Cheating is incredibly heartbreaking, no matter how you look at it. But while sometimes the betrayal is impossible to miss, other times it’s much harder to spot.
On Reddit, people shared the subtle signs that revealed their significant other was being unfaithful—and some of them are genuinely wild. We’re talking about things you’d never even consider, like a partner suddenly using a completely different set of emojis.
Read them below so you know what red flags to watch for in your relationships. Hopefully, you’ll never have to deal with any of it yourself.
#1
The dog loved every guy that ever stopped by the house.
Except one.
She would bark at him, look at me, and then continue barking at him.
Checked wife’s phone. Filed for divorce a week later.
#2
The recent emojis on the keyboard of the phone were ❤️💔💋.
They were not being sent to me.
© Photo: namednone
#3
I'd come home from work at lunch to surprise her, she wasn't there.
I went back to work and come home normally. Asked her how her day went.
"Nothing much, just hanging around the house."
© Photo: SnooPeripherals1914
#4
This sounds incredibly odd... it was FB advertisements. I kept getting ads for "Is he cheating" or "How to save your marriage". It made me take notice his behavior had changed. He had been chatting with her on FB messenger.
© Photo: _iron_butterfly_
#5
His clothes.
He suddenly had sandals and button up shirts, that I'd tried to get him into for literal years.
I guess that means he did listen. All those things I told him he'd look good in, he started wearing as soon as he cared about looking good for someone else.
© Photo: Sweet_Cinnabonn
#6
I got a text explaining the (intimate) things she was looking forward to us doing later that night. It got deleted as I was reading it. When I replied asking what she deleted she said "sorry. It was to remind (sister's name) not to forget we have to get mum a present this weekend and I sent it to you by mistake."
A 12yr relationship was ended right there.
© Photo: redwolve378
#7
Mostly about the phone. An interest in hiding it, silenced, no notifications etc. I went looking for reasons. And did not like what I found. I ended it 4 years ago.
itsobviouslymeduh:
Phone always on DnD, and takes it with her to the bathroom even to just wash her hands. Screen always facing down. It’s always the phone.
neimaacutie:
The sudden obsession with their phone and suddenly it's always on silent.
© Photo: Parking-City-6725
#8
I have a habit of listening to the same song over and over again on repeat until I am sick of it.
There was this one trendy hip hop song I liked and my then partner would get irritated because I would play it everytime I sat in their car. Got to the point where they would force me to change it or turn it off.
Then one day the same song came up on their Pandora or Spotify as a random suggested song and to my surprise my partner turned up the volume and said "oh [coworker's name] loves this song".
idkmybffdw:
My ex hated music from a specific artist I loved and one day started listening to them. I found out a few days later he had an entire second relationship.
© Photo: Faysian
#9
The way they stopped including me in their future "we" sentences. it wasn't a fight or anything big, but suddenly it was 'I’m going to do this' or 'I might move there' instead of 'We should do this.' The future just started shrinking until I wasn't in it anymore.
© Photo: ProofGrab7994
#10
Showed up at 1:30 am drunk after being out with her girls… hey babe, where’s your wedding ring?
It really sucked but I was very appreciative of her at least taking if off because it was my grandmother's wedding ring and she was a saint.
© Photo: KA047
#11
Cologne. I don't wear any and I noticed her clothes had a faint lingering smell of some expensive [stuff]. Checked her phone and she texted the guy that she couldn't believe she was pregnant. And couldn't believe I brought home a stray dog a few days before. Miss that dog.
© Photo: potsgotme
#12
It was Valentine’s Day and we were going out for dinner. We lived in downtown Toronto so it was super snowy and we walked a fair bit. I was wearing heels and he always gives me his hand to climb steps or whatever when I wear them.
But this night he didn’t help me once. He didn’t help me get off the streetcar, he didn’t help me through the snow, he didn’t help me get over curbs… I found out 2 days later.
