We're all stuck at home, might as well demolish any backstabbing partners sharing the space! These people thought they knew their significant others, but all it took was a nation-wide lockdown to discover the secrets hiding nearby. No way their lives could go back to normal. Content has been edited for clarity.
He Kept The Most Devastating Secret
“Last year, the Jaguar Land Rover company had to shed 4,500 employees to reduce their mounting debts. They did this by offering a fat voluntary redundancy package, I mean, this buyout package was gold-plated. If you had worked there for over twenty years, you were being given almost £40k to walk away with, and the guys within ten years of retirement were just going for it. That is, except for one guy. He had this Jaguar job in Warwick, and he would commute to a testing job at Millbrook, the nearby town every other week. He had been doing both of these two job forever, at least as long as I had been at the Jaguar company. Even worse, he had a wife and kids in Warwick, and he cultivated a relationship with a long-term girlfriend and had some kids with her in Millbrook. Neither family knew about the other one, and he kept telling both families that he was away for work on the alternating weeks. This man kept up this ultimate deceit for over fifteen years, and I could never imagine the deceitful gymnastics his brain would have to perform in order to keep these lies going. One day, he told me how he wasn’t looking forward to retirement, as both women would obviously be expecting him to retire to their homes, and his deadline was looming.
So this Land Rover company severance package rolls around, and he had to decline a tax-free lump sum AND the ability to retire early, because there was no way for him to get out of the huge mess he was in. I took the package and left, but he stayed behind. From what colleagues told me, when lockdown came into effect, this guy was furloughed. That was when everything fell apart. He was discovered by both women, who both sued and divorced him. I have absolutely no sympathy for him. I got the impression that he was a pretty terrible partner and father to both families, as he couldn’t commit to holiday celebrations, kept his money super tight, couldn’t care for a child with a sick partner, and he refused to officially marry the second woman, He would deal with the Christmas holiday by intentionally having an argument, so he could storm out of the house for a few days. He might also say he had some critical testing work to do, which was obviously false. He was barely present in either world he was in. He must have lived in constant fear of the truth coming out. But he would let things slip at work, which is how we all pieced together what was really going on. I came from a family destroyed by a cheating father, so I cannot stand people like him. If I ever received the opportunity to tell his first wife what he was up to, I would not have hesitated. This man wasted so many people’s lives.”
Juggling Too Many Humans At Once
“My ex-husband had a wife (which was obviously me), a long-term girlfriend that was also a co-worker, and then several short-term girlfriends that would come and go. He found the time by hooking up with his girlfriend at work, telling me he had to work and not going to work, and telling his long-term girlfriend that he was with me when he was with his short-term girlfriends. The only one that knew he was a cheater was his long-term girlfriend, and she apparently got very upset with him any time he ‘cheated’ on her with the short-term girlfriends. I found out about the whole thing when his long-term girlfriend confronted a short-term girlfriend and let it slip he was married too. So the short-term girlfriend contacted me to tell me what a piece of garbage my husband was, and to tell me she was sorry. I cannot fathom why someone would voluntarily sign up for all of that stress. That’s a lot of human beings to juggle. Honestly? I’m pretty okay now. I’m just really grateful to the girl that told me what was going on. I had been married for like twelve years at that point, and it could have been years and years before I found out what was really going on. That short-term girlfriend was really shocked that I was nice to her. She thought that I was going to scream at her and call her names. It wasn’t her fault my ex-husband was a sociopath!
My ex-husband was extremely abusive in multiple ways and had basically trauma bonded me to him. We met in high school, so I was too young and dumb to see all his red flags. He was always doing shifty things that would make me suspicious, but he was really good at manipulating and gaslighting me. I actually caught him ‘cheating’ twice before I really knew he was cheating, and he talked his way out of it both times, convincing me that they were just emotional affairs. It was a horrible and messed up situation, and when this happened I think I basically snapped. I kicked him out with the help of my family, gathered as much evidence as I could against him, and I gleefully filed for divorce.”
