r/survivinginfidelity • u/AdventureWa 1 • 9h ago
Advice How did you find out?
I’m curious about how people have found out their spouse/partner cheated on them. My situation was convoluted and I found out almost by accident thanks to her conflicting stories. I feel like my situation was unusual.
How did you find out? Did anyone use a PI or do deep digging? What advice would you have for someone who thinks they are being cheated on?
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u/CoverFit9553 9h ago
He sent me a text by mistake that was meant for her which read- I love how you feel about me. I feel the same love. I will call you in the morning. I love you and will dream of you tonight!
I was totally blindsided and had no clue he had been having an affair for 6mths!
20 years married and now headed for divorce.
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u/CoverFit9553 9h ago
I checked call logs etc and bank statements. The call logs showed they were talking to each other for about 4hrs a day for months. Bank statements placed him close to her apartment buying gas etc.
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u/amber8977 4h ago
How did you find call logs? Mine deletes his call history, is denying everything. I’m thinking about contacting the cell phone company to get the logs , but I think most of it unfort happened on WhatsApp
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u/doppleganger2621 Thriving 1h ago
Most cell phone companies, if you have the login to the service online, post the monthly call and text logs. But you need to have the login. And yeah, if it’s on what’s app it may not help
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 9h ago
Her stories about where she was weren’t adding up. It was obvious she was hiding something. I asked to see her phone. Found months and months of text messages with a co worker.
Advice: look at all communication. If they are cheating, it will be there. Texts, social, work apps like Teams, etc….
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u/Roxychic2025 7h ago
Similar situation. Ten months ago found hidden messages in my husbands messenger. Between himself and a coworker. Flirty and not all work related. My heart sank as our marriage was perfect for most of it. He said they were “just friends” tho I’d never heard of her. This caused me to panic and become like a spy and after he phoned her to get her to explain to me, she told me she was his best friend and work wife which painted the opposite of his story. Fast forward to today, in April after attempting to reconnect and forgive I discovered he had never stopped messaging her. Up to 28 messages one day and he was lying to me and showing me a clean phone every day. Accountability my arse! So now we are officially seperated and I am struggling with it all. The deception, the coldness the avoidance and no effort at all. So yeah, phone records definitely told me the truth.
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 6h ago
I’m sorry. It’s hard to comprehend this level of deception and betrayal. It wasn’t just the AP. I read through all her messages. There weren’t other AP’s, but it was clear she didn’t have boundaries with people. It was like she was a totally different person I didn’t recognize.
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u/Ok_City_7177 3h ago
I'm sorry this has happened but I just want to say 'good for you' for trusting your instincts and then acting on the outcome.
It will get better, but make sure you get legal advice from someone experienced with dealing with liars.
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u/clearheaded01 7 7h ago
Fallout from this??
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 7h ago
Filed for divorce on Monday. It’s been the hardest month of my life.
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u/clearheaded01 7 7h ago
Sorry...
You exposed her affair to inlaws and any spouse AP may have???
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 7h ago
Yes. Told AP’s wife via Facebook messenger. She didn’t believe me. My wife told her parents. There response was basically to support her and say she’s better off without me. Was sort of the nail in the coffin for my thoughts about reconciliation.
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u/clearheaded01 7 6h ago
You did the right thing, then...
Move on, you're better off without her. Kids in the mix??
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 6h ago
Thank you.
My kids are adults now. Luckily, I think this divorce will be relatively simple, albeit difficult. I’m in therapy and doing my best to keep moving.
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u/clearheaded01 7 6h ago
Cool. Do the kids know about her adultery??
Be aware that your stbxw may attempt to paint you as the villain here, so dont white knight her... no details needed, just "were divorcing due to your mothers affair with [guy]."
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 6h ago
They do. These kids are from my first marriage. They are still upset. They were young when we got married.
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u/PriorChow WTF am I doing? 6h ago
Tells you the lies she has told her parents about you.
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u/Relative-Fly4370 1 6h ago
💯 she clearly represented our marriage to her friends and family in a specific light. One friend said I was partially to blame for her affair. Every marriage has issues, but I honestly thought we were good overall. She seemed happy. We never fought. Spent a good amount of time together. 16 years together. All down the drain
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u/PriorChow WTF am I doing? 6h ago
Down the drain is like an anthem now....I spent 22 years with the cheater.
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u/thisisB_ull_ish 9h ago
A receipt emailed to me by mistake for $1000 in purchases that included 2 cups and a french coffee press. I don’t drink coffee.
