It goes without saying that cheating sucks. There's no excuse for it, and it's not the fault of the partner being cheated on. However, that doesn't make it any easier to learn that your partner is cheating. So, we asked (formerly) married people of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us how they discovered that their spouse was cheating on them, and they did not hold back:
1. "When he called me at 3 a.m. to come pick him up. Where from? He wasn't sure where he was on a specific street but said I'd see him. I got there, and he came from behind a tree in just his underwear. He'd just gotten chased out of his girlfriend's house when her husband caught them."
2. "I looked at his Apple Watch and saw his friend texted him that he needed to leave the other girl alone and focus on his marriage. His response, 'I only used my fingers.'"
"Lol."
3. "My ex-husband is epileptic. After he had a seizure one night, he was out of it and pretty disoriented. Before falling back asleep next to me — after I took care of him, gave him his meds, and wiped the drool from his face — he grabbed his phone, tapped something out, and then threw it directly behind him. The phone landed face-up in my lap, showing a text to his mistress that said, 'I’m in love with you.'"
"Our divorce is final next week."
4. "It had been going on for two years. He'd been grooming his social media to look like he was a single father in the house that I'd bought. However, he only planned on meeting up with her, having sex with her once (with a condom out of respect for me), and then blocking her because I'd gained weight after having a kid and was struggling with PPD. I found out when he plugged his phone in to charge in the kitchen. We'd spent the night celebrating a friend's birthday over Skype. I'd spent a couple of hours making a new recipe for dinner, as well as dessert. Around midnight, I went out to get a cup of water after what I had considered a great night, especially during quarantine, and saw his phone go off. It was a message from an unsaved number saying, 'I love you, too.' Of course, I opened the message to find he'd been telling this woman that he'd had nothing but a corn dog for dinner and missed her and loved her."
5. "He kept having to run back to work for something. For the longest time, I believed him. One night, he said he had run to work and sign some reports that were overdue. Ok, fine. He accidentally took my phone instead of his because we had similar cases. I didn’t realize it until the 'Did your wife let you leave yet?' text came through. I texted back that he was on the way and asked if she could let him know that he grabbed my phone instead of his. Her response, no joke: 'New phone, who dis?'"
"When he got home, he had this long, ridiculous story but ultimately was never smart enough to put a passcode on his phone or delete the old sexting and pics she had sent."
6. "My mother-in-law told me my husband was cheating on me because everyone knew it — like everyone — except me! He was away on a 'business trip' with his girlfriend, and I brought our kids over to my in-laws to see their new condo. My mother-in-law couldn’t stand it anymore! She said, 'He’s cheating on you.' It still took me a few minutes to comprehend. My father-in-law was there, one of my brothers-in-law... It was a real family affair."
7. "My now-ex used his Apple account to set up my 2-year-old son's iPad. I was in the kitchen cleaning one evening, and my son was sitting on the floor playing on the iPad. He was watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse when he clicked out and said, 'Mama, look!' As a parent busy with chores, we don’t often look, and I said, 'Wow, buddy, that's cool,' while still loading the dishwasher. He walked over to me, pulled my pants, and said, 'Mama, daddy!' I looked down to then see messages opened with my now-ex's nudes."
"He was obviously sexting someone. I grabbed the iPad and scrolled through the messages. It was his ex whom he had reconnected with via Facebook. I screenshot everything, sent it to my email on his account, then deleted the evidence and email.
Later on, I confronted him. After a very heated argument in which the police were called, my son and I left for my sister’s house. My ex gaslighted me about everything, and his family came for my throat, saying they would help him get custody of my son. So, naturally and calmly, I posted every screenshot on Facebook and tagged him and his entire family in a public post."
8. "His grandfather developed dementia, and we moved in to help take care of him. My husband didn't have a job but would leave each day with a book bag. Long story short: I found condoms in the book bag, and an open wrapper fell from his pants pocket when I was doing laundry."
9. "It so happened that the girl my husband was secretly seeing was also colleagues with a close friend of mine. She was showing off photos of her new boyfriend to everyone in the office, so imagine my friend’s shock when she saw who it was."
"She told another close friend — both were also my bridesmaids at my wedding — and they both broke the news to me together, which I am forever grateful for because I know it’s not an easy conversation to have."
