No one ever expects their partner to be unfaithful, but it happens—and surprisingly often. According to a new YouGov survey, more than half (53%) of Americans say they were cheated on.
To get a better understanding of these situations, Reddit user BlushyBunnyBop asked people to share the worst stories about infidelity they know—whether they lived through the heartbreak themselves or witnessed someone else experience it. The responses were raw, shocking, and sometimes even darkly humorous. Here are the ones that stood out the most.
#1
Dated a girl for four years. We lived together, discussed marriage, had a shared credit card and bank account, I helped her lease a nice Chevy, etc. All rainbows and flowers. I come home from work early from a business trip in Grand Rapids (I’m in Michigan). I was home pretty much two days early because there was an outbreak of COVID at the conference so it was canceled. I go upstairs to my bedroom to sleep after a 3 hour drive only to find the “love of my life” in bed having s*x with my “best friend” since 1st grade. This is someone I traded Pokémon cards with, had sleepovers with, we played basketball in my driveway, would later go to bars…..just absolutely destroyed me. Being betrayed by the two most important people in my adult life killed me. I’m not proud of this part, but I pulled Carlos (my bff) off my fiancé and beat him within an inch of his life. The worst part? He didn’t resist or fight back. I could feel the guilt and shame leaking out of him. He left my house barely dressed and I told my fiancé to go get dressed and get a hotel for a couple nights with literal tears streaming down my face. She left and within the week had moved back in with her parents again. Her dad and brother who I was always cool with (we’d go bowling, watch football, go to Detroit Tigers games together, etc) moved her stuff out in a U-Haul. Her dad shook my hand and her brother hugged me and said they were gonna miss me and were sorry that his daughter threw away a great thing. This was 2021 and I haven’t even gone on a date since. Focused on work rn. Got a promotion and love my staff. I’ve hired a ton of Detroit natives that don’t get a shot and it’s worked out SO well. Detroit Mercy graduates are top notch. If you read this whole sob story thank you. If you were cheated on I’m sorry. The world can be cold, but guess what? We are the warmth! Carry on and keep fighting. You’ve only lost when you give up. God bless you all.
Image credits: Lizard_State2500
#2
I didn't know she was married until I got a death threat from the husband.
Image credits: owbilli
#3
Wife called to say she won’t be home because she drank too much & didn’t want to drive (yet she’s never been a drinker!). Turned off her phone location & was evasive to my texts. Refused to let me come get her & didn’t care that her kids were concerned. After an hour of texting she stopped replying. In the morning I was getting warnings of attempts on a credit card to get cash from an ATM because none of my cards allow that. Ran to the bank at opening time to remove all cash only to find money was drained from it 10 minutes earlier across town. Fast forward days later I find phone evidence that the bf & her have been discussing where they’ll live & where they’ll have the kids go to school. I could go on but it’s the typical didn’t-see-it-coming-from-this-person scenario. It’s terrible that someone can hurt their spouse & kids so badly but it happens every day. Fortunately if you work hard at it, life can be 1000 times better years later without that person.
Image credits: TheLawOfDuh
#4
Heard this from a date:
She was dating a rich Chinese kid. Well, the girl had been busy with med school or residency and she had been with him for 10 or so years. Families and friends were all intertwined. She thought she would marry him.
She rather emotionless and expressionless. But, a week before her board exams she wanted to go visit him in Chicago. On the flight, she had WiFi and a friend messaged her saying she found photos of her boyfriend in another condo and there appears to be another girl. Turns out that he was playing house with another girl as if they were married and whenever this girl went over to visit, he would go to the other condo. Turns out, the rich Chinese kid had two condos.
She broke down on the plane.
But, she made it a point that she passed her board exams.
Image credits: Cantdrownafish
#5
Teenage Summer Camp (so not really that important)
Long time GF went to the week-long camp. Many of my friends went. I couldn’t go due to my job.
GF openly making out with another guy during the week.
When I picked her up on the last day, only one of my friends told me about it. That hurt much more than the cheating.
Image credits: gachunt
#6
My friend found out his wife cheated cause he got chlamydia. When he confronted her she lied and said it was ra*e. The husband convinced her to take it to court and charge him. She started to but her story stopped making sense when the police investigated and she had to admit she lied and got charged with lying to the police.
Image credits: silly_sosidg
#7
My ex husband slept with two of my sisters.