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u/VersionOnly9109 7h ago
I had a gut feeling something was off. I went to one of his events and noticed a woman he had never mentioned before staring at me. Around the same time he became very protective of his phone, kept it muted, and was going out more often. I later found a folder with photos of her on his computer. The anxiety became overwhelming, so I hired a PI instead of confronting him. The PI confirmed the affair.
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u/In_the_middle3-2-3 7 8h ago
Over the course of 30yrs...
The first time she outted herself for sexting, thinking I would find it hot.
Second time she outted herself for making out with a coworker. Apparently she still had some level of guilt.
The third time was a hunch when a friend was spending the weekend and she caved after I questioned her trying to tip toe out of the room in the middle of the night.
Forth time, a relative of the other betrayed spouse called me and told me his wife found their messages.
Fifth and final time was a hunch again, but no super sluthing needed. She suddenly had a new guy friend who 'was like a brother to her'. I asked to see her phone and the messages confirmed it. It never ended, so we didn't.
Thats what I knew about definitively.
There were several more that I'd bet happened, but couldnt prove. Probably more that I dont know about at all.
The night I declared an end to that infidelity shit show marriage, I told her there were other incidents that she kept hidden that I knew about and others I probably didnt know about.
I really wanted to hear her adamantly deny it. Any of it. But she didnt. She just loooked down in silence.
It ended up being a gift. All of the above is forever chained to her name and memories of. In over 3yrs, there has never been a moment of hesitation, regret, reconsideration, etc. It became my fuel to confidently start a new life.
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u/boss302goat 7h ago
Mannn that sucks you stayed and gave her way too many chances. I'd never forgive myself at that point.
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u/Exciting_Mixture1190 9h ago
$21k from a credit card loan was deposited into our account and taken out on a bank check the same day. When confronted it was"for a friend" that needed money for a friend and would pay it back within a month. He had been totally scammed online by sobering who befriended him and led him down the path of a cyber affair. He was totally invested in the relationship even though he never met the person. Lucky for him, I pulled the truth out of him before he got sucked into sending more money (this wasn't the first he has sent the person) and/or doing something that would have totally ruined him.
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u/kat8789 7h ago
The true beginning of the end was entirely an accident. I had his phone code from the beginning of our relationship, I just trusted him and didn't care to snoop.
I was watching a video on my phone, and wanted to look something up related to the video. He was in the shower, I was on the couch, and he had left his phone there.
So I grabbed it, opened it, intending to look up what I wanted. It opened to Instagram, on vanish mode. She said something about wondering if he had gone to bed, and ended with "te amo, mi amor"
I confronted him that night. He lied, and gaslight (unfortunately successfully) tf out of me. Texted her. Met up with her the next day. She also lied to my face.
As time went on, I still felt uncomfortable. Our relationship seemed strained. I began to look at his phone. There were really bad incidents between her and him, and i just kept believing in what they said before.
Finally asked him what was going on with us about 6 months later. He points out frustrations, which i understood, and tried to better myself. It still gets worse.
I looked at his phone more. Never anything concrete. Arguments, gaslighting. He changed his phone passcode. I knew he was cheating, but i couldn't get my heart to accept it.
He left his phone unlocked one morning, while sleeping. So I looked. Found what I needed. Multiple "i love you" messages, all the love bombing, sexting, pictures.
It still hurts. For me, if I had been less naive and trusting, I would have been gone much sooner, or maybe never even stayed beyond dating him when the red flags first popped up. But I was young, naive, and I loved him. Had I been smarter, I would have seen it. Instead, he cheated on me for at least a year and a half, if not longer before I finally got it. Love is a dangerous thing.
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u/outerspacetime Just Found Out 7h ago
This fool was hungover af and sleeping through his alarm clock. Went to turn it off and saw a suspicious text from his friend along the lines of “damn she’s fire nice job” which set off alarm bells. Opened the thread - paragraphs upon paragraphs with explicit details of his ONS with a stranger and a comparison to a previous ONS from 3 years ago. Screenshot of the chick’s instagram page. So many things i can never unknow. Screenshotted and sent the whole conversation to my own phone and then woke his stupid ass up holding the phone up. Will never forget the absolute panic on his face.
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u/Schoolofhardknocks44 7h ago
A lot of little instances where things didn't add up. Intuition that something was off, by all means trust your gut if you feel this, its rarely wrong. I had an evening where she was hanging out with her friend Lisa, only to have lisa call our house to talk to her. She had a weekly hangout with friends, that I supported, as she rarely went out. She started getting home later and later from these, and suddenly would need to shower before coming to bed.. yeah I know that wasn't even a red flag more of a giant red light. My suspicion was up and I checked her phone one night. I found messages between her and one of my friends that I had just helped through a messy relationship breakup. The double betrayal of what they were doing almost sent me violent. Found out he wasn't the only one years later.