So Much Worse Than She Ever Imagined
“Okay, so I’m not the cheater, but I was unknowingly the mistress, and lockdown actually helped the guy get away with this for so much longer. Basically, we had started dating about a month or two prior to the initial lockdown. His father had gotten really sick a few years prior, so he had started renting his house out and moved back in with his parents to help with their mortgage, and then hey stayed to continue to help his mom after his dad had passed. Seeing as we weren’t dating for very long, me going to his place pre-lockdown seemed a little premature, if it meant meeting his mother. Once all of this chaos started, he said he was terrified of also losing his mother, who is high risk of illness due to her age and diabetes, so they were extremely cautious about who they spent time with. He didn’t want to worry her, so he basically had to sneak around a bit to see me. Once he started working from home, he would come see me by telling his mom he had to go to the store or pick something up from his office, which seemed fine for a while. Unfortunately, the longer it went on, and the more places started opening up, the less sense he made. I eventually put my FBI hat on and from some DEEP digging, where found his wife’s social media account.
I never expected it because when we were dating normally before the shut down, we saw each other almost every day, and he was always super affectionate with me in public. He had even asked me questions from his ‘mom’ while on the phone with me, as if she was in the room, so it made me feel like she knew about me and was in the loop. In hindsight, nobody else was there in the room with him. I definitely would’ve questioned things MUCH sooner if it wasn’t for our lockdown. It turns out that this man had been married to his wife for eight years. I remember speaking to him about past relationships, but he told me this bizarre story about encountering a ‘crazy ex’. They met at the mall, and she saw him with his mom and ‘female cousin’, and the girlfriend started accusing him of being married. He had to calm her down and tell her this woman was just his cousin. He probably made this story up so that if I ever saw him in public with a woman, I would assume it was his cousin.
I kinda ignored him for a day, trying to gather my thoughts while he was blowing up my phone all concerned, because we always would talk daily. I finally messaged him late in the evening and basically just asked when he was planning on telling me he was married. He denied it, asked me who I talked to, and kept gaslighting me, saying he couldn’t believe I would believe someone else over him without talking to him first. So I told him I didn’t speak to anybody, that I saw something with my own two eyes, that he knows I’m right, and to just admit it. Again, he denies, and he asks what did I see? When? How? Where? And I told him again that it doesn’t matter because I know he knows that I’m right, and to just admit it. So then he said something like, ‘I’m sick of this nonsense, believe what you want!’
Then I send him screenshot after screenshot of all the photos I saw of him and his wife. Then he goes into how it’s a loveless marriage and he feels trapped, and how everything is so terrible for him. He then tried to tell me he was working up the courage to leave this woman, and he didn’t expect me to wait around for him. But if we were meant to be, then we would work out. Yeah, we definitely were not meant to be. I wasn’t really that sad, more so angry instead of anything else. I’m so glad I found out when I did, because my intuition was screaming at me that something was off. Had I found out right when lockdown started, and he was the only person I was seeing in person, I would have been devastated. I’m so thankful I can quarantine with some friends now. I totally cut off all contact with him. I didn’t even break up with him in person, it was all through text. I blocked him on all forms of social media, and I have never regretted it since.”
What Really Is Real?
“My ex has Borderline Personality Disorder. In the over ten years I was with her, I never cheated, ever. Unfortunately, she was a very jealous type, always asking who I was talking to or texting. Most of the time, it was just me casually scrolling through social media. We decided that because we have two kids together, we should try and work through the lockdown together, since there was no school for the kids to go to besides the remote one at home, and there was no day care as an option. I lost my job right before things got bad in the lockdown, and she was laid off for months, so combining our resources seemed like a good idea. This was a very bad idea. The lockdown sent her mental health spiraling. She started abusing various substances, to the point of passing out several times a week, while I did my best to keep the household going. She became more and more paranoid, obsessive, and suspicious of me. Over a couple of months time, she was convinced I was some kind of serial abuser in it with her for the LONG con, for over ten years. According to her, I had been seeing other women at the same time, even though we were both locked down in the same apartment. She spiraled pretty badly. If I tried to calm her fears, it was viewed as me trying to trick her or gaslight her. Kindness made her think I was up to something. She started telling me things like, ‘She knew who I was now,’ or that, ‘She was on to me,’. She started thinking I was bugging her phone. She accused me of trying to turn the volume of her cell up and down while she was listening to it to threaten her. She thought I was hacking her laptop. Things got very weird, very fast. I tried to get her some sort of help, but in the early part of our lockdown, well, that wasn’t very easy to come by. So yeah, I definitely got accused of cheating when it was practically impossible for me to do so, and I can’t ever say I saw that coming.”
