was teary-eyed, and I wasn’t sure at all about her state of mind.
When the two came off the court, they shared their affections and sat together, all lovey-dovey. This guy’s wife whimpered. Her stomach was heaving. I had the same feelings, but not so intense. She patted me on the elbow and trotted down to the lovers. I didn’t want to reveal myself so I entered the row behind them while his wife entered the row in front of them. They were kissing and in another world.
When they pulled apart, he turned and the first thing he sees is his wife staring back at him. He said ‘What are you doing here?’ And she says, ‘I was about to ask you the same question, but it’s answered.’
She jumps over the seatback, grabs his tennis racket, and strikes him across the face, He snaps backward in the chair. I think she’s going to hit him again, but she doesn’t she hits my wife. At this point, instinct betrayed me. I had the option to stop the carnage, but I didn’t. I have many regrets about it. Instead, I grabbed the lover around the neck and held him in the chair. He was skinny and I’m a little more muscular, and the awkward position kept him from escaping. I lost count of how many times she hit my wife before my wife stumbled away screaming, guarding herself while other members grabbed the other wife and held her back.
I ran out and drove home, thinking she was going there. She called me from the emergency room before I got home, so I went straight there. She was a bloody mess. She said she’d been attacked by a mugger and -say what? She didn’t know I was sitting behind them and holding her lover down?
I told her I was glad she was safe, the doctors fixed her up. The scar on her scalp but nothing permanently visible. Three fingers were broken on each hand defending herself.
I finally got her to the house around midnight. I wasn’t sure if she would file charges on me – how was I supposed to know this woman would go full contact on her? Still, it was only a matter of time before all this came out.
To start the conversation, I held out the Ziploc bag with her rings. She said she’d been looking for them. Where did I find them? I told her. Her face went blank for a moment as she tried to understand. Then I told her the rest. She looked away from me, numb.
‘Is that why you didn’t stop her?’
I told her – frankly I wished it was me doing the hitting. Glad she was doing the dirty work for me. I shouldn’t have said that. But it was what I was feeling at the time. Each time that woman hit my wife I wanted her to hit her again. And again. Just nuts.
Within three months we were divorced. The other man’s wife divorced him and took the lion’s share of everything they had. During this time, she called me and apologized for her behavior. Something had clicked in her head, and she lost it. She thought she had it together, but seeing them kissing just made her flip.”
Broken Fingers And Broken Marriages, Part II
“When the two came off the court, they shared their affections and sat together, all lovey-dovey. This guy’s wife whimpered. Her stomach was heaving. I had the same feelings, but not so intense. She patted me on the elbow and trotted down to the lovers. I didn’t want to reveal myself so I entered the row behind them while his wife entered the row in front of them. They were kissing and in another world.
When they pulled apart, he turned and the first thing he sees is his wife staring back at him. He said ‘What are you doing here?’ And she says, ‘I was about to ask you the same question, but it’s answered.’
She jumps over the seatback, grabs his tennis racket, and strikes him across the face, He snaps backward in the chair. I think she’s going to hit him again, but she doesn’t she hits my wife. At this point, instinct betrayed me. I had the option to stop the carnage, but I didn’t. I have many regrets about it. Instead, I grabbed the lover around the neck and held him in the chair. He was skinny and I’m a little more muscular, and the awkward position kept him from escaping. I lost count of how many times she hit my wife before my wife stumbled away screaming, guarding herself while other members grabbed the other wife and held her back.
I ran out and drove home, thinking she was going there. She called me from the emergency room before I got home, so I went straight there. She was a bloody mess. She said she’d been attacked by a mugger and -say what? She didn’t know I was sitting behind them and holding her lover down?
I told her I was glad she was safe, the doctors fixed her up. The scar on her scalp but nothing permanently visible. Three fingers were broken on each hand defending herself.
I finally got her to the house around midnight. I wasn’t sure if she would file charges on me – how was I supposed to know this woman would go full contact on her? Still, it was only a matter of time before all this came out.
