We recently asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the story of how they caught their parent cheating. Here are the wildest replies:
1. "I found out my dad was cheating when he was supposed to be in a class and he picked me up from the library in a completely different outfit. My mom started taking me on drives where she would tail him. When we finally confirmed his other relationship, I assumed she would divorce him, but she never did. He had a separate family. They had two daughters, and the first one was given up for adoption."
"I got to know the second daughter when I was in college. She is almost exactly 20 years younger than I am, and I love her to bits. Twenty-five years later, my mom met my sister, and my parents made my sister and me joint trustees for their estate. Both my parents ended up in memory care, and the 'other woman' was the one checking in on them at the home and being sure they had vitamins and adult diapers. My sister lived two hours away through miserable traffic, and I was halfway across the country, so having someone there to check on my folks was really wonderful. By the time my parents died, we were all one big, happy family."
2. "When I was 12, my mom, stepdad, and I were driving to Florida from Texas for a vacation. We had stopped at a Waffle House for breakfast before we headed out. While we were sitting there, my stepdad looked at my mom with this stupid smirk on his face and said, 'Remember when we used to meet here every morning before we would go to our little spot?'"
"My mom giggled. When he said 'our spot,' he tilted his head in the direction of the motel right next to the Waffle House. They hadn't even been married a year yet, and it was very obvious, even to 12-year-old me, that he was insinuating they had been meeting for a long time before they were married, during her previous marriage."
3. "I caught my dad making out with one of my mom's best friends two months after their wedding. She was even in the bridal party! My dad has always said he's such a 'great, devout, Christian man,' so they always met at church to do their unholy, home-wrecking dirty deed. One day, her kids and I caught them making out, half naked, in a broom closet in GOD'S HOUSE. My dad still denies it and still says he's a devout Christian."
4. "My mom was logged in to Facebook on my computer. One day I was doing homework, and a dirty message popped up on my computer. I clicked on it and found nudes from my mom and this other guy. He was using a fake Facebook profile. My sister and I went into investigation mode and found out he worked with her. We brought it up to her, and she told us that if we told my dad, we would be breaking up the family. The guilt killed her after a couple of days, and she ended up telling him. My parents haven’t been the same since, especially my dad."
5. "My boyfriend caught his dad eating out his niece by marriage the day his wife (my boyfriend's mom) came back home in remission from a rare leukemia she developed after a broken leg. And my boyfriend's mom actually sent my boyfriend in the room to tell him dinner was ready. She’s gone now, RIP, and the family is torn apart. It’s my goal to keep a positive feeling of family for him while he mourns the loss and betrayal of his best friend."
6. "My father had an affair with his male high school best friend. The friend lived about five hours away by car. We would visit him, his wife, stepson, and mother in-law. They would disappear for hours when we were all together. The stepson and I figured it out when we were around age 12 and we heard them fighting on the phone about love."
"They stopped their two-hour-long, almost-every-night phone calls. Then my dad and I started visiting two times a year instead of every other month; then we stopped visiting them at all. They have since made up, but they're not together anymore. I told my mother, and she doesn’t deny it."
7. "This one time, my dad, my mom, my younger brother, and I went on a family vacation to Boston. While there, we stopped at a truck stop midway, and my dad told us to wait while he went in to get some snacks for us. About half an hour later, we got antsy and followed him inside. When we couldn't find him anywhere, I described him to the cashier and he was like, 'Oh yeah. He's out in his truck.' I was so confused. We went to where the trucks were parked, and my dad had asked one of his colleagues to park the truck they shared at the truck stop for a few hours, and we saw him fucking a sex worker in the truck. I was so angry, I knocked on the window and started yelling, and he didn't even stop; they just kept on going."
8. "The first time, my dad straight-up brought his girlfriend to the house while my mom wasn't home. I was too young to realize what was going on, but my older sister knew something was up and told my mom. The second time, he'd had a heart attack and was unconscious, dying, in the hospital. His phone kept blowing up from a number I didn't recognize. I called back, thinking it was maybe a work acquaintance who should know what happened to him. It was his girlfriend!"
"I had to explain he was married and asked her not to come to the hospital because his wife and children were there. Apparently they'd been together a while. I had to tell her when he died and beg her not to come to the funeral. What a fun thing to be dealing with when your dad just died. There were many others. These are just the two I was directly involved with."
9. "It was the day before my birthday, and I was looking for a painkiller when I found a notebook that my dad had, and it confessed his affair he had when I was 7. My parents were already divorced, but I never knew this was part of it. I had to spend my entire 18th birthday dinner acting as if nothing happened. It ruined my view of my dad, who used to be my idol."
10. "I was around 7 years old and was messing around in my dad’s parked truck when I found a baby bottle under the passenger seat. I didn’t have a baby sibling. It turned out my dad had a whole other family."
11. "My dad cheated on his new wife. I caught him in bed with another woman while I was away on a trip. I saw it on the baby monitor."
