1. "We had finally bought our very first house after being married for 10 years. He wanted to remodel the house while waiting for our rental's lease to be up. I had a feeling and drove to the house one night to find our hot, young mortgage broker, fresh out of the shower, in a towel. The whole house was furnished with furniture that wasn't ours and there was a baby crib being assembled. He was remodeling something all right, just not our house."
—Lacey Q., Facebook
2. "I was in acute renal failure in the hospital. He sat there messaging other women, telling them I was gonna die and he was looking for my replacement."
3. "I came home from work early once. He wasn't home, but his car was, and he wouldn't answer his phone. I was seriously getting scared. A car screeched up and he jumped out. He explained it was just a coworker (the one he'd been coming home glowing about recently) and he gave me lame excuses about her being in the area so they grabbed lunch and didn't think to tell me. I had forbidden him from doing anything privately with this woman after I met her and could tell she was moist for him. I was devastated. He gaslit me, and even screamed that he wouldn't be with someone who didn't trust him! This went on for four years."
"The economy was really tough and I couldn't afford to move out, so I made the best of it. I finally got drunk and fed up one night and went through his things. He had videotaped it all — on MY side of the couch, at her house, and at her mother's. Every weekend. He still proceeded to gaslight me, saying I didn't actually see what I saw. I made him watch his perverted actions with me on said couch as I narrated each scene."
4. "I was with someone for three years and he called me on my birthday and left a voicemail with her laughing in the background. At least he didn’t deny it. But really, on my birthday?"
5. "I caught my dad making out with one of my mom's best friends in my bouncy castle on my seventh birthday, then again at CHURCH! He still claims to be a pure, holy 'man of god.' SMH...but thankfully my parents have been divorced since."
6. "He left me and our son because I wasn't giving him enough attention. Then, his grandfather died and he took my maid of honor and her child to the funeral. I had been with him for 11 years. They are married now, but because of their personal issues, they have to have supervised visits with my son. I’m remarried now to a wonderful man, but it still irks me to see her. It turned out he and I were miserable, but I wish he had ended up with literally anyone else."
7. "He forgot his phone in my car. I left to go get our baby from daycare and he got a text. I never checked up on him, ever, but that day my gut told me to look. It was our neighbor's sister saying, 'Too bad you can't get out. I've got a big ol' hotel room to myself.' It was the day before my parents threw me a huge nursing school graduation party, so I had to hold it together for an entire weekend. I was so humiliated and sad."
8. "After 27 years of marriage and four children, I was at my little sister’s house in another state, halfway across the US, after she had just died from a long, sad illness. He was driving two of my teenagers (a 20-plus hour drive) to attend the funeral, when both of them heard him tell another woman on the phone that he loved her. He thought the kids were sleeping. They waited until they returned home and told their older brother, who confronted his father. He admitted to many affairs and told my son that he would not stop seeing other women. He also told him not to tell me because he needed to get me home to 'medicate' me. He sat each of my children down and told them the same thing in addition to telling them that he never wanted to be a father."
9. "Ways I've found out exes were cheating: one talked in his sleep, one told me when he was drunk because he forgot I didn't already know, and one told me after we broke up that he'd been seeing his ex the last couple months we were together because he was mad I was seeing someone new. I got added to a group chat of his THREE OTHER GIRLFRIENDS and now we are all very good friends."
10. "When I was in uni, I was fortunate enough that my parents were able to afford to get me an apartment close to campus. I started dating a student there a few weeks into the first trimester. She lived in a dorm with three other girls and always complained about how it was hard to live and study there, so I got her a key to my apartment and said she was free to use it whenever she wanted a quiet place. About a year later, I come home early after my class was postponed to find her filming a sex tape with another man on my bed. You can’t make this shit up. After I asked her to pack her stuff and move out, she left the sex tape on my bed with a message about how I wasn’t able to satisfy her."
11. "My ex-husband cheated on me every chance he could get. I was so naive about it too. We had a young daughter that I didn't want to raise alone, so I stayed with him for 23 years. Every time he cheated, his new girlfriend would always call me and threaten me. I never knew why they did this, as I didn't know any of them. I finally woke up and divorced him when he started seeing a friend of ours, who also called me and threatened me."
—Jackie W., Facebook
12. "My ex-husband ran his own business from our home and had an affair with his secretary, despite our two small children. For two weeks after I found out, she would come to my home to work, totally unaware that I knew what she was doing. My ex was served divorce papers on April Fools Day."
13. "I had an ex call me from jail on a three-way call with the other woman. He called me every name in the book and let me know he was breaking up with me to be with her. Then, he tried to come back when he got out of jail. So glad I cut that off."
—Bryenna A., Facebook
14. "I'm a Realtor, and we were selling the house we built together, raised our blended family in, and lived in for 10 years. I was hosting an open house, and his mistress stopped by and announced she was there to talk to him. She walked up to him and put her arms around him as his face drained of all color. He told me that he was going to tell me about her 'after the house sold.' At any rate, it was a pretty traumatic breakup for me. That was two years ago. In August of this year, he called to tell me that they had broken up and wanted me to sell the new house they had together. He showed up one night with his guitar, one night with a bottle of wine, and one night with candy all the way from Ireland (where he had just vacationed)."
15. "My mom was dating a cop for a bit when I was in high school. He ended up getting shot (he lived) and it was obviously in the newspaper. In class, we had to do a current events assignment every day, so I was reading the article about him and saw he had a wife and a son. I immediately asked the teacher to use the phone and called my mom. She had no idea and was glad she hadn't gone to the hospital to visit him yet."
—Jelly J., Facebook
16. "I had an amazing start to a relationship, but he kept disappearing. He had this 'ex' who was apparently very controlling. When one such disappearance happened, I looked him up on Facebook. He was adamant he wasn't on there, but he was! He was just very publicly in a relationship with his 'ex.' They got married two months later."
17. "My cousin drove from Washington to California to sleep with my boyfriend. They have a son together and my entire family thinks I'm the dramatic one for hating her. I was 16. She destroyed me."
—Heather B., Facebook
18. "I found out my ex was cheating at our first (and last) marriage counseling appointment because she wrote me an apology letter and made the mistake of saying, 'You're the one I choose.' When I asked what that meant, she admitted to cheating. I moved out that weekend (stayed with friends until I could go pack up) and filed for divorce the next Monday."
19. "My partner cheated for three years, but I could never actually prove it. I knew it, but he treated me pretty good. I found out when I put an app on his phone to catch him in real time. He literally cheated within the same two minutes I started watching his phone. I was actually doing a test run to see if the app worked. We lived together for years and he was talking about marriage...I needed to know."
—Mariah R., Facebook
20. Finally: "I was with my ex for over three years. He had cheated on me in the very beginning of our relationship with his ex, claiming that because I was 'away' in college (less than 45 minutes away), he felt lonely. I stupidly stayed with him, knowing I was moving closer and thought that would make him feel more secure. Eventually, we got a year lease on an apartment and I thought he was going to be the one I spent the rest of my life with. One day, my intuition told me something was off, and when I confronted him, he told me that he wasn't sure he was in love with me anymore because I wasn't doing enough around the apartment we shared. I was out on disability from a car accident and couldn't physically work. So, for two weeks, I picked up my game. I made sure I cleaned, cooked, did laundry, and did everything in my power to convince him we could get through it."
I am so deeply sorry to the people who were hurt by their loved ones. Cheating is despicable, and I hope you are doing better now.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.