© Photo: himmieboy
#13
I went from being his favourite person to him suddenly being annoyed at everything I did. That's when I knew something had changed.
Fast-forward to me checking his phone one night while he was asleep (I usually believe in privacy but I needed answers) and the first three text conversations were him telling different girls that he loved them. This happened in 2019 and I have genuinely never been the same again.
#14
The distance. It starts off small and incremental, but one day you wake up next to someone you don't recognize anymore.
#15
Got herpes out of the blue.
#16
The immediate shower as soon as he got home, and the random ATM withdrawal receipts of cash from our buildings ATM when I would never see him use cash for anything together.
#17
He called my dog by a different name and it rubbed me wrong. Later that week he got a flirty text from his coworker and told me she was obsessed with him but he kept turning her down 🙄 (ya ok) I looked her up on Instagram and she had a dog with the same name as the one he had accidentally called my dog.
#18
They suddenly started accusing me of cheating. Projection is the loudest confession.
#19
Distance, feeling like you’re getting bread crumbs suddenly, somehow [intimacy] feels different or less frequent, they are suddenly very paranoid about your behaviors. So a combination of projection + subtle indifference.
© Photo: sethcera
#20
He had gotten a new phone when we were together for about a year and he let me program my fingerprint on it so I could unlock it for emergencies.
Towards the end of the second year, he handed me his phone to show me a video but the screen locked. Put my finger on it to unlock it and it didn’t work. Handed it back to him…he’d changed it to a number code.
© Photo: Weird_Bluebird_3293
#21
The showerhead angle was adjusted. She can't reach it.
© Photo: bill1024
#22
Found a toll road bill open on the floor with multiple 12am-3am trips on it to another city. When confronted he said he was “going to the mall.” I was like … bro what mall is open at 3am? That quickly changed to “oh sometimes I go sit at the pier by myself to think.” Then I was accused of invading his privacy and being a psycho.
#23
Her twitter kept popping up in my “people you may know”. I joked about it with my ex and he seemed uncomfortable - she was “just some ex who was obsessed with him”. Sure enough, he dumped me a few weeks after this. I still had his location, and saw he was at a hospital. I found out that, right after he bought a new car, he went to go cheat on me with his ex and they got t-boned when he picked her up.
#24
A chunk of glitter. I have tons of glitter makeup. He tried to pass it off as mine. Wrong. This was big, cheap glitter. I know my glitter.
#25
Shaved her private parts after never doing it.
20 year relationship, she ended up confessing after she got caught up.
#26
I encountered myself in a dream and he (I?) said "She's cheating on you, dude."
Woke up instantly in a cold sweat. After a couple days of thought, I confronted her. Turns out dream-clone me was right. Never met myself in a dream before or since.
#27
She was a co-worker and it was the way he spoke about her. It was different than the way he spoke about his other female co-worker "friends." He would get excited talking about her and his face would light up when he got a text from her.
I may just be a stranger in the internet, but please believe when I say - it usually is the one that they tell you "not to worry about." Also, for the women out there, it's called "women's intuition" for a reason. Your gut will let you know way before your brain catches up
Edit- Just wanted to say that I probably should have used the term "gut instinct" instead of "woman's intuition," as guys can also get a gut feeling when something is off with their partner.
© Photo: Usual_Sympathy3140
#28
He started calling me more often, which was unusual. This was so I would not call him, like because we already talked.
#29
The entire list of suggested followers on my instagram was random women with ‘followed by *bf*’ under every one.
I asked him about it and they were all ‘old friends’, of course this prompted me to go through his phone and he was messaging all of them.
Never thought I’d say this but Meta’s a real one for real.
#30
The mystery baby that he was tagged in a photo with.
Oh, you said subtle?
Similar_Climate_227:
SAMEEEE he was tagged in an ultrasound picture on FB and that’s how I found out :) after 6 years of being together.