—Anonymous
12. "Around Christmastime, I was in my room doing homework and my dad was in the office. I wanted to see if he was buying my gifts, so I decided to creep out and take a look. Crawling on my hands and knees, I slowly inched my way toward the office. I caught him scrolling through escort websites and messaging girls. The number of boobs I saw was traumatic."
—Anonymous
13. "My dad dropped me off at my senior prom and started chatting to one of the teachers at the door. They seemed to really hit it off. Later on, he texted me to say he might be late picking me up, but I didn’t check my messages and walked up to my dad's car as we had originally agreed."
"He and the teacher were in there together. She was promptly fired. My mom divorced him, and we both haven’t looked back since. He was trash."
—Anonymous
14. "Our family had a shared computer. My dad wasn’t great about remembering to clear the computer history or logging out of things. My sister and I found multiple online dating profiles where he said he was either divorced or widowed."
"He was also never as subtle as he thought he was when he’d sneak out to meet someone."
—Anonymous
15. "When I was 20, I got a Facebook message from someone claiming to be my half brother. It turned out he was. My father had a three-year-long affair when I was a toddler, the woman got pregnant, and he had been paying child support since. My mother knew as well. They just never told me."
"It gets better. It turns out my dad had ANOTHER affair with ANOTHER woman (there were several) and SHE GOT PREGNANT. So there were, in fact, TWO secret brothers I found out about when I was 20. Go figure."
16. "My dad went 'salmon fishing with a buddy' but didn’t take his salmon gear. I hacked into his email and found several emails exchanged with a woman (including nude photos of them both) who turned out to be his high school sweetheart."
"When he returned from his 'fishing trip,' I found a photo of them in his truck. I told my mum, but she already knew. They divorced soon after, and one month after it was finalized, my dad married the other woman and had a MASSIVE wedding that I was not invited to and was only told about six months later on a family ski trip. I was 12 years old and have deeply seeded trust issues that I don’t know I’ll ever get past."
17. "The other woman called to talk to my mom, and I answered the phone. She had no clue my dad had a daughter and didn't expect me to answer."
18. "My dad told me he was going to burn some CDs and he needed time to concentrate. Nosy 5-year-old me walked in his room and saw him doing it with my aunt. On my dad’s side."
19. "My mom always went out Friday nights. At first I thought she was going to meet her friends, but I went through her texts one day and I didn't see anything about Friday nights with her friends. I found that odd, so I decided to track her phone using Find My iPhone, since I knew her iCloud password. I checked her location, and she was at an unknown house."
"By the end of the month, my dad found out that she was cheating on him with his boss from work, and now they are divorced and I'm happily living with my dad."
—Anonymous
20. "My dad asked me to print some things from his email, and I noticed emails from some dating site. I went quickly to grab the papers, and when I came back, those emails had disappeared from his inbox."
"I want to think that it was only spam, but he was very quick to erase it on his own, when usually he asks me or my siblings to delete his trash mail. I hope I’m just overthinking things, but my mom once told me that he indeed cheated on her while they were dating, so I don’t know."
21. "I was young, and my mom took me to the movies, and her friend from work joined us. I witnessed them flirting during the entire movie, and he even rubbed his hands along her thigh. I was so grossed out because he was so ugly."
"She acted like it was totally normal and said that I was imagining things when I asked her why her friend was touching her that way. She worked another job, and I witnessed more flirting with the man she would end up leaving my dad for."
22. "When I was 15, my dad picked me up from tutoring and said, 'I love you, too,' as he got off the phone, but I was on the phone with my mom when I got in the car. I got suspicious and went in his office and found a handwritten note from his mistress. The only thing I really remember from the note was her telling my dad that he doesn't even love my mom and that he needs to leave her."
"We knew the woman from my dad's workout group. I told my mom, and she kicked him out and divorced him, and he blamed me. Next time I saw the woman's car in the gym parking lot, I smashed three of her windows and slashed two of her tires."
—Anonymous
23. "My parents were 'taking a break' when my mom got sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. I called my dad and he came to pick me up and took me to his flat. There was a woman there who told me that she’d been dating my dad for three years. He’d only been separated from my mum for a few months."
—Anonymous
24. "My ex found out his mom was cheating on his dad when his mom was at work and accidentally texted my ex instead of her lover, saying, 'I’m in the bathroom waiting for you, my love.' His dad was at work that day, and mind you, he worked over 50 miles away from her, so that text was indeed not meant for him."
25. "My sister tagged along on errands with my dad one day when we were about 10. They had stopped at a jewelry counter to look at a present for our mom when she overheard our dad asking the salesperson if they had two of a particular item. The store only had one, so they left without buying anything."
26. And this: "I was about 17 years old, hanging out with my then-boyfriend. I picked up my mom's phone to find pictures of our cats, and instead I opened up recent messages to see she'd sent nudes to her coworker."
"This weighed on me heavily for months, and after a huge fight with my mom, I broke the news to my dad. He was never the same after that, and I am still dealing with the guilt from that conversation."
—Anonymous
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.