The Film Doesn’t Add Up
“I counted the pictures.
This was in 2000 before everyone had a camera on their phone and you had to get your holiday snaps developed at a photo lab.
She brought home the pictures of her vacation to see her ‘old high school friend’ in Las Vegas, but there was something missing. See, back in the day, the rolls of film were made up of exposures of 12, 24, 36 pics, etc. depending on the film you bought.
I went through the photos and it didn’t add up. Literally. The 24 exposure roll only had 18 pictures. Eventually, I found the remaining photos…of she and the new boyfriend looking happy.”
Syncing Snafu
“Her iMessage was linked to her computer. I was on her computer buying stuff off Amazon and she was sitting on the couch, feet from me, texting her ex-boyfriend. He was trying to get her to send him nudes and they were reminiscing about previous encounters.
He was bragging about how he made her ‘legs shake’ all the while I was watching the conversation in real time, right next to her. My adrenaline kicked in, it was hard to breathe because my heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was closing my esophagus. It was difficult not to react while it was happening, so I simply closed the computer and left the house without saying a word.
This was over a year ago and I’m still fighting her for custody of our children as she definitely has proved not to be a fit mom. For example, one night she went out partying and got too trashed to drive home the night before our daughter’s first day of preschool. She got a ride home (puked in the ride) and was passed out on the couch in the morning. She was then unable to give our daughter a ride to school since she left her car at the bar. I had to call into work and cancel a meeting with my company’s CEO to handle the situation. My daughter had been excited to go to school for months and that’s all she talked about.”
The Telltale Burner Phone
“I was married for about six months and something just wasn’t right. Finally one day she and I were driving in her car to her parents for an event, and once I got there I dropped her off and said I wasn’t feeling well. I said I was going to go back home instead of staying. On my way home, I stopped at a grocery store parking lot and tore her car apart. I finally found a cell phone hidden beneath the trunk liner.
I turned it on and read the text messages. All of the texts she sent to her boss said things like ‘she missed him,’ and that she was ‘on her way,’ etc., which coincided with all of the times she said she was meeting her girlfriends for lunch or something. It was a phone he bought for her. I called the number and he was surprised that it was me, her husband, on the other end. I chewed him out and he played dumb. I explained that he can keep her… I’m done. I called my wife from the same phone and told her I found her phone, don’t bother coming home.
It was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. What I suspected for months was finally confirmed. I wasn’t crazy. I went to Walmart and bought new deadbolts for the house. It turns out she had been sleeping with her boss for at least six months prior to our wedding as well. I wondered, ‘Why even marry me then? I don’t get it.’
Once we separated and I filed for divorce, her maid of honor that was in our wedding reached out to me and next thing I know we’re having drinks and began to date shortly thereafter. MY soon to be ex-wife HATED that, which was a bonus.
She also wanted to fight the divorce. I had a lawyer and she had a lawyer. She wanted to remain married. I did not. We had an appointment at the courthouse where my lawyer and I showed up and she and her lawyer were supposed to arrive so she could sign the papers and it would be finalized. Her lawyer called and said she was not showing up to sign the paperwork. We wasted a day, I lost time at work, I had to pay my lawyer. Not cool.
Since we had just gotten married not long ago, I called her and gave her the next court appointment for her to attend in order to sign. I explained if she didn’t sign, I’d print out all of the texts her and her boss sent back and forth (I had kept her burner phone) and send a copy to everyone that attended our wedding (I was the one that mailed out our wedding invites so I had all of the addresses), explaining who she was sleeping with and that this is the reason we are no longer married. Next appointment came around and she showed up and signed without a peep. All done.”
Sometimes Cheaters Prosper
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“I already was suspicious for a few months that something was going on with her new coworker, but she always said I was just jealous and there was nothing to worry about. One night she told me she was going out with a bunch of coworkers, including him. I don’t like the idea, but I can’t force her to not go. So I watch her shave her whole body, put her best clothes on and some perfume (she never used perfume, she had bought it recently). I wait for her. She doesn’t come home until 4 in the morning when I finally fall asleep. When I wake up the next day she acts like nothing happened. I decide to believe her and let it go.