Image credits: iSubjugate
#8
My friend and his wife have two kids and are set to go on a Disney cruise. They've been planning it for months with his family. Two weeks before the cruise, she gets a promotion at work and is set to travel on a work trip, so she will miss the cruise.
Cruise day comes and he flies himself, and his two kids (one is 4 and one is 2) to the cruise ship. They spend the night in a hotel the night before, then go to the cruise ship.
He gets on the ship and once it's about to be underway, too late for him to get back off the boat, she texts him and says that she wants a divorce and that when he comes home, she'll have all his stuff packed up. He calls me and says that he has limited Internet access, please drive by his house. I go over there and her vehicle is gone. I start driving by likely friends' houses (they lived in a small town about two hours from me) and I find her car parked in some guy's driveway. I take some pictures and go back a few days later and the car is still there in the middle of the night.
He's stuck on this trip with his family and two kids under 5 on a Disney cruise while his wife is getting railed by the town drunk.
It doesn't end there. When he came back, she'd called the sheriff and said she knew he was coming home and was going to beat her up so he gets there and the sheriff has him drop of his kids and tells him he needs to find a different place to stay for a few nights because she's called in a DV complaint **even though he was on the cruise!**
It took him a couple of years to get it all sorted in the court system. Despite the s**t she did, including being the town bop and having their kids spending the night at different guys' houses, the court gave them joint custody. F*****g Alabama dude.
Image credits: 001235
#9
I’ve only done it once.
I was in my 20s. I felt so bad about it that I broke up with my girlfriend two days later.
I learned a lesson from the immense guilt - ALWAYS break up with your partner FIRST before you let anything get that far. It’s not necessarily easy but it’s the right thing to do.
I could never bring myself to cheat again.
Image credits: Rich-Contribution-84
#10
I met this beautiful girl (she was out of my league) who was working at a KMart. I thought I was pretty suave and flirted with her. I asked her out for that night and she agreed. I asked her where she lived and she said she’d meet me at the mini-mart.
I pick her up and we spend the evening hitting various house parties. I only knew a few of the people at the parties. We were getting pretty drunk and she would sit on my lap and kiss me.
Some people were staring at us, but I figured they were either jealous or wondering why she was with me. I took her over to my house and we sc**wed for a while.
It was getting late and I took her home. She had told me she was divorced. When I was driving into her neighborhood, she said that she was separated, not divorced. As I pulled up close to her house, she said, “You better stop here, my husband is home.”
I said that I thought she was separated and she said that they were going to be, but that they still lived together. I let her out of the car a few houses away from her house.
I know, I know, alarm bells should have been going off, but I was a fairly inexperienced 18 year old and I was flying high after my evening with her.
I went home and went to sleep. The next day, a friend of mine comes up to me and says her heard about me taking her around town. I smile proudly and said, “yeah, I had a great time.”
He looks at me and says “You remember when someone shot holes in Jay’s Mustang last week with a deer rifle? That was her husband; he’s crazy and so is she!”
I said “ she told me she was divorced.” He looked at me with a grin and said he hoped her husband didn’t find out where I lived or what car I drove.
I spent the next few months, wondering if someone was going to take a shot at me. Nothing ever happened, but I learned a lot about cheating from my experience.
Image credits: Moopigpie
#11
Ex wife and I had a pretty perfect relationship, never really fought/worked as a team to better ourselves all that good s**t.
After about 5 years together she out of the blue wanted kids, ok, we tried pretty much everything (hrt/vitamins/trackers and apps/diets) but just couldn't conceive. After her second round of hrt we had back to back miscarriages, she withdrew and we slowly stopped having s*x. After 14 months of just constantly trying to figure out how to fix something she didn't want to fix I caught her f*****g someone else. 10 years down the drain oof.
So divorced and thought I could do better than that, few bad relationships led me to therapy in 2020. 2 years of that and I met someone, let her move in after 9 months exclusive. About 6 months after that she accidentally put up vids of her f*****g someone in my bed to her snap.
So that was that for me and finding love lol.
Image credits: anon
#12
My ex-wife pretended to be admitted to a mental health ward for long term treatment while actually staying with her new man and cheating on me.
Image credits: w0fIvHv034Ei
#13
I was in a long distance relationship at the time. I got a message from her friend out of the blue saying she was out with another boy. Received photos and videos from her as evidence too.
I asked my missus at the time what she was doing,
"Just helping mum with baking"
Immediately sent her all the evidence her friend sent me, told her that we were done and blocked her number.