To start the conversation, I held out the Ziploc bag with her rings. She said she’d been looking for them. Where did I find them? I told her. Her face went blank for a moment as she tried to understand. Then I told her the rest. She looked away from me, numb.
‘Is that why you didn’t stop her?’
I told her – frankly I wished it was me doing the hitting. Glad she was doing the dirty work for me. I shouldn’t have said that. But it was what I was feeling at the time. Each time that woman hit my wife I wanted her to hit her again. And again. Just nuts.
Within three months we were divorced. The other man’s wife divorced him and took the lion’s share of everything they had. During this time, she called me and apologized for her behavior. Something had clicked in her head, and she lost it. She thought she had it together, but seeing them kissing just made her flip.”
“I Hate That Part Of My Life.”
“I hate this moment of my life. This memory haunts me but I never speak of it.
My partner and I lived together in a two-bedroom apartment with our son. We were about 22 and we lived in a ghetto area where across our apartment complex was a hotel where streetwalkers were known to hang around.
One weekend night I asked my partner if it was ok to go out for some drinks with a friend. He said yes. I went.
My partner was a somewhat heavy drinker and he could not handle his intake.
He assumed I was going to be home late since It was Saturday night and I would be drinking.
I spent an hour at the bar and was ready to go home. I was dropped off and as I approached the door I could hear my son crying. I knocked and knocked and finally an older crack head-looking white lady in jeans, and a spaghetti strap shirt on with no bra brushed past me and ran off from my apartment without saying a word.
I was so utterly confused. I went in and my partner was sitting on the couch without saying anything. I asked who she was and what was going on but did not wait for an answer because I could still hear my son screaming and crying. I found him in the room with the lights off and the door closed. He was barely a year old and could not open it himself.
I consoled him and calmed him down then went back to my partner and he was not there anymore. He had left.
I had problems okay so please do not judge. But I got in my car with my son and went to look for him. I saw that woman that had been in my apartment with now some other guy. I asked her what she was doing in my home and how she got there. She said she didn’t know he had a family and that he had just asked for a BJ.
I couldn’t believe it. In my own home. With my son wailing in the other room. I still cannot believe it.
I hate that part of my life.
He said he did not remember a thing. He said he had too much to drink.”
Til Death Do Them Part
“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?”
He Couldn’t Believe Who She Cheated On Him With
“I was 21 and she was 19. We’d been dating for about five years which, to be honest, was about three years too long. After year four we decided to get our own apartment, adopt a dog and a guinea pig and try to force our long crumbling relationship into success.
Now I was more into the social scene at my university at the time. I enjoyed going to parties, binge drinking, staying up late, and smoking recreationally. She was the exact opposite as she was a budding scientist, responsible, studious, and rarely drank or used anything else (she tried pot once). We always justified our terrible relationship with that tired old saying, ‘Opposites attract.’
So one Saturday night I’m getting ready to go out to a party with my friends and she’s getting ready for bed since she was always in bed by 10:30 PM even on weekends. We get into a spat which basically ends in both of us saying something along the lines of, “Well if you don’t like this then you should just be with somebody else!”. It certainly wasn’t the first time we’d ended a fight like that so I honestly thought very little of it. The joke’s on me, I guess.
The party turned out to be low key and I didn’t have more than a bottle or two so I decided to just head home around 1 am. I thought maybe I’d mend fences with my girlfriend and get a decent night’s sleep.
I get to our apartment complex and park my car right beside hers. ‘Whew, glad she didn’t storm off and go somewhere else,’ I said to myself. As I’m walking up to our building I notice that every light in our unit was on. Weird, but ok. When I enter, she’s nowhere to be found even though I’d just seen her car. I’m still not lining things up at this point. I look in the bathroom and see the makeup that I didn’t even know she owned strewn across the sink. I look in the bedroom and see short dresses that I didn’t even know she owned strewn across the bed. Mind you, this girl wore a t-shirt and jeans every single day and the only time I saw her wear makeup was at prom.
