Being cheated on is a horrible experience that nobody should wish even on their very worst enemies. Your partner hasn’t just broken your trust, but they’ve also broken your heart. And while some couples do find ways to heal and move forward together, many other relationships end up breaking down beyond repair.
User u/OkCheesecake7067 sparked a very open, honest, and vulnerable discussion on AskReddit after asking everyone who has ever been cheated on to share their stories. Scroll down for these internet users’ tales about how they found out that their significant others were unfaithful.
#1
My three year old told me.
Image credits: FourTheyNo
#2
While we were driving 16 hours to summer vacation, I saw him texting a lot on his phone (while driving). When I asked who it was, he said it was about work. I saw kissing emojis on one of the texts and thought that was really weird. All day I told myself I was crazy, he would never do anything like that.
Later in the hotel, I saw he was on Facebook messenger. It was 1am, so it was unusual and weird. He had guarded his phone all day so I could never check it, but I remembered I was the one to set up his Facebook account and I knew his password.
I logged on to his account on my phone, saw the messages, and my life exploded. He was having an affair with a woman from work. They were saying, "l love you." Total devastation. Married 25 years at that time.
Image credits: didntaskforthis123
#3
In my college dorm I ran into her very drunk roommate in the elevator as I got back from a late night cramming session. She said hi and asked what I thought about my girlfriend going home once a month. I told her that it didn’t bother me. She said that I must be very open, because if her boyfriend went home once a month to sleep with his ex, she’d be pissed.
In retrospect it was incredibly obvious that she was sleeping with her ex back home, but I refused to see it because I was into her and we had amazing chemistry. When I confronted her she said that she had never actually broken up with her ex and I was just a fling.
Image credits: dring157
You may or may not have found yourself in a situation where you suspect that your partner might have been unfaithful to you. While it’s impossible to know 100% for sure that they have cheated on you unless they confess their guilt, there are lots of small, common signs of infidelity that you can keep an eye out for. Essentially, what you’re looking for are sudden changes in behavior and communication.
Verywell Mind notes that some of these signs include things like an increased interest in appearance, more time spent away from home, changes in attitude, lying, avoidance, and indifference. Among other signs of potential cheating, you’ll find things like changes in intimacy, money issues, changes in how they use tech, and even accusations that you’re the one cheating on them.
#4
My first serious bf was actually the older brother of my best friend at the time. She was the one who introduced us and got us together.
About 2.5 years later, out of the blue, she calls me. Says she overheard him on the phone and felt awful, but she couldn’t keep it from me.
I didn’t believe her at first, but she was right.
A few years later, at work, we were all sharing stories about cheating exes. When I told mine, the ladies were shocked that a sister would rat out her brother like that.
Image credits: BloomyBonnie
#5
When your partner’s phone mysteriously gets locked and you’re suddenly “not their type”.
Image credits: SunlitSnowboarder19
#6
I don’t know how to describe the “just know” feeling. I walked into my own house and just knew he had brought her into it. It’s the slight change of attitude toward you, the way they look at you, the slight change of tone in their voice, hell, even their text messages to you is different. When you know someone soooo well and then they suddenly feel like a stranger… yeah, they are cheating.
Image credits: OrdinaryBridges
Some changes in attitude can be signs of infidelity, but they can also signal other issues, like lots of added stress at work or problems with other relationships.
For example, your significant other suddenly showing signs of self-esteem, wanting more thrills, being more negative, criticizing you more often, picking fights, and getting defensive when you mention infidelity might indicate that they’re unfaithful. Then again, there might be other problems afoot here.
#7
She told me right after she came back. Knocked on my door, broke down crying, had me comfort her for an hour and then broke the news. Her cheating wasn't the worst part, though.
She was at a music festival with a few of our mutual friends, told everyone we had broken up recently and hooked up with some dude, everyone knew what was going on.
No one, however, messaged me even once upon finding out that I was supposedly going through a break up, sitting alone at home for the entire four day weekend they were there. Thanks, I guess.
Image credits: Poschta
#8
I caught my fiancee and my flat mate in my bed together, 2 weeks before the wedding. The fiancee did not live with us and flatmate had her own bed on premises that she could have screwed him in.
Image credits: rowenaravenclaw0
#9
My fiancee was driving us home from a party and using her phone to navigate. I went to pick it up and check the directions and she freaked out, saying I couldn't just use her phone without permission and how that was an invasion of privacy. I wasn't sure what to make of that until she left herself logged into Facebook on my desktop a couple weeks later and I noticed messages from a guy I didn't recognize. If it hadn't been for the odd response in the car I wouldn't have scrolled up through them and discovered that she'd been making plans to see him and lying to him about me abusing her for months.