Fast forward 3 days later. I’m at an important convention for work and her coworker’s wife calls me in tears because a friend of hers had seen them in a bar, fully getting it on. I call my girlfriend and she just says she doesn’t know what to tell me. Turns out the other night was a date, not a get together with all the coworkers. So, I’m completely falling apart at this venue, trying desperately to hold myself together until I can excuse myself and cry hysterically behind the building. I was together with my girlfriend for almost eight years at that point.
The two eventually married. They went to Las Vegas and her parents paid for everything. The cheaters are now happy together and have a family.
For me, it was a struggle afterward. I had to move back to my parents as I couldn’t afford the rent alone. I lost 15 kg in one and a half months because I couldn’t eat. My parents almost put me into medical care when I finally started eating again.
But after about 4 months it was slowly getting better. I started making new friends, went out, drank a lot ( too much, I know that now) and dated a lot. Now I can finally say I’m stable again. Got a girlfriend that is the most loving and caring person I ever met. I got some issues that stuck with me because of it, mainly jealousy, but I’m working on it.
Yet I still hope that one day one of them will cheat on the other and they have a dirty divorce. I will celebrate with bubbly when the day comes.”
Abandoned With Baby
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“Two days before I was due to go into the hospital to have our 2nd child (scheduled c-section), my husband dumps me by text. He stays out that night but says he’ll still take me to the hospital to have the baby.
I was in complete shock! He had been acting super nice and trying to book a holiday for a few months after the baby arrived. He was his usual loving self, buying stuff for the baby, and had booked extra leave so he could be at home to help after my c-section – I did not suspect a thing.
I tried to stay calm and not stress myself for the sake of our unborn baby and our eldest child, so I agreed to not discuss it all until the baby is born.
We went to the hospital and had our baby, he left after an hour and said it was awkward because my family had come to meet the baby.
He was meant to look after our eldest child but kept dropping her off to different family members.
I was so exhausted and in a blur of the joy of having my baby and upset and confused from the breakup. However, between the pain meds and the family coming to visit, I didn’t have time to compute the situation.
I finally got to go home after four days and he stayed away from the house. I sent a message asking for him to come talk and bond with the baby but he said he couldn’t and ignored all my other calls and texts.
That night after my children were asleep, I was on Facebook and saw that he had changed his profile picture to one without me and a girl I’d never seen before had liked the new picture. I started to flick through his pictures and could see he had deleted every picture of me and she had liked practically all of his pictures.
He came to the house the next day and I asked him who she was. He said he doesn’t really know her, just a girl he used to go to school with. He then storms out of the house punching a hole in the banister on the way out.
About a week after he turns up and I’ve had enough, I tell him I need to know the truth, we’d been married four years and the breakup came out of the blue. I just wanted to know why he was acting the way he was. He pushed me across the room and my c-section stitches tore a bit on one side. He stormed out of the house and I call a family member to come and help me. I leave the house with the children and don’t go back.
A load of our mutual friends tell me that on the day I moved out of our house he’s in a relationship with someone else on Facebook, my friend sends me her picture – it’s obviously the girl who was liking his pictures. Seems as though they were together for a while as various friends tell me there are suddenly loads of pictures of them together on Facebook.
It was obviously hard, but it’s over a year on from it all now and my children and I are doing great.”
Sam I Am Not
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“He said he didn’t have a Facebook account, but one day I saw that he had the app on his phone…so I searched him, and after a little stalking, I later found out:
- His name wasn’t Sam, that was the dog’s name.
- He had a wife, and the ‘family vacation’ he had gone on a few months back was actually his wedding.
- I was definitely the side chick.
The confrontation was…unpleasant. We’d been together for almost two years, and looking back from where I am now, I realize he’d always been a manipulative, abusive prick. But I didn’t want to see it for what it was because emotional abuse is full of lies, manipulation, gatekeeping and gaslighting.
If he didn’t text for a few days, it was something I did to annoy him. If he changed plans, it was my fault because I should have planned better. If he stayed out all night it was because I wasn’t ‘doing my job’ to keep him happy; basically blaming me for everything, to hide his lies. So many lies (I mean, he didn’t even tell me his real name!) and so much manipulation. Everything I did was ‘wrong’ and he would ignore me to ‘punish’ me. Maybe I was just naive, but I legitimately loved him and he manipulated me to make me feel like everything that was wrong with our relationship was my fault.
