Being cheated on is one of the most painful things someone can go through. There's no good way to find out that a partner is cheating. These relationships came to an end after their significant other's cheating ways were revealed.
These people turned to Reddit to open up about their awful experiences. Here are the posts of the most heartbreaking ways people found out they were being cheated on. Content has been edited for clarity.
She Accidentally Answered His Call
“I called her to ask when she would be getting back from Philadelphia. She was in bed with him and must have hit ‘Answer’ instead of ‘End.’ I listened for eight minutes.
We had just moved in together. I took the high ground and sent her the following text:
‘I just called and heard something I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to. I don’t want an explanation. When you get home, I’ll be with my family for the week, and when I get back on Friday, I expect you and all your belongings to be gone.’
She called about half an hour later, but I didn’t return her calls and answered no texts from her except for essential logistics questions.
The worst part was they both giggled, and I heard her say, ‘He doesn’t have to know everything.’
They mocked me while they did it. She’s dead to me.”
The House Was TOO Clean
“I had my suspicions as things weren’t great. He was tilting his phone away when around me, going out every weekend. I went down to my friends for a night on the weekend. He texted me a few times asking when was I coming home.
When I got home, the house was spotless and the bedsheets were changed. I knew he didn’t do this for me as his behavior was still off with me and he never did these chores unless I asked. I went through his phone when he was in the shower – he’d been sleeping with my friend the night before – in our house. I saw the texts which said it was so good you were here last night, I wish we could do it again. I burst into the shower, he got angry at me for looking through his phone and denied anything had happened. I took photos of his screen with my phone and sent them to another friend for posterity.
I rang my friend and told her she was a tramp, and how could she do this when she had a seven-year relationship? Her justification – it wasn’t as bad as when her boyfriend cheated on her.”
A Bad Prank Turned Even Worse
“I lived in a different town after I graduated university because she was locked into her lease for another three months. We decided that it was only a 30-minute drive each way, so the distance wasn’t so bad for the few nights I didn’t sleep over at her place. We had started looking for homes together.
Anyway, I had to miss a weekend due to some family crap, and she went to a party. That’s fine. Whatever. We went to lots of them together, so her going to one without me was no big deal at all. The next morning, I sent her a ‘good morning’ text message and got back ‘I don’t want you to text me anymore.’
Okay. What. So, of course, I tried to call, no answer. Texted like a maniac, with a ton of responses like ‘We’re done. No more.’
Alright, breaking up time, that’s fine. But after three years together, I want my stuff back, so I drove in that morning. I had a key to her place, so I opened the door. I found her passed out in bed with another guy. She had ‘left’ her phone at the party, and her friends thought it would be funny to break up with me as a joke. Best prank ever. I would never have caught her cheating.
So, she wakes up to me packing my stuff up. Tries to explain, ‘He had nowhere else to sleep, his clothes are on, nothing happened, we were wasted.’ I almost believed her until the guy gets up and yells, ‘Hey, do you want to shower with me, or should I just rush out?’
No more fuming, packed my stuff. Stormed off. Took her back four months later because I was lonely. She didn’t cheat on me again. But after another two months together, I just had to know, ‘Was it just once?’
She answered honestly that she cheated on me with a few guys; mostly one-nighters over the course of the last year of our relationship. Knowing just made it worse.
I couldn’t do it, broke it off, and have never seen her since. I talked to her once on Facebook; she messaged me to tell me a mutual friend of ours died and wanted to go for coffee to talk. I declined.”
The Phone Bill Told Her Everything She Needed To Know
“He left his house before I did one day. I picked up the phone to call someone I was meeting to let them know I was on my way, and the phone was dead. I investigated and saw that it was unplugged from the wall. Investigated further and saw that the other two phones in the house were also unplugged.
Obviously, he didn’t want to risk someone calling while I was there, so I went straight to where he kept his phone bills. Saw that he called the same number every single night right after he called me, so I called it and found myself introducing myself to his fiancee.
We were together for about 18 months. We lived about 90 minutes apart, and she lived another 90 in the opposite direction. He did business with the company I worked for, so he usually drove up to my place Wednesday night, scheduled meetings for Thursday and Friday and then stayed the weekend, or I went down to his place for the weekend. There were no red flags at all. The fiancee admitted that she felt kind of stupid believing he was too busy to see her more than one or two nights a week. We both dumped him instantly.
