In case it needs to be verbalized, cheating sucks. Don't cheat. It's not excusable. Just leave if you're unhappy. We all know the drill.
But some people apparently just don't get it (or care), so we asked members of the BuzzFeed Community who had been married to share how they caught their spouse cheating. And unfortunately, you can't make these up:
1. "I got a phone call from my best friend when she found a phone under her car seat. I didn't think much of it since she drives for Uber. She turned it on to see if she could locate the owner, and it was my husband's 'lost' phone. Turns out, he'd been hooking up with prostitutes across the country — he was a cross country trucker — for the last 1.5 years. I was 14 weeks pregnant at the time and ended up hospitalized with complications."
"Thankfully, my baby is healthy for the time being, and I didn't contract any [terrible] diseases or infections. Also, our two toddlers and I — his pregnant wife — were evicted while he was hooking up with prostitutes. I cry every single day." —misspriss1234
2. "I found texts on my husband’s phone. The other woman was not only our young daughter’s babysitter but our roommate as well. 'Let her move in to save on child care costs.' 🙃 They both just walked around the house — day in and day out — messing around while I was at work and our daughter slept in the next room over."
"Heartless." —marisam4de6132ef
3. "I caught my dad cheating when I was 17 and came home early unexpectedly from a school function. He and another woman — who would later become my stepmother — were in my parents' bedroom. They must have heard me come up the stairs because, suddenly, his bedroom door flung open, she pushed past me, and RAN to the front door while putting on her shirt and pants, her bra and underwear in hand. My dad came running out with boxers on and said, 'YOU SAW NOTHING!' Then he ran after his lover. I obviously followed as she ran up the driveway, down the street with my dad behind her yelling to 'come back, maybe this is a good thing!' (Again, he was only wearing boxers and barefoot.) She sped away, and I looked at my dad and said, 'You know I'm gonna tell Mom.' He tried to bribe me, but I obviously told her later that night."
"They had been married almost 30 years at that point, and that woman was in her home in her bed... The disrespect! BTW, the other woman was also married." —stacyg
4. "I am from Mexico, he is from Finland. We moved to Mexico for a while when we had our third kid. At the baptism, he flirted with one of my best friend's sisters, but I thought that it was nothing to worry about. Three days later, I found out he was promising her to marry her and move her into our house. He even told her she was the perfect stepmom for our kids because she also spoke Spanish like me. I forgave him. Two years later, I noticed he was texting a lot. I couldn't take it anymore and confronted him, and he admitted to cheating on me. I divorced him, moved away, and his whole family turned their backs on me. I had to be strong and find my way in a country I wasn't born into. The asshole had the audacity to move across the street from me with her 'for the sake of the kids.'"
"Later, I found out she was his work colleague. They had been dating each other for months and making fun of me about me being able to smell weird smells in our bed." —marthamtzmedina
5. "One night, the space heater in our room made shorted the power. I went to unplug it before I went to the breaker box when I noticed his cell phone lighting up with incoming text messages from a woman. They were selfie after selfie, all racy, and her messages were 'baby, this' and 'baby, that.' I sat in a chair with his phone, watching him sleep. Finally, I woke him up. He got mad I snooped on his phone, which I had NEVER done before. I demanded the truth, so he opened his phone and showed me a picture of a baby girl. He said, 'This is my daughter. That is the truth.' She was 15 months old."
"It devastated me. But we decided to work it out. She's almost six now, and I love her to pieces. And I'm friends with her mom." —katieh101
6. "I found my ex cheating in our house. He was having a threesome with girls he'd met at his adult fat camp. I blacked out I was so angry. Somehow, I managed to take pictures of everything. I got a hefty settlement for less than three years of marriage."
"I got pictures of her license plate, hired a private investigator, and spoke to her husband. He cheated in North Carolina, where she could be sued for alien of affection." —jenniferjanvier
7. "After struggling to conceive for a year, I finally got pregnant. At the beginning of my second trimester, I tested positive for syphilis. My husband found a prostitute and got syphilis from her. Fetuses that get syphilis and are untreated have a 50% chance of being stillborn. Three painful shots in my rear later, I had been treated, and my son was born healthy."