10. "I went to Houston for a job interview. When I called home, my then-husband was really distracted due to a party he was having. Anyway, two days later, I got home. I was spending time with my 4-year-old stepson. As I was holding him and telling him how much I loved him, he casually says, 'Like Jenna?' I said, 'Who is Jenna?' My little stepson proceeded to tell me how daddy has this friend, Jenna, who spent the night and told him and his older brother — who was 6 at the time — that she loved them so much and looked forward to being their mommy."
"We got home; I called my father-in-law and told him I was leaving, filing for divorce, and the reasoning behind it all. Never saw the kids that I loved again or the asshole! Changed my name back."
11. "Husband was logged into our kid's tablet. I was scrolling through downloaded apps trying to locate whatever I was looking for, and I was able to see that apps like Grindr and the like had been downloaded by him (on his device, not the kid's)."
12. "About six months after we got married, my ex started talking about a coworker who was having issues with her partner. A few weeks later, he called to tell me she'd be staying at our house because her partner 'got violent.' I wasn't happy about not being consulted, but I'm not going to turn away someone experiencing domestic violence. This happened twice, and he moved out right after to stay with a friend, claiming he needed 'space to work on his sobriety' (which is a whole other story). A few weeks later — one week after our first anniversary — I found a bunch of love notes she'd written to him, online reviews he'd written for hotels and a spa they'd gone to together, and that he was not actually staying with a friend. I also discovered her partner wasn't abusing her. He had actually moved out because he found out she was cheating. That's maybe the thing that upsets me the most because that was such a disgusting lie to tell."
"When she stayed at our house, my ex stayed up all night with her. He then got mad at me for being upset about it.
Once I found out, I bagged ALL his shit up and put it outside, cleaned out our joint account, told his entire family what he'd done, and moved on. Two and a half years later, I'm happier and healthier than ever before."
13. "The idiot borrowed my car, took her out in it, and got pulled over for doing donuts in a cul-de-sac. For some reason, the cops called me to give me a chance to come to get my car and wouldn't let her leave until I showed up!"
14. "I came home on my lunch — which I did every day — and they were in bed. He was having a breakdown about turning 30, and she was 19. After his birthday, he told me he was done with her. He could not understand why I wouldn't take him back."
15. "The day before my 30th birthday, my (now-ex) husband was arrested for sending pictures of his penis to who he believed to be a 14-year-old girl. Thankfully, it was an undercover agent."
"Between then and when he ended up taking a plea deal to avoid prison, I found a pair of women’s panties that weren’t mine under my bed. I know of at least one time he had another woman over while I was at work."
16. "I had a feeling but couldn't prove it at first. He was getting gas in towns we never went to — lots of leaving in the middle of the night and gaslighting. One time, we had a charge from a florist, and I never received flowers. He said he bought them for me, but I was being 'such a bitch' that he trashed them. He even told me a sad sappy story about a 'friend' who had a baby and no help, so I bagged up whatever my baby had outgrown to give. Then, the home phone bill came, and, for some reason, it listed every call that month. There were more than 265 outgoing phone calls in one month from our home phone to one number. (I later discovered he also had a work cell and a burner phone to contact her on.) When I called the phone number, I reached the voicemail, and it was his coworker, who had just had a baby. Several years later, that child looks a lot like my own child."
17. "My husband asked me — out of the blue — when my last pap smear was and if it was normal. I told him it was a month ago, and it was fine. I asked, 'Why did you want to know?'"
"'Just wondering,' he answered, and since love is blind, I left it at that. Turns out, the woman he was sleeping with tested positive for HPV! He wanted to make sure I didn't have it because I immediately would have suspected he was cheating. He was my first!"
18. "I was out for my birthday with my husband. He went to the bathroom and left his phone. It rang, showing a name I had never heard him mention. When he got back, I asked him who she was. At the time, he had a really important job that caused him to work away a lot. If he missed calls, he could get in trouble, so I just assumed she was someone he worked with. His first response was, 'Nothing’s happened,' which told me that everything had happened."