Image credits: Mello_Boy1401
#14
I have two
My first girlfriend f****d like 15 guys behind my back while we were dating, and had the audacity to bring one over to a fire we had one night. I got weird vibes so I was overly flirtatious/touchy with her and he threatened to beat my a*s (he didn't know we were together either). She also f****d her "gay marine friend" who when I approached to find out, offered to f**k me too.
And the worst one, my ex fiance (together for 9 years) and I broke up, I went back to my hometown for the weekend to get my mind off it but came back a day early. She had a guy over and freaked out when I came home early. I told her it is what it is I'll be moved out asap. She then f****d him while I was staying in the guest room directly next to her room, and then brought him back over again the day before I moved out.
Image credits: Snake_-_Eater
#15
A friend of mine was a truck driver in a 2-man crew. His partner bragged to him of his wife's sexual prowess... in great detail, on a daily basis.
The newly wedded friend decided he needed to check that out... destroying 2 families, several friendships, a softball team, and the company.
Image credits: Luthiefer
#16
I was 20, my BF was 21, my best friend was 22.
She hated the man, always up and down complaining about how I could do better, how she just didn’t get it, etc.
He knocked me up, I was still pretty religious at the time, and wanted to keep the baby, he and my best friend were the only ones I told. He was very anti-have the baby. She said “I’ll support you no matter what you choose but you should listen to him”.
I had an abortion, I had complications and was bed-bound for a week and some change, just bleeding profusely and in a lot of pain and having internal war because I figured Jesus hated me now.
That whole time? Crickets from either of them. No calls, no visits, no nothing.
By the time I’m up and at em’ again, I’m seeing weird stuff on his social media. Pictures taken of him in his home with captions she always put on her own pics.
Her sister finally lets me know, they’re together right now. So I went over and caught them in the act.
Worst part? She was wearing MY lingerie which she’d taken from my room, didn’t even fit her t**s. I said “what the f**k is this” and she stood up, finger waves in my face and says “listen here b***h”
I decked her, one punch straight up to the jaw and she crumpled on the floor crying (all talk no tough) and then he pinned me to the wall and then his roomies came in and separated us all.
Found out later she’d told him I was cheating on him and the kid wasn’t his (not true), and she admitted this to me. She said “you don’t even deserve him” so her hatred of him the whole time we dated was apparently just jealousy
Melina - I have never forgotten, you rotten f*****g human. You ruined my life, you broke my heart, you caused irreparable damage, you soulless c*nt.
Image credits: DefinitelyN0tAM0th
#17
We were 2 years into a relationship and up until this point she was madly in love with me, called me a trillion times a day, always wanted to be with me, etc.
It was around the time she was helping her sister plan the sister's wedding. Her calls became less frequent per day. When I called her she usually wasn't available and I just assumed it was because of the wedding. Our dates became less frequent as well and I naively believed again it was because of the wedding.
About 1-2 months later I get a call from her other sister during work and it caught me by surprise. She told me she had something to tell me and somehow I just instantly knew what it was about. "My sister's been cheating on you."
It was with her soon-to-be married sister's fiancé's brother. They had all been going out at night because of the circumstances around the wedding. My ex found it fun and found his existence to be some kind of "sign from God." Like a movie/fairytale.
She continued to lie to me about it for weeks even though I already knew the truth. Her sister eventually forced her to "break up" with me and even during that moment, during that conversation, she didn't have the decency to tell me she was with someone else. I feigned a smile saying I always knew we weren't going to end up together and let her be on her way.
After our official break up, I still wanted her and kept trying to convince her to break up with him and come back to me. She continued to either deny the relationship; that she cheated; or would tell me that they stopped talking. This period of time gave me immense grief and I could physically feel that sinking feeling in my body every day & every night. This all accumulated to an intense pain in my abdomen that caused me to not be able to sleep at night until I was too exhausted to stay awake.
I begged her to stay or at least visit me over the Christmas holidays. She promised me that she would and then told me she had to be with her family last minute. I found out she actually took that time to take a solo flight to go see the other guy for the entire holiday.
I was in and out of the hospital for the pain for a while. My mom, not knowing that we broke up, called her to tell her I was in the hospital. She was upset but never came to visit even once. When it was time for surgery (my gallbladder was infected), guess who showed up to see me? Not her. Not once. Her sister did though.
My ex and her new boyfriend only lasted about a year. Turns out he was physically and emotionally abusing her. And neither of them was smart enough to know how to save money so they were both broke as well.