So I see all of this and it finally clicks: she’s out with someone. So I call and text and call and text and call and text and call and text…you get the idea. Finally, she texts me this: ‘On my way back. We need to talk.’ That’s when I felt my stomach drop and the blood leave my face. So I rush out to the parking lot waiting for her to be dropped off by some guy. I was racing through my brain trying to think of who it would be. Surely whoever it was, I’d act like a man and rip his throat out! That’s what men do!
So they pull in and I see the guy. It’s her fooling around with her professor who was like at least 30 something. She’d been studying under him for a year or so and honestly he’d flown right under my radar. I mean he was older than us…and already bald…and kinda pathetic. Ugh. I didn’t feel like killing him, I felt like vomiting. I felt like crying. I felt like curling up in a ball and dying. I felt like DRINKING. So through her half-assed apologies, I drank most of a bottle of Jack, punched the side view mirror off of her car, and left (Yeah I drank and drove. That was dumb. Don’t drink and drive, seriously).
So my reaction? I wasn’t even that angry until much much later. Being cheated on is one of those things I always wondered how I’d handle if it ever happened and it was nothing like I imagined. As I said, I was absolutely gutted. I didn’t want to hurt anyone or act all manly because someone who was a big part of my identity for a quarter of my life had just betrayed me. Anger was so far down my list after pain, turmoil, resentment, regret, nausea, rejection, heartbreak and so much more.
I have to write this anonymously. A few months after we broke up, the ex called demanding more money for damages to our apartment. Around $400 worth of damages she had caused that I knew for a fact were paid off because I’d just written that check myself. I was angry by this point and just went off on her about how terrible of a person she was and how I wouldn’t give her a cent and how I thought I knew that everyone could see her for what she really was. She responded by telling me that if I ever talked about her like that again, to anyone, she’d accuse me of harassment. So I shut up and gave her the money.
Fun fact: She married that professor that she cheated on me with. Good for her.”
A Very Strange Way To Deal With A Breakup
“On some Saturday morning in March of 2005, just a couple of hours after I caught my ex-wife cheating on me, I got a visit from the police.
The guy she was with heard that I’d found out about them and called the police, concerned for her safety. She wasn’t returning either of our calls.
The police checked the house and my text messages to make sure she wasn’t in the house with me and that I hadn’t threatened her safety. I’m not a violent person, but that day, I had taken down all the paintings in our house and cut them to shreds in the garage. One of the cops stopped on the way out and turned to me to say, “I know what you’re going through and I can see the kind of person you are. You are legally within your right to do what you want in this house so long as it doesn’t interfere with your neighbors’ well-being. But if you do tear this house apart, I can tell you’re the kind of guy that’s going to feel bad for it later. She’s not worth that.” Then he just walked out.
His words had all but robbed me of my anger. I was ticked off because I wanted to continue to be angry at her, but he was right.
As emotional stability began to return, it hit me. I could still dismantle the house without damaging it. So, I grabbed my tools and in the subsequent ten hours, I dismantled everything in the house that could be unscrewed. I spared nothing.
The kitchen appliances, all the furniture in the study, the three bedrooms, the office, the dining room, den, and finally, the living room. I was very careful not to damage anything. I neatly and gently stacked the parts and pieces of everything I dismantled.
I then put all the hardware in a shoebox and took them with me.”
Caught In The Act!
“This one evening I arrived in his town (where my boyfriend lived) with a team of four other workmates of mine, we had come for a media conference for some reason I didn’t tell him. I checked into my hotel room as did the others who later suggested we go check out a nearby club but I for my part couldn’t bring myself to come along.
Word for the wise, it was not a wise idea to drop in on my boyfriend without calling first! I showed up to his room and knocked. Nothing but silence for 30 seconds. I knocked again and still nothing until I heard some muffled voices inside. I stood there for five minutes contemplating what to do next. I could tell that there were multiple people in the room. That’s when he finally opened the door and said he wasn’t going to open it. That’s when I started to get mad. If he wasn’t gonna open that door then I was gonna bust it down. My adrenaline was running high but that’s exactly what I did next.
