Trust is the cornerstone of a monogamous relationship, and nothing hurts quite like discovering that your partner has been unfaithful.
It’s not easy to keep such a big secret, and sooner or later, these things have a way of surfacing. And when they do, it can be quite a mess.
Several people came forward on the internet when asked about their experiences, and here’s the tea on the most unbelievable ways they caught a cheating partner.
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My ENTIRE friend group knew about it, and I only found out after the one real homie blackmailed her into admitting it.
And when she did, it was the most insincere stuff ever. "It's no big deal, everyone else thinks it's ok!" and stuff like that. Suffice to say, I got my butt outta that relationship AND friendship group real quick.
Date night cancelled day-of. I decided to make it a guys night to see the new marvel movie at the time. As we entered, I saw her sitting it the theatre snuggling up with a guy. Our seats were a few rows back, saw them kiss a couple times. When we all left at the end of the movie they were exiting their aisle as we walked down the stairs. She absolutely froze when she saw me. Blocked her on everything while I’m the in parking lot.
My 9 year old son told me that there were strange men in the house when I was away working. She'd been at it for years.
It's horrible to deal with at the time, but honestly, it's such a relief to be rid of such a toxic mess.
That is vile , bringing her booty calls home with her son at home ,what a vile mother n total s k a n k !
But why do people cheat?
The simple answer: when your partner cares more about themselves and their needs than about connecting with you or the relationship, trouble usually follows.
Being an adult means understanding the difference between right and wrong — you wouldn’t eat a chocolate cake every morning for breakfast, in the same way you wouldn’t spend all your money on lottery tickets.
It’s common sense to resist instant pleasure because you know it comes at a cost.
He sent me a pic of the dog while I was away with a text that said "look how cute she looks" like 3 weeks later I went back to the photo to show a friend and upon looking at the photo again I noticed a pair of women's boots in the background by the door.
Her other boyfriend (who I didn’t know existed) and I had a mutual friend who put two and two together and told me. I said I wanted to meet him so he called him over. We talked out some things and then called her together at my suggestion. Good times were had by all -1.
I had just gotten home for 3 weeks summer holidays. I hadn't been home or seen my wife for a few weeks so I was excited to get home. It was on the Saturday night and I could sense she was awake into the small hours on her phone. I never thought anything of it as I'd never had a reason to not trust her.
At 4.30am she got up out of bed and said she was going to pick her brother up from a party. Covid lockdown had just ended so everyone was partying. We have 2 young kids so we didn't go out. She comes home just over an hour later and jumps into bed wearing racey underwear, which was the opposite of what she went to bed wearing (married men will understand!).
I woke up with the kids at 7 and the whole situation didn't sit right with me. I took the dash cam footage from the car and loaded it onto the computer. There it was, clear as day, some dude who did not look like her brother at all was thankful she came to pick him up and they flirted in the car for a bit before dropping him off at his house.
It was difficult to watch but when I confronted her she broke down and confessed. 2 weeks later and the car was sold, 6 weeks after that the house was sold, a year later and were divorced.
It was a tough point of my life but thank god for that dashcam! Saved me wasting more time of my life with a woman that didn't value me as much as I valued her! I've now moved on with an absolutely fantastic woman and I have my life back (but better!).
But maturity in relationships is more nuanced. It goes beyond just controlling yourself — you don’t avoid cheating on someone just because it’s wrong or you might get caught.
But maturity in relationships goes beyond just controlling yourself — a mature person doesn’t avoid cheating on someone just because it’s wrong or they might get caught.
You wouldn’t do it because you know that your actions won’t just affect you, but also the other person involved. It’s about self-awareness and responsibility, and valuing your partner’s trust because faithfulness is about choice, not an obligation.
He apparently wrote an address wrong and the love letter he wrote was returned to our home.
It was a great way to come back from vacation.
Her best friend, who didn’t even like me, told me. Sometimes it pays for people to think of you as a good guy even if they don’t like you. Her friend literally told me “I don’t get what you two have in common but you don’t deserve that”.
She demanded to read all the messages on my phone, I said no problem but only if I could read the messages on hers.