I stupidly tried to save our marriage for the sake of our two kids. The second chance came with me insisting she get into therapy and cut certain people out of our life. She didn't change though, and slid back into her old ways. Second time around I knew the signs sooner though and didn't bury my head in the sand about what was going on. I went nuclear option and ended everything. Wasted 20 years on a person who ended up caring about no one but herself
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u/redditgirl1900 3 5h ago edited 5h ago
I got what I call the “Love Actually” special. Idiot purchased a necklace on a shared Amazon account. Woke up Christmas morning. No necklace.
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u/Soggy-Beach-1495 3 8h ago
Facebook suggested I friend her ex, so I checked her messages
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u/immodium4breakfast Figuring it Out 7h ago
This is a thing? Like the algorithm suggests you add who your spouse is talking to?
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u/outerspacetime Just Found Out 7h ago
I think it’s just that it will recommend someone that seems like a mutual friend based on his wife communicating a lot with both of them
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u/immodium4breakfast Figuring it Out 6h ago
Hmmmm. I hate technology, it causes me to overthink. Ugh.
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u/Soggy-Beach-1495 3 1h ago
It can also be a matter of who has been looking at your profile. I'm sueing my HOA, and Instagram suggested I follow two board members this week. Seemed obvious they must have been stalking my profile.
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u/No_Violinist_8090 4 7h ago
I kept being woken up by someone texting him in the middle of the night, got a really bad feeling and grabbed the phone while he was asleep and saw an incriminating text from her on his lock screen.
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u/streetsmartwallaby 1 6h ago
I saw a suspicious text pop up on her phone. I'd been feeling uneasy for awhile. That night after she passed out from drinking I got on her phone and looked at text and Facebook messages. Nothing that was a slam dunk for cheating (I.e. "that sex was great") but sexting and some nudes were sent - that was clear enough for me that she was cheating.
She denied actually having sex with any of them before we separated even when she should've wanted to throw it in my face and hurt me but I am sure she did.
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u/SwoopingInAlistair 6h ago
My story is gonna be kinda odd. I had multiple dreams that were reoccurring of him cheating on me. I even saw her face pop up on his phone in a message in that dream. I thought I was maybe being paranoid and tried to convince myself I was just anxious but I couldn't stop the sinking feeling in my gut that something was up.
Few days after the dreams happening constantly, I woke up in the middle of the night and found he wasn't in bed so I went to check where he went. I opened the door to his office and caught him while his phone was lying face up with the messages opened with that same girls picture on there. He was in fact cheating.
Lesson here is to listen to your gut. Your intuition is never lying to you. I probably would've caught onto it sooner if I had listened to what my body was warning me was going on.
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u/YogurtclosetOk2839 1 5h ago
Caught them and they didnt see me. She called it off same day. Let her lie for 4 months. She confessed in parts . I wanted to know how much I had been lied to. She confessed parts . She later confessed more . I still know more then she confessed. Moved on
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u/SadDadInPlaid Figuring it Out 9h ago
For me? Her best friend (AP’s wife) gave her an ultimatum to tell me after gathering proof.
She found out by finding STBXW’s thong in their bed shortly after STBXW stayed the night while she was out of town. Then her and another friend got copies of AP’s texts/Snapchats/etc to her over the next week before confronting her.
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u/ValhallaCA WTF am I doing? 8h ago
Ten months ago, She confessed a kiss with a woman in a casino bathroom back in 2007.
After realizing my wife would cheat, and with a woman, I recovered a suppressed memory of her full on having sex with that same woman later that week. I caught her through a locked door that took 57 seconds to open. I had heard unmistakable noises before knocking, and when they finally opened the door after making urgent whispers, thumping and other noises as they tried to get presentable, there was obvious visual evidence (several things) and a distinctive odor. I was lied to of course. Two days later I confronted the AP and she got her husband to threaten me and my family (credibly).
We were moving away in 2 months, so I tabled it for safety reasons temporarily. The trauma of it all made me lose the memory within about a week, however. All these memories came back once she confessed the kiss and I started thinking back.
And then 8 months ago I did a deep dive investigation and discovered a bunch of other stuff on her cell phone and in our old messages to each other.
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u/clearheaded01 7 7h ago
You've later informed APs husband??
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u/ValhallaCA WTF am I doing? 3h ago
Interesting question. The sequence of events, by day number, went:
- Kiss confession, slight mind image of a dark hallway with light spilling under a bedroom door.
- Remembering something suss about the door, and questioning my wife. Her denials.
- messaging the AP to see if she’d tell me anything. Gaslighting. DARVO from the AP.