I was completely devastated, but I screenshotted everything in case she decided to gaslight he about it later. When I asked her friend about it, she said my fiancee had met the guy at a wedding they'd gone to in Vegas six months earlier and that they'd hooked up there. The friend had thought it was a one time thing but wasn't surprised when I told her things had kept going.
We'd been together 16 years, and I never saw it coming.
Image credits: Redcrosse
WebMD states that some signs that your partner may be cheating on you may include things like the sudden protectiveness of their electronic devices. “Partners engaged in infidelity often cheat over the internet, either on their computer or phone. If your partner is overly protective of their electronic devices or defensive about spending time on them, that might mean they don’t want you to know who they’re talking to.”
It’s also very suspicious if your significant other suddenly has periods of unavailability. “There might be times when your partner simply disappears and you have no clue where they are. That might mean that they are with someone they don’t want to tell you about.”
#10
A very random chance. Turned to his monitor, he paused a stream he was watching and told me I was disturbing him. Never had that reaction before. A few seconds later a discord message from his bff popped "s**t man you're in a pickle" followed by "you have to tell her". I pretended I saw nothing and turned away.
I knew if I confronted him then and there, he would deny and delete everything. But I am a very trusting person and I never snooped or asked questions, so that would give me a chance to read it at a later point.
Over the course of the next few days I read everything, including the convos with the chick. The affair was fairly recent, from the past month or so, but I found out he also took women to dinner on his fun trips out of the country, 3 years ago (at that point we were together for over 3 years). Idk if he ended up sleeping with them but I didn't care anymore.
Best part? He was extremely jealous, to the point of screaming "cheater" if I took 10 minutes longer to get back home from work.
Image credits: SolidJade
#11
My ex liked to stay with parents sometimrs, instead of staying at my place every night.
So once her parents called me and asked how shes doing, i got confused cos she sad shes sleeping home today.
So i just called her at 4am, saying im a landowner and need to speak with flat owner. And that sleepyhead just gave her mobile to the closest male.
After couple of minutes chat we foubd out shes not very truthfull. And got a prize - two ex boyfriends fir the price of one phone call.
Image credits: Silvermurk
#12
Worst one was when I found her journal and in it was a list of the men she'd slept with. My name was two up from the bottom and we'd been dating for over a year. One of the names below mine was her male friend that she swore nothing had ever happened with.
Image credits: atticusfinch1973
Have you ever been cheated on by someone you were romantically involved with? How did you find out about the affair? What are some bright red flags that someone might potentially be unfaithful to their significant other?
If you feel like opening up about such a sensitive topic, feel free to share your thoughts, experiences, and advice in the comments below.
#13
Found a CD of love songs in her car...
Was moving her car off the drive and singing along to NIN's "Something I can never have" when it dawned on me "this isn't my car & she hates NIN"
Skipped through the tracks and it was obviously a mix tape of love songs.
The guy she was cheating with turned out to be the one she was always telling me was such a good dad, husband and family man.
All whilst I worked full time then looked after the kids when she was out working on her "business".
Image credits: MrBenzedrine
#14
2 different relationships. Both times I caught them in the act in my own house. F****d me up bad for 10 years or so. I crawled into a bottle and barely got out. Please don't do what I did. Does it hurt? D**n right it does, but you are much better off to let it hurt in the moment and don't make things worse like I did. Don't wallow in self-loathing and self pity. You will think there must be something wrong with you but there isn't. You will probably find that down the road they will do the same thing to some other poor b*****d too. It hurts, but you can heal. You just have to go through a process.
Image credits: Tasty-Introduction24
#15
Phone records.
However, his behavior to me was so horrible in
months leading up to it that with hindsight, I should not have needed “proof”. If someone obviously doesn’t care about you anymore and can’t be bothered to try to be decent to be around, that’s enough.
Image credits: Limp_Dragonfly3868
#16
She was a bartender at a popular spot downtown. I would hang out with her while she was working and eventually befriended one of the other bartenders, Jake. One day, I get a text from Jake that says "hey man, as your friend, I feel like I have to tell you this: (girlfriend's name) was making out with our bouncer and then they went into the bathroom together."
I thanked Jake for being honest with me, sent my girlfriend a text asking when she started hooking up with the bouncer and waited. Ten minutes later, my phone was absolutely blowing up with messages from her. First the denial, then the "it only happened once/drunk mistake" excuse, then something about it only being a couple times but that she'd stop. I didn't reply to any of these messages. I just let her ramble until she finally said "so we can't get past this?" I replied "no I don't think so.".
Image credits: apocalypticradish
#17
She called him while she thought I was asleep, and told him how much she craved him.
I rolled over and told her to go then. She did, and she had the nerve to be shocked when she came back to find her s**t out in the street and the locks changed….