She had forgotten to delete a message from a guy saying "All we ever do is sleep together, can't we hang out some time?"
There was nothing on my phone.
"I think you're cheating on me because I have a guilty conscience!"
While there can be several reasons for infidelity, therapists say that one common cause is disconnection.
“One of the biggest reasons people cheat is the feeling that you and your partner have drifted. Perhaps the relationship has become stale and predictable and one partner is feeling trapped, looking for an escape,” Naomi Light, a relationship coach and couples therapist, writes on her blog.
She also says that sometimes people can sabotage what they have consciously or unconsciously as a way of avoiding commitment and rejecting feelings of responsibility.
According to her, people also cheat when they have low self-esteem issues, or when they no longer feel cherished and accepted in their relationship.
I was clearing internet history/personal data off my work laptop before I turned it in as I was leaving for a new job. I remembered that my now ex-wife had used my laptop for some freelance work, so I went in and cleared out the information on her Google profile as well. Unbeknownst to her, Google profiles track data across any device you use. That’s how I found out my ex-wife was moonlighting as a cam girl while I was working.
I confronted her, she confessed. But I knew there had to be more. Exactly a week later, she came home from a doctor’s appointment. She had chlamydia. Which she didn’t get from me. She tried to justify it by saying monogamy “didn’t work for her.” It sure as hell worked for me. That’s why she’s my ex-wife.
He was drunk at his 21st and while joking around with his friends he started listing off all the women he’d slept with in the last year.
I was standing right there and we’d been dating for two years at that point.
He wanted to let you know that he cheated, without having the b@lls to directly tell you
Not really wild but my ex-wife and I owned a small business together.
One day I noticed a strange email address on the office computer. Her first name and a different last name. I realized that email was still logged in so I took a peek.
I found 2 years worth of emails between my ex and some dude she dated before me. So I printed out every email and had it bound in a binder ready to present to my divorce lawyer.
Being cheated on can leave lasting scars, and trust probably won’t be the same, while any healing will take a long time.
There are also more complex emotional and psychological effects of feeling betrayed.
Some people may find it challenging to trust any subsequent future partners, while others will question their worth and attractiveness making them less confident.
A study found that almost 45% of adults who experienced a partner’s infidelity showed symptoms similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
People reported having symptoms such as flashbacks, hypervigilance, avoidance, panic, and intrusive thoughts.
I was visiting a dying relative in hospital so could not attend some stupid college party he and his roommate organised. I told him I couldn't go and asked him if he could come over later (after visiting hours in the hospital) because I knew my relative would die soon and I really just needed someone to be there with me. He said he probably wouldn't be able to, as he needed to help his roommate with party preparations, but would come over later if they finish early... Next day I saw pictures of him with his ex in his lap, kissing, uploaded the previous night by his roommate. The roommate even knew we were dating, he was just too drunk to realise he added me as a friend a week earlier on Facebook and I would see the pictures.
Maybe the roommate did it on purpose but just claimed to be too drunk. There are a lot of people who aren't comfortable with their friends' cheating. I know if I discovered it I would find a non-obvious way to let the partner know.
After his company Christmas party I stayed over at his place. Got up the next morning and came downstairs to find his girlfriend cooking breakfast for him. Needless to say she and I were both pretty shocked.
I was out at a bar with some friends, when I started talking to the people next to me. They were wearing our towns local social sports club shirt. So I asked them if they knew my wife, who was in the club. They responded with “yeah I know her, I hear she is cheating on her jerk bag husband.” I then reply “I am her husband” and ran out the bar crying.
One of the best ways to deal with the impact of infidelity is seeking counselling or therapy. Professional help goes a long way, especially if the situation affects you for a long time.
If you’re not sure that you want to break up with your partner after they cheated on you, you still feel you love them and want to stay with them, couples counselling is the way to go.
It can also involve social support, rebuilding trust and renegotiating boundaries within the relationship.
She got pregnant. I’m a female as well, so.. two tacos doesn’t equal quac Y’know?
