How Did You Get Proof of Cheating?
Today’s Friday Challenge is: How did you get proof of cheating? Chumps are often accused of being irrationally suspicious. But eventually the spackle gives way to investigation (or “snooping” as it more pejoratively known.)
What did you find?
And how did you find it? This topic was suggested by a listener of the podcast for a future episode.
Would love it if you did an episode of the way people investigated their FW to get proof that their FW was cheating?
So, CN got any clever stories?
One of the abiding skillsets I required during my time on the Marriage Police Force is the ability to do deep dives on public records and cross reference time lines. Which is great if I want to give up blogging to become Kojak, but is not generally a good quality in a partner. (It’s helped my journalism career though! I’m a big fan of background check software.)
But the point of marriage and intimacy is trust. You should feel safe. No one can live in a state of hyper vigilance, which is why my usual advice is : you know enough.
You don’t need proof of cheating to know that your relationship is unacceptable.
If someone is disrespectful, evasive, checked out and diverting their attentions elsewhere, THAT’S ENOUGH. You don’t need to be MrGruff the Crime Dog.
But most chumps, driven crazy with gaslighting, start snooping. And most cheaters get sloppy (not, IMO, because they want to be caught, but because they underestimate you.)
So, CN, tell me how you got the goods.
You can leave a voicemail here or give us a masterclass on your methods in the comments.
TGIF!
Ex-Mrs LFTT – I now know – used to communicate with her AP between their meet ups (AKA “Choir Practise”) by text message on her iPhone. Her iPhone was “synched” to her iPad, which our youngest daughter also used to use occasionally.
One day our youngest daughter was using the iPad when a string of texts (none of which were appropriate for a child of her age) came up between Ex-Mrs LFTT and her AP. Youngest daughter showed them to her elder brother and sister, who took pictures of the texts and thought that t might be worth checking the search history on the iPad’s browser …. “How to have an affair and get away with it?” and “What should a woman in her 40’s wear on a first date?” were two of the searches.
The kids showed me the texts etc – I had been oblivious up to this point – I confronted Ex-Mrs LFTT, she denied everything and the rest is history.
LFTT
“Choir practice” – is that what the young people call it now?
I’m sorry, it really isn’t funny. It’s sad.
DofaC,
Ex-Mrs LFTT had joined a choir and would attend practises on a Thursday evening and then further practises and performances on a Sunday. Despite me being the main breadwinner and having a very demanding job at the time, I was expected to turn myself inside out to make sure that I was available to look after our children so as ensure that Ex-Mrs LFTT could pursue her new hobby.
A few years later I found out from a work colleague whose wife was also a member of the choir that Ex-Mrs LFTT seldom if ever showed up ….. it was cover for her date nights with her AP. More fool me I suppose; I knew that she couldn’t sing for sh*t, but I wanted to be a good husband and support her new hobby without judgement.
LFTT
My then 12 year old son saw text notifications on Dad’s phone and pieced together the rest. I wish he ran to me with his discovery but he kept his Dad’s secret for some weeks or months. When Dad was leaving us to “go do some soul searching alone” for a while and I was unwittingly roped into delivering that script to our son, my son asked both of us if we had someone else and watched each of us swear that of course not. When the door behind Dad closed, he said to me: you know about X from work, right? I don’t think I can ever get over what this did to my son. This premature loss of innocence, this burden of keeping a secret on top of having to manage the impact of these facts without any support, the need to lead a “double life” of his own because of Dad. And watching Dad lie straight to his face.
🤮
Your poor kids.
That must have been horrible for your kids! I hope they’re OK now? Your X is a disgrace but she’s their mother. Shame on her for exposing her children to that!
Same, LFTT, same.
My 14-year old son was on the family computer and hit the “History” button to look up his school project work. Instead, he was treated to a looooong list of Craigslist hookup ads. In a panic, he screamed for his 16-year old sister. She came running down, took one look at the screen and yelled for me. Then the three of us sat silently staring at the screen. Ex, of course, denied that anything had happened. “I was just bored and thought it would be funny to scroll through them.”
When I finally filed for divorce, my son asked “Was it because of what I found on the computer?”
😢 What they do to their kids is unconscionable.
Poor lad!
Eve,
You have my sympathy, and I hope that your son and daughter know that they did absolutely the right thing in informing you.
LFTT
Wow. They don’t understand technology at all, do they??
I think it’s more that in their arrogance, they don’t think they’ll be caught.
One word: trichomoniasis
Yea, I remember having to go to the doctor because something wasn’t right down there. I should have left him then. Naive me.
I had that, too! 13 years before Dday #1. At that time I refused to believe he cheated, though, and fell for my Asian face-saving doctor’s explanation that I picked it up from a toilet seat. 😖
I’m sorry that happened to you. When I found out I did all kinds of toilet seat research and got a second opinion! I wrote to chump lady in desperation thinking that somebody would tell me that there was another way I got this. Nope. I was with a classic FW And this was the only way I would believe it. Divorced and free two years now. This blog and book and all of you saved my LIFE. Now I’m the mom my kids deserve. 🩷
Way to go, doing the research you did and writing to CL! I’m happy you are out and being the mom you want to be. You are mighty!
I didn’t even have to try. My FW forgot that he had set me up as a partner in Google photos so that every photo he took was automatically shared to me whenever his phone connected to wifi. He was on a long (7 week) trip overseas, supposedly working remotely while visiting all his aging family, and asked me if I minded he stay another week to catch a spectacular meteor shower best visible in the Canary Islands where his cousin lives. Meanwhile I was home with 2 sick children, one reacting to his strep antibiotics. I woke up to a notification at 3am (8am where he was) of new photos – him cuddling half-naked with a tramp, the naked back of said tramp sleeping, him and trampy out at the bars, out sightseeing, out at lunch. He didn’t see any meteor shower. He stayed to take a whole week vacation with some Tinder tramp he met. Proof of the second tramp (that I know of) from said visit – he came home with a bracelet in his luggage and it did not even belong to the vacation-tinder-tramp. He got sloppy after all these years.
I don’t know if Apple still has it…but a few years ago you could track people on their phone – you know, see where your friends are, etc. Dipsh*t forgot about that. So, while he was supposed to be in Redlands, California, he was actually in Palm Springs – even though there was no conference THERE! He lied and said a bunch of colleagues drove to Palm Springs for “dinner”. That sealed his coffin.
And, what amazes me is…despite his lying to me (and being in Palm Springs overnight with his female work colleague), she stuck around and married him! They are two liars made for each other. I don’t think cheaters ever give up cheating. So, it should be a fun life for them.
Sounds like he had a “meaty whore” shower that turned into a “meeting your” lawyer.
Wow, what a moron! Mine wasn’t quite that stupid as he would delete his photos of the OW, but he didn’t realize they still remain on your google timeline when you erase them on your phone, so I got them that way. FW works in tech and didn’t even know what google timeline was. 🙄
So what did your FW say when confronted with the photos?
I wonder how many of us can thank Google Photos for the covering the deceit?
My X was sloppy as well or I wouldn’t have gone looking in the first place! It seems to be one their failings, sloppiness, doesn’t it?
I think it comes from and overestimation of their own cleverness and an underestimation of ours!
Yes, and I think they build complacency every time we catch a hint of something and question it, and then believe their lies or downplaying and ignore our guts, because (in my case anyway) we so desperately want them to be the good person we think they are.
Forgiveness grooming I call it. Step by step you are groomed to forgive or let it go. One lie at a time
We do indeed, because when the blinders come off, it’s a horrible thing to face up to that the person we loved and cared for so much, and feckin’ well trusted, is not who we thought they were and probably never had been! It’s a shock!
The nerve, and the idiocy!
We were heading out to one of his company parties, and had booked a brand new babysitter for our 6 year old. As I was prepping the sitter for the evening, we discovered that the TV wasn’t working for some reason – and I felt bad that she wouldn’t have any entertainment after my son went to bed, so I offered her my iPad to use until we got home. FW, always trying to look like the “nice guy,” rushed over with his iPad and said – “No, use mine instead – it’s newer and nicer.” He proceeded to give her his passcode, which I had been trying to guess for weeks – so I overheard it and memorized it. 5 days later – Thanksgiving – he went for a “run” (for over 2 hrs) and I took a break from cooking to dig into his iPad. Boom – there it all was, the pics/love notes/videos and even some real estate listings that they were considering for when they each left their chumps. I don’t know how I made it through the rest of that day, I have no recollection of cooking the rest of the Thanksgiving meal or eating it…but what I can say is that I wish I hadn’t seen all of that. It gave my mind WAY too much to ruminate about for a very long time, and I really do think it made my recovery a lot harder…talk about having something “living rent free in your head,” ugh. I wish I hadn’t wanted to know the details so badly. Also, I can’t stand the taste or smell of turkey anymore – which still makes me mad.
