Warning: This post contains mentions of sexual assault, grooming, mental illnesses, and substance abuse.
We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community who have been divorced to tell us the biggest secrets they or their exes kept throughout their past marriage. The responses were definitely eye-opening — here are some of the comments users left:
1. "My major secret that I’ve kept from my ex-husband is that I’ve slept with his best friend many, many times. His BF and I were always a bit too friendly with each other, and sometimes I would catch him staring at me like he was holding back intense feelings. The tension was always palpable when we were together whether it was a big or small group. We just sensed each other's presence — it’s hard to explain. Our marriage started to take a turn for the worse — lack of communication on both our parts, lack of respect for the other, gaslighting the other's genuine feelings; you name it, we went through it. We separated for an evening, and I texted his best friend wanting to talk, so he came over to the motel. One thing led to another, and he ended up spending the night."
"It was an absolutely incredible night. It felt like everything I was lacking in my marriage was solved chemistry-wise at that motel. We kept it a secret for another nine months (while continuing to sleep with each other) until I officially filed for divorce. His best friend was a guy he was close with for over 23 years. No regrets on either of our ends."
—Anonymous
2. "I was married for two years and had a horrible, long divorce that got ugly — she got the house, the car, everything. During the two years, me and my wife had separate beds and separate bedrooms, and during our marriage, she was very secretive, and so was I. About a year in, on our anniversary, I got to meet her brother who was also married and secretly gay. I ended up sleeping with him that night in the next room. We continued to see each other for a year after, every single day till my divorce, after which he went to focus on his family. Three years later I ran into him again, and he divorced his wife. We are now engaged after a year of dating, and his family and my ex-wife still don't know."
—Anonymous
3. "I traveled a lot for work and sadly had dozens, if not more, straight and gay encounters. These include getting arrested once and questioned several other times by cops for crazy intimate encounters. ... She never knew about any of this. Sad but true."
—Anonymous
4. "It's really a toss-up between 1) the fact that he was having an affair that started five months into the marriage and 2) that he was not, in fact, in recovery and had been using drugs the whole time we were together, including with the person he was cheating with. You live and you learn!"
5. "My ex-husband was hiding his drug usage. I knew he'd had an issue in the past before we got married. I'd been supportive and had even gone with him to meetings years before we got married. I thought we had a strong enough relationship that he'd tell me if he started slipping. Anyway, things started in December when he lost his job because his regional manager did a surprise inspection, and his inventory was off. Come to find out, if a guest paid in cash rather than a debit/credit card, he would pocket the money. Flash forward to May — I'd just started a dream job, and he still wasn't working. We'd been having a rough patch because he hadn't been helping at all with our 9-month-old, and I was exhausted. My parents called us to sit both of us down and confronted us with credit card statements. He had been stealing their credit cards and had ran up over $10,000 in charges and had no excuse for it."
"He'd even do the cash advance thing. The way my parents even realized it was by accident — my mom and I were at Target, and the cashier ran her card twice, and I told her to double check her statement to ensure he didn't accidentally charge her twice. And when she did ... it opened up an entirely different can of worms. They had found out he was on security cameras at Target and a local grocery store buying gift cards or buying something expensive, then going outside for a moment and walking in to return it and say that he didn't have a receipt, and they'd give him cash. It was such a mess, and it opened the flood waters to so many other problems. My daughter is 7 now, and he hasn't tried to see her since she was 3. He continuously gets arrested and is homeless now. It's very sad where his life has ended up. And the entire experience causes me to have a lot of walls built up for people to try to get close to me. I hope others don't go through this."
—Anonymous
6. "A major secret that I kept from my former spouse is that I have over $50K stashed in my private savings account that they never knew about for emergencies — like, real emergencies — for a divorce or something remotely life-changing. I’ll have my own back before I have theirs when it comes to money like this. I refused to share bank accounts for a reason as well. Don’t do joint. Please save yourselves."
—Anonymous
7. "I secretly hated being married. When I found out he had an affair and stole from my family, it was heartbreaking, but at the same time it was a relief because it gave me an out. I divorced his scummy backside and have never looked back."