Oh my god, more context from OP: "We did get high a lot, but I don’t think her brain cells would have deteriorated that much. Her mom was dumb as a cow, so I wouldn’t be shocked if it came from her side 🤷♀️ What is even more s****y though, is that I was going through a hard time. My father died, my grandfather died, and my cat died in my arms. All within three or four months of each other. I needed her more than ever, and I wanted to die everyday because I was so depressed, but she went off and f****d some random guy and then was excited we were going to have a baby. So I dumped her, and I still miss her, sure, but she was toxic. And I got myself out of that funk. She tries to message me every so often, but I haven’t talked to her in about four years now. I know she had a boy, and named him after my grandfather. And that’s all I know"
My colleague married a guy she'd been with for years. She found out shortly afterwards he'd been cheating because they met this girl (who was his colleague and gym buddy) when they were walking in the park, and their two French bulldogs (who were noisy and protective) didn't bark at her at all. There was no reason for this woman to have met the dogs before, as she had never been to their house, to her knowledge. So, she snooped on his phone while he was asleep, and apparently, he had been cheating for over a year, and she was pregnant, and they were opening a business together, and he was leaving as soon as he had the whole thing set up. When the dust settled, the only thing she was pissed off about was the expense they and her parents had spent on the wedding. He could have called the whole thing off and saved thousands.
But there are some DIY methods in case you decide to end the relationship after the betrayal.
Start with prioritizing yourself. You can only communicate your needs and boundaries with someone else once you spend some quality time with yourself, learn to love yourself and try to understand yourself.
Stop thinking about the past, and obsessing over the person who cheated on you or going over reasons why it happened. Every time you rethink the relationship, you disconnect with yourself.
Setting yourself proper goals, whether it’s as small as getting out of bed at a particular time or as big as working towards your dream life.
Journaling, meditating, exercising, taking up a new hobby are some other ways to help recover from a messy relationship.
Not me but my dad. His girlfriend at the time had been cheating on him with his friend, who didn’t know they were in a relationship. My dad found out when his friend told him he was gonna propose to her.
Did he just never talk with his friend? If they did talk . What about ?
Her parents told me.
They either don't like you or they really don't like her.. does OP ever wonder which one it was?? Questions that keep us up at night.
It's no one’s fault but yours if you cheat on your partner, no matter what kind of a person they are or what kind of a relationship you are in.
If you’re unhappy in your relationship or marriage, no one forces you to stay with that person and most of us have a choice to walk out.
Even if your partner is emotionally or physically abusive, if you have the courage to cheat on them, you should also have the courage to end the relationship.
You can always date and get involved with someone else once you call things off with your current partner.
Because at the end of the day, there is really no excuse to hurt someone who trusts you.
Had one of those “catching up” phone calls with a girl I used to be good friends with. Told her all about my girlfriend during the conversation. The next day, I’m supposed to see my girlfriend and she cancels on me. No big deal. A couple hours later my old friend starts texting me asking me questions about my girlfriend. She ends up telling me she’s pretty sure my girlfriend is in the back seat of a car with her and that my girls been all over her boyfriends brother and they’re all on their way to the movies now. I try calling her and texting to confront her. She calls me back and breaks up with me. The cherry on top is my girlfriend and I work together, and the guy she’s cheating with is my manager. She ends up quitting not long after but I have to work with this guy for another year before I change jobs lol.
Too recent to relive but here’s how it went.
Got a random text on Insta asking if I am OP and knew “X”
Responded saying yes. She literally replied saying “congrats, your girlfriend is sleeping with my boyfriend” followed by a barrage of screenshots she had gotten from her boyfriends phone.
He told on himself. He randomly called me saying why I messaged his ex and I was super confused because I never did and told him it’s a misunderstanding I can reach out to her to explain it’s not me. He got SUPER defensive & threatened if I reached out to her we’re done. I found it odd & reached out to clear my name & she spilled saying he’s been cheating on me as well as playing her & multiple other girls all at the same time. Turns out one of the girls made a fake account of me & reached out to her. Never found out who it was but this is the one time I’m glad having a stalker worked in my favor otherwise I would’ve never known haha.