“Things I lost when I booted a fuckwit: turkey. And… No, just turkey.”
Yeah, they can ruin the things you love. But you can often get them back in time. For years I could not go to certain places associated with their trysts. I can now. I hope you get turkey back.
My first clue was finding an unfamiliar pair of women’s underwear on my closet floor. Queen of denial and nonconfrontation that I am I put them in the laundry. They mysteriously disappeared. Then when my ex came back from a work trip and I looked through his computer bag. Guess what was inside?! The underwear, along with a woman’s t-shirt, also not mine. Cut to nearly ten years later, they’re married af not have a 6 year old. She’s 57, he’s 54. She and I are actually on good terms -she apologized to me for her role in a situation that caused me so much pain. She then gave me the laundry list of lies he fed her about me and our relationship (we never had sex, I was cheating throughout the marriage, we were separated but keeping up a front for the kids, all of the classics) each of which I debunked. Recently I mentioned the underwear and how it was the first sign of their relationship I encountered. PLOT TWIST: THEY WERE NOT HER UNDERWEAR!!! I still have no idea whose underwear they were, but damn am I glad she won the pick me dance!
“PLOT TWIST: THEY WERE NOT HER UNDERWEAR!!!” I wonder if this was a surprise to OW, or did she already know what she was married to? Oh, to be a fly on the wall during THAT discussion!
I went no contact with all the OW. It is incomprehensible to be talking about the cheater and giving them centrality. This story just fries me.
I found black underwear hidden in a corner under the guest bathroom sink in our apartment. Being newly married and having a baby, I spackled and thought they were left by a guest of ours. I didn’t even confront him about it. Now looking back and finding out he was a serial cheater our entire marriage, they were probably intentionally left by one of his APs. Boy do I feel dumb for not even questioning him about it.
Aw, you’re not dumb. You were incredibly vulnerable and overwhelmed. It’s understandable that you didn’t feel up to confronting him.
Oooh! There’ll be trouble in THAT paradise soon I reckon!
It’s mind blowing to me how she stays at this point. I mean, at least I had the excuse of not knowing who he was and what he was capable of. But she know everything he’s done! She even caught him in more lies just a couple of years ago. Karma is them staying together forever.
As a fellow underwear finder, I ***love*** that those underwear didn’t belong to the OW you knew about.
When I say that I nearly fell over I am not exaggerating. She said she was going to talk to her therapist about how to confront him about it. I’m dying to know how that went.
I say this with love — leave her to her therapist. There is no reason to keep hearing about their b.s. years later. They betrayed you in the most horrible way, and “dying to know” may be more apt than you think. Maybe “living to not care” would be better?
A few chumps on this forum whose FWs died before they could divorce them described having to suffer through APs attempting to crash funerals. It gave me a head film of being in the same boat– ugh, gag, ick. Then I had a fun thought: hire a couple female comedians to stage a Jerry Springer style multi-schmoopie pile-up the second the AP shows up. Lots of hair spray, fingerless gloves and, of course, the requisite simulated cat fight over the casket. Bring popcorn.
Well, the first clues were growing a beard (which he can’t really do and it looked terrible) and joining a new gym. Then he started treating me terribly. But the real clues came when I could see via our shared locations that he was spending time at an apartment complex in town, and then his location sharing started not working frequently (he of course, had no idea why it wouldn’t work.) I then looked up a coworker of his who I thought lived in a different part of town and found out she had filed for divorce, so had likely moved into an apartment.
I called him out and he admitted the affair (just “emotional” though) and moved out three days later. That is when the snooping started. He had left behind the family laptop with his email logged in. So I was able to find the email where he Venmo’d her a Christmas bonus for having a hot ass 18 months prior. And sent her an Ulta gift card with the caption “what would I do without you?” for her birthday.
But the best part was, after we had to file taxes as married the year he left, I requested a copy of the tax return from our CPA, who returned to me all of the original support as well, which included all of his business expense receipts. So, while I knew about the affair, I got to find out that he had been taking her on business trips and fancy dinners on the company dime.
Of course, none of it mattered in the long run. I can’t recoup any of that money since he claimed it was all work related (she was his assistant but he never took any previous assistants on trips.) And now I get to see FW and Schmoopie twice a week at my son’s football games. Good times!
My sleuthing was old-fashioned reading of text messages on his phone when he (amazingly!) left it unattended. He also hadn’t changed the password so I could access the messages. Sloppy? Yes.
The first time, I felt the need to “snoop” because he was acting especially strange and evasive and checked out.
The 2nd time, more than a year later, I intentionally planned to read the text history when the opportunity arose because I knew I couldn’t get the truth from him.
What I DIDN’T plan on was what it did to my sympathetic nervous system reading their texts – how close they were, how much energy and deliberate planning went into deceiving me and others, how much he put me down to her like he was the victim of being married to an ogre.
I will never have proof of what they said or did in their numerous video calls or in-person meetups. But as Tracy said, I knew enough because of the texts and how he was behaving.
Hey wait, you can’t claim my ogre throne! Here I was thinking I was special that way. 😀
Haha, yes! 🙂
We can share the title. 😉
I never had any “hard proof.”
There were the high-risk HPV strains that suddenly popped up 12 years into our marriage, but my female doctor assured me that they could have been dormant since my youth and didn’t mean anything. I now seriously doubt that.
There were those on-and-off periods when he was so irritated with me, seemingly grasping at straws to find and point out any faults I had, no matter how small. I now know those were times he was interested in someone else, devaluing me to justify talking to other women.
The Craigslist posts I found were just “writing exercises.” The sign-up for a dating app was because he thought we met on it and wanted to see our old messages; he deleted it right away.
The shady massage parlor visit while I was out of town was for a massage only, and besides, he doesn’t even know how to ask for that sort of thing. He didn’t tell me about it because he knew I would “take it the wrong way.”
There was that family vacation when he was oddly calm and happy but kept leaving our hotel on various errands that took hours longer than they should have. I know now he was using that time to text and talk with an old girlfriend. Totally innocently, of course—she was having a hard time, and he just wanted to be helpful! He simply didn’t tell me about it because I was so “judgmental,” and he deleted the texts between them so I wouldn’t be able to see how “innocent” they were.
Through this blog, I realized I didn’t need to catch him red-handed. Everything I discovered, I stumbled upon accidentally. Even if all his excuses were 100% true, it didn’t excuse him from keeping secrets from me. He was not trustworthy. I am certain that for everything I found out, there were 100 things I didn’t. I’m not that good of a detective, and I never was trying to be one anyway.
Friends, if you catch someone lying to you, no matter how small, that’s the time to break away from them. The same goes for concealment. Maybe they didn’t outright lie, but they let you live in a different reality while secretly having all the facts. I often feel like he watched me try to solve a puzzle while he had all the corner pieces in his pockets.
Any single one of the incidents above was “enough” to leave. I wish I had understood that at the time, but I hadn’t found this site yet.
I’m sorry you had to go through such a health scare. I’ve noticed organized medicine keeps stretching out the HPV dormancy period to the point of absurdity. First it was a few years, then ten, then more. I’m suspicious there may be “family values” motives underlying this since I can’t seem to find any solid research supporting the figures, plus every article touting the “decades” thing will usually add “So this doesn’t mean your partner is cheating.” But honestly, how would doctors even know this unless they’d performed several peer reviewed longitudinal studies on prisoners in solitary confinement?
I wonder if it relates to the fact that doctors seem to have high statistical rates of cheating not to mention all the reported misogyny in medical fiends. Some doctors might really get off on telling women, “No, you’re husband didn’t give it to you– this was your slutty past!”
This – “I never had hard proof” – but I had all of those same things. @NotAnymore, I could have written this.
Eventually, he admitted to me that he had been “cheating on every woman he was with for his entire life”… but then he recanted the next day, claiming he had not done that to me. He still tells our friends that he doesn’t understand why I divorced him. I have given up trying to understand. It doesn’t matter. I’ve reached Meh.
Yes, this image of the puzzle pieces is so poignant. And your advice is dead-on: “Friends, if you catch someone lying to you, no matter how small, that’s the time to break away from them.” I wish I had known this, 20 years ago.
This! “I often feel like he watched me try to solve a puzzle while he had all the corner pieces in his pockets.” You nailed it.
We were looking for a new house–he was future faking and wasting my time. We spent weekends going to open houses. He left the bedroom computer open to a listing, which I read. Told him it was a rental. He told me to look again. I did, and also open on the page was an email to a woman, inviting her to move into the rental with him in a few days.