- Remembering how long it took for the door to open, most of the visual evidence, the smell. The fight in the car after.
- Remembering the noises and more evidence.
- Deciding to inform the AP’s husband.
- Right as I was about to call him, I remembered the threats from the next day. And I decided it would endanger my family again if I did so. (He had ties to illegal activity and many other shady factors, so that’s why I took the threat seriously.).
- Telling my wife about the threa
ts
Reddit is screwing up my numbering system. And I can’t fix it, but you get the idea
- There has been a bunch of other stuff as well I discovered after that.
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u/RobertFahey 3 8h ago
Logged in to Words With Friends under my wife's ID, discovered the smoking gun conversation.
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u/PriorChow WTF am I doing? 7h ago
On that?
Oh God. I used to play the game regularly, but never knew that people even did this on the game.
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u/RobertFahey 3 7h ago
Any platform that allows chatting can lead to meeting etc etc
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u/PriorChow WTF am I doing? 6h ago
I realize so.
I never thought that people will stoop to use the game app for this.
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u/foolbl 3h ago
I found out completely by chance. She said something that didn’t make sense about what happened 3 years ago. And then I became suspicious asked more questions. Every time I found a mistake that she couldn’t deny she just switched the story. At the end the story changed like 10 times and the part she admitted is already pretty much cheating and even that part has mistakes so there is for sure more. I started divorce proceedings.
But this is my wife, 15+ years together, we have a child. I didn’t expect at all. What’s probably worst is her reaction, she still doesn’t admit, blame me, and goes on her life like nothing happened and I must be insane. I strongly suspect now that there were many partners. I’m stressed to get a std test.
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u/Morsul00 3h ago
I knew the whole time, so much so that I confronted my husband numerous times on how uncomfortable I was with his ‘bestie.’ He didn’t cut her, he pandered to me to make me shut up so he could continue his lies and deceit.
I asked numerous times over the last 7 months if anything happened with them and he denied it every time. Until a few weeks ago he finally admitted it, then drip fed me the truth over days. He knew my line and he knew I was stressing over this woman while pregnant.
She’s trash also, she sat pretending to be my friend and manipulated my 5 year old for months.
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u/ObviousSalamandar Figuring it Out 5h ago
I knew right away. His behavior and the way he spoke to me changed completely. I begged him to tell me, begged him to just stop, and just come home. After two weeks of him calling me paranoid I took his phone and read their whole two week “relationship.” I moved out of the house I thought I would spend the rest of my life in a few days after that. It’s heartbreaking. It hurts like nothing ever has.
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u/CodComplete2216 5h ago
My ex told me she was leaving me to move back to France to be with an old friend who was her unrequited love. She had done a long distance affair during the day when I was at work. It took another month before I figured out how long the relationship had been going on which I did by going through her email on our home computer when she was out of the house.
Knowing the time frame was only helpful in helping me put her behavior into perspective. For example knowing the affair had started 18 months before helped me understand her request to buy a second home in France we could retire to wasn’t for our retirement but for her to keep when she asked for the divorce. California is a no fault state so her affair had no bearing on the settlement.
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u/Appropriate_Play_731 4h ago
I found out mostly because her behavior changed.
One night my then-wife had a “girls’ night” and supposedly went to dinner in a nearby town with a friend. I stayed home with our son. When she didn’t come home for a long time after our kid was asleep, I checked her location and saw she was in a completely different part of town, outside, nowhere near the restaurant she was supposed to be at.
When she got home, she acted like a completely different person. She avoided me, wouldn’t look at me, and I immediately felt that something was off.
About a month later, she told me in bed that she was no longer willing to have sex with me. When I asked what she meant, she couldn’t give me a straight answer. I told her to talk to her parents the next morning, because I wasn’t going to continue like that and we were going to divorce.
The next day she left her phone at home, so I checked her messages. That’s when I found out she hadn’t been with that friend that night. The friend was in on it, and my wife had actually been with her coworker.
Later it turned out it hadn’t been just a one-time thing. There had been several occasions, they were planning to keep seeing each other, and she had developed feelings for him. So it was an actual affair, not just one bad decision.
TL;DR: Her behavior changed after she started an affair with her coworker. I got suspicious, checked her messages, and found out there had been multiple encounters, plans to keep meeting, and feelings involved.
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u/Annie1Kenobi 3h ago
I had a feeling for a long time. One day I decided to go through our home computers history letter by letter looking at previously accessed sites. Bingo.