#31
-his phone became an extension of his arm. Always having it face down and screen turned away from me. Smirking while texting and just constantly checking his phone in general. Never letting me touch his phone.
-being very emotionally [toxic] towards me for seemingly no reason
-coming home later than usual and claiming he had a lot of work to do. Also making excuse to leave the house on the weekend to go to “work” events
-stopped being intimate with me and rejected me if I ever tried to initiate.
#32
You can sense that something is off, TRUST YOURSELF. Do not let them try to tell you, you’re crazy, overthinking, over analyzing.
Honor your feelings.
My ex would gaslight me over this feeling, and when I would say let me go through your phone, “you should just believe me, you should trust me” then he would flip it around on me. It was awful and truly an evil thing to do to someone. Instead of just letting me go, he had to have me and her.
He would always sleep with his phone under him or close to his body, (never did that before he started cheating) I wiggled it out of his pocket and boom, everything confirmed. Jumped up gathered my [stuff] and left, the whole time he’s fumbling around half asleep trying to figure out what’s going on and stop me from leaving.
#33
When I saw he stopped using social media around me (especially instagram). I grew suspicious of it and I asked him politely if we can watch reels together on this account. He refused immediately and turned off his phone. It's been 1 yr since I ended that relationship. Never felt better. Found out about the other girl eventually by the end.
#34
Every weekend, the background on her phone would "accidently" change from the picture of us to a generic butterfly picture. She's currently dating the guy that was "just like family" and still doesn't know I know. There was more signs like the used pregnancy test I saw, but overall I had checked out before finding out so it didn't hurt me much.
#35
It was an ldr, and every time we had an argument, he would either block me or refuse to talk to me until the next day. I found out he had been chatting up with other women and begging them to meet him while I was crying myself to sleep, waiting for him to unblock me or talk to me.
#36
Constantly finding other women's hair & accessories, him smelling weird when he came home, having makeup on his clothes, change in attitude, he became incredibly cold and cruel towards me. I found evidence of him buying gifts for women that I never got. We even had a run in in public that was extremely weird. I became extremely sick.
Would never admit any of it & insisted it was all in my head.
#37
She was out running errands and then told me that she was going to this guy’s place. It was already like 5pm. I had never heard of this man but didn’t want to seem insecure. She got home around 11pm that night. I spoke to her about it the next day because I wanted to be mature and regulated. She convinced me they were just friends.
Around the same time her phone location started being weird (I would normally check to see her ETA so I could start dinner), but it would be turned off most the time, and when I asked her about it, we’d “fix it” only for it to do it again.
Flash forward three months and she’s asking to open the relationship for her new guy “friend” and then refused to stop contact with him when I wasn’t down. Turns out she was being a lot “friendlier” with him than she was letting on.
I was open to repair, but she immediately wanted separation and divorce, and turned the matter into my reaction being the problem rather than her infidelity. 12 years down the drain. Never thought I’d be both betrayed and abandoned by my best friend.
#38
He got really mean about random, petty [things] - I could literally do nothing "right" by the end. I now know he was looking for things to justify him cheating on me.
For instance, one day I cooked us breakfast & he got pissy that I hadn't cleaned up the kitchen he "just cleaned" 2 days prior, but he got mad while I was still actively cooking. It was like wth do you expect me to not cook for a week after you clean the kitchen? According to him, not cleaning as I cooked was all the proof he needed that I didn't value him.
#39
-Stopped wearing her wedding ring.
-Changed “honey” to my actual name in her phone.
-All of sudden wasn’t tired in the early evenings anymore, and stayed out often till midnight or later.
-Criticism galore, Treated me cold as ice.
-Finally admitted to me that she was interested in someone else and she was only with me for financial support.
Good Riddance.
#40
The power cord was incorrectly wrapped around my electric razor. Think about it....