I immediately created a new email account for me, searched the emails to her and forwarded them to myself, called what I thought was a mutual friend for help. (He never responded and later I learned he was a co-conspirator.) Realized almost immediately it was a catfish scam and that FW was sending “her” money. Confronted him that night. It was ugly.
Later found boxes for at least three cell phones. Later found paper evidence and electronic records of thefts from me, my parents, our child’s inheritance (he had claimed only he and his siblings inherited). Unfortunately was unable to find out what he did with major thefts from my non marital assets–probably sent out of state to a stockbroker sibling.
Changed the locks and refused his request to return to the house for specific clothing items and told him I was sending it all. Got a neighbor and volunteers to document all his clothing, and in the process found what he was really after—in his closet, he’d hidden bags and bags of receipts and other evidence of tens of thousands of dollars he’d transferred and sent to the online AP/catfisher.
We had shared our electronic calendars. I immediately shut my side down but kept his open, and saw he was dating a succession of women, wining and dining them at top-end restaurants, then withing days or weeks taking them to five -star resorts at peak season, things he’d never done for me.
What I couldn’t find was a lawyer good enough to get any of this back for me. The thefts were either outside the statute of limitations or he denied them. He denied giving the money, wire transfers and credit card to the catfisher scammer. I was told he was allowed to spend tens of thousands on lavish meals and vacations, while child and I were going to the food bank,
I still need an aggressive lawyer for unresolved matters on child’s behalf and would like to know how to find one.
Have you tried googling family law attorneys while adding the phrase, “high conflict divorce?”
I had multiple lawyers. First firm specialized in “high conflict” and gave me someone who had 25 years of experience, but NONE was in divorce. Next two attorneys also claimed extensive experience with high-conflict divorces and also how to calculate potential value of annuities my ex invested in; turned out they didn’t know either area.
Another writer in a prior post suggested asking potential attorneys if they’re familiar with Bill Eddy’s work, which is a good idea. But lawyers can still lie and exaggerate.
“Future faking.” I like that. Ima borrow it!
Funny how fuckwits will go above and beyond for everybody BUT us, huh?
It seems to be part of the new Narcopedia lexicon. Formerly known as reneging, breaking promises and stringing people along! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXmtTxMYBbk
Jeff, it’s not original. It’s when cheaters and others act as if they have long term plans–buying a house, having kids, moving, a vacation trip, etc.–but do not intend to follow through. By going through the motions, they mislead chumps and others about their intentions to have a specific future.
My ex had me searching real estate listings constantly, we went to numerous open houses, AND scheduled many individual showings. He always found problems with homes we liked, and when we found the perfect houses several times, he’d suddenly have new, previously unmentioned concerns that his job would be terminated or his division sold, so we shouldn’t buy at that time. He wasted incredible amounts of my time, and realtors’ time, and was constantly getting up the hopes of me and child, who would be figuring out how to use space, change schools, etc.
It was particularly offensive because he knew how frustrated I was when my former boss did the same thing. He secretly sold the company, and to cover up why the new owners were in and out of our buildings, he told us he was buying a new corporate office and facilities, so on top of our usual workload, he had the exec team work feverishly to allocate new offices, create transition plans, etc. Such a waste of time and effort. For months he even had us looking at and choosing furniture, colors, carpeting, etc. for the new buildings. He could have told us that the visitors were there to help him with refinancing or potential new ventures instead of creating pointless work, debates and discussions.
Just occurred to me that he was a cheater, too.
Came here late to say that “future faking” needs its own post.
It is one of the biggest baddest red flags out there for chumps to be aware of. Cheaters and all FWs weaponize this knowing it is an intoxicating carrot dangled. Puts us right where they want us: not examining or noticing present actions…. future faking is the beginning of the con, the literal “bait and switch”.
Ooh yeah
The bullshit we are told …. Then cringe as we look back on it.
I found a love note, and then emails but never caught her red handed and this bothered me. I had gathered plenty of info but wanted to catch her. My lawyer told me they had plenty. Unbeknownst to me My lawyer knew who FW was because my lawyer handled one of FW’s affair partners divorce a couple of years earlier where she subpoenaed FW. I however kept wanting to catch her. Finally my lawyer told me about FW and explained that she had plenty of evidence. I still wanted more and finally she said;
“Dr, you have the love note, she admitted sending naked pictures. It is always more than they admit to. No importantly in what relationship is that behavior appropriate.”
When I found Chumplady this was echoed.
Being on the other side I now can see that evidence is important, but in many states it doesn’t change much and it can be expensive to get if one starts hiring private investigators. My advice is get what you need but follow your attorney’s advice. Try to keep the emotions separate, as hard as that is, and realize that divorce is a business transaction. It sucks but you can’t change the situation.
On thing mine did was have a secret credit card I didn’t have access to, which, in my no-fault state was priceless. Lawyers I talked to before I settled on the one I retained couldn’t believe anyone could be that dumb. He kept refusing to turn over his banking records and my attorney subpoenaed them (and these were at the bank he works at, so that was fun for him) and THEN the fun began. Thousands of dollars spent on Only Fans, escorts, high-end lingerie shops, Tiffany’s, etc. All of which helped me get a nearly 70% settlement in a no-fault state. Stupid is as stupid does.
Dang, if getting a “secret credit card” is proof of low IQ, by deduction my brainiac kids must take after me more than FW. I had no idea I was that smart. I feel very flattered, thanks. 😉
Wow, where do I start? A mix of ignoring my instinct that something wasn’t right mixed with hard evidence that I was gaslit and blameshifted into turning a blind eye to and being made to believe I was crazy.
So, here goes, in no particular order. Scratches on his back, numerous “work” trips on a weekend, calling me last minute saying he’d drunk too much and needed to stay over at a “friend’s”, receipts for gifts I didn’t receive and getting a private investigator pack from an affair partner who smelled a rat that he was separated from me and took matters into her own hands. There are many, many more!
BTW, I think this is a great subject to focus on as well as the recent one about how our intuition told us enough was enough and we shut down from the relationship as the penny finally dropped.
You reminded me of ignoring instinct. I thought of this in hindsight long after he left; but I remember about a yearish before he left, he walked out of the bedroom in a pink shirt that was new (I bought all his clothes for him, he would have laughed at a pink shirt). I said where did you get that shirt and he said “I saw one of the guys wearing it, and got one”. Ziiiinnnnggggg, wizzed right over my clueless head.
It’s amazing how they hone in on our trust and exploit it so easily. And how often we ignore our “guts” on things.
“Guts” are a tricky thing. I think normal, reflective, thinking people always consider the chance that what feels like a prophetic intuition might instead simply be fear or projection. Which is why most normal people don’t read alien messages in chipped paint or see the Virgin Mary in burned toast.
For instance, I had a few vivid dreams many months before D-day in which I quite accurately envisioned the AP down to her muffin top, thin hair, fast fashion taste, sneakiness and pecuniary avarice. In one dream, a boxy woman in a crappy, boxy business suit (get it? “Workplace affair”) crawls out of a large suitcase that FW brought home (did I see that scene in the series “Killing Eve”?). In another, the same dumpy creature– but now in cheap low-rider jeans, is standing at an old fashioned chalkboard adding up columns of numbers in chalk and giggling malevolently. Get it? Greedily raping my kids’ college funds.
In retrospect it’s freaky how much my unconscious mind got right. But does that mean I should also believe, say, the dream where my kids are playing with some weird Transformer-type figurine that turns into Satan and predicts the imminent end of the world in the gravely voice of doom?
I always have weird, graphic dreams and I’d quickly go nuts if I took them all literally. Basically what creeps are capitalizing on is critical thinking tendencies– the fact that normal people question themselves and try to differentiate between creative interpretation of fears and reality.
I guess I was fortunate-when I was completing my master’s degree I had a prof that specialized in art therapy that did a class session on dreamwork (it was an extra credit sort of thing). We were taught to look more for themes than the actual symbols. That chilled me out from literal dream interpretation.
I knew what at least one of the people she betrayed me for looked like-she was sloppy in quickly closing windows(or perhaps it was part of the point…)
I had a very, VERY bad nightmare about a two weeks before D-Day where my fuckwit shouted in my face “(redacted) is my real husband and you’re just spare parts!” 2 minus two hours to D-Day I had another bad one just like it. That is actually what triggered the conversation that ended things.
I DID bring up the “spare parts” dream to her. She looked aghast and asked how my subconscious could construct such a thing. “Probably because I just spent a year watching you give my love away to other people while paying all of the bills and fighting with me.”
I think your subconscious mind got her dead to rights.
