Being cheated on is a pretty singularly shitty way to end a relationship. It’s pretty traumatizing to have that kind of trust broken so thoroughly. It has to be hard to trust again after, but there is an “after”, and that’s an important thing to bear in mind if you’ve been cheated on. Hopefully, you can find a silver lining in there somewhere.
The BuzzFeed community recently shared their stories about being cheated on and any lessons that they learned from the entire ordeal. Here are some of the best replies.
1. Photographer
“He wanted to be a photographer, she was a model wannabe. I knew there was an attraction and thought it would blow over. I called him from work on his birthday to tell him I could take the afternoon off and have a birthday lunch but he said he wanted a ‘me day’ to take nature photos. Since he NEVER took pics of anything other than women I was suspicious. I took the afternoon off anyway and found pages of emails and a fake Facebook account. I foolishly let him come home but a year later he went ‘out with the guys’ and lost his wedding ring because he was cheating again. I don’t miss him.” —dianalia
2. The easy & the hard
“My first ex was easy to catch. He was on my cell phone plan and I found a number that I didn’t recognize. I called the number and talked to the girl. She claimed they were just friends and said that he should have female friends. I agreed that he could have female friends but I should know about them. Long story short, she eventually admitted that they were having sex, so I filed for divorce. I met the second ex right after my first divorce was finalized. He was harder to catch. I could never prove he was cheating but I knew he was. He eventually asked for a divorce via text message. My advice is that if you think someone is cheating then they probably are cheating. My exes tried to say that I was the problem — that I was paranoid — but I wasn’t wrong.” —Anonymous
3. Background check
“I ran a background check on him and found out he was actually married. I will run background checks on everyone I date from now on.” —Anonymous
4. He said yes
“She was a new co-worker at my husband’s job. I met her in person before it happened on a double date with her and her then-boyfriend, but I knew she was trouble from the start with just how casual her body language was around my husband. He kept reassuring me when I brought up my concerns. Fast forward about a year and my neighbor asks me out of the blue if she can sleep with my husband. I was like, ‘What the hell?’ Turns out she and him were basically sexting and wanted to move forward but decided it was a good idea for her to ask me for permission first. My husband was out of town when that happened, so we talked on the phone and I asked point blank if he slept with the co-worker.
He said yes. Feeling nauseous, I had to parent my two young kids for a couple more days by myself before he flew home. I packed a back, took out some cash, and stayed at a hotel for a few days. We have since worked it out, the co-worker got a new job and is blocked, and my neighbor is dead to me.” —bringbackclippy
5. Flowers
“I sent my wife flowers at work. She never acknowledged receiving the flowers when she returned home from work that evening. In the middle of the night a text message popped up on my wife’s phone, from her lover, stating the flowers were not from him.”
6. Trust your gut
“My advice is to just trust your gut and if you feel like you’re losing it, chances are you’re not — and you’re right on the money. I had a guy lie to me for months and tell me I was overthinking it. I second-guessed basically everything and everyone. In the end I was right. Also if you have enough strength, end it quick. Like many people, I dragged it out way too long and held onto the idea of someone’s potential.” —doinfthings
7. Pictures making out
“He took pictures on his camera of him making out with another girl. I was scrolling through pictures from the weekend and found the pictures of them. I had never suspected a thing. We were long distance at the time so it was easy to hide everything from me. His excuse was he took the pictures so he could look back at them and see if he felt like cheating was a mistake or not.”
8. Before cells
“This happened in the 90’s before GPS and cell phones. I started to get a strange feeling from all his ‘extra hours’ and how often he would go into the bedroom to relax. I’d come in to find him on the phone and it was always ‘I’m talking to Kevin.’ Then he was gone all night and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I started calling police departments and found him sitting in jail. He had been arrested for DUI eight hours after he was supposed to be home. When I asked what was going on, he still wouldn’t tell me. So I asked for a separation and space. He stated he was going to stay with ‘Kevin.’ Using my gut instinct, I located his car, in a random apartment complex, in a large college town. The next time he called me I asked him ‘Who lives at _____?'” “That shocked him so much I got the truth out of him. He had been seeing a girl with the same exact name for a couple of months and he was staying with her. I stupidly issued an ultimatum. Choose. He choose our family and came back. But I never trusted him again and I finally kicked him to the curb four months later. Always trust your gut!!!” —Anonymous
9. Distant
“He was acting incredibly distant and super standoffish where there was excellent communication and closeness beforehand. One day, I noticed this woman liking all the pictures I tagged him in on Facebook and asked him about her. She was in her early 50s and an absolute knockout. He assured me she was harmless and a friend of the family. One night, I dropped my necklace between the couch cushions and dug around to find it. I ended up pulling out a receipt from a clothing store that had her name on the bottom of it. I got on Facebook and asked her what she was doing buying things for my boyfriend. She said she didn’t know we were still together. Apparently, according to the screenshots she sent to me, he had deleted texts from me to make it seems like I was the crazy one and told her I couldn’t ‘get the hint’ that it was over.
She lived three houses down from him. He was very surprised to walk into his house that night to his girlfriend and the woman he was cheating on me with. That woman and I have been friends since. She’s like a second mother to me. My advice? If it feels off, it’s definitely off. Trust your gut. Always.” —ptyram7
10. Unopened condoms
“Most recent one: he had an unopened three pack of condoms in his bedroom junk drawer for the longest time. Unopened because we were monogamous and didn’t use them. One day I went to grab something from that drawer and saw the pack opened with only two left. The rest before him? I had an inkling and went through their phones which confirmed my suspicions EVERY SINGLE TIME. I trust no one. I hate dating.”