#41
He called me while he was really drunk, he was at a concert, it was really loud & he kept trying to figure out where I was ("are you upstairs?" "did you go outside?" "are you at the bar?"), then I realized he thought he was talking to another woman, told him he was talking to me, *his girlfriend*, and at first he argued with me that no, he had called _ some woman's name _, I couldn't be dedoubt, then he finally realized with horror what he had done & hung up.
Not subtle but awful & darkly funny at this point. It wasn't the only time he cheated on me.
#42
When she had a Christmas shopping day with the girls and couldn’t name who it was with, when she had an unexplained Victoria Secrets bill on the credit card a week before the shopping day, when she was all of a sudden waxed when she had never done so before, when I came home one day and she was covered in perfume(which she never used), smelled of booze, and was stand offish with me. I finally figured out who it was with (one of my business clients that she knew) on Christmas Day when he called as we were serving our kids breakfast-and she had to take the call in the next room. A December to remember….
#43
The rage towards me. Suddenly i was at fault for everything. I mean i almost once put a glass on the wrong shelf and she broke down crying and screaming that i was a narcissist because i was taller than the other people in the house, and the glass was a sign of my [toxic] personality.
She met someone and became super [toxci] because she needed ti find a way to justify her actions. Tbh it was way worse than the affair. The gaslighting and crazy was horrible.
#44
He’d “joke” about me cheating and asking if I was. He also become more protective over his phone when he never used to care if I went on it. Suddenly I couldn’t touch it.
He also became meaner to me. Less soft. Less caring. More irritated. Just little things in his character changed.
#45
She kept talking about a guy at work, she actually talked about 2 guys at work. We both have opposite gendered friends at work so I wasn't terribly concerned. Then one day, we were sitting on our deck talking and her phone was blowing up. She was paying a lot more attention to it than she was to me. I excused myself to got to the bathroom. I went in the house. From a window, I could see over her shoulder with my telephoto lens on my camera. She didn't say anything really incriminating, just, "I'm on the deck, it's so peaceful here." I took a deep breath and walked out. I asked her who she was texting. Insert deer in the headlights and stuttering excuses. It finally came out. I asked her to take a week and decide what she was going to do. The next Saturday she was moving out. Divorce is pending.
#46
Suddenly buying new underwear and makeup that she normally didn’t wear.
#47
The very sudden surge of love bombing and completely random affection because of the shame they feel... i lived through this with my ex a few times... i remember the dates when these events happened, checked her phone and all clicked in the right direction... messages from strangers.. pictures.. well..
#48
Stopped getting goodnight texts after 7 years of receiving them whenever we weren’t together.
#49
She had a ton of guy friends. I never had a problem with. One of them she was super defensive about when I asked how they're doing. Turns out he was doing her lol.
#50
She started talking about him a lot, she was telling me she met a "cool new guy that I think you'd like." It is probably not as subtle as I thought it was at the time lmao.
#51
Nothing subtle about it. One night she wouldn’t come home making up anything she could like being drunk (she didn’t drink) lol. Honestly there were things that added up over about a year leading to that night. But she was a Class-A smooth talker. Never thought I’d be involved with someone who’d cheat but that’s life and I weathered it. 10 years have passed and what I’ve heard is she’s always racking up debt and constantly changing rentals, cars, friends, towns/states, jobs, boyfriends, etc. At least she’s not my problem now.
#52
Sudden increase in the "gaming nights with guys", outbursts and criticising any nice thing you were doing for him. Take your pick.
#53
He kept coming home really late after work, was pushing me away/ didn’t want to do things together anymore and started carrying his phone with him everywhere when he was never like that before.
#54
My ex would say my friend was ugly every time I gushed about how pretty she is. I literally looked at him like are you kidding me right now? She was very clearly stunning. They are together now lmao.
#55
He would show me something on his phone but almost never wanted me to actually hold the phone.
#56
He was a big drinker and liked going out to bars a lot and he went from always inviting me and including me in on his nights out to forbidding me from going so he could have “alone time”. Then it spiraled from there.