I saw FW sneak off with Soccer Mom at end of season team bbq. I knew right then. I snuck up on them & they were talking quietly. I walked up and said “so who should I kick the shit out of first?” And I’m petite so you can imagine how angry I was to do that (but I have alot of brothers too so I was used to mixing it up with them ). Soccer mom took off, gathered her kids & left. FW scattered too. He avoided me afterwards too. I didn’t say anything until we got home. Then I calmly told him to leave our house. He tried to reason it “we’re just friends”. FW didn’t have friends so I shut that shit down.
That would have been great to witness.
I was not going to log in to this post, but your comment was so damn sharp that it made me laugh out loud. Thank you for the refreshing bit of pure unequivocal directness. I need to be more like you.
Thank you for the compliment & that you did log in! ☺️ However I wasn’t that sharp until that moment. I was as angry at myself as I was at them for overlooking a lot of hints & clues that he was cheating.
I have to say there were other clues too but I never pieced them together until that moment.
I was with my FW for 8 years (not married or living together) when his Schmoopie showed up on my doorstep when he was there one night (while my young children were home) crying hysterically that she needed him to comfort her (like he promised to do) because she just had an abortion for him that day. The D-Day was ROUGH for me and afterwards he told me she “blackmailed him” into paying her $20,000 for that abortion. In reality he paid her to keep the secret from me, which she couldn’t even do for a few hours. We stayed together for another 5 years before I came to my senses. Happily moved on from his MF now for over 3 years. I could not be happier.
Yikes! What a terrible way to find out.
The thing about cheaters is that they are liars by definition. Lies beget more lies and most cheaters seem to run screaming past “plausible deniability” on their road to “catch every social disease.” Frankly I think most of us catch them strictly based on sampling bias. Sooner or later they slip up and the entire web of lies does what SpaceX would call “an unplanned mid flight disassembly”(or “exploded” for non-space nerds in the audience.) I’d be thrilled to find out how many marriages have ended over the advent of Push notifications.
It was relatively straight forward with mine. Granted she only THOUGHT she was outsmarting me(yay for sunk costs!) I had considered putting an AirTag in her car but honestly she was so sloppy I did not need to involve Bluetooth(I didn’t learn about location services until after she had moved out.) Watching how her behavior would change when I entered the room and they were clearly talking. Quickly changing the tone of her voice out of phone sex mode when I’d enter the room or closing windows on her monitor. Watching how her explaining things away metamorphosed over time from “you have nothing to worry about” to “let’s talk about what YOU are doing wrong!” or inserting another lie.
Toward the end of the Pick-Me Dance phase as the relationship approached “unplanned mid flight disassembly” of our own, the previously semi-agoraphobic woman I was in love with(that I had to drag out of Walmart due to crowds on more than one occasion) was suddenly VERY interested in going out on her own into large crowds. By herself, of course. Apparently despite a career in homeless advocacy and mental health services “(I) wouldn’t understand”. Or something.
She talked about going to protests and her stories stopped adding up after a while(mysteriously stopped having photographic evidence). There was an incident where we were supposed to have Date Night and she claimed that a protest ran long(transforming me back into “well, I guess I got stood up” when she stopped responding to txts at 9:30-hits very different when you wake up next to the idiot). While there was in fact a protest, it ended far before she claimed that she did(co-opted by a co-worker that was there who mysteriously did not see my fuckwit in the crowd. Odd!) There was another protest there was no record of(was in the middle of the day on a Friday and it was a slow news day). Or the trip to Washington DC to visit a friend where she suddenly went off of the grid and had a large swath of time that was unaccounted for.
I think I did end up sabotaging a rendezvous-there was a protest that went bad that she decided she needed to intervene in(escalated into a massive police reaction). I insisted on going along and she took me grudgingly. All she seemed interested in doing was driving circles around the cordon (and calling police officers assholes under her breath)…as if she was looking for somebody. Here I thought I was scoring points on the Pic-Me dance card!
Or the “breath therapist” that there was no record of anywhere(in a moment of early-Chump weakness I was inclined to go…”look for him.” Just as well that it turned out to be a bad lie-it might have gotten a completely innocent man’s knees broken).
Looking back on it, I’m more insulted at the weakness of the stories I was expected to buy into. Granted, I spackled with the best of them so there’s that.
Getting the confession on D-Day only required minor pressure. She actually had the audacity to try and say “I’m just going to be single for a while”…the look on her face when I said “…you already have another boyfriend”…priceless.
Never letting THAT happen again.
Have a Fuckwit Free Friday!
From first-hand experience, I acknowledge that there’s an extra-special mindfuck involved with fuckwits who dissemble “woke” values while betraying and even use this as an alibi and cover.
(looks like the work internet ate my previous response to this.)
She got straight up radicalized during that whole 10 month Pick-Me Dance phase. I was happy to see her so passionate about…something that wasn’t being abusing. Debating various topics became pretty normal dinner table conversation by way of “helping her with her homework.”
I will never forget the day she looked me in the eye during an argument and as part of an ad hominem attack said “YOU are part of the patriarchy!” Which stung(which was, of course, the point.) It started to be pretty clear that she was lumping me in with the people she’d (claimed to) go to rallies about. Granted, she needed to justify the abuse to herself whatever way she could and not feel bad about it. When I started lurking here about 13 months ago after she had moved out the Ester Perel “spirited act of defiance” horse hockey hit HARD.
She wanted to yell at people in power. I think it helped her deal with how powerless she felt. Of course the person she rallied hardest against was the one that spent the most time pulling her up. It’s easier to assign blame than to look inward, I suppose.
Selective feminism seems to be very common among fuckwits. But to quote Margaret Atwood, “Ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them.”
I’ve worked in advocacy for various causes and can attest there’s always a consistent portion of people who get involved simply to compensate for being heinous in their personal lives, usually in some way that directly contradicts the nature of the causes they champion. Plus virtue signalling and playacting at “passion” over a cause are handy ways to get laid. I remember RFK Jr. waxing passionately feminist during speeches about environment. Then he allegedly (the condom I’ll put on credible hearsay) fucked his way through the ranks of environmental activists.
Running into people like that in the course of working for something you believe is critically important is kind of extra-traumatic because they’re usually awful in every way imaginable. I think of them as desecrationists because they usually end up deflating the commitment and ideals of everyone around them. I feel like I know who your ex is because I’ve encountered so many flaming hypocrites. Important activist causes attract mostly the best and the worst and not a lot in between.
“Lies beget more lies and most cheaters seem to run screaming past ‘plausible deniability’ on their road to ‘catch every social disease.'” I chuckled out loud! And I think it’s true: once a person starts lying, their conscience gets blunted and the lies proliferate.
After doing all the obvious things such as checking emails and texts I went a bit further.
I pinpointed on a map their meet up places and then did a hotel search out 50 miles in each direction. I’m in a rural area so we’re not talking about a boatload of hotels. I then called each hotel and pretended to work for delivery service located in another city. My speech went something like this: “I’m Kathy with XYZ delivery from Kansas I work in the accounting department. I’m calling in regard to a request for payment from one of our employees. He has indicated that he stayed at this location during this time frame (I used the time frames that I knew they had met). He is requesting reimbursement from our company. I was hoping you can confirm his stay?” Only one place refused to tell me. With this little charade I was able to find the hotel they used.
That’s some really master-level sleuthing not to mention funny as hell. I’ll bet your real friends completely worship you.
I resorted to this after the continuing lie of “we’re just friends”. I suspected otherwise, but needed just a bit more proof.
I saw getting proof as a self-hack to kick myself into battle mode. There were other tactical benefits as well.
Wow! That’s some next level sleuthing!!!! Badass!
Thanks! It took me a few months to build up the courage to do it.
My computer had a virus and I couldn’t use it but I needed to pay bills so I asked to use his laptop. It was such a production for him to let me use it. He sat behind a closed door for 5 minutes before he opened the door and handed it to me. Then he didn’t want to tell me the password. When he gave me that the first one was wrong, second time he “forgot” to add that it needed to be capitalized, the third time he finally gave me the full correct password. I KNEW then something was up. He happened to be logged into facebook so I checked his messages and found what I needed to know. I was shocked, he crossed every other boundary in the marriage but I never thought he’d do that. I never pick me danced. I never even told him everything I found. I just asked him if he had ever cheated on me, he said no, I knew it was a lie, I didn’t argue, I just filed for divorce.
So mighty, kms15! It must have taken a lot of fortitude to not confront him in any way with the evidence.
The state I lived in was a fault state, I actually went to an attorney before I asked him if he ever cheated. The attorney told me not to tell my ex what I had because it could be used it court. The hardest part was finding the information, and not saying a word until I got into an attorney. Longest 3 days of my life.