19. "I found out because he was being too nice to me. We had gotten into a huge fight the night before I left to visit family about one of his 'friends' that I didn't like. We talked a little while I was gone but had no long conversations. When I got back, he was very doting and sweet, which was not normal. Long story short, he had taken his 'friend' to a show that I told him I wanted to see. He said he took her instead of me because he 'thought I didn't want to go.' A couple of weeks later, we were hanging out and getting breakfast. He dropped me off at my apartment, and as soon as I walked in, my stomach dropped. I had this gut feeling that hit me HARD. I called him right away and immediately asked, 'Did you cheat on me?' It went silent for what seemed like five minutes until he said, 'How did you know?'"
20. "It was our seven-year anniversary, and he went radio silent after he was supposed to be off work. It was 11 p.m., and I ended up driving to his dad's house — he went there frequently — to try to find him. He was in the spare bedroom with another woman."
21. "I had been feeling really uncomfortable and in pain *down there* for weeks. I ended up going to the doctor, who suspected I was having an ectopic pregnancy. I was told to rush to the hospital to be checked out but no pregnancy. A week later, I got a call telling me I had chlamydia. Given my apparent shock, the nurse said I 'probably needed to have a chat with my husband.' Eventually, he admitted to sleeping with a sex worker at a well-known local brothel whilst I was working on the other side of the country. He also confessed to being a compulsive masturbator and 'relieving himself' on a daily basis in the toilets at work. The chlamydia was so well-established, it developed into pelvic inflammatory disease. For years, I was worried it had left me infertile."
22. "My ex-fiancé and I shared a cabin with other people. Sometime later, he quit his job and moved into the cabin full-time. I suspected something was going on with another woman in the cabin but had no proof, so I said nothing. Then, when we were having sex, he did something he'd never done before in our two-year relationship. A week later, we were skiing together, and I took a bad fall. I sustained a very painful and serious knee injury, but he only screamed at me and skied off. While I was lying there in the snow, I happened to look up. There, on the chairlift above me, he and this 'other person' were laughing and pointing at me, fractured and stranded in the snow."
23. "We had been married for 10 years with two beautiful children. One day, I opened our shared laptop, and it was opened to an email from, basically, a Craigslist pimp, matching him with three eligible MEN! I was utterly shocked and immediately asked him what the fuck it was. He said it was an ad to pair people for a golf foursome!"
"Mother f'er, you don't even play golf! Four months later, he came clean and came out. I was actually extremely relieved and happy for him. Eight years later, our kids are happy, and we're both now married to wonderful men!"
—Libby, Facebook
24. "We were both residents but matched in different cities. During that time, he'd stay late at work and constantly text one of his co-residents. In December, I took an eight-hour bus ride to see him and got to his place at 4 a.m. He greeted me with a super enthusiastic kiss, and I just got this feeling that this kiss wasn't meant for me. When he went to work, I found emails between him and his married co-resident. I took photos, packed my bags, and confronted him, but he denied it. I started reading the emails, and then he told me breaking up is easier than he thought it would be."
25. "My ex told me he wanted to separate on a Tuesday. That Thursday, his friends from out of town stayed at our house, so we pretended everything was fine. On Friday night, my ex got really drunk. When I checked on him, he fell asleep in the basement. It was 2 a.m., and he got a text from a coworker. Seeing as it was an absurd hour to talk about work, I curiously opened the text that said, 'I just told [my husband] that it was over.'"
"I scrolled back and saw that the two had been secretly planning to leave their respective spouses so they could be with each other. They're a gross representation of a relationship stemming out of the heartbreak of both their spouses.
Turns out, they had been calling and texting each other the whole time while I sat there fighting for our damn marriage. I confronted him about it while our guests were out at a wedding, but I still managed to put on a happy face around his friends and family all weekend long.
This guy was really finding comfort in another woman while I played the part of the sweet, welcoming wife to HIS friends. Coward."
—ja5
26. "He got a new cellphone and gave me his old one to sell to one of my friends. I reminded him to do a reset, and he said he did. His dumbass just deleted some stuff, but I saw texts between him and another girl."
"He was talking about how nice it was to hang out with her a few nights before when he had told me he was with his brother. It was a horrible, toxic relationship, and I was so relieved to have a good excuse to end it."
