1. My wife tried calling and didn’t hang up once it went to voicemail. She accidentally left a 2:45 VM. The VM consisted of her and her BF talking shit about me and how much happier she was with him.
At the time I was home with our kids and I thought she was 1,800 miles away to be with her dying father. Two years later we are divorced and her father is still alive.
2. She needed a new phone so I put it in my name since I was working, 2 hours after leaving the store and having lunch with me joking about how excited she was to get married I found a photoreel full of pictures she had been exchanging with her ex whilst transferring her stuff to her new phone.
I put 2 and 2 together and opened her text inbox and surprise! She had been texting him for months and fucking him for a few weeks.
3. I counted the pictures.
This was in 2000, before everyone had a camera on their phone and you had to get your holiday snaps developed at the Walgreens photo lab.
She brought home the pictures of her vacation to see her “old high school friend” in Vegas, but there was something missing. See, back in the day the rolls of film were made up of exposures of 12, 24, 36 pics, etc. depending on the film you bought.
I went through the photos and it didn’t add up. Literally. The 24 exposure roll only had 18 pics. Eventually I found the remaining photos…her and the new boyfriend looking happy.
4. My super genius ex wife bitched about the cost of our joint cell phone bill. She told me I’m using it too much. I never used it except to call her phone which was free. So I looked over the bill and found the number to the dude she was cheating with.
5. iMessage linked to her computer. I was on her computer buying stuff off Amazon and she was sitting on the couch, feet from me, texting her ex. He was trying to get her to send him nudes and they were reminiscing about previous encounters. He was bragging about how he made her “leg shake” all the while I was watching the conversation in real time, right next to her. My adrenaline kicked in and I simply closed the computer and left the house without saying a word. This was over a year ago and I’m still fighting her for custody of our children.
6. She became more and more distant. Not just that, but also indifferent. She just stopped caring and it showed. I caught her because she claimed she was working OT, but her pay never reflected it. One day I got out of work early after a machine broke down in the department. I didn’t tell her. When I came home, I caught her red handed with someone in our bed.
7. I had a feeling for a while, it was always denied of course – directly and through a massive amount of gaslighting. Ultimately, the other woman was also married