Image credits: anon
#18
Their best friend's livejournal. Only reason I was aware of it is because my wife used to make fun of it with another one of her friends for being so cringe. It was very cringe, that is why I would read it also. So I had it bookmarked and would occasionally catch up on it when I was bored. The girl was talking about her friend sleeping around on her husband at home and that it made her angry because he was a good guy or something. I knew she only hung out with like 3 people and was easy to deduce which one based on other stuff. Luckily I was more upset about the splitting and losing of material things in the divorce than the wife.
#19
Dated a girl for 4 years. At the end we were engaged, had picked out a date but hadn't sent out invitations.
I realized I didn't want to be with her. She would vacillate between being VERY interested in our relationship and spending weeks at a time berating everything I did. It was like dating two different women.
I broke it off and then 5 and a half years later, while eating breakfast on the morning of my wedding to a different woman, my dad mentions. "She was cheating on you. She had this guy from high school she was cheating on you with." I knew who he was referring to and was floored that my parents apparently knew this and told me nothing,.
Image credits: anon
#20
Saw her discord with pics of them together on what was supposed to be a girls weekend.
Image credits: DakezO
#21
She would always place her phone on tables faced down, and when she was using it near me she would angle her phone out of sight whenever an insta notification popped up, so I decided to see why.
Image credits: throwhoto
#22
The bf knocked at the door asking for her!
Image credits: BeerisAwesome01
#23
Hiding her phone, change in behaviour, getting devensive when i questioned her about it in the beginning etc, I'm very trusting but my gut was screaming at me that something was wrong, I looked through her phone 1 day and found she had been sharing explicit images/videos with a colleague for at least 5 months.
All texts were deleted but the images/videos were in her whatsapp "sent" folder as well as images/vids of him he sent her in the "received" folder, it was enough for me to file for divorce.
Image credits: themorganator4
#24
Blue is my favorite color. If I can buy something in blue I will, including lighters. Find a black lighter in her car and asked about it. She said it must be mine because she doesn't know anyone who smokes. Didn't saw a word to we got home. Went and collected 4 blue lighters and showed them to her then the black one saying I only buy blue, who's is the black one from. Confessed everything.
Image credits: Hates-Picking-Names
#25
Got home from a 48 hour shift, went to look for the key to our fire safe in the nightstand. Found a note that said “thanks for last night and this morning, you really are something special” signed by the travel nurse that had started working on her floor a few weeks before.
We had been together for 7 years.
Image credits: Con_mon
#26
I came home to change clothes for my second job, and there was a hotmail account open on the computer. I didn't have a hotmail account, so I looked closer. I sent myself a copy of all of the mails and went to work.
I called a friend and asked to borrow a rifle. He asked what I needed it for. I told him. I asked if I could still borrow it. He said "Absolutely!" I thanked him and let him know I'd be over after I got off work. He said, "Ok! But before you go, I'm going to advise against this course of action." and then he proceeded to explain why my plan wasn't going to work out as I'd hoped.
Best. Friend. Ever.
#27
I found out through a mutual friend. They didn't want to tell me at first, but they knew it was the right thing to do. It was a shock, and I didn't want to believe it, but the evidence was there. They showed me messages and pictures that were hard to deny. It was a tough pill to swallow, but I'm grateful they told me. It hurt, but it was better to know the truth than to live in a lie. It's important to surround yourself with honest people who have your best interests at heart.
Image credits: BackgroundProper6340
#28
18 months into marriage. She’d been away at a friends for a couple of days, returned home and immediately went off to work.
I got her bag and figured I’d throw the clothes in the wash. Found loads of typed out text messages and a printed address. Copied them all on a fax/copier - yes it was years ago!
Weekend rolls round and she’s off to see her mom, I give it 30 mins and go out and see her car isn’t there, punch in the address I’d found, go there and her cars outside.
Go sit on the hood and send the following text “you better be having fun in there cos you’re in deep s**t when you step outside, and if he comes out with you he’s going to have time to think and regret his choice”
Curtain twitched, she came round to the front and I simple asked “how long?”
Ended up with me going to her moms house and saying “she’s staying with you until she decides who she wants to be with”.
She chose him. Bullet dodged.
Image credits: SuperNuggsy
#29
I was doing his discussion questions for his college class and went into his email to find something pertaining to the question.
Found so many Craigslist emails (that’s where we met) of him soliciting s*x from other women. He cried and cried and cried and said it was just the chase that he’d never do anything. So my stupid 18yo a*s believed him.
Then he did cheat on me, dumped me, and stole all my depression medication.
Then after we broke up he was soliciting blowjobs from gay men and trans women “I’m not gay but I’ll give you a handy. I just miss enthusiastic blowjobs.” And I forwarded those emails to his parents.
#30
He flat out told me all the gory details. He was shocked when I told him to get out of my life and to never contact me again. Apparently, that was not the reaction he was looking for.