I actually kind of scared her. I said the requisite ‘You don’t know me, but’ and explained that I was calling from his house. Her first reaction was asking if he was okay. I explained that I was his girlfriend but just discovered that he called her all of the time and that I’m hoping there’s some explanation, but she immediately said, ‘We’re engaged’ and it went from there. Pretty much the same questions on each side, like how long we’d each been with him and putting together how he juggled it. Crying and anger on both sides. At the end, we exchanged numbers in case either had any more questions later, but I never heard from her again. She seemed to feel exactly as I did. We each knew the other didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Nice Scarf”
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“I was dating this extremely hot girl I met in my history class. We’d been officially together for like a month when this happened. I was at home on a Saturday night because my parents were mad that my grades were low. Well, as I’m sitting there playing video games, my buddy calls me up. He asked where I was at and I explained that I couldn’t go out. He then said, ‘Hey man, question, aren’t you dating Alexis?’ I said yeah and asked why.
‘Uh, well she’s at the party I’m at and she’s totally hooking up with this dude in the next room. Sorry to be the one to inform you, but if it was me I’d want someone to tell me.’
I thanked him and told him to let me know the details later. He called about an hour later and said, ‘DUDE there is no way she’ll be able to deny this one. She just came out of the room with huge hickeys all over her neck.’ I thanked him for being a bro and letting me know. I texted her like normal telling her goodnight and stuff and acted like I knew nothing.
Monday comes around and in the morning before classes started, she walked over to see me and was wearing this crazy scarf that didn’t match her outfit. It was also already a warm day so it made absolutely no sense. I said, ‘Nice scarf,’ and walked off with my friends who were all aware of what she did. She started texting me asking why I didn’t even say hi and I just ignored her. I ran into her before going into the history class we shared and I asked, ‘So why the scarf today?’
She said she just liked it a lot and hadn’t worn it in a while. I told her to cut the crap, I knew that she was covered in hickeys underneath it. She looked shocked that I knew and then burst into tears. We went to class and she cried the entire time. Her assigned seat was directly in front of me and everyone knew we were dating so the whole time she cried, everyone just kept looking at me and gave me questioning looks.
The best part was our teacher knew we were dating as well so he looked at me at one point with a ‘What the heck?’ look and I just shrugged and continued about class, like nothing was wrong. She continued this crying thing for five days and sent me texts constantly saying that she was sorry and made a mistake and that I was the best guy ever and that she didn’t want to lose me. I ignored everything and never talked to her again. I ran into her six years later and said hi.”
“I Just About Threw Up While On The Phone”
“I was out of town on business about 1,000 miles away from our home. It was a weekend in the fall where two college football rivals typically played – the wife said she was traveling to the game with a girlfriend (about 200 miles away from our home). Our kids stayed at home (oldest around 20, youngest around 10). I worked during the game and did not get back to the hotel until late. I called to check on the kids the next morning, asked where their mother was – ‘Not home yet.’
I’d called my wife previously and got weird responses with her driving in the car and odd voices in the background. Later, I called her parents because we always stopped there. They said, ‘Oh, she just was here with (male person).’ I just about threw up while on the phone. It was seriously messed up. I spoke with her father on the phone, the tone of his voice gave away that he knew what was going on. He was not happy. I don’t think they were okay with it, it’s just that blood is thicker than water for her family. She could have been Charles Manson and they would have supported her actions.
I tried to hang on to the marriage for about another five years, and it took an 800-minute cell phone exchange with an unknown number to clue me into the next affair. Even after I caught her in that and called her every name in the book, she wouldn’t file for divorce. I had to end it myself. Crazy.
And what’s even worse? Time heals all wounds – several years later now I chat with her on the phone as if nothing ever happened. Now that is messed up. I should have booted her butt out immediately. Oh well, divorced two years and I am better for it now.”
Her Fake Outrage Didn’t Deter Him
“We were married for a few years and had a kid together. We were struggling with money, so I took a much higher-paying job in a city across the country, spending only weekends with the family. We had the intention to move there together when we found a nice setup.
One weekend at home, I found a duffel bag with some clothes – she explained that she drove her coworker to the airport one day and this is the stuff that he had to leave behind because his luggage was overweight and she’s just keeping it for him.
Fast forward some time and she is selected to some kind of prestigious state-funded scholarship, sending her and a bunch of people with a similar professional background to another country for two weeks. The kid stays with me. Somehow I found out that one of the other recipients of the same scholarship was the very same coworker mentioned before.
This made me extra suspicious. I even asked about him and, boy, she was furious that I even suggested anything, that I am paranoid and stuff.
So, I set up a mail account that looked identical to the mail that that coworker used and sent an e-mail to the hotel that I knew they were all staying. The mail was a request for a confirmation of stay in the hotel with a list of names of people checked in the same room together. BAM! Hotel-signed proof that my wife shared a one-bedroom apartment with that guy.
Happily divorced for two years now.”