Good job, most cant keep their mouths shut or think if they catch them they’ll stop.
I didn’t. He left when his house of cards fell and an ethics complaint was filed. I did start to suspect that he was cheating a couple months before he left; I knew something was wrong for about a year. He kept getting progressively nastier.
I did do a deep financial dive after the split, found lots of money spent and not appropriately.
Oof. I was so trusting that it took me YEARS to start snooping. I dismissed my suspicions with a, “He’s training to be a pastor, he would NEVER.” We all know now true that was.
Mine was really good about not connecting accounts to other devices and deleting any messages that might make him look suspicious. He was also glued to his phone, of course.
I finally found hard evidence from the AP. She didn’t actually send me anything, but she posted a public exposé on her social media. The trouble was, he had so many APs that it took me making a list of all of his female friends and going through them one by one to eventually find it.
It was her attempt to get me to leave him so she could have him, and hey, it worked! As soon as I approached FW with the evidence, suddenly she claimed I was “stalking” her. 🤣 Girl, you wrote a public letter to me that started with “Dear Mrs ” The audacity to call me a stalker and say “be better” when I was looking for evidence that you wanted me to find is truly impressive.
Would love to see that open letter run through the UBT. It’s quite typical for domestic abusers to not only project their own flaws on victims
I am with you. I prided myself on not being a snoopy wife and I honestly didn’t feel I had to snoop for years and years. In retrospect, I’m sure he cheated on me our entire 27 year marriage, but I just didn’t consider he’d be doing it when he went to work every day.
It’s sick but they HAVE to cast about for someone else to pin the crazy and bad character on. I hope you keep laughing.
My exFW was not tech savvy so that helped. My son found ex and Schmoopie’s home made porn on his shred photo account. The ex also forgot about family sharing and being on a shared computer. This yielded much information once I was out of the RIC and went full on detective. The FW was also very careless about trash and that yielded a gold mine of receipts and other information. Happily I am in a fault state and the lawyer loved what I had collected. The only thing is that the court does not care about cheating as much as it does about money spent on cheating. Thankfully, I had receipts and statements and could track the transactions. He spent a ton of money on Schmoopie and other hookers (yep he had others and not just Schmoops).
The judge gave me all the money FW spent on hookers and Schmoopie and 56% of the assets plus the money he had spent. I was happy!
Being a detective took a toll on me and it took months to physically recover.. Mentally and emotionally, I am healed as I can be. I find it difficult to trust and e open until I feel secure with anyone (but that is on me).Life is better on the other side and I am very happy and have been dating a really wonderful man.
So much evidence—I should have left long before I did, but I kept spackling. But here are some of the things I did:
I finally left him after telling myself that if the viagra halves (he started breaking them in half for some reason) went down at all, I’d call a lawyer. One day, they did. And here we are, happier than ever, almost three years later!
The viagra thing. I also saw the pill stash deplete, the ones that we used and the others half a pill at a time. After D-Day I asked him “Why half?” and he told me “With her I only need half a pill.” Lovely.
What an ass. I’m sorry. I never confronted mine about the viagra and he probably still doesn’t know. He might have said something similar.
I just assumed he was trying to preserve them because they aren’t supposed to take more than one per day and he had heart problems. It caused him problems to have to satisfy two women in one day at his age.
There is treasure buried in trash sometimes.
There have been so many times, I could write a book! My therapist calls me Nancy Drew. I will keep each brief and emotion-free:
#1. I woke up in the middle of the night to see him texting someone who clearly was a woman. I watched him check the weather in a city 200 miles away. The next morning, I checked his Twitter followers until I found one in that city. I Googled her background art photo and the city and found a mural that matched.
#2 armed with the city name, the next night I op-ed his phone using face while he slept. INTERESTING NOTE: Six months later Apple updated its software to require OPEN EYES to face unlock a iPhone. An Apple programmer FW? I’ll bet. Anyway, just Googling that city I found the mother load.
#3 I found he was still communicating with her 2-1/2 years later because I glanced his phone while he was scrolling inbox emails (BTW, my FW is an above-average intelligent guy and I had all his passwords I thought but never checked anything any longer.) I saw
An email that announced he had a new
Message for “email address I didn’t recognize.” He freaked out grabbed his phone and ran. I calmly picked up his iWatch he’d left next to the bed, and simply “recovered” his password to another email account (also in the iWatch, of course), got in the email and saw all the Google chats. 2-1/2 years of “letting her go gently.” 😆
Wow–impressive sleuthing!
I had scattered proof including projection, secrecy with his phone/laptop, an ask for an open marriage/threesome, and an STD that took two years to fully get over. He also had a girlfriend from several decades back that he idolized and may well have remained in contact with. When he ran, he went to the area where she was living, last I knew.
I live in a state where adultery still counts if you go to trial, so my attorney questioned me closely about the signs of adultery. He said, “You know that there is very likely way more than you know here, especially because he abandoned the marriage.” Yes, got it. The iceberg of infidelity.
My attorney also said early on that he would be preparing as if we were going to trial because it seemed to him like a strong possibility. So I asked him how much a trial would cost. He said around $50,000-10,000 “depending.” OK, I hope we don’t go there. I REALLY didn’t want to sit through a recitation of my STBX’s horribleness anyway. My attorney said that if the adultery case was strong, he likely could get my legal fees covered. Still…
Ultimately, the confirmation came from my STBX’s attorney who overshared and told mine that they had nothing on me and that he hated lop-sided trials where his client had committed adultery. He told my attorney that he was seriously thinking of quitting and gave my attorney some of the details. Horrifyingly poor ethics, I know. Mine convinced opposing counsel to stay and noted what he was told. My attorney asked me if I wanted to know, and I said no.
Thankfully, we settled without a trial, and my attorney retired the day after the judge signed off. My ex’s attorney stayed on the case through their part of closeout and then sadly died of COVID. His firm completely divested themselves of family law.
But yes, the overall proof came from my ex’s own attorney. That was enough for me, and I felt completely meh when I saw in the online court system that the judge had signed off.
There were more signs before I recognized them (echoed in this thread). But what shook me violently awake from my naïveté was when she said she was going to get a massage from a place she used to go to years ago. And then on the front door ring I saw her heading out to the so-called massage appointment while wearing a purple wig. And I thought to myself “who wears a wig to go get a massage?”
It should have unraveled after that but it didn’t. She was so good at making a chump out of me that I bought her explanations, to the point that I ended up deleting that first round of evidence that I gathered. But there were so many other nights she spent out late with friends, and all of them curiously at the same not-massage-parlor in an apartment complex.
Fool me once, fool me twice.
I had a fedex delivered to my house that was meant to go to a woman he was seeing. It was nothing more than a book and a lint roller that she had left in his hotel room. He addressed to the wrong address,so it returned to sender. I knew in that instant. My brain just clicked.My XH had never sent a package in his life (obviously).Once that happened all I had to do was follow the thinly hidden breadcrumbs of an entire double life of many other women over many years. Kinda funny, he was brought down by a lint roller.
My dumbass ex made too many slip-ups both before and after I filed….my favorite was when he got a burner phone and added it to the family plan. Epic, next-level gaslighting ensued….
Well I’d have to write a bit of long screed to tell it all but basically, he forgot to hide his phone sometimes so I found the odd thing on it that, together with him not coming home for nearly 24 hours after he’d finished work at the weekends for 3 weekends in a row, lying about it, and finding stuff on his phone, means I found out just enough to know he was cheating and I was going to call time!
The only thing that stopped me from doing that straight away after discovering the first dodgy message ( one from a bird with a pair of giant knockers nearly falling out of her top!) was the fact I had a hospital appointment for a procedure under general anaesthetic in a fortnight’s time, that I needed him to take me to and from. I kept my powder dry until a couple of days afterwards, when the GA had gone from my system, bagged up a load of his stuff, texted him and then told him when he got here, that I needed him to move out. He flat out denied cheating but though I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him and was determined to remain cool and calm, I knew what I’d seen and knew he was lying and that the relationship was destroyed! End of!
I was looking through her Google photos to find some pictures of a kid’s concert to send my parents. I thought I remembered some that weren’t there any more, so checked in the trash folder. I found about 50 naked and extremely explicit selfies, and she sure as hell had never sent me anything like that in our 20 years together. So I confronted her right away, but fell for her gaslighting about how she was just taking them for her own self confidence.
Luckily I wasn’t quite able to squash the part of me that knew better. To her credit I never did find any text messages or anything like that. But she fancies herself a writer, and there tend to be notebooks scattered about the house. I started finding cryptic angsty poems and rants. I thought she was upset with me about something (like the “false” accusation) or maybe depressed. Until I found the bombshell, 3 pages of angry desperate letter with all the details of what the OM promised her and then suddenly dumped her. She was playing the pick me dance before I ever did. I don’t know that I ever would have found proof if he didn’t dump her.