#31
It was the way he talked about his male friend.
„Everybody thought we were gay in high school“,
Then months later „sometimes we shower together“,
And yh eventually we got there.
He’s openly dating men now,
But also still has a new alibi gf for his family.
#32
He's a photographer and it's not unusual for him to travel to do photoshoots.
I took the SD card out of his camera one day, to download some photos he had taken of our then, 3 month old daughter. Found photos and videos of him having s*x with other women that he was doing photo shoots of.
Yeah. I trusted him so completely that he got too lazy to even try to hide it anymore I guess. I never would have touched his camera before our daughter was born. I just wanted to print the photos...
#33
When he stopped giving me hugs, I had a feeling something was wrong.
We were together for about 8 years, married for 3. It’s a crazy story—we were in an a*****e situation with someone else, and he was my rock. It was brutal finding out he was cheating on me with that woman.
Image credits: LilaBliss
#34
When I got onto my boyfriend's Snapchat, I discovered that he communicates with many girls and even invited them to check in at the hotel.
Image credits: aluustful
#35
I was doing LDR while she planned to move to London, I flew to where she and my family lived very last minute as my sister had given birth to my niece (I booked my flight 4 hours before it took off). My GF at the time was really funny about the fact I was there and made a point that she wasn't changing her plans because of it, which was fine as I wanted to spend the night with my family.
Later that night I had agreed to take her and her friend home as late night Taxis are like gold dust there, she got in the car an instantly I noticed that the makeup on her nose had rubbed off. Now, I knew from experience that if we were kissing the same patches of her makeup would start to rub off.
I confronted her about it the next day, she admitted that she had a FWB she would see on nights out while I wasn't there or she wasn't at mine.
Looking back, there were multiple red flags from that relationship I missed or ignored because I was being manipulated.
#36
She commented another guy's name on a post of FB. The post was along the lines of "I was I was with you this New Years Eve". She was with me at that time. I guess she didn't know FB would put her comment in my newsfeed.
I borrowed her phone a few days later and my paranoia got the best of me so I checked her FB messages. Not only did I find conversations with the guy but multiple others, most of them explicit in nature.
#37
Found she was going away for 3 weeks and neglected to mention it was to be with the other guy. She wanted me to still be around in case it didn't work out.
#38
She broke things off when she got pregnant, sure it was someone else's baby. Turns out I was 1 of 3 possible dads, fast forward a couple of years and after some paternity tests, we found out it was actually mine.
Image credits: Active-Stress2392
#39
After being convinced I was mentally unwell for being paranoid she was cheating and was getting therapy/medication for it, went on her phone to see she was worried about being pregnant about the guy I was told ‘not to worry about’.
Image credits: AwezMush
#40
I was on pizza delivery. The address looked familiar. This was before to smart, smart phones. I get in the neighborhood and like huh right next to the girl im seeing. Walk right up to her door for the delivery. Knock thinking hey why is my gf ordering pizza when she knows I could just bring her one after work. She opens door in bath robe w a guy also pretty close to naked. I laughed and dropped the pizza. And walked away. My cell was immediately blown up, saying how sorry she was. I took my manager to the beach that night and she ptty f****d me in the back of her car.
#41
She went out with some friends and I discovered that she had taken the bottle of lube with her.
#42
She told me. Though initially she wasn't truthful about how many times it occurred. She then ended the relationship.
Kinda feel like she couldve easily done those things the other way around and it would've been way less bad.
#43
I was already getting some Red Flags, backing off when I went to kiss her, keeping her phone on her 24/7, keeping it face down most of the time.
When she ended it, she came up with some BS excuse that she "wasn't seeing the kids enough" (Not mine) She wasn't seeing the kids any less when I was around haha.
Pretty much confirmed when she was in a relationship two weeks later and kept deflecting the question when o called her out on it.
#44
They really withdrew from me for about a month and stopped initiating anything. I had a suspicion they were cheating. A friend texted me that they saw them on a dating app. My ex dumped me later that day. I am not sure if they decided to just end it, got wind that I found out, or something else.
#45
The first time: he had a contact in his phone called "HQ" and I couldn't figure out what headquarters he needed stored, but then one day he got a text from that number and I pieced it together as "Head Queen"
He'd been texting her reminiscing about their prior sexcapades and she happened to reply at an inopportune time for him since I saw it.
She and I had a 3 hour phone call after that (she was his ex and he even introduced us on a trip to his hometown one time) where she told me how he cheated on his other girlfriend with her as well. Both scummy people. He still likes to share "his side" on reddit once in a while.
Second guy worked with the girl he cheated with and started talking about her a lot, and when I asked him about her he told me she "probably has a green v****a" as if that would convince me he wasn't into her. He started picking up extra shifts at his job and buying her coffee on his way in with my credit card. .