I eventually left him, but some days I’m not sure I’m over him. That relationship broke me.”
Whose News Is Worse?
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“I found out I had cancer, lymphoma to be precise, and it took me two weeks to tell her. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her this devastating news, I hated the fact that I knew it was going to make her cry.
I called her after around 10 days of knowing, explaining why I’ve been quiet over that time, and that we needed to talk.
We met up, she said, ‘I think I know what you’re going to say…’
I had no clue how she knew I had those test results, I hadn’t even told my family.
I said ‘Look… I need to tell you…’
‘I know you know, so I’d rather tell you…I’ve been sleeping with Ben (my first close friend after moving to the city) for a few weeks now…I know you guys are really good friends, but we were wasted and we had a lot of fun and I didn’t want that to stop.’
Well, that fracking blew my bad news out of the water. I’ve still got trust issues because of that.
P.S. I never told her my bad news… I just got up and left.”
A Voicemail Gone Wrong
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“My wife tried calling and didn’t hang up once it went to voicemail. She accidentally left a 2:45 am voicemail. The voicemail consisted of she and her boyfriend talking smack about me and how much happier she was with him.
At the time, I was home with our kids and I thought she was 1,800 miles away to be with her dying father. Two years later we are divorced and her father is still alive.”
Broken Trust
“I came home at 6:30 am and her car was gone.
After nine years together, two of them married, we had gone through some crap together. Things were starting to get better. It had been over a year since her affair, and we were happy and normal again. Right after I got my new job in April, she started seeing everything I did as wrong. Trying to give her a peck on the forehead before work was forceful. Making her favorite dinner was presumptuous, how did I know she wanted that? And so on.
After the Fourth of July, she asked me if we could spend weekdays apart for two or three weeks so that we could calm down and start fresh. I jumped at the chance to make things better. She originally suggested that she stay with her friend, but the friend lived 50 miles away, so I told her I’d stay with one of my pals. I ended up sleeping in my car for a week and a half in the July heat before my old friend and coworker insisted that I sleep at his place.
Three days after I started staying with my friend, on a Friday, I had to run home for something. As I said earlier, when I got there, her car was gone. My dog was gone. The bed looked like it hadn’t been slept in since I’d put new sheets on it the last Monday morning when I left.
Around 7:00 pm, she rolled up with our dog. I could see the lack of emotion on her face. The only thing I saw was the slight annoyance that she was having to deal with this. I asked her where she was. She said she was staying with my supposed friend Jordan. It turns out she’d been seeing him since things started getting better in November of 2014. I told her I wanted to talk seriously on Sunday, and when we saw each other I told her I wanted a divorce. She was shocked.
We divorced in May of 2016. I couldn’t be happier with where things are now.”
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?
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“His best friend’s wife told me accidentally because my ex-husband failed to get his story straight with his buddy and scapegoat. Then, after the divorce was final, he admitted it in a ploy to get me back.
My ex-husband told me he had been working late, then met his buddy for drinks. I talked to his buddy’s wife (we were friends, I was oblivious, and I didn’t go out hunting for info) that weekend at a dinner party and she mentioned a big decision they’d spent the evening discussing the same night the ex-husband was supposedly out drinking with him. It’s really that dumb because he could have just said he worked even later and had a Heineken at work or when he got home before me, and I’d have been none the wiser.
After the divorce, I found out he’d been with ‘Maria’ for months and had managed to keep it from all his friends. His friends only found out about her when he dumped her to try to ‘call off the divorce’ but I was long gone by then, moved four states away, and started a new life. He then cried to his friends when his stunt didn’t work out and now he’d lost us both.
If I’d been smarter, I’d have known WAAAAY sooner, because he had messed up and spilled the beans himself early on after he started seeing her, and blew it off as a joke ‘about his other life.’ That’s how ‘oh, I was out with Maria har har har’ became a joke in our (soon to be short-lived) marriage. The joke seemed plausible (as just a joke) and funny at the time, because we lived together, worked together, had the same friends, and spent most of our time together (or so it seemed), so when could he have actually found the time to cheat? But he did.