"I truly have a miracle baby." —pazna213
8. "My ex — who I'd been with for 24 years — insisted he wasn’t cheating when he asked for a divorce. I suspected for quite some time because I kept finding things like strange hair clips and clothes. I checked his voice messages, and there were several nasty messages from a 'supposed friend' that were clearly not 'friend-like.' She left her husband for my ex, too. After that, people came out of the woodwork to tell me about all the women he slept with. His coworkers didn’t even know he was married. He had worked there for 12 years by that time!"
"I’m grateful for my hubby now who is amazing to me."
9. "I called my then-husband, and he just happened to be over at his girlfriend's place. I guess he couldn't make her be quiet, and we got into a rather heated argument. At one point, he said, 'Tell that to the 60 other women I've been with!' When I told him that his little girlfriend would be happy to have him sign divorce papers, she went absolutely bananas in the background. I could hear them fighting over the phone."
"Then it hung up. We'd been married less than five years at the time." —mzzbunee
10. "He sold my laptop to his brother without asking me first. He knew I was thinking about getting a new one, so he thought it would be fine. I calmed down when he gave me the money for it. The next morning, I opened his laptop to start looking for a new one. He had left his email open and, right in front of me, on his laptop was a picture of some naked lady asking when they were going to meet again. This was the early 2000s, hence the email and not a text. I confronted him, and he tried to pass it off as spam. I read through the entire email chain and, obviously, they had met and were hooking up."
"I had to leave for work and told him he and all his stuff better be out of my apartment by the time I got home. Stupid me took him back a year later. The next year, he cheated on me again, and I found out because she ran straight up to him and kissed him on the lips in front of me. She hadn’t even seen me." —prohibitionandpearls
11. "The other woman told me about my husband cheating. She then begged me to not tell my teenage daughter, who met her as a toddler — when he started cheating. She claimed she was a product of a broken home, too."
"So if you endured this, you’re okay with doing it to another family? And my husband (not for long) is a whole other (huge) bag of dicks..." —doza75
12. "I found out my wife was cheating in a very difficult way. One day, I was cooking and my seven-year-old daughter answered the phone. It was a guy who told her, 'Go tell your daddy that your mommy is having an affair with me.' My daughter immediately started crying hard because she thought I would leave and never see her again."
"Needless to say, I asked for and got custody of my daughter. I pray no one's kid ever has that happen to them. I was hurt, but hurting my daughter was enough for me." —tuckerdavid659
13. "I was six months pregnant, and we'd been together almost seven years. He cheated on me with a teenaged coworker with the same name as me. I saw the messages pop up on my Apple CarPlay in car while he ran into the store."
14. "My mom’s first husband was literally a traveling salesman with mistresses in different cities. Mom found out because one of them called her, begging her to stop denying him a divorce — that was the first she had heard about a divorce. Mom had recently gone through several miscarriages and a tough pregnancy with my sister. Mom and the mistress who called had the last laugh, though — they confronted him together."
"Apparently, he had been telling these mistresses that his wife was a horrible woman who wouldn’t let him get divorced. Since my mom is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, this was a pretty low blow." —corellianne
15. "I was using his computer one day and decided to turn on some music from his music file. Instead, I saw he had pictures of his 'best friend' in a bikini in the file. I asked him three different times, and he denied it. Finally, I said, 'I know you have them saved,' and I pulled them up. He got mad and accused me of snooping."
"Two weeks later after I left, I found out he paid for her abortion." —emilyp40ce33bc7
16. "I found them drunk on the floor in our apartment. It was after my thirtieth birthday party. He claimed the wine was rancid, and he thought it was me."