11. Gave it a chance
“The woman he cheated on me with showed up wasted at his door while I was over and we were about to do it. I didn’t know at first, until she blatantly asked him why he had taken both of our virginities, but then chose me instead of her. Ouch. I was 100% prepared to dump him, but he convinced me to give him another chance. Don’t fall for that crap! Once you forgive them, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll feel like they can get away with it again! That jerk cheated on me half a dozen more times before I figured it out and left him for good.” —cupcakekrystle
12. You had your chance.
“I was married at the time. We got married super young and super quick, but it was one of those ‘young and in love’ types of scenarios. She wound up staying with me while I was at college, so our friends were in the same circles. She started to spend a lot of time with one of my friends, but kept saying they were just hanging out. She already had a history of cheating on me, so I was already suspicious. We were on a date and I got a text message from my friend’s fiancé. It said something like, ‘If you don’t want it to happen again, just let me know.'”
“I asked my wife what the text was about and she finally owned up to the fact that she was sleeping with my friend. We stayed together for another year or so, all the while she was still sleeping with him and lying about it. We finally broke up and I left the state. It took years to get a divorce (it’s expensive), but the relationship is over. I wound up meeting and marrying an amazing human being, and she and my ex-friend dated for a few years before he left her. The funniest thing is that, years after we broke up, she reached out to me to tell me that she still loves me. Girl, you had your chance.” —Anonymous
13. SIM cards
“My ex switched our SIM cards (I had given him an old phone) and suddenly I was logged into all of his accounts. I saw a decade’s worth of cheating bullshit all at once. And this was literally hours before we moved back to Texas from California. I crushed my ring with my bare hand. Great drive home. In retrospect it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He was incredibly abusive and seeing indisputable, cold, hard proof is exactly what I needed to leave and never turn back.” —mkatherinekelly
14. Butt-dial
“When he accidentally butt-dialed me and I could hear them going at it. Still stuck with the relationship and had two more children with him. Relationship was toxic and I was always driving myself mad with suspicions after that. My advice is if you genuinely cannot seem to get your head past the betrayal, get out of the relationship altogether.” —nib80
15. A friend staying with us
“My ex wife cheated on me with a friend we let stay with us. When Justin Timberlake did the ‘Single Ladies’ dance on SNL, she wanted to show me the video so she pulled it up on Facebook on her laptop. While watching the video a message popped up from him. She freaked out and tried to hide the screen, then panicked and just closed the lid. I walked away and went to my computer, logged into her account (I knew the password but had never used it before) and saw the chain of messages between them, including messages from him asking what he should say if I ever asked him about it. Later I asked her if something was going on between them and she was so good at denying it, by the end of the conversation I was apologizing to her for accusing her, even though I had seen the evidence with my own eyes. It took a few months for everything to come out. We tried to reconcile for a year, but after that she went back to him and we divorced. They ended up moving out of state and I mostly raised our kids myself. They’re still together 11 years later.” —Anonymous
16. Panicky feeling
“I had just moved in with him after dating for a year and three months and I kept having this nagging, anxiety, panicky feeling about him cheating on me. I thought I just had trust issues, because he was such an amazing liar and I honestly believed him. One morning I got a sudden urge to check his phone and I found multiple sexts (complete with videos 🥳) to multiple women. We ended it then and there. Lesson learned: Sometimes, love is blind. And TRUST YOUR GUT!!! It’s there for a reason!” —mbruning88
17. Daughter spotted it
“I was driving, my ex-husband was in the passenger seat. My 11-year-old daughter was sitting behind him. She saw him typing on Facebook Messenger ‘Can’t wait to see you again.'”
18. Three women
“The boy I was dating at the time sent a pic of his neck and he had two hickies on it. I called him out about it and he told me that his chains cut him because he wore a lot of gold chains. I wouldn’t think a gold chain would cut him. Fast forward two months later we broke up because I couldn’t accept the fact that his chains cut him and it turns out I was right that he was cheating and he cheated on me with THREE women!!!” —shannantaylor13
19. Suspicious
“Even though I suspected it, raising four kids and working full-time almost made it impossible to check up on things. One night though, it was my then-husband‘s turn to pick up my daughter from her after-school job. It was around 10:30pm and he had fallen asleep. I went outside to get in my car but his car was behind mine so I grabbed his keys to go get my daughter. His phone was in the car and a text was coming through. I pulled over and read everything. It was heartbreaking to read this intimate text between my husband and his mistress. I had to suck it up to go get my daughter and I confronted him later that night. He had the nerve to tell me that I was out of line for reading his texts and said to talk about what was happening would be considered gossip. It took a few more years but I finally left him.
My youngest daughter was a senior in college and my life is so peaceful without the trauma of an unfaithful husband. My only issue is that even though my kids were young adults when I divorced, they have issues still surrounding everything that happened.” —Anonymous
20. The cover up
“For me, what gave it away was incredibly innocent photos of my ex at a party, which were tagged on social media by another party-goer and then very quickly untagged by him. I wouldn’t have thought anything of the entire situation, but the cover-up is what gave him away. Dickhead.” —sarahdianna