I’ve seen some more of that writing since everything blew up and we separated. Not a word of guilt or shame at what a monster she is, at how she destroyed our family and ruined my and her kids’ lives. Nothing about missing me or any part of the life we had together. It’s all about him, and how could he possibly go back to his wife and break all the promises he made to her. Yep, they really are that hypocritical.
Chumps always project I seems. I love her! So she must love me too. Nope.
Both my cheaters confessed under duress. The proof was irrefutable and their confessions were only a crump of truth, but it was ENOUGH. Once the cloud of hopium cleared and you sat with the enormity of secret basements perculating for Years…the shock of D day wears off and the truth set me free. The abuse was enough and they both helped me with hopium fire extinguishing…it was sad, heart breaking 💔and life shattering. But I got another life and I am abuse free. ….Forever, as no one will ever do that to me again. I’m over 70 and I had all I could do to live past this last cheater, liar abuser. I’m done and I’m so thrilled.
He swore he never had sex with a prostitute in our home. The history in his Uber phone app showed he paid for a trip from an unknown private home to my house and then back to the private home. In the middle of the day, while I was away with my son visiting my family. Clear as day. He still tried to deny it. He eventually admitted it.
interesting to notice how often the poor kids find it – my FW tried to tell my daughter 14 at the time to grab a piece of mail because he said he had ordered concert tickets and didnt want me to see because it was a surprise – she was suspicious immediately and we looked at it and it snowballed after that….we went down the rabbithole and found tons of proof but i agree with the article -its not that they want to get caught but they just underestimate everyone including children
He forgot to log off his Facebook account on my computer. I saw in his search history every single sugar girl he had sex with since he stalked them on line compulsively. When confronted, he made up a very intrincate explanation. He also proceeded to close our American Express credit card (for which I didn’t have a log in and password to check transactions). I called American Express and was able to retrieve 6 years of statements. Every payment to escorts and sugar girls was there, with location, dates, and times. Also hotel rooms and gifts. I was able to (very painfully) draw a very accurate and complete timeline of all his cheating in the last 6 years.
I also had access to phone records since I’m the account holder. Thanks to that I was able to prove that he was lying when he swore he had not contacted one of his affair partners after D-day
There is a folder by default in every iPhone called Files that I never understood how it works. When he gave me access to his phone, believing he had erased everything that could implicate him, he obviously had not thought of that mysterious little folder. I found a sex video that one of his sugar girls made for him.
I’ve been married to three cheaters — unsurprising, since I grew up with an unrepentant cheater. My father came from a long line of cheaters. My sister grew up to be a cheater, and I grew up to be a chump.
Given that my father is a cheater, I’m not sure if him telling me that my first husband was sleeping with my sister constituted proof or not. Cheaters tend toward “truthiness” rather than truthfulness. When I asked my sister, she blew up at me, screaming, “You had no business talking to Dad about me!” (Among other, less savory things.) I asked my husband and he said, “I was only trying to be nice to her because she’s your sister,” and admitted that he’d slept with her but “it was only once” and “it just happened; I didn’t plan it.” By this time, I suspected — and he denied — numerous affairs. I divorced him, and people came crawling out of the woodwork to tell me about all the affairs they knew he’d had. As for my sister — she tried for the trifecta. I’ll give her two for sure, but my second cheater preferred men so I don’t know about that one. I haven’t seen her since my mother’s funeral. I don’t plan to ever see her again.
My second cheater was also an abuser, and I left him with the clothes on my back and my dog after he strangled me and left me and the dog on the highway 300 miles from home. I didn’t even have my purse. I went back to the house when I was sure he’d be at work to get my purse and whatever else I could fit into my best friend’s pick-up. Surprise — Cheater wasn’t at work. He was cavorting with Father Steve. He insists it wasn’t cheating because we were separated. Father Steve insists it wasn’t cheating even though we were still married because it wasn’t sex. “There was no possibility of procreation, so it wasn’t sex.”
I have no proof that the third cheater actually had a physical affair; but I don’t need proof. He was awful to me, and that relationship was not acceptable to me. I suspect he cheated with my sister, but since I don’t talk to her I didn’t ask her. He lies, so I wouldn’t have been able to believe anything he said anyway. I also suspect he cheated with the neighbor, co-workers of his, co-workers of mine, his boss and some random woman who got dumped out of an SUV naked in front of the ER. I know he was abusive, and his sister told me he was cheating on me with his high school girlfriend. (He denied “touching her,” but I have proof of over 300 text messages a month for eight months, travel to her city and that they were both at another “friend’s” home at the same time.)
I’ve learned that proof of cheating isn’t necessary to divorce someone. If the relationship is not acceptable to you even without cheating, it’s OK to divorce.
I’m no longer ashamed of my three divorces; I am proud to say that when I couldn’t save my marriage single-handedly and my husband wouldn’t try, I didn’t just take it. I left. I left rather than be abused any further. My mother just took my father’s shit for sixty years. I am not my mother.
I knew enough already, but was in denial. It’s almost funny to look back on now (it was so long ago that the ‘discovery’ involved our shared home computer and Yahoo! mai). Not only did she not try very hard to hide it, it’s almost like she wanted me to know. Now that I think of it, she claimed as much after the fact. The details are not interesting, but from the begining of the relationship if she didn’t actually tell me what she was up to she left many very broad hints. When I finally got up the nerve to actually look, the proof was all to easy to find.
When it comes to secret sexual basements, the best defense is a good offense. The trick is to keep the chump constantly on the defensive with gaslighting, blame-shifting, character assasination and all those other tactics. If those things are going on, sure you can kick down the door to their clandestine sex dungeon if you think it will make you feel better (it won’t), but you’d probably be better off (I would have been) accepting that they are what they appear to be and moving on.
In my State, the fact that she was unfaithful was irrelevant to our divorce case. We didn’t have kids, but even if we did I don’t think the judge would have been at all interested in the gory details of her escapades no matter how depraved.
If one minute your willfully ignoring things you know are very wrong, and the next you’re creating fake Tinder profiles, learning how to hack emails, or hiring private detectives to get “proof,” you know enough already.
“The trick is to keep the chump constantly on the defensive with gaslighting, blame-shifting, character assassination and all those other tactics.”
So true. I was also kept busy running errands for him, doing volunteer work to benefit his career etc. I also worked full time and though I was never the lofty spit shiner that he thought I should be, for his royal highnASS, I did a decent job keeping up all the house, plus moving the lawn all summer. And no he never lifted a finger in the house. I even brought him his dinner to his chair, so he could relax from his long day of working and cheating.
I’ve mentioned before, but I sometimes have a bit of imposter syndrome on this page because I never got an explicit d-day. After the divorce was underway, and I looked back at his and her behavior and only then did I piece together that what was going on was at least an emotional affair. I have suspicions that other stuff did happen at least electronically (sexting) or in person, but I’ll never know, nor at this point, do I need that confirmation.
We had had problems years before the emotional / maybe physical affair. During my pregnancy I caught him in some big lies, including wracking up a $10,000 gambling debt behind my back before ceremoniously getting fired from his job for forgery. Still, I “stuck by my man,” like an idiot.
For at least the last couple years of our marriage we butted heads over their “friendship.” I wasn’t ok with him complaining about me to her (OMG, I asked him to help me windex the mirrors when I had been cleaning the house all day (small child in tow, hello Sisyphus!) I was such a monster!). I saw her message pop up on his phone while he was in the shower. He started taking his cell into the bathroom with him after that. I know I saw a message pop up some other time where it was clear she was dissing me. Of course, was my husband coming to my defense? No!
There was a friends outing where the two of them spent almost the whole day together, he barely spent any time with me. A couple weeks later at a “friendsgiving” again, they were buddy buddy so much that other people asked me afterwards, “What’s with FW and StinkyTits?”
I now know he was devaluing and discarding me, but at the time I just knew he was pulling away and picking fights. I kept catching him in lies (again) about where he was and what he was doing when he claimed he was on work trips. I bought his excuses and spackled like a pro. Oh, he even came back from an audit trip with his junk shaved and was trying to hide that from me? And chumpy me, we were already in therapy because of his lying, I just wasn’t ready to confront him on the freshly shaved genitals yet because I knew it would be the end of things and I couldn’t handle hitting the wall of pain yet.
While we were having problems, so too were his “friend” and her husband. Funny, a month after she asks her husband for a trial separation, my ex asks me for a trial separation. A month after she asks for a divorce, ex asks me for a divorce.
