Note: This post mentions suicide.
Recently, Reddit user u/Mr_MightyMouse posed the question, "What is the one thing you found out about your S.O. you wish you never did?" And whew, this is some tea, y'all!
Here are some of the top-voted responses:
1. "She gave me her phone to look for an address and make a restaurant reservation for our seven-year anniversary. Someone sent her a video on WhatsApp, and the next message said, 'Tomorrow again?' Now, I am not one of those people who normally checks my partner's phone; I don't like that. But I was curious and clicked on it. It was a full two-minute video of her cheating on me with two men. Needless to say, there was no anniversary dinner."
2. "My very first boyfriend and I used to talk on the phone all hours of the night, sharing every secret we had. One night, he told me that he regularly shits in the shower and stomps it down the drain because he’s too lazy to get out and dry himself off. This was in 2002, and I’m still shocked. Like, what?"
3. "I fell head over heels for a guy in college and would’ve done absolutely ANYTHING for that relationship. Meanwhile, he was lukewarm about me, and I didn’t have enough life experience to know that that was unhealthy. He was in a frat, and basically, all the brothers (including him) had slept with this woman who used to hang around the house. The whole frat would make fun of her and say awful, dehumanizing shit about her. They treated her like an inside joke. My ex said more than once that she was basically a sex worker.
"Meanwhile, a different brother would have sex with her every other weekend. It really made my blood boil that they would dehumanize her like that, and then turn around and have sex with her. I always tried to defend her. Anyway, after we graduated, when we’d been together for four fucking years, I found out my ex had been cheating on me. With this fucking woman who he'd compared to a sex worker. I really thought I was going to die when I found out, that the grief was going to swallow me whole."
4. "I was with someone for seven years. Decent relationship and was never treated badly. He brought me food in bed, did laundry, walked the dogs, and anything else I asked. He even surprised me with flowers all the time. All-around good guy. Three years into our relationship, we got our first apartment with some roommates, another couple. I found out said roommate robbed a guy at gunpoint for a bunch of cocaine and $5,000. My boyfriend was the other gunman and the getaway driver.
"I didn’t find out until he went to jail four years later. Broke up shortly after that and will never think the same of him again."
5. "My ex had an affair with my father. I divorced her. And as far as I'm concerned, he's dead to me. I've kind of withdrawn from everybody because I don't feel like I can trust anyone. Trust isn't something I even have on the table anymore."
6. "I spent the night at my friend's house after her dad died. When I got home, I found an old cellphone on the bed. I looked at it hoping to find out who it belonged to or maybe find some cute photos of my stepson. No, I only found nudes of my boyfriend's ex. And later that month, I discovered he was cheating on me through SnapChat (he was drunk and opened up his photos while I was sitting next to him). I called him out, and he said I was 'crazy,' but I pointed out everything that he was doing for the past few months. He admitted to not loving me for MONTHS.
"Meanwhile, I was raising his son pretty much by myself and taking care of him after numerous surgeries. He still wouldn't admit to cheating. Two and a half years wasted, but luckily, I'm with a really nice guy now. I regret finding out what a piece-of-shit, nasty person my significant other was, but I'm also super grateful for getting away from a terrible situation after seeing past all of his lies."
7. "I hang up a towel to dry my hands in the bathroom. Sometimes, I would find it on the floor and think, 'Hmmm, the towel fell off the rack,' and put it back. TEN YEARS WENT BY. One day, my husband casually said, 'You are always so quick to do laundry. If I accidentally pee on the floor and clean it up with the towel, it is gone so quick.'
"I was like, what? What? WHAT!!! So yeah, I've been drying my hands with pee towels for 10 years. FML."
8. "My ex joked about having sex with two guys on the same day being a turn-on for her. It always bothered me because I already had my doubts about her being a cheater. After a few years with her, I found out she was cheating with her daughter's father, and there were at least a few days where she hooked up with both of us, a few hours apart.
"Glad I found out about the cheating because it's what I needed to leave (and eventually find someone 1,000-times better). But I wish I never knew about the both-of-us-in-the-same-day fantasy being a reality."
9. "That he’d stop being attracted to me if I removed my breast implants. He’s a great guy and does love me, but he said that he likely wouldn’t consider me as beautiful as I am now because he’s a boob guy."
10. "What he was up to every night on his laptop while I was seriously struggling with our baby, waking up at least once (often twice) before he came to bed, and sometimes falling over from exhaustion on my way to get the baby. All the while, he sat downstairs prioritizing other women online for months. This destroyed our 10-year relationship almost beyond repair.
"I wish I hadn't found out. Part of me is dead inside from realizing how little someone I loved for so long valued me. I doubt I will ever love or trust again."
11. "That he lied about his military history. He was enlisted, but his dishonorable discharge, the stripping of his rank, and actual listed MOS was a complete shock. Sure, it wasn't stolen valor, but he was absolutely not a combat veteran, and he's built his public persona and career out of these lies. I have a copy of the DD214; it’s all there."
12. "He slept with my friend from childhood when she stayed over once. I found out several years later, after she had committed suicide, and he had tremendous guilt. Fucked me up because I loved her. I still love her. I can't be mad at a dead woman, and it was a decade ago. However, every memory I have of her is tainted now."
13. "He was unfaithful to his ex-wife twice and asked for a divorce when he realized he was tempted to be unfaithful a third time. It seems like he's acknowledged his mistakes and grown from them, but as someone who was cheated on, I can't help but worry that he'll repeat this pattern with me."