I found his numbered list of people he'd slept with, and there were names listed under mine..
And I hope the first call was to make an appointment at the std clinic , ! Cos he was defo a walking pretri dish of STDs !
My fire alarm woke me up when it was low on batteries at 5am and thought it was strange that my gf wasnt home yet(she was out drinking with her friend).
I tried to call her, but she didnt answer. Thats when i remembered that we had the friends spare key. She lived like next house so i went to check and my gf was sleeping in her friends bed with some guy.
If the fire alarm didnt woke me i think i wouldnt have ever known.
My old barbershop… Was talking to my barber about her, and one of the other barbers overheard. We ended up finding out it was the same chick💀.
Wife (soon to be ex) was in rehab and started sleeping with someone. She got out and told me she was going to a meeting. Suddenly, I remembered I could track her car cause I pay for the Lexus Enform app. She was at a hotel.
I guess I need to write a book.
One of the guys he was trying to cheat with found me on Instagram and said “hey your bf keeps hitting on me but you’re way cuter” and gave me his phone number. Did some digging and discovered he was on multiple dating apps, saw the messages.
Jfc- apparently OP had just been diagnosed with cancer when this happened.
My son. He told my 14 year-old about her and showed him her picture. Then he asked him to keep her a secret and continued to text and call her constantly in front of him. Then he bought her kid two $50 gift cards to an online video game at Walmart in front of my son and texted her the pins in the parking lot. He would never do that for my son.
My son told me, and I filed for divorce. My husband claims it wasn't an affair because they didn't sleep together. I say it was an affair and filed for divorce two days later. And including my son was another form of jerk. That's his child, not his buddy. He was supposed to protect him from the ugly in the world, even if that ugly was him.
I've traveled for 1 week due to my work. I've returned, with gifts, for my brother and my girlfriend. When I've kissed her, I've noticed my brother eyes and knew it immediately, but I've lived on denial for months before kicking them both out of my place.
Found him in a motel room with someone when I was six months pregnant.
We broke up and then her best friend and best friend's husband told me that night. She had been sleeping with a few different people but settled on one. They got married, had kids, then she cheated on him with me one night years later (I didn't know they were together). They divorced, she remarried, got divorced, and now she is on husband number three. My favorite part is she portrays herself as an amazing christian woman that is better than everyone because she is so christian.
My ex forgetting her paper agenda, this was years ago, at my place and then calling to check something for her. Which after asking, turned out to be the day she had been ovulating as she got pregnant. After which I realized we hadn't hadn't slept together in that week, but her visiting a "platonic" male friend that weekend to "babysit his daughter".
I then hacked her email, to find mail conversations with this guy that were far from platonic. Only to confirm my suspicions.
I had a long day at work and went to meet my husband at a bar for one drink at closing time. He had recently put a bunch of his paintings on display there. When I arrived at the bar he was drinking in a booth with two women, one young and one old. I walked over, took a big drink of his beer, introduced myself as his wife and thanked them for coming to his art show. Cue looks of shock and confusion. It turn out he was on a date with his girlfriend and was meeting her mom for the first time. In hindsight I find it hilarious, but I can’t get the look the mom gave me out of my head. A perfect mixture of shock and curiosity, with a little bit of disgust; she realized before I did what was going on.
Roommate left her laptop open on her desk in our gaming room/office. She blogged a lot back in the day when it seemed like almost everyone had a daily journal/wordpress page. She kept up with it after most people had given up on blogging.
Well... According to her and her blog, I was somehow involved in an open relationship with her and my boyfriend at the time. She was writing about her experiences being in an open relationship and how cool it was to have both a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time. That was all news to me. For more context, the three of us lived together in a three bedroom home. I agreed to let her move into our guest bedroom just until she could get back on her feet after a rough breakup since she was a mutual friend of both me and my boyfriend.
So, yeah, I found out I was being cheated on by snooping on my roommate's blog.
I was telling one of my wrestling teammates about how much I love her and he told me he was just with her last night it was so embarrassing.