Image credits: ThornyPost
#18
Caught my old boyfriend on Craigslist with an ad for "getting double d**ked down DL masc4masc with femboy". I was very naive and madly in love at the time that I accepted his excuse. "I just only get off on REAL p**n." Followed by him, leaving periodically at super late hours to go meet a "long-time old gay friend" who had a major crush on him. He would never admit to it fully, but all the signs were there. He even threatened to break up weekly because he felt like "everything was rushed" and "I want to explore." I asked him point blank. "You just want to f**k around?" And it was a "well, yeah. ".
Image credits: Lexail
#19
My girlfriend at the time cheated on me THEN dumped me on my prom night. She also danced the last dance (which she said was one of our songs) with the guy.
Image credits: nhgaudreau
#20
Caught my ex texting someone saved in their phone as pizza hut. Thought they were just really into takeout… turns out, they were just really into someone else.
Image credits: tastieraqwerty99
#21
We were at a friend's relative's funeral. Turns out both of his girlfriends came to show support. It was a big occasion, hundreds of people there. The deceased was beloved in the community.
Anyways, he asked our friend group keep his girlfriends away from him and from meeting each other. There were so many people there that it wasn't too difficult.
Image credits: canyoudigholes
#22
A close friend of mine went through something absolutely brutal a while ago. He was in a relationship with a woman, and they had a three-year-old son together.
After their son was born, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression. She was on sick leave and stayed home all the time. My friend worked full-time and took care of their son whenever he wasn’t at work. He did his best to hold everything together.
One day, he found a memory card in their bathroom. Out of curiosity, he checked what was on it. What he found completely shattered him.
It was filled with explicit photos and videos of her with other men – not just random stuff, but full-on setups with lighting and multiple men involved. And it was all filmed in their bedroom. On their bed.
The files were timestamped. He went through a few and noticed one date that hit him especially hard.
It was the day of their son’s third birthday.
That day, she had told him she was “too sick” to come to the birthday party at his parents’ place. So he took their son alone. Meanwhile, she stayed home.
And apparently, invited one (or more) of those men over to film a s*x tape in their shared bedroom.
Needless to say, he was crushed. It wasn’t just the cheating – it was the coldness, the lies, and the fact that she could do that on their kid’s birthday.
Image credits: DemoHassan
#23
Bought a house with my girlfriend (a dream of mine for over 10 years). She gaslit me when I had suspicions about a coworker, not long after she cheated and left me for him before we even got to move into the house and 2 months before I was going to propose. It destroyed me.
Had to list my house for sale before I even got to move into it. During this time I had to stay in touch with her until the house sold. Once in a while she would text me apologizing or saying how much she loved me. Even called me crying to comfort her after her dog died.
Well the coworker she left me for cheated on his ex of 9 years to be with my ex. Guess he never really left his ex and continued seeing her. He was apparently emotionally a*****e to my ex and they fought all the time, she got in dangerous situations, cops had to be called a few times and he became a stalker. She had to get a job elsewhere to get away from him.
This strained her relationship with her parents a lot as they were really disappointed in her as she kept making bad decisions.
When the house sold she owed me over $20k, she asked for some Taylor swift tickets of hers that she had told me to keep months earlier to make up for the cheating. When I did not return them she refused to give me the money. I could’ve went to court but I just sold the tickets for nearly 20k and I’ll just take the loss rather than have her in my life anymore.
That last I heard of her was she was f*****g a bunch of different guys to restore her faith in men or something. So she lost a house, lost her reputation, lost her job, and lost a man that wanted to build a life with her and loved her more than anything.
Image credits: Chrispy_Crunch_
#24
I know two separate stories.
#1. Someone I know was I a long-term relationship (high school sweetheart) then f****d his dad, got caught, they broke up, but she's back with the sweetheart and now they all have family dinner like nothing happened.
#2. Girl dated twin 1 and cheated with twin 2 and got pregnant and switched teams. Also has kids with twin 1.
Image credits: sunflower8731
#25
2013. I started dating this girl who was from a small town. She stayed over at my place or me at her place 3-4 nights a week. I came up with some reason why I was gonna stay at my place alone and left. I went to the bar and ran into this chick from HS. Things escalated and I took her home and had s*x with her. Next morning dropped her off at her car. She fell out of my truck and broke her ankle. 2 nights later me and my gf went to a friends house party. That girl was there and knew my gf from friends of friends and they got to talking about her ankle. Let’s just say I got caught in a bad way in front of everyone. I am fully aware I am wrong and am a piece of s**t. I am a faithful married man now.