This Relationship Ain’t Slowing Down Soon!
“My sister cheated on her husband of seven years, left him in June 2020, then she started dating the guy she was cheating with. They both went to Mexico and rapidly got engaged. Before our very eyes, my sister moved in with then fiancé. She has since moved out of his house and called off the engagement and wedding that they planned for the upcoming holidays. She actually texted her ex-husband, asking him to work it out with her. The ex-husband’s new girlfriend texted my sister, telling her to leave her man alone. Most recently, my sister is now ‘dating’ the guy she was cheating with once again. They are basically just trying to take tings day by day. It’s exhausting to keep up with! The guy my sister was cheating with has a couple of kids, and my sister is trying her best to be a mother for them. She isn’t the best mom, and I love her, but I know that she has quite a lot to work out emotionally. AS of this week, she finally acknowledged this! Her ex-husband was pretty terrible himself, so they just made each other more nasty. That ex-husband actually once sent a super nasty text to everyone in my entire family, talking about how terrible all of us were. He said some really mean things about my parents, and he said we would all be better off when my sister died. That definitely explains a lot. Look, I’m happy for my sister that she’s finally found someone she could be compatible with, but I really wish that she would just take her time more and slow down with this man! No one needs them to rush into a wedding!”
Exposing His Big Secret
Well, it all started when I thought I would make a great meal, clean up the house, and surprise my fiancé, who I had been with for a total of sixteen years. While cleaning the house, I found some socks my partner left on the ground in our bedroom. Once I got over to the dresser drawer, I found some notecards, with what appeared to be a social media username and several accounts. I went online, and guess what I found! My partner was up on the internet, with nothing on, showing literally all of himself off for everyone to see. Based on the comments, there were plenty of thirsty people online who were enjoying what they say. Believe it or not, I wasn’t too upset by this, quite the contrary actually. I was actually pretty excited to see my partner trying new things. The one thing I was mad about was that my partner tried to keep this a secret from me. He knew how open and understanding to absolutely everything I can be, so why did he hide this? My trust in him was totally demolished. The more I thought about it, the more that this seemed like he was cheating on me emotionally, rather than physically. He was keeping this relationship with thirsty internet people a secret, like he was ashamed of it. If he was keeping this from me, what else could he have been hiding?!
We immediately separated, but I kept my three dogs to keep me company. He moved out of the house, and I am so thankful for everything I still have. I’m really glad I didn’t rush into my marriage, I only want to get married to someone that I could deeply trust. Now I have nothing but love and respect for people making an honest living taking their clothes off on the internet. It’s a hustle, and we all have bills to pay. But his need to be so secretive about it deeply bothered me.”
Working From Home Gets Deadly
“One of my staff found out her husband was having an affair at the beginning of lockdown. While we were waiting for IT equipment, we had all our staff log onto the system using their own devices, and her husband had saved a hotel booking confirmation to the couple’s desktop computer, which she hadn’t used for a while. What an idiot!
It’s not great. He was apparently, ‘Very sorry and didn’t want to lose her,’ promising her the earth, and then the other woman started turning up at the house. She demanded to see him and wanting to tell my staff member all sorts of tales about what they got up to. This woman attacked my poor staff person for apparently standing in the way of true love or something. The staff person took an overdose of pills not long after that, and she was in hospital for a bit, later moving in with her parents. The rest of us think that the other woman had moved in, but don’t know for certain. When offices were allowed to open again, our company decided they would only be for absolutely essential on site work, so I had to negotiate with a director for that staff person to be allowed to work in the office a couple times a week. Working from home full time really wasn’t good for her.”
Web Of Lies Unravels
“Recent events made it so much easier for my husband to cheat. He was laid off for eight weeks, and I was still working full time. My workload doubled, so I would be home later than usual and extremely exhausted. He would sneak his mistresses through the back door while I was asleep at night. Funnily enough, I found out what was going on through Reddit! My husband posted something for our cats and showed me. So I went and liked the post and replied to some comments. I was pretty new to Reddit and ended up looking at his profile. I saw some scandalous pictures of women he had uploaded and shared. I tried to prove to myself that he was clearly innocent, and obviously his friends must have sent him those pictures. I asked to look at his phone and found out he had a couple partners that he was regularly sneaking in the house. He handed his phone over all nonchalant, but then when I actually started looking, he tried to grab it back and admitted to everything. Then we went through the phone together. He was pretty good at deleting messages, but he didn’t with one friend for some reason, and that was where most of the incriminating information was.