27. "We were both in the Army. I got pregnant a month after we got married, but we were stationed apart for the majority of my pregnancy. My daughter was born six weeks premature, and I felt no support from him. I was suffering from postpartum depression, PTSD, and other mental health issues. He took my daughter to Florida to see his parents so I could have a weekend to myself and then stopped answering my calls. While I was on his laptop for a consignment sale for kids, his email popped up. I found a flight confirmation with his name on one ticket and my daughter's and a woman's name on the other. This fool tried to gaslight the shit out of me. He even cried about me not trusting him, saying I was ruining our marriage and he had no idea who the woman was. Here's the twist: Everyone in my group therapy was close. As I was talking to one lady about what happened, another lady overheard and said, 'Hey, I know her! She works on the same floor as your husband!'"
28. "We were visiting his parents four states away. He and our almost-2-year-old child were both snoring adorably on the bed in our hotel room. His phone was the closest, so I picked it up to snap a picture and saw a message from another woman."
"Turns out, they had been dating for a year and a half."
29. "We had lived in Vienna for four years when she got a job in Berlin. We then decided I would move to Berlin after a year. I gave up my job and apartment. A week before I was to move, she said she was flying to the US for a retreat with her mom and wouldn't have much access to a phone. She called once at 2 a.m. and said she had calculated the time difference wrong. The next day, I got a call from one of her friends. It turns out that she was actually in China with her boyfriend, Stefan."
"I knew she had had an affair with him shortly after she got to Berlin, but I thought it was over because she told me it was over. After she got back to Europe, we talked. Over the course of the next six months, she earned my trust again.
I was still in Vienna and thinking of moving to Berlin when I found out from another friend that she and Stefan were flying to NYC. This was a long time ago. I'm very happily married now. She and Stefan didn't last."
30. "My 3-year-old daughter caught her dad cheating by pressing the record button on our answering machine. She recorded his conversation with the other woman. You should have seen his face when I played it back for him."
31. "My ex would leave as soon as I got home from work to go to his mom's to help. She was fighting cancer, so I had no reason to not believe him — until a shirtless pic of him was tagged at a female friend's home at midnight."
"I was the only one working, supporting him, our new baby, and my mom so he could go to his mom's to help. Moron still wouldn't admit he cheated, and he still won't 10 years later."
32. "I found out from Google timeline. Almost every day, it tracked her going between our house, work, and the other woman's place."
"I felt stalker-y looking at her Google account, but I had major suspicions, and it proved me right! I moved out that weekend and never looked back."
33. "I opened his phone one morning to take a sexy pic and leave it stashed in his photos for him to find. Instead, I found the Kik app open to messages between him and another woman. She sent nudes the previous night, and he laughed about talking to her while I was asleep right next to him."
34. "I was on the computer, and I just had the urge to check his Gmail. I found some Cash App payments to a girl and then went to his Google Photos since it's synced to his phone. There, I found a lot of pictures and videos of them having sex. To make matters worse, he took my daughter to see her."
35. "My kids told me they were getting a new stepsister, but I wasn't allowed to know."
—Natalie, Facebook
36. "I asked my ex-husband if he was cheating, and he said no, got angry with me, and made me feel like I was causing a rift in our marriage. One evening, I was at home alone while he said he was out with friends. I checked my email and had been automatically emailed a receipt from CVS for some lube and condoms. He never came home that night, didn’t call, and never answered any of my texts or calls."
37. "I handled the money and paid our bills. One of his credit cards didn't come in, so I went looking for the paper bill. It was nowhere to be found. Next, I checked the account online. I noticed a $1,000 purchase for gym equipment. Um, where was this $1,000 gym equipment? 'Cause it was NOT at our house. Well, I dug around some more. It had been delivered to our hairdresser. I still remember his mother defending him, saying he would never cheat on me."
"'You guys have been married for 15 years,' she said. I said, 'In 15 years, he has NEVER bought me a gift for a thousand bucks. Has he ever spent a thousand bucks on you, Mom? I rest my case!'"
38. "He kept borrowing my car while I was in class or at work. One day, he didn't pick me up. He said he had a family emergency in Atlanta. Turns out, he was down there staying with an ex-girlfriend and hooked up with another ex during those three days — in my NEW car. He literally had sex in the backseat and bragged to the girls that it was his car."