Image credits: Byers0614
#26
We’d just had s*x it was a Friday night I asked her what she was doing for the weekend she told me she was getting married.
Image credits: Late_Mixture2448
#27
After we got back together, because we broke up due to my insecurities of her cheating, her and her sister went out to the club on her 21st bday. I didn’t go and was fine with this for a few reasons.
1 - we were only dating again for a couple of months
2 - it was just her and her sister, her, her friends and I were gonna go clubbing the next day.
Anyways, we go out to eat with her family prior to that. We have a good time and I go home and don’t think about it.
Randomly around midnight, my heart just sinks and I just start getting really panicky. I start freaking out and for some reason get this deep intense feeling I’m being cheated on. On some stalker s**t, I googled how to check recent followers on IG and saw she in fact followed 3 men that night. My heart sank and it felt like all of my suspicions and insecurities were just true.
So I decide to sleep and in the morning go to work out to clear my mind. Ultimately, I text her and tell her I’d like to see her and ask her to come over. She does and we go sit down and I just flat out say “I don’t have romantic feelings for you” because I wanted to keep it blunt and quick. She freaks out and we argue, eventually I drop the fact she followed 3 guys and I know about it and that she did something.
Immediately starts calling me insecure, weird for stalking follower count, stuff like that. I agreed and immediately regret everything I did and said because just like our last relationship, I’m letting insecurities get in the way. So once I start to apologize and back track, I get called a piece of s**t and that I’m not a real man of God (we both are saved by Christ) because I wouldn’t be accusing her of doing such a thing, she’s a woman of God / been cheated on before.
She leaves and I text her I’m sorry and ask her to come back. A few hours later she says she doesn’t want it to be over but needs the weekend, where she went up her to her grandparents (which I knew about prior).
When she comes over, my initial plan was for things to be completely over then and there because it was clearly just a toxic relationship. After enough screaming at me, where I gave no response to it, she breaks down crying and starts saying stuff like I never loved her obviously because I’m not fighting for her, stuff like that. This literally killed me to hear and I fell back in. We do work things out eventually but I just have an itch that I couldn’t scratch and kept that moment in mind and waited until I could get confirmation.
One night, I get into a bad accident and go to the hospital, and we plan for her to stay with me for the weekend as I could barely move. Well, we were just laying on my couch talking and cuddling when she eventually fell asleep. This was my perfect opportune as I had recently learned her phone passcode and I go through the phone and go straight to her birthday.
Sure enough, I see some texts. I won’t go too much into detail but ya I found out did in fact cheat. Beyond that, she invited him out after we broke up. Beyond that, she invited him out not even 2 hours after coming back to my house and making up with me. Beyond that, she was actively chasing him while he was turning down the invites. She actually tries to talk and hang out for more than a week after we get back together.
At this point, I needed to see more. I search my name into the bar and scroll through. Holy s**t. I don’t understand to this day why she ever started to talk to me again. One of last texts I saw before I couldn’t keep my composure was sent during our first break up, something along the lines of “I’m gonna go break his(my) heart I’m not mad about it haha feel a lil bad though” and her friend saying something along the lines of “he wants to be with you so bad but he doesn’t even deserve to breath the same air”.
This was after I wrote her a letter telling her how sorry I was for my “insecurities” and letting them get in the way of something good, and that I will do everything to better myself. Basically a letter saying I wanna get back together.
I got hit with pretty much every cheating trope/stereotype there is.
Image credits: AlwysProgressing
#28
Caught my ex cheating while I was helping her study for her finals and covering her rent because she’d lost her job. Found out through a friend that she was going on “study breaks” with another guy. What stung the most wasn’t even the cheating—it was realizing how much I’d ignored the red flags because I cared too much. Lesson learned: if you’re doing more for someone than they’d ever do for you, you’re not in love, you’re being used.
Image credits: justagirllarissa
#29
It was our wedding day he left for a few hours to take my niece home. He came back talked on his phone the entire time didn’t do anything with me. I watched the nun in a super expensive location while eating crackers. Went a head a took an ambien and just hung out.That should have been my first sign this marriage wasn’t going to work! But no I ignored it. He acted a fool one day screaming being his narcissist self. I had enough and went to my moms I got an alert on the camera and he was grabbing this b**ches a*s. Needless to say I filed for divorce the next day we were married 6 months.
Image credits: Old-Check-5938