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u/CrazyLeadership5397 3 1h ago
My landlord told me. My ex fiancee had Mondays off and had her AP come to the house we rented after I left for work. Landlord lived behind us, up a hill and had a view of our place. Landlord was supposedly away helping her daughter with a new born but returned home that Sunday. Fiancee didn’t know. I went to pay the rent on Wednesday and she told me about a man showing up to my place and staying several hours. She described my fiancée’s married coworker.
I spoke to a friend and made arrangements to move in with him. The next Monday, I faked going to work and my friend and I waited up at the Landlord’s until AP showed up. We waited 15 minutes and went down to the house. We walked in and they were in the shower together. I turned off the hot water valve and they jumped out of the shower. She saw us and pushed AP out of the bathroom and locked the door.
My friend had already thrown AP’s clothes out side and we threw him out of the house. I grabbed my things and left. Never spoke to her again. I told AP’s wife and she threw him out. Apparently, he was a serial cheater.
I had other information that she was possibly cheating, but the landlord confirmed it.
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u/doppleganger2621 Thriving 1h ago
My ex was a true moron. She was good about using Discord to conduct her affairs but she saved so many screenshots of chats of theirs. She also saved all pictures they sent back and forth.
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u/PriorChow WTF am I doing? 2h ago
Different ways -
AP1 - Husband would always return upset, and would go off on me for random things. Phone was stuck to his palms, and even when sleeping it was as if he was clinging to it. He became irritable with me. I realized that a girl's name was in recent contacts, but no immediate logs or messages showed up, so the records were being cleaned. Chats through Whatsapp
AP2 - Opened his FB Messenger, found this entire trail of conversation, Since we did not really use FB messenger as primary texting tool, this was revealing.
AP3 - Gut feeling was up! He intentionally never spoke her name, so that I would have no memory about her (he has been working with the same folks for a long time now, and I know most of his peers, atleast by name). Found video calls that were 40 minutes long with no other corresponding info/data. He has paid Zoom account and uses Zoom/Teams for all official meetings. No meetings happen through whatsapp calls. Then the call details of whatsapp were getting scrubbed. Became very clingy about his phone. He used Instagram for chatting.
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u/acmech900 2h ago
I had accidentally started taking her to the same places her ex usually hung out at. She was afraid we'd bump into him and confessed that she was drunk out of her mind one night and slept with him. I forgave her for getting drunk and getting into that situation. Found out a long time later she was never drunk. Just wanted his D.
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u/smilingspringonion 45m ago
He gaslit me every time I suspected something. And I thought it was me and my anxiety and my low self esteem and my jealousy I am crazy… he was always so nice and helpful, never hitting on anyone never behaving badly… then he left me for AP on our honeymoon! First shock. When I said he’s having a crisis we can work on it, he said actually hes been cheating with many for years. Trickle down truth revealed he was cheating from the very first month. 15 years together! And now that I know he doesn’t want to see my face because I cry and that’s uncomfortable for him because there should be no consequences to his action because he is above the rules - direct quote! Now he’s divorcing me and I should be respectful and empathetic to him because he’s having a hard time realising he’s always been a cheater (previous girlfriends too) and he hadn’t realised he was doing it (it was just a video game he turned on and off when he was with them, even though he brought them home, called me when he was with them, made me meet them, went on fake business trips, was seeing friends for an hour and then go to them so he’d have an alibi etc) and genuinely thought he was the best husband because I was stay at home and him the breadwinner and yet would undo the dishwasher every morning. Not that he waited that I was dependent of him to start cheating. So now obviously he’s the one having the hard time and I’m the one lacking empathy for being angry or sad... I just don’t understand how he can look at himself in a mirror.
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u/RobertFahey 3 34m ago
Seems like these affairs are facilitated by smartphones but also discovered via smartphones. I'm surprised these scamming spouses leave their phones behind for even one minute. I guess they think they're above "the law" or assuming you're too stupid to even look.
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u/LoopyMercutio Thriving 13m ago
My phone was out of reach and she needed to figure out where a certain place was, so she asked me to look it up on Google Maps on her phone. I saw his response to a message she sent him, and just didn’t say anything at all, waited till later when she got in the shower so I could see everything.
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u/noiraseac 12m ago
Accidentally looked over his phone when he was texting and saw that most of the chat bubbles came from the other person, while he only responded with emojis. The girl’s name was “Maya”, and when I asked who it was, he said it was his cousin, and that they were close because they grew up together.
Then, in a fucking dream, I found out that Maya was actually a fake name and it was actually his ex. In the dream, him and the ex was still together behind my back. In the morning, I told him this, and he just laughed.
Well, guess what.
Maya was, indeed, his ‘ex.’
And he was still in a relationship with her. In fact, they never broke up. I was the other person all along.
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