The first thing I saw was the girl on the bed. I had a flash of a thousand things to do to her I didn’t need a committee on this one I had to act first. When she tried to leap making for the exit I pushed her right back onto the bed she hit herself so hard against the wall she lay still, she moved and I knew right then I hadn’t committed murder I thought to myself well the party can still go on some more I pounced onto the bed after she did a few more jolts smashing her head on the wall by now my boyfriend was scared he started restraining me or had he recovered from the shock and started acting in charge.
I flared when he held me back enough to let the girl flee out of the house with just a towel barely wrapping her body. Now it was between me and him. I was so raged because here he was protecting her from me! What a coward. He held his head in his hands while I tore through the room snatching up that girl’s clothes.
I threw her stuff off the street a good blocks away. Ticked off and on the street, I decided to join my work colleagues at the bar. I knew I deserved a shot that night but the sauce was definitely off the table for me. Who knows what I would do if I hit the bottle.
I walked straight to my table and asked the tallest, darkest, most handsome guy in the club to dance. I felt bad I was going to use him to not appear sad and sulking while acting like I hadn’t seen my boyfriend.
My BF had followed me to the bar and couldn’t contain himself at the sight of me and the handsome stranger. He shamelessly sent over a waiter to tell me that he wanted to talk to me. But I was not having it. This buffoon was too arrogant to even apologize but I decided to give him a piece of my mind.
‘I admire your boldness getting caught a few hours ago, coming here like nothing happened to appear like the perfect boyfriend who wants to take his girlfriend back home away from a preying man when in essence you are reeking of that last girl and I doubt you even cared to take a shower first,’ I sneered.
‘Please forgive me,’ he pleaded, ‘That man you’re with knows me and actually hates me. He’ll do anything to sleep with you just to get back at me.’
‘Small world! I thought. It was just my luck.
Me: ‘Well now there’s two of us who hate you. Why don’t we talk tomorrow when I’m reeking of him too?’
Four years later I am happier than ever. The hilarious thing though is that bozo still calls me from time to time. Do people never really move on? Or they just think life revolves around them?”
From Cheaters To Lifelong Friends
“I Began a relationship when I was finishing my bachelor’s. He always seemed very charming, kind, and funny. After a while, he joined the army and his life changed a lot.
He had some sort of status in there, He was recognized for his work and everybody respected him for his ethics and all the good things he did at that time. But when he was with me, he treated me like I was inferior, that I should do ‘something with my life.’ He made me feel worthless.
I went to his house one day to watch a movie, we fell asleep and he woke up a little bit scared because of a bad dream. He went to the bathroom and all of the sudden, I felt an impulse of opening his night table. I found a few pink Chapsticks, headbands, lots of Trojans, and some makeup. I never said anything but I needed to find out more.
I kinda became nuts. I felt betrayed, he disrespected me and our relationship, I gave him my best, I tried to become his family, his friend, his everything. Later I found out he cheated on me the entire time we were together. I finished everything, I thought that I was ugly, that I couldn’t find anyone else, that I was nothing. My self-esteem was destroyed.
When I ended my relationship, my ex kept calling me but I always rejected him. After two years I had to face a tumor in my brain and I needed surgery. My ex-boyfriend called me all of the sudden; we finally met again and his life was upside down. He quit the Army, he lost his status, he was alone and his friends were not around anymore. For the first time he asked for forgiveness, he said “I’m sorry for all your tears and all the bad things that I did to you.
After that, I felt released, I felt free, I didn’t have that bargain in my heart. We became friends, the best ones, he held my hand after surgery, he was with me every single day, he brought movies and candies when I was in recovery, he helped my mom putting my socks, and sometimes made me laugh so hard that I thought I was going to bleed.
A few years ago, he encouraged me to come to the United States (I’m from Colombia) And my tourist visa finally was granted. On my first trip, I found love with a friend from school that was already living in Florida. My ex helped me to find the love of my life.
With all this, I learned that if you still hate and feel hurt, you won’t be able to be happy again. Release all the resentment and let go.”