39. "I walked into my boss's office, and my husband's picture was on her computer. She saw my face and said, 'Oh, sorry! My friend met this guy on Plenty of Fish, and she's debating meeting him.' He was lying about his age, job, education, me — everything. Luckily, I was already at the breaking point, so I just kind of laughed and told her who he actually was."
"It was slightly awkward, but my boss's ex-husband was also a cheating piece of shit, so at least she was someone who I didn't need to feel embarrassed in front of. She knew what it was like."
40. "I was shopping on my ex's computer when a Facebook message popped up. Curiosity got to me, and I found multiple messages of him expressing his love and regret for marrying me to his high school girlfriend, who he considered his 'best friend.' Plus, messages between him and other women."
"Some went as far back as the beginning of our relationship. Text messages, Instagram messages... I began getting texts from other women he knew telling me about things he sent to them or asked for via Snapchat and how he talked badly about me to them.
I tried to make it work, but he continued to talk to his 'best friend' even though I explained to him why I wasn’t comfortable with it. He just didn’t care. He told me I shouldn't make him choose between me and her. So I made the choice for him."
41. "I got off work early and decided to take myself to the movies. He showed up at the same movie with the other woman."
42. "I got an Instagram DM from a guy I didn't know telling me. He was my partner's mistress's husband. He also let me know he figured I was away for the weekend since his wife was at my apartment screwing my partner."
43. "I was eight months pregnant with my first baby at the time. We had moved earlier that year across the country where I knew no one. I was feeling frisky and propositioned my husband one evening, but he recoiled at my touch, and something about it seemed very off. I had a bad feeling and looked at his phone that night — something I'd never done or even suspected before. I found thousands of messages clearly showing a relationship with a girl 10 years younger than me that dated back to the past three months. He saw me with his phone and pushed me down the stairs to get it back from me."
44. "My ex was in a bad car accident. His car was pushed into a concrete median and totaled. He was lucky to be alive and came home in an Uber. As he was explaining what happened, he started showing me pictures of the car — one of which was a picture of a female torso with a seatbelt burn."
45. "My ex-husband — immediately after we got married — asked for his best friend to move in with us. I said fine, he's a cool guy. Then, he wanted to bang him and begged me to be in an open relationship so we could have a threesome. I was hesitant but wanted to be supportive of him and his interests. Turns out, the friend was NOT into that but was into me — so he requested that he and I continue to do things. My ex-husband shrugged and said he didn't care as he was seeing other men already. I had no idea he had been using Grindr."
"Fast-forward to the following year, I told him I wanted to focus on our marriage and wanted the open thing to end. He threatened me with a divorce. So I said fuck it and kept seeing his friend, who made me very happy when we were together.
All three of us ended up moving states, and it turns out, my ex-husband had been sleeping with someone who was HIV positive without telling me. He also kept gaslighting me and completely tearing me down for anything I did.
I ended up demanding a divorce, and he told his friends and family I cheated on him. He swiped $20,000 out of our joint bank account and left. Then, at the divorce hearing, he tried to get me back.
Since then, I've been blissfully married to his now ex-best friend for two years, and we have two children. It's been hard for us to come to terms with the way he treated us, but we've helped each other through it. I still don't believe I cheated since he forced me into it."
46. "I went away for the weekend to visit family. I came home to find long brown hairs in the shower."
47. "My ex-husband had been in another state for a few weeks for work. Instead of coming home for Easter weekend, he said he wanted to save money and was going to see his (male) friend who lived nearby. That Saturday, I see he's been tagged at a restaurant on Facebook with his ex-girlfriend."
"He really didn’t even try to hide it or deny it after. He just said that I deserved better. Well, he was right about that part."
48. "I checked our phone bill and constantly kept seeing the same number that I didn't recognize. The phone conversations were sometimes as long as three hours, so I called, and she confessed that she was the other woman."
49. "He wanted to move into an apartment downtown so he could walk to work. A month after selling my dream home, we had several friends over at the apartment pool. I went in to go to bed, and they all stayed out. He never came home. Turns out, he made out with my 'friend,' and 10 other 'friends' saw it but said nothing. He went home with her. After he came home, I confronted him. He admitted to it, and I immediately left him. I ditched all those toxic people, too."