I had a girlfriend in High School who was naughty/nasty in a very good way lol. Fast forward two years and my best friend is dating her. He didn't know we used to date also. He confided in me that he had met this really cute girl but he was very shy. He asked if I thought she would mind if he kissed her.... Nah dude kiss her, she would like that. .........I never told him.
I was living in a small town of about 3000 people. There was a shooting in a house that was right next to my girlfriend’s house. Gunshots, lights and sirens, cops all over at 3:00 AM. They interviewed all of the neighbors.
I asked her about it the next day and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Because she wasn’t there. She admitted why later that afternoon.
The Honda App on your cars screen gives you a most recently visited place overview that connects to your Google. I went away for Basic and AIT, and at the end of basic training, when we got our phones back for an extended time, it gave me the most visited places. It was another apartment complex I didn't recognize, but Google Maps had a picture of his car there. He had emotionally cheated before, so I kinda knew because none of friends had mentioned living there and it would be a got there at 7 or 8pm and then leaving for his classes in the morning for school without going back to our apartment 2x a week.
GOOGLE STILL TRACKS YOU EVEN IF YOU DONT USE GOOGLE MAPS TO GET THERE.
I met my girlfriend in a bar on Valentine's day. After a rant about not wanting to be tied down, she left to go clubbing with her friends, leaving me sat at a table with another guy she was also dating. He had no idea about me either. Knowing we had both been played, we nodded at each other, and I left.
Wife and I were getting intimate. I felt a string inside her, which was weird, since I’d had a vasectomy a year before, after our second child was born. I said, “what is that string? Do you have an IUD?” To which she paused, then replied, “It’s a science experiment.”
I had suspect she was sleeping with another dude, but I was still so shocked at her bizarre explanation, I just had to laugh. I think I then sarcastically commended her commitment to the advancement of science.
Met in opposite directions on escalators. She was in his arms and could only mouth sorry as we passed each other.
Woke up on Christmas morning and her neck was covered in hickies that I most definitely did not leave. That was shortly followed by logging on to fb, only to find that the new girl (barely more than half my age, but over 18) had posted a ton of pics of the two of them snuggling and making out and *she had tagged my ex*. So all our mutual friends found out I’d been cheated on at basically the same time. Merry Christmas to me.
Start the New Year fresh and with less baggage. Wrap his c**p up with a bow and be done with him.
I had spotted a text on his phone and questioned it. So he ghosted the affair partner.
After a day or two, she messaged me on social media saying "I know this might be awkward, but I know youre *blanks* kids mum, I'm his GF, but he's stopped replying to texts and calling me, it's really not like him at all, do you know if he's OK?"
Guy was still living with me and our son and acting like everything was fine while he had a whole second girlfriend who thought I was his ex.
We were driving and she put on a song that was too different from her usual wheelhouse.
That was all it took to get my spidey senses tingling. I tried to act casual like I was curious what made her want to listen to this new song (old song, new to her). She didn't provide a satisfying answer and the more I pressed the more thinly-veiled her excuses became until it was just, "I felt like it."
Checked her phone to confirm, and she was texting the guy from work she'd previously told me not to worry about ~40X a day, which was even more sus because she had to have been intentionally ignoring his texts around me so I wouldn't notice. I didn't realize at the time how far gone she already was for him and tried to salvage things, but the two of them were dating within a month, though they tried to keep it low key for a few months so everyone wouldn't figure out what a 304 she was. Dude is a fool though, she's just going to cheat on him too.
I don't care what you say, you're not going to convince me a 22yo white girl is going to pivot from Billie Eilish to RUSH without an older man introducing her to them!
Met a girl through work (not a coworker), got her number, and when we first talked she said she just went through a breakup and didn’t want to jump into anything. So I played it cool. After a few weeks we started hanging out and hooking up every day. I really liked her and our connection was great. After 8 months I was like okay, this is a thing. I was on vacation, we were talking on the phone, and the idea of us still being “just friends” was naturally brought up by her in a teasing way, like her saying “come on, we’re more than that.” I told her with a smile on my face that we should talk about that when I get home. Then she went quiet. Hardly answered my texts the rest of my trip. Gave no explanation, didn’t wanna hang out when I got back. I was SO confused. I don’t have social media, but in my desperate confusion I made a Facebook in 5 minutes and looked her up. She had never broken up with the previous guy. She lived with him. Cheated on both of us for 8 months straight.