Fool Me Once…
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“I found a burner phone hidden in the closet. Every night for about three weeks, she’d go into the bathroom for a good 15-20 minutes, but each time I’d hear the closet door open and shut – once as soon as she went in, and once right before she came out. Didn’t take long for me to figure it out.
I found the phone, saw all kinds of one-sided conversations, and several pictures of ex-boyfriends, shirtless co-workers, etc. I confronted her about it. She had all kinds of excuses at first but then tried to turn it around on me for being a snoop. I never believed her. My response to the ‘How dare you go snooping?’ was simply ‘Well, I obviously had reason to.’
She said she’d get rid of the phone, that she wouldn’t talk to any of them again, that she wanted to work things out. I gave it a go since we were married. Three months later, I found the same phone again in her vehicle when I went looking for jumper cables. More texts, more pictures. The messed up thing is, I was initially looking for the cables to make sure her ‘winter road kit’ was complete for the upcoming snowstorms. I was a White Knight to the end and that was the thanks I got.
The divorce will be final next month. It was the second marriage for both of us, no kids together, no debt, nothing contested. So, no alimony, no child support, nothing but dividing assets. She moved out, my kids stayed with me. All I lost was some furniture and a few wasted years. Pretty decent win, all in all.”
“I Suspected Something But Certainly Not What I Ultimately Found”
“Things had been difficult between us, and I suspected something – certainly not what I ultimately found, but I felt a bit suspicious, and had been feeling that something was amiss for a couple of weeks. I traveled a fair amount for work in those days. I figured part of what was bugging her was me being gone more often and not being home as much to be with the family.
One week, on trash day, I was working from home, running some errands and fixing things around the house. In the early afternoon, I was emptying the kitchen trash and accidentally dropped some of it on the floor. I saw a crumpled up blue sticky note and just opened it up to see what it was. It said ‘$29.95 a day’ and a phone number. It was in my wife’s handwriting. So I called the phone number. A guy answered the phone: ‘U-Haul, can I help you?’
So I decided to play it out and see where things went. I stammered a bit, not quite knowing what to do or what all this meant, and then I said, ‘Uh. Yeah. My wife was supposed to call and reserve a truck and I wanted to find out if she did because we are moving soon.’ (All of which was, of course, a lie I made up on the spot. We weren’t planning on moving.)
He asked me what my last name was and said ‘Just a minute, let me check.’ A minute later he comes back on the phone and says ‘Yeah, she reserved a truck. The big one. For next Wednesday.’ I thanked him and hung up. I felt like the pit of my stomach was a ball of ice.
I looked at my calendar to be sure. Yep, I was headed out of town on a work trip on the following Tuesday night. Due back on Friday morning. She obviously planned to clean out the house while I was gone, and I would come home to an empty house.
I confronted her about it that night. She admitted that she did plan to leave and was pretty much going to take everything. And then she left for a few hours and came back – with her boyfriend to help her get her stuff. I filed for divorce the next morning.
Fast-forward to a week later. She took the kids and moved to her mother’s house. I changed the locks before I left for my trip – as much as I felt like I shouldn’t go, it was an important work trip and I couldn’t miss it.
I get back that Friday, and I can see the front door is ajar. While I was gone, she broke in and did in fact pretty much clean the place out. Left the bed, one TV, and my clothes and golf clubs and a few other personal things of mine.
We’ve been divorced for over 10 years now. I’m remarried and my wife and I have a child together. My kids from my prior marriage don’t talk to my ex-wife much. After she left, they lived with her for about a year, and then I got custody because of all of her chaos. I see them almost every weekend now that they are grown. And we have good relationships.
As for my ex, she’s since been married three more times and has been in and out of substance abuse and drinking treatment centers, and the occasional psych ward for the last few years.”
The Constant Lying Was Outrageous
“This was almost exactly a year ago when I started finding out my ex-fiancee was cheating on me. We had grown apart and she felt like I was kind of phoning it in. So, she cheated on me with her married best friend (also a woman, as am I), lied about it until I dragged it out of her, and admitted she was only staying with me for my money.
L and I were together for six and a half years. We had been living together for four years and engaged for two of those years. We met my senior year of high school (her junior year) and were very young. Our first year together, she broke up with me because me being in college was too much distance. Our second year together, she cheated on me because being at separate colleges was too much distance, and I couldn’t get out to see her for a month and a half. Our third year together, we moved in and we were deliriously happy for a while.
I don’t know what happened, I think it was stress and finances and just the fact that we grew apart. But we both just ended up being restless and unhappy. I wasn’t giving her the physical affection she needed. She wasn’t giving me the moral support I needed. I could tell she was unhappy. Around August or September 2014, I started suspecting something was going on with her best friend. Granted, I am a wildly anxious human even on my best days, but I was pretty sure something was up. It just felt wrong. I started feeling just like I did when she cheated on me in college. She was acting different, being secretive, being distant, hiding her phone from me.