The worst part of it all (at least that part) is that I am polyamorous and would have been fine with Maria if he’d been honest with me about her. I was having medical issues so his physical needs weren’t being met, and instead of talking to me about it like an adult and working it out, he cheated and lied and then divorced me when his own guilt overwhelmed him. We had other issues in our marriage, and I’m glad it ended the way it did and when it did – turned out to be the best thing he ever did for me, but it was all just so dumb and immature.”
The Most Important Exam
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“I found out by trying to have a friendly conversation with her new boyfriend (we were acquaintances at the time). I was asking him how things were and he mentioned offhandedly that he and my ex-girlfriend had been dating for three weeks.
Furious at my discovery, I called my ex immediately to get the closure I deserved. Lacking any form of compassion for a man who just had his heart ripped out, her boyfriend advised me not to do it because she had a big exam the next day, to which I said, ‘no, eff that.’ He then proceeded to call me a child for not waiting for her to complete her exam before calling her to talk about it and said that I was getting too upset.
Her grade tanked and they both blamed me for causing her emotional distress.
To top it all off, this was about a week after we had a big fight where she essentially told me that I wasn’t good enough for her anymore. Oh, the irony.”
Secretary Or Girlfriend?
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“He gave me all his passwords when we first moved in. I didn’t want them, but he insisted on it. And then he’d start asking me to answer some emails from time to time because it was stuff he didn’t want to deal with. So I guess I was like his secretary. Anyway once he was away on business, and I decided to check his email. Found all kinds of CraigsList hookup replies. He was trying to hook up with someone while he was out of town.
I confronted him when he got home, and he had the nerve to say I should feel sorry for him because it turned out none of them were real women (just webcam sites and stuff) so he didn’t get laid. He was jealous because if I ‘posted on craigslist as a woman, I’d have my pick of guys.’ What a winner.”
Ubering Around Town
“His Uber receipts didn’t match with the activities he said he was doing. He said he went to see a movie, but his receipts would say that he went to check into a hotel or go to a restaurant.
He asked for my forgiveness and we stayed together for six months but it didn’t work out because he acted like he is entitled to my trust because he already asked for forgiveness and doesn’t understand recovery takes time. He also tried to turn the tables on me regarding the trust issues.
I couldn’t take it anymore – so I ended things with him abruptly and blocked him everywhere. After a month, I saw him with another girl and I turn around and walked off. I do not want to engage with him in any situation.
Some days have been a struggle, some days has been quite a breeze. Most importantly, I don’t have to listen to his problems and support him anymore.
What I know is he still hasn’t gotten a job yet. I hope karma will serve him well and he gets to understand and feel the same pain he has inflicted on me.
I never cheated in my life and won’t do that to someone because I know how awful it feels. I feel really ‘unclean’ with myself sometimes especially due to the fact he slept with me the next day after his one-night stand.
I hate you, Hisham!”
A Locked Room
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“Went to go see him like I always did, and the door was locked. I heard the movie Jennifer’s Body playing towards the middle of the movie. Knocked on the door, said his name, no response. I certainly heard the movie pause though, because he was stupid. He wouldn’t open the door.
I gave up and left the house. As I got in my car, the girlfriend of his roommate comes out and tells me that she’d want to know if the same thing happened to her, that she knew he was home and that she had seen his coworker go up there with him. I drove somewhere, parked, and cried as I tried messaging him.
He tried denying it but then I got the truth.
By the time this happened, he had already emotionally abused me enough that I proceeded to stay with him for another six months or so and moved in with him into a new place.
And then he cheated on me again.
This time it was with another coworker. It went on for six weeks.
During those six weeks, she went from engaged, to married, to just over a month into that marriage… To another guy. I ended up finding out from him that my boyfriend and his wife were cheating together.
I moved out and was devastated.
Took me about a year to get over that one. Went into a deep depression.
It is now three years since that disaster of a relationship ended, and I’m happy to say that I’m now in a relationship where I’ve never once had to worry about being cheated on.”