#57
1. She hired a personal trainer, started working out twice a week religiously, and dieting strictly for months and months, but stopped going out on hikes with me and our dogs.
2. She started routinely exploding with rage, over the most minor of infractions.
2. Offering breadcrumbs of time, attention, and [intimacy]. (Always my fault, because of something I’d done wrong )
3. Phone locked down hard, and always in her hand.
Then, I found a well worn, wall mounted iPhone holder, hidden in a weird spot in her bathroom. I asked her about it, and she got flustered, then defensive, then raging pissed off.
Her phone and computer were on 24/7, high alert lock down. One day, she got an unexpected call, and left the house quickly, with her laptop un-locked. Which, she didn’t realize was set to back up her phone.
I found the mother lode of explicit pics/videos, she was sending to her AP. They were video chatting, and she would mount her phone on the bathroom mirror, and they would “perform” for each other.
Needless to say, I’ve moved on.
#58
Just a random gut instinct while everything was going well on the surface. Checked his phone while he was in the shower, left the messages with the girl open on the bed, grabbed my stuff and left.
Am now in a healthy relationship and have NEVER had this gut feeling with my current partner. Sometimes your body knows before you do.
#59
My ex husband “lost” his wedding ring in the sauna at the gym (where he worked as a personal trainer) so we got him a new one, but still… he’d come home from work and the ring would be in his bag. It was a silicone ring meant to be safe for the gym. We bought it specifically for that reason. Also, we shared each others locations often to check where we were to start making dinner or whatever. When he’d get off work, I noticed his location would just be slightly away from work but would stay there for 20-30 mins at a time. He started going through my phone without me knowing and I caught him going through my messages when I got out of the shower one time. I let it slide. I had nothing to hide. He then accused me of cheating or looking men at the gym and trying to “make men look at me”. I finally went through his phone and found Google searches for “why do I crush so hard.”
He swore up and down and probably still would because he cared sooo much about his image and “integrity” that he never cheated. Yeah ok bud.
So a lot of projection on his part. And some many not so subtle signs.
#60
Spending more time on their looks. Dolling themselves up when they usually don't.
Any strange new behavior. For me, she started waking up before me on the weekend. She never used to do that. Always claimed she loved sleeping in.
#61
Hairs everywhere. Women really lose a lot of hair 😂.
#62
There was a beer in her fridge - she doesn’t drink beer.
#63
She was too tired to talk to me in the morning but five minutes later her friend called and she was wide awake.
#64
My gf and I had been on the rocks for a few weeks, fighting alittle bit but I thought we were working through it okay, then one night while on the phone with her while I was out with my friend she drunkenly started saying that she was worried I was cheating on her, and that she is losing trust in me…..immediately after my friend and I both agreed that it felt a lot like a guilty conscience admission and I started to look for evidence…..once I started to look it was pretty easy to notice all the other pieces.
#65
She started drinking beer and took an interest in hockey. We where together almost 15 years, both of those things where generally despised by her throughout the relationship. She took a trip without me and in the final 6 months she found excuses to be out almost every night. She also started going grocery shopping for four hours at a time. I finally called her out on it and she said she was leaving and blamed me for the relationship falling apart. My sister then caught her out with another dude and that sealed it. Since the divorce I have come to the conclusion that she cheated more than once over the years and actively ran a smear campaign to turn people against me. Many many lies.
#66
Phone facing down.
#67
He was strangely good at new positions.
#68
One of my exes and I went to one my families holiday parties. One of my uncles came up to me and just said, I don't think she's the one, watch out. Sure enough years later I found out she was cheating on me with one of her coworkers. Idk how he had this intuition, but I should have taken it seriously. 5 years down the drain.
#69
He looked on the edge and was finding any excuse to start a fight.
#70
Not meeting my eyes and when he did there was a look of pity.
#71
Hmm.. i guess when they are good at rationalization. Anything morally wrong is okay, as long as it makes sense to them why its not so wrong.