Yes, there probably is more incriminating stuff that my husband tried to remove from his phone. I did ask him to create a timeline of all the events and what went down, which he actually did right away. I then contacted the three other parties that I knew about, and they all confirmed his timeline. I’m not sure any of this matters though. There are multiple reasons why leaving would be next to impossible right now. The first and biggest reason would be my health. I can barely get off the couch right now. He has been very supportive, but I would say we are living more like roommates now anyways.”
The Cheesiest Crime
“My neighbor got busted cheating on his ‘corona-diet’ that he and his wife were doing. He would go ‘out for a run’ up to Little Ceasar’s, eat a pizza and drink a soda, then come home sweaty and directly take a shower and brush his teeth to hide it from his wife, who was diligently doing her part in the diet. He was outed when restrictions relaxed around here, and one of his teenagers spotting him coming out of the restaurant holding a bag. As far as I heard it, he came clean to his wife when his teenager spotted him. Not that the kid wasn’t going to snitch, but the dad didn’t give her the chance. And why would you go for Little Caesar’s pizza anyway?! It’s this super inexpensive, gross pizza. Most Little Caesar’s don’t even have sit-down seating, just an industrial kitchen staffed with stoned teenagers. I do really enjoy their ‘crazy bread’ breadsticks though! I’m really craving that soft, buttery bread right now.”
“Maelstrom Of Emotions”
“Okay, hold on to your butts folks. So I, a man in his twenties, cheated on my fiancé during this whole massive lockdown thing, and I feel truly awful. When the lockdown happened, my job thankfully stayed open, but I also got injured at work. I was transferred to a much easier position, meaning I did nothing but sit on my phone for over ten hours a day while at work. Needless to say, I got really bored, and since I had had always had this weird curiosity about why people cheat and why their partners take them back, I decided to make a post on social media, asking my friends if they would take their partner back if they discovered they were having an affair. Mistake number one.
I broke my own news feed with a tremendous amount of people posting their story and wondering if me and my significant other were currently in this situation. Along with that came a whole bunch of friends who also inboxed me personally their stories, because they were uncomfortable posting in such a public forum. One of the friends, who had replied in my inbox, was someone I had met once years ago once at a coffee shop during a very random a chance encounter. She told me online how her ex-husband was a verbally abusive cheater that had stepped out on her, even after being previously caught before. I had follow-up questions about her failed marriage, which eventually led to semi casual, and inevitably casual, chatting. It felt like catching up with an old friend so I unfortunately leaned into it. All the while, I was sitting at a desk for over ten hours a day, so it was a nice enough distraction, or so I told myself. Mistake number two.
During this correspondence, she sent me a video of her singing, and I was blown away by how well she could sing. And I, being a musician, was captivated by her amazing voice, and I earnestly wanted to write and perform music with her, despite all of our social distancing. So we made plans in secret and met up at a music store to start creating music. Now at this time, I was aware that this was inappropriate, but I wasn’t thinking about that. It was selfishness and apathy that drove me to meet her without my fiancé knowing. Everything was pretty normal. We met up, discussed musical influences, shared a few online videos, and we shared some musical ideas through song. Afterwards, we went to a coffee shop close by, to drink and talk some more. We shared some laughs and had a good time, but when it was time to leave, she kissed me, and I kissed her back.
I experienced a maelstrom of emotions in the minutes and hours following. I told her that we shouldn’t see each other again, and that I felt conflicted and that what we were doing was wrong. Honestly, I don’t remember exactly how the following conversation went. But within a matter of weeks, we planned to meet up again at a different music store. We met and did all the same things we did the previous time we saw each other. I felt completely trapped now, because I cared about this girl’s feelings, and we were building an attachment to each other. As much as it hurt to do this to my fiancé, I didn’t want to hurt this new woman. I felt so sick to my stomach. It all came to a screeching halt when I was spotted by my fiancé’s family member while I was with this new girl at the coffee shop. My fiancé confronted me, so I came completely clean. I never actually hooked up with this woman, but what I did was in some ways worse. I never thought I was capable of doing such a thing, but my actions lead me to feeling overwhelmed with regret. This sort of thing could happen to anyone under the right circumstances.”