—Anonymous
8. "This isn't what I kept from my spouse but what he hid from me and his family. When I left my husband, I didn't tell anyone that he was having an affair with a man in his Air Force unit. I honestly didn't think anyone would believe me. He has narcissistic personality disorder and spent our entire marriage telling people behind my back that I did the things to him that he was actually doing to me. Six months after I left him, he had to quit his job. The guy he had been having an affair with made his life a living hell by basically turning into a stalker after they broke up. My ex told his family the guy was harassing him, so he had to quit. When they asked why this guy would do that, my ex said what he used to say about me — 'He just went crazy.'"
"I kept my mouth shut, feeling very sorry for his naive Mormon family. When we were alone though, I asked him, 'Was he worth your family?' To which he replied, 'No.' And that was the only time we talked about it. Fast forward seven years later, and my bestie who used to work with him says to me over coffee, 'How come we never talked about your ex and this guy having an affair?' Turns out the entire unit knew my ex-husband and this guy were together. The validation was nice."
—Anonymous
9. "I'm bisexual. She will never find this out because she comes from a very conservative town, and she would have questioned our entire relationship. I am in a very happy relationship with a man, and she doesn't know that he's more than just my 'friend that I'm roommates with for financial reasons.'"
—Anonymous
10. "My ex-husband of 16 years was a narcissist who groomed me from the age of 17 (he was 22). He doesn't know that I had a five-month affair with my new partner and that feeling seen by this person was the reason I was finally able to agree to split when he threatened to leave — again. Four years of freedom started that day, and I couldn't be happier but would never admit to the affair because he doesn't deserve the satisfaction of knowing."
—Anonymous
11. "My husband had these really expensive, nice skis — well, they came up missing. During our divorce he asked me if I knew what had happened to them. I lied and said no — but I sold them behind his back for extra cash, and to this day nobody knows."
—Anonymous
12. "I was miserable as soon as he moved in when we were dating. I had fallen into a pretty heavy depression and started having increased panic attacks — but by the time he proposed, I was able to blame my really shitty job, some very big family drama, and just my history with anxiety as a whole. I would very regularly get drunk, and I smoked all the time while he was at work or I wasn't at home."
"The whole time we were married I justified everything with us being able to start a family finally — something I have always wanted. But he just wouldn't work to do anything more: he wouldn't look for a new job, he spent money incessantly, and he spent almost all of his free time with his friends.
I was most angry he didn't try to be a better individual and only did some very big changes AFTER I told him I wanted a divorce."
13. "We had been talking/pseudo-together for a little while before formally meeting and getting together, but a week or so before, I hooked up with another girl in my hometown. It was a one-time thing, and once my wife and I got together I never so much as looked at another woman. My wife, however, cheated throughout our entire marriage and having three kids. I wanted so badly to weaponize this tidbit for comeuppance, but I've never uttered a word until now."
—Anonymous
14. "I was living with my girlfriend in a condo we rented together. While she was away out of town I had a very brief affair with a coworker. We got together a few times. However, after I asked my girlfriend to marry me, I ended the other relationship. I never told her, even after she left me 16 years later to be with someone else. In spite of her breaking my heart, I just couldn't do that to her."
—Anonymous
15. "One of my friends, someone we would game with and who we met online while gaming, is now my S.O. The secret was how much this person's friendship meant to me at the time, and how much he helped me through a really dark and depressing phase in my life."
—Anonymous
16. "I had an on-and-off affair for five years. It started before we were married and ended almost four years after we were married. I never told him, nor will I ever."
—Anonymous
17. "We were never married but together for nearly eight years. His mom and I were out getting pedis together one day, and she told me he was an accidental pregnancy. She took antibiotics while on birth control, not knowing the consequences, and that was how he was conceived. She told me he didn't know this. Even though he and I had an acrimonious split and a highly contentious relationship as co-parents, I've still never used that secret to hurt him. And I never will."
—Anonymous
18. "I married my first husband because I got pregnant when I was 19. But I was also sleeping with someone else at the time at college. When my son was born even my sisters questioned if he belonged to my husband because my son has light hair and eyes, and both my ex-husband and I don’t. As my son got older he definitely looks like my ex-husband, he just got the recessive genes on both sides."
"Even though marrying him was a mistake, I can’t be too regretful about it because my daughter was born three years later, and both my children are amazing young adults now."
—Anonymous
19. "I had a secret credit card that I had cosmetic procedures placed on. I regularly got Botox, laser, microdermabrasion ... and he would tell anyone who listened how I got good skin genes from my mother!"
—Anonymous
What secrets did you or your ex-spouse keep during your marriage? Let us know in the comments below.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.