"🤷♀️" —jennithebaker
17. "After seven years of marriage, my husband started working nights. He was at home all day alone and spent most of his time on the computer — but he always remembered to close it before he left for work so that I couldn't see what he was doing. One night, he forgot, so I decided to have a quick peek. Not only had he been having an affair with a woman from another country, but he had also secured a job and a place to live. He was planning on leaving the country and not bothering to tell me!"
"It didn't bother me that much as our marriage was virtually over. I just packed his stuff in rubbish bags and left them on the doorstep with a note. Then I changed the locks." —bagpussaa
18. "I was eight months pregnant with my second baby when I found out my husband was cheating on me with some girl we met at his niece's funeral. She was posting pictures and quotes about how 'the pandemic brought me someone special' along with things that gave me the inkling that 'someone' was him. They both made my last month of pregnancy hell — messaging me the things they were doing and making fun of me. He completely ghosted our kids financially and physically. It’s been nine months, and she’s days away from giving birth to his baby."
"You never really get to know some people, regardless of time." —blancaponce
19. "I once found a woman's T-shirt in our bedroom that wasn't mine. My ex tried to convince me that it was my shirt and that I must have just forgotten. Such gaslighting! I confronted him, he, of course, denied it. Everything finally came to an end when his phone rang early on a Sunday morning. He was still sleeping, so I answered. It was his girlfriend of six months! She was shocked to learn we had been together for six years and were living together."
"I'd also found a pair of women's leather gloves. I obviously knew he was cheating, but he refused to admit it. We were not in a good place. Needless to say, I moved out that same day." —brittaniarcher15
20. "I had gotten a new phone and given him my old one. A few days later, I received a couple of calls that would hang up when I answered. I asked him about the number, and he said he didn’t know it. One night, I happened to check my Google account because I couldn’t sleep. It was about 4 a.m. Google Maps Timeline puts you within 500 feet of a place. I saw an address I knew because he was friends with her ex-boyfriend. The bastard went over to her house on my birthday when he told me something important had come up and he had to go to his co-workers."
"The calls were weird enough because I hadn't given anyone my new number. He finally admitted to it since I had proof, but he still won’t admit to how long it had been going on for." —fordbaby
21. "My ex-husband started cheating on me three months in. He was tagged in a photo with her in a hotel room. He said it was old, but he was wearing the hat that we just got him. He went to Mardi Gras with her Valentine's weekend and said it was Army training. He left me but came back and — being a good, married, Christian woman — I forgave him. We decided a baby was a fantastic idea. When I was 11 weeks pregnant, I found all the messages he didn't delete from his GIRLFRIEND that he had while we were apart — along with all the women he promised to marry for military benefits when we 'divorced.' He said I couldn't be mad because I had already forgiven him for the time apart. THEN, he cheated again while I was eight months pregnant. I got sent the video."
"He continued to lie, cheat, and be emotionally and verbally abusive for another year before I was able to leave. He said I caught him every time.
The marriage turned me into a toxic partner to my next boyfriend. I had to learn to trust men again." —sammit06
22. "My ex always showered. For 18 years, he showered. Suddenly, he started taking baths. He'd call his girlfriend and sext her in the bath. We lived in a very small house, so I could hear every word. I think my kids heard, too. I was too scared to ask. We’d be on a date — I was trying to save our marriage — and he’d leave to talk to his girlfriend of the moment. Even though I’m over him, I will never forget the shame of that time in my life."
"Every time he took a call, it was always a 'friend' needing help." —t46a8c968f
23. "We were together for seven years before we got married, so I thought we were pretty solid. A year into the marriage, he started talking more and more about a coworker and the issues she was having with her husband. Finally, he told me he couldn't be married anymore because we were just 'too different.' But he swore up and down it wasn't about anyone else. He moved out, and as I was packing up to sell our home, I found a used condom wrapper in his nightstand. Spoiler alert: We didn't use condoms since we were fine with getting pregnant."
"He ended up marrying that coworker two years later. So much for no one else." —threestories