14. "An ex told me she was a size queen and how large her previous boyfriends' penises were, then proceeded to complain how she couldn’t feel me. I was already being verbally abused, so this hurt. But now, I’m glad I dated her as nothing anyone (even a S.O.) says can truly hurt me. I grew because of her (my maturity, not my little peepee who still gives it his all)."
15. "My partner let it slip that he used to have some serious feelings for one of my closest friends (years before I met either of them). The thing is, I always used to have this suspicion that he was attracted to her just based on their chemistry whenever we all hung out together. But I shrugged it off as me being paranoid and insecure. To find out after dating him for almost three years that he actually had wanted to be with her romantically felt like a slap in the face. Also felt like a double betrayal because my close friend never mentioned this to me, and it felt like lying by omission.
"She turned him down when he confessed his feelings to her long ago, so it’s not like anything happened between them, but I would have definitely preferred to know this history before I dated him for nearly three years. He’s a faithful man and swears he no longer feels that way about her, but UGH. Sometimes, when we all hang out, I feel like he connects with her more than he does with me."
16. "That I just turned into a convenience for him. I would always come with food, provide sex, and help him get out of financial issues while he told me every excuse under the sun why I couldn’t move in with him. When he broke up with me, he admitted he just liked to use me for sex but hated spending time with me and loathed me spending the night. He could have broken up without saying those things."
17. "That she wasn't really on mission trips for the two years prior to us meeting. She was in prison for conspiracy to distribute. Caught with 6.5 pounds of weed. I couldn't care less about the weed; it was the lie that got me. She also used an alias so people (including me) wouldn't be able to find the articles online about the drug bust/court case, including the public court records. So, I didn't even know her real name until I found all this out six months into it. That was a long, strange trip."
18. "He had a notebook of every detail of my life (including menstrual cycle) and also kept all the details of my friends and family members. Even ones I had never mentioned. And we were only together for two months."
19. "My husband was a scammer. He told me that he and some friends used to run a scam out of an internet cafe in his hometown of his native country. This was back in his 20s, 10 years before he met me. I still can't envision it. He is extremely generous, giving his last dime to help out poorer families who lost their jobs during the pandemic, buying them food, and doing pharmacy runs for the sick. He is not money-orientated at all — lord knows I don't have any — so I can't imagine him sitting there, helping his friends to scam people out of thousands.
"He hugely regrets it and has nothing to show for it, but still. It sits weird with me. I don't think about it that much, but it lingers."
20. "When we were in college (eight years ago), our relationship was on the fritz, and she told me that she never really found me sexually attractive. I still have body dysmorphia and confidence issues from that."
21. "He told me he'd rather masturbate to porn than be intimate with me. I love him dearly, but that one hasn't really left me since he said it."
22. "That she slept with a musician we hear on the radio to this day, and I hate that he is pretty good to listen to. This was before we were married."
23. "I found out he spent hundreds on webcam women. He apologized and said he wouldn't do it again but didn't consider it cheating. A few months later, I discovered several OnlyFans subscriptions, and he said they were old. We've been together three and a half years. He's been talking about buying me a ring to propose for about a year and a half now...I'm still waiting."
24. "There was a joke going around that students from a certain university (ours) were bad at giving head. I laughed and said, 'Oh, that’s absolutely not true. Look how happy you get when I do it!' He proceeded to look at me and say, 'Yeah, but you remember that one girl I told you about, who I hooked up with two years ago? That head was god-tier. You have a lot to live up to.' I saw red. To this day, I can’t and won’t give him head.
"I love him, and he apologized, but every time I think about it now, I always wonder whether or not he was thinking about that other girl every time I did it for the first six months of our relationship. It hasn’t really left me, and I don’t think it ever will."
25. "She drunkenly admitted to her friends that her ex-boyfriend was the one, and she’ll never get over him. Still not sure how to handle that information."
26. "Too many details about his intimate life with his ex-girlfriend. I did not need to know what he thought about her body, what they did in bed, etc. Still not sure why he ever told me, and it’s always bothered me."
27. And finally, "I knew my ex was cheating on me. But man was he good at hiding it. One day, the woman he was cheating on me with called me, spilling everything. After getting all the info from her, I realized that NOTHING I thought was true was actually true. It is an unimaginable amount of pain when you learn that literally EVERYTHING in your life for the last two years was a total lie. After we got off the phone, she texted me and said, 'If there is any doubt left in your mind that I’m the one who's lying, check his email.' So, I did and found two years' worth of photos and videos of them together: nudes, videos, screenshots of texts that were between them that he wanted to keep (since he had to delete shit from his phone every day), and pictures of them kissing and cuddling.
"I had to realize that every time he claimed he worked late or 'ran errands,' he was with her. Every time he 'went to bed early,' he was in our bedroom sexting her or talking on the phone. The one that got me the most was the day that I almost died in the hospital, and he was late getting there because he was WITH HER. My appendix ruptured while he had my car. I had to call five different people to find someone who could take me to the hospital. I got there, and the doctor told my grandmother I was dying and needed to get into surgery right away. I said I needed my fiancé there with me first, but he was almost two hours late because he was cheating on me. That’s what hurt the most.
"Although that was six years ago, and I’m with my husband now, I still deal with issues of feeling dissociated from reality. It wasn’t breaking up with him and losing the relationship that hurt. It was just the trauma of the situation itself that permanently affected me."
Have you ever learned something about your significant other that you wished you hadn't? Share your story in the comments below.
Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.