My FW reconnected with her “best friend” from college after they had drifted apart. Since she lived 2,000 miles away and was straight as far as I knew, I didn’t worry. I was annoyed by the constant phone calls but I trusted my wife. I encouraged her to go visit her “pal” in Wisconsin while I was traveling elsewhere. She did and I remained trusting. Until the bestie came to visit us a couple months later. I don’t know what it was but I was immediately grumpy and annoyed and I knew something was “off.” At one point I turned off my phone’s location so they wouldn’t know when I was coming home from the family party they had left together. I felt like a creep but I found them sitting too close. Not exactly a smoking gun and I chastised myself for not trusting my wife.
The next day they went to visit another college pal and I got a notice from Google Photos that I was running out of room and should considered deleting screenshots. (FW and I had partner sharing so we could see each other’s pics of our kids.) So I did, carefully looking before I deleted to make sure I didn’t trash something she needed for work. Found a screenshot of a text thread where Shmoopie said she was afraid it would end. “There is no end to us,” my wife replied. “I can’t wait to kiss you again.”
By the next morning, I was looking for a divorce attorney and Shmoopie’s suitcase was on the front lawn.
Reading all these narratives of what we chumps do in our search for the truth, I’m reminded of the profound pain I felt, both when I was doing the searching and then when I alit on the evidence. I assume most or all of the people here would say the same.
I’m just reflecting today on the deep, cutting trauma that is the reality within all these narratives. Grateful for this site, where we can come together in solidarity. It really helps. And cheers to us for getting out.
There is nothing like that pain searing pain – and the tsunamis of nausea that came with it.
These days, I’m pretty much over the pain of the betrayal, but these stories trigger my anxiety so bad. The feeling that I was in a top-loading washing machine and couldn’t grab anything to hold on to. Absolutely horrific.
But this place gave me something firm to hold. And helped me see through the bullshit. And now when I learn some new awful thing he did I shrug and think, “well of course he did that too, he’s an arsehole”.
Trust that they suck indeed.
I suspected something was up – he was coming home every day saying I was the best wife and mom and how lucky he was, and it all seemed off… (later I realized that this was because I was plan B in case plan A – the AP – fell through).
So I looked at his computer one day which he left unlocked. Found the g-chat with his business-school classmate (the AP), both giggling about how they had sex the night before and none of their classmates knew, omg it was like reading high schoolers communicating. I didn’t look any further – it was all I needed and it made me nauseous to read.
I confronted him. My ex has rare moments of honesty about how he sees things, and this was one of them. Classic lines I’ll never forget are:
“I thought you’d be happy for me”
“I feel like I deserve to have a mistress given all that I’ve done for this family” (?!?!)
“I feel like a king and it is great!”
“You would like her – she’s a great Mom – you’re both a lot alike”
“I think we can all do vacations together!”
Needless to say, I was flabbergasted and had no good response to these statements. Just wow. I really didn’t know him at all, even though we were married 15 years and had 2 kids. I’ve since learned that he’s just a typical narcissist con-artist, nothing deep.
I definitely trust that he sucks.
“I feel like I deserve to have a mistress given all that I’ve done for this family.” This captures the essence of many cheaters, and definitely of my own ex. Six months after our daughter was born, he started cheating because–well, simply because it was obvious he DESERVED a mistress.
The entitlement is mind blowing, isn’t it? Statements like this definitely opened my eyes to who he really is.
Same here. It was just so weird and chilling to hear, from his own lips, the truth of who he was!
It was because of drinking and texting. My now ex wife was drinking and fell asleep texting her affair partner. She had ben covering her tracks by deleting their texts to keep me unsuspicious. So late at night, her phone starts pinging with incoming texts, which almost never happened before. Everyone she knows, knows that she doesn’t like late-night texts.
So I check it out. It is texts from her supposedly platonic relationship “friend.”
“Friend”: Sorry about pregnancy. Def me?
I was blown away. I knew immediately what this meant. I woke her up and showed her. I was too shocked to be angry or hostile. My head was spinning. I could hardly breathe. She denied they had sex. She said she could explain it. That I was reading too much into it! Yes, she denied it, even then! What gall! She took her phone and fell back asleep right away as she had been drinking quite a bit.
I was completely sober. I knew the truth but did not want any chance for her to be able to have even a fig leaf of cover. Once she was asleep again I got her phone and texted back to her affair partner, pretending to be her.
Me for her: What do you mean by Def me???
“Friend”: Are you sure it was me that got you pregnant?
omg! Was it him? Did she have the baby?
There was no way to tell if he was the father or if I was. She told him she was sure he was. She told me she was sure that I was. She really did not know. She did not have the baby. Her heavy drinking while pregnant is evidence that she was intending an abortion all along. My finding out about the affair was not the deciding factor in that issue.
While sitting down at husband’s computer with our boys to start researching our trip to Europe, he began typing something to search in google and the predictive text popped up “can I get herpes using a condom with an escort”. Uh… the house devolved into a total shitstorm & he was stammering that he didn’t “actually” cheat on me, just thinking about it because of our nearly dead-bedroom and he was “having an existential crisis” that he would never have sex again (hard eye roll here). Dead-bedroom was from me refusing to have sex that was imo porn-like for the last 1.5 decades, and I was sick of feeling banged instead of made love to. He swore and swore it was only research, “check my computer & phone!!! I’m an open book!” LOL, soooooo, a few days later while he was out with friends, I searched his computer and he neglected to thoroughly delete messages and emails soliciting escorts – it went back as far as 17 years. 17 f-ing years.
My daughter discovered it. XW was texting someone nonstop. My daughter asked who it was and XW answered “my sister” … but she and her sister communicate in Italian and the mysterious texting was in English. My daughter looked through her mother’s phone that night and learned about the affair. She told me about it a week or so later. It was rough on my daughter; I happen to know there was a lot of sexting involved because the AP “accidentally” forwarded a bunch of sexts with my wife to his wife during a particularly contentious phase of their divorce, presumably as punishment for her daring to assert her rights during the settlement negotiations.
I didn’t get a lot of detail – in fact, XW still denies it all to this day – until I made contact with the other betrayed spouse who had credit card receipts (flowers, chocolates, lingerie etc) going back a year or two, but it’s clear that it started earlier than that. I still don’t know exactly when the affair began and am mostly dating it from when XW first started picking bizarre fights with me, but to be honest I kind of suspect that signaled her “starter affair”, not the one that she eventually ended our marriage.
My STBXH was in chat rooms with women he didn’t know and sending e-cards declaring his love to one in particular. Like an idiot he kept the password to the e-card account in the back of his password book next to his computer. I needed to log in to a joint bank account and my laptop wasn’t on so I used his laptop and opened the password book to get the password. I accidentally dropped the book on the floor and it fell open to the back page where I saw sign in information for an e-card account. He had told me years prior he hates e-cards, sending or receiving, so I thought it odd he would pay for a subscription and I had never received even one e-card from him.
I took a snapshot of the e-card account info so I could log in later when he wasn’t around. When I signed in, I found 8 e-cards he had sent to another woman over the previous 5 months. Everything from “I love you, your my everything, my angel” and including an animated card of a man and woman kissing while groping her back and butt with the comment “I think about this all the time”. Before confronting him I took 2 days to check his credit card, bank accounts, etc. to see if any money had been sent. In the process I discovered that he had also been reaching out trying to contact a high school sweetheart that he has had no contact with for 52 years. I never got to see any chats as he had deleted all of them but the e-cards were more than enough for me.
What he did was not physical but he broke vows taken 48 years prior, disrespected me and continued to to lie about everything when confronted.
At 73 years of age he was acting single in the chat rooms so I’m helping him reach this goal by getting a lawyer and filing for divorce.
Somebody saw my FW with OW, which I think is because he got a sick thrill out of the risk in taking her places where people I knew might be. He knew that person might be there that night, because I told him about it and asked him to say hi for me if so. I had no idea he was cheating at the time. I knew something was very wrong, but since he mostly just saw OW during his lunch hour at work and at the gym, there weren’t a bunch of unexplained absences to make me suspect cheating.
However, I did snoop to uncover the extent of it. Naturally, he tried to hide that. I used his GPS to uncover times when he was supposed to have been out with friends to prove he was actually with her. I used his credit card records to find out how much money he spent on his daily lunch dates and where they went on these dates. Sickeningly, he would go out of his way to take her to our favourite restaurants, even ones we commonly went to with our kids. Sick bastard must have got a kick out of that. I also used his phone records to find out how often he was texting her. The content of the texts was gone (he erased them) but the number of texts and calls to her phone were still available, and it was astounding how often they were at it, even though they saw each other every single day at lunch and at the gym both days on weekends.