I confronted her several times about it and she didn’t confess, even after we broke up. So, what I ended up doing was reading through stuff on her phone and confirming she was cheating. This was December. But I wasn’t satisfied because I knew that little tramp was lying to me about when they got together. She was stupid enough to write down in a notebook all the dates that she and her married best friend had done things, like go to the movies and share a first kiss and buy each other jewelry, so I found that crap and was, probably, way too nice about it when I confronted her.
We lived in the same house for six months after we broke up until I got a new job and a new place and got out of there. She had her parents help her financially and ended up owing me hundreds of dollars because I paid all the bills when we were together. She kept the dog, too.
I still can’t believe I was lied to for so long, even after I gave her opportunities to tell me the truth. I do feel bad about reading her things, but I think it would have been worse in the end if she kept lying and cheating. So, what? Was I supposed to put it out of my mind and keep paying for things and let her break up with me when she felt ready? I am still so angry at this girl.”
A Very Classy Date
“He wouldn’t take my phone calls or respond to text messages while I was at work. I looked and found his online dating profile. I came home, went through his phone and saw he had been cheating on me with multiple women. He sent and received nudes, went to their houses, took pictures of my house, and sent them to women claiming it was his and he ‘just bought it.’ I woke him up after I went through his phone and told him I knew. His response: ‘This couldn’t wait until the morning?’
He didn’t respond that day because he had a date with a girl at Walmart. To Walmart. With the truck I bought, with the gas I put in it. He was too lazy to work, so he couldn’t afford to take me out, much less a side piece. He’s also quite the thief. Stole my credit card. I’m sure he stole ‘Missy’ something pretty.
I screamed at him for a couple hours. His excuse – he cheated on me for me. Said he was seeing other women to boost his confidence so he could feel better about himself. He wouldn’t leave my house, threatened suicide, and I had to call the cops to get him out. Afterward, he stalked and harassed my mom, a friend, and me. I called the police again and they told me to file a restraining order. I told him I would file if he didn’t leave me alone. He left me alone until about three weeks ago when he messaged me and said ‘Can we please talk?’ Nope.
I was suspicious the entire four-month relationship and there were a ton of red flags I refused to acknowledge. He was constantly texting other people. He wouldn’t be home when he said, he was always ‘sleeping.’ He would borrow my car and put my hair clips in the console. The car smelled like another female. We would have huge fights when I wanted to see my friends or family. I had to text him when I woke up, when I left for work, throughout work, when I left work, and when I got home. He was keeping tabs so he could have his fun and I confused it for care.
The thing that was special about him was he was a sociopath – manipulative, controlling, and abusive. Combine that with my inherent belief that all people are good and I was an easy target for him.”
Maybe It’s Time To Drop That Friend
“I was dating a girl for close to two years when I introduced her to a good friend (and ex) of mine, knowing they would hit it off. I clearly underestimated how much they would hit it off, however, because soon they were talking to each other more than either of them were actually talking to me.
I thought nothing of it because as far as I was aware, my girlfriend at the time and I were very much in love and I had full trust. I thought it was a bit strange when my girlfriend invited us both over for a sleepover. But, it was even stranger that I was told I had to sleep on the floor and she would be sharing a bed with my friend. Still, I didn’t get too suspicious at the time as her parents were pretty homophobic and it wasn’t unusual for us to not be able to sleep in the same place at her house.
The real problem started when they started giggling and moving around a lot, thinking I was asleep. I knew they were getting it on as soon as they disappeared around 3 am for an hour.
They’re still together. I ended up with a different girl for about a year and a half…until I found out she was cheating on me with the same friend.”
Saved By A Stranger
“I was sitting in the park when this man I had never seen or met before came over and sat next to me. He started small talk, but after a few minutes his face changed, and he started describing what happened the night before. He described this woman who slept with his roommate, and described her, what she sounded like, and what they had done. It sounded a lot like my girlfriend, and eventually, he said: ‘I have seen you with her.’ So, I asked him to bring me to them. He brought me close enough to confirm, then the two of us went out to brunch together.
He was a bro’s bro.
I didn’t confront her about it, after a day or two the relationship was dead. We dated a good long time, the longest I ever dated anyone, and it ended with a mutual ‘I really don’t want to look at you anymore.’ I didn’t talk to her for about 5-6 years, and now the two of us are friends again. Life is weird. I see her father sometimes and he asks why I never married her. That is awkward.”