I had suspicions and finally broke down and went through her phone....
... She was chatting with him through Words With Friends.
In college I was dating a guy in a frat, they had this stupid, horrible 'contest' for young women to become the frat's "sweetheart", or an honorary member of the frat. I entered and then found out the entire frat and all the contestants went to dinner a few days later to announce the winner. My guy took another girl and didn't even tell me about the dinner, I found out via the many, many Facebook posts made by his frat brothers.
Definitely dodged a freight train with that guy though. Looking back I can't believe I was ever into him!
Wife was working late and I fell asleep on the couch. Woke up and she wasn’t home and I got worried. Drove up to her office and her and coworkers car were only ones there. Walked into their office and caught them in mid stroke on her desk.
Broke up with me and as I was going though deleting her socials I noticed a post she made on her snap story that was her and a guy with a post saying "with my king", post was made two hours ago and had only broke up an hour ago.
Was married; it happened a week or so after my two week’s R&R (Was in the middle of a twelve month deployment to Iraq). Long story short, I hadn’t cheated on her, but I sure as hell got diagnosed with a STD a week or so after I returned back to Iraq.
We finalized our divorce a couple of months later while I was still deployed.
A guy added me on League of Legends and asked me if the girl I played a lot of games with was my girlfriend (she was). That was a rough day.
Came home off a deployment. Now (ex)Wife was acting really weird but I figured it was because I had been gone for a year and everything was just taking time to get reaquainted.
About 3 days after I returned I had a notice from my unit stating my vehicle had 3 tickets at another base (we were in Germany) a few hours away in the past few months.
When I went in to find out what the deal was all 3 had photos attached to them for speeding through a checkpoint.
All 3 had my wife and some other guy. She was kissing him in the 3rd pic..he was driving my car.
I went full spy.
I took my work phone and subscribed to a family plan tracking app that allowed me to set a radius around multiple locations and would ping my personal phone when my work phone was moved outside the radius.
I took my work phone, wrapped it in a plastic bag to waterproof it, then duct taped it to a series of small neodymium magnets I got from home depot and stuck the phone to the bottom of my ex’s car.
She had her own place at the time and worked nights so by the time she was off work and potentially fooling around, I was in bed asleep. So, I set a radius around her work and her home and received exact locations in-between.
One night, around 2am, I got a notification that she was leaving her home (after she got home from work) so I watched as she drove to an apartment complex one block away from me.
I walked over there and went up to the one window that was lit up to listen and sure enough… I heard her and a guy talking. I knocked on the door and he answered, so I asked if she was there and he said no and closed the door in my face. I pounded on the window until she came out and then asked her to please leave with me but she said no and went back inside.
That night was a horribly bitter end to a 4 year relationship but it brought me peace of mind after months of knowing, but not having proof.
I woke up in the middle of the night and found her with her cellphone in her hand. She was texting her ex and there was a picture of her son on the screen. I thought it was sweet so I scrolled up to see if there was more. There was not. It was a text message where they were arranging to hook up during her psychiatric visit
Edit; I confronted her about it and she called me out for looking at her phone. So I ended up being the bad guy. All her and my friends agreed. I apparently was in the wrong for looking at her phone.
Me: "Hey you're looking a little fat" (Playfully of course!)
Her: *confesses that she's pregnant*
Me: *Happy noises* "How far along??"
Her: "I've been...seeing...someone... it's probably not yours"
Surprise, surprise it was NOT mine.
Both times I've been cheated on I found out by an errant text. First one was "I think she knows about us" we'd been together six years. The second was "I miss you so much, can't wait to see you" we were in the same room, we'd been together two years.
Both times I've been cheated on I found out by an errant text. First one was "I think she knows about us" we'd been together six years. The second was "I miss you so much, can't wait to see you" we were in the same room, we'd been together two years.