When confronted with all that, he claimed he had “forgotten” those things.
My 50 year old ex ran away from home to her boyfriend so she could do drugs with him, no one knew where she was, I found her using find my phone on her Mac computer that she left at home. Here’s what Martha Stewart recommends to young women about cheating: “Young women, listen to my advice, if you’re married and your husband starts to cheat on you, he’s a piece of sh-t,” Martha (Stewart) said in the trailer (to her Netflix documentary). “Get out of that marriage.” When a producer asked, “Didn’t you have an affair early on?” the chef answered, “Yeah, but I don’t think Andy ever knew about that.”
Two scoops of sh-t.
Because there were mutiple people he cheated with in multiple locations, it was sort of a domino effect. He was never very creative, so he took mutiple people to the same locations. Hilton Head and Savannah–4 or 5 people. Cruises to the Bahamas, again, 4 or 5 people. Ditto for a New England road trip he liked to take folks on, followed by a few drinks at Cheers bar in Boston upon return to the city. There was a national park outside of DC, Mt, Vernon, and a bunch of restaurants and bars in Arlington and Alexandria that he took pretty much everyone to that lived within 100 miles of there. A few of the earlier people told me all this, and then about 10 years ago he decompensated and “came out,” when he was diagnosed with an STD after hospitalization for a second stroke. It was then that he hit rock bottom and began cheating regulalry with crude, often bisexual, hard drinking types.I was already separated and free by then. He typically had numerous folks in the same city, and I met some of them when they were diagnosed with an STD or ran into each other at a gay bar or an ersatz Cajun place he went to with many of them. He actually ran into one person he cheated with while takng a ferry ride on the Potomac (he did that a lot) with another one. So it was sort of one after the other. I didn’t suspect some of them, as they were so vulgar,manly and crude, but I hadn’t realized how low he had sunk. One thing I would say is that if you think a person is too unattractive, too crude, too much of a drunk, or too sleazy, you are likely wrong. I recall my therapist at the time told me that little, balding older men like him typically affair way, way down as a lifestyle.They are like a drunk stumbling around in the gutter. Whatever the next piece of trash they trip on, they will try to cheat with that. So if you think a person is too trashy..that’s likely a real attractant to him. That helped me easily see who he cheated with. It was never the lovely, classy, smart and beautiful gals he knew. They wouldn’t give him the time of day. This mindset made it easy to figure out who he cheated with. Now it is a laugh to look back.
I ONLY went through the effort to get proof because my state is an at fault state. He said he was going “clubbing” with some work friends. In 20+ years of marriage he had NEVER been in a “club”. I velcroed a sound activated digital recorder under the drivers seat. I used an old iPhone of our daughter’s and bought a $1 SIM card and a $20 data plan. I deleted everything and downloaded Life360, silenced all notifications, attached an external battery charger and stuck it in a leather pouch and tossed that under the passenger seat. INSTANT tracking device. Watched him drive for an hour then got and the car and followed. He drove straight to a hotel in Nashville. I called and explained the situation the lady at the front desk called them downstairs for me when I got there and I was sitting in the lobby when they came off the elevator. I snapped a pic of them and her car and drove away. Waited for him to get back in town and head to his favorite bar, unlocked the truck, that he was CONVINCED I didn’t have a key to grabbed my devices and drive straight to my attorney’s office. To this day he has NO idea how I knew he was in Nashville and is convinced I followed him the whole way!
It was about a year after D-Day #1 when I found solid proof that FW was a serial cheater with a secret sexual life. We were living in Germany at the time. The day my oldest daughter turned 4 months old, FW was leaving for yet another business trip to London, where he was trying to get us to move to. He was in a hurry packing up his stuff to get ready to leave for the airport. His computer was having major issues again (probably because of all the pop-up blockers and weird security stuff he had to install on his computer to cover his tracks, I now know), so he borrowed my computer to log into his email to print out his boarding pass. In his hurry, he forgot to log out of his email account, so it was left open on my computer (though I didn’t realize it at the time). We said goodbye, and he left and I breathed a huge sigh of relief, as I always did when he left. I was always so much more relaxed when he was gone, despite my anxiety and how suspicious I was that he was or would be cheating again.
As I was nursing my daughter, I decided to quickly check my email, and that’s when I realized his email account was still open. I quickly scanned through his Gmail inbox and was horrified, disgusted and forever traumatized with what I found. Dozens and dozens and dozens of email conversations from different women, originating from Match.com International. I started shaking uncontrollably, and the shaking didn’t stop for hours. I realized I needed to get my daughter off to bed as quickly as I could because I was going to need to pull an all-nighter to dig through all of this, and that I needed to do this quickly, before he realized his mistake and autologged himself out somehow.
I don’t know how I survived getting through the next few hours getting my daughter to sleep, but once she was asleep I got to work. I screenshot, saved and printed as many of the emails as I could, trying to be careful to cover my tracks so he wouldn’t know I had been in his Inbox. And no, I do not feel even the tiniest bit guilty for reading his emails. I was up until the early hours of the morning reading the emails, and I was utterly horrified at what I read. It was clear in all these emails that he had hooked up with dozens of random women already and was trying to hook up with even more.
The absolute worst one that I found, that will stick with me forever, was reading an email (Subject line: “Disappearing act….”) he wrote back to one of the women explaining why he hadn’t written her back for many days. His excuse was the following:
“I apologize for disappearing like that. Something happened in my life and it took all of my life/time/energy to deal with it. I really don’t want to go into all of the details. I do want you to know that my disappearing had nothing to do with you, my desire to get to know you or anything like that. I hope that one evening we can sit down in a pub together and I can tell you all about this and myself, so whether or not we ever connect, you can know that I really am the person you thought you were getting to know.”
That “something that happened” in his life? That was the birth of our daughter!!!!! I cannot begin to describe how disgusted and horrified I was to read that, and alllllll the other emails…. And the part I am most embarrassed about is that even after this, I still chose to stay with him and try to reconcile!!!! And even after more D-Days!! Such is the trauma bond to a narcissistic sociopath.
The final D-Day was in 2019 when I discovered condoms (long after his vasectomy) in his travel bag when he had just returned from a “business” trip and was packing for another. He tried to convince me they were “old ones” that he and I had bought (though we hadn’t needed condoms since the 1990’s!!), but thanks to the power of the internet and expiration dates on Trojan and Durex condoms, I proved that was a lie, too. The lies he told me around that final D-Day were so pathetic and laughable, they make a great story – I wish I had the energy to write it out for those that could use a good laugh. Thankfully, the divorce was FINALLY completed a few months ago.
I was on my way home after spending several days at the nursing home where my mum was in her final hours. I received two text messages from FW. The first one was for me: “How are you? Has your brother arrived, keeping watch? Have a safe trip.” The second text message a few seconds later, obviously wasn’t meant for me: “Happy birthday, my darling little darling! I’m looking forward to seeing you! Love you.” Of course he denied everything, “just some emotional talk to some coworker…” I then checked his navigation system on his car, former destinations: hotels, apartment buildings, romantic hike locations… I then hacked his phone and found out about his extensive double life.
FW #1 was away on a 6-month business trip for training on the other side of the country on the west coast. She was on my health insurance, so the EOBs came to our home address. About a half dozen of them showed up randomly one week, and I hadn’t been to the doctor at all and she had never mentioned anything to me on the phone about any medical issues while she was away, so I opened them. It was for her treatment of ectopic pregnancy and she had to have her tubes removed to save her life. Turns out, she had gotten pregnent to a co-worker.
FW #2 accidently left open her facebook messenger on the home office computer, and I saw some messages between her and one of her long-time male “friends” (who was also married) about meeting up for intimacy while she was away in Boston on business (his home city). She of course denied everything for a while, but pulling on that thread led me down a long line of infidelity that included her cheating with multiple male friends, her best female friend (who hated me and I could never figure out why cause I was so nice to her, even babysitting her kids while she was out with my wife) and her male boss at work. She ended up having to leave her job after I blew up that spot and HR got involved. Of course, nothing happened to the boss who was also married and had 2 kids. I even reached out to his wife on FB to let her know what I knew, but she never responded.
After their affair became public at work, his poor chump wife started posting dozens of pictures of them kissing and hugging on FB with all these captions about how true love endures all.
I had a pretty good gut feeling. I looked at the cell phone bill and a number showed up with greater frequency. I reverse searched it and came back to the female I was suspicious of.
I waiting until I had all my info, but no real proof, and said I know some things and you need to be truthful. I acted if I knew more than I did and was given a full? Confession.
Do you really need proof? Mine treated strangers better than his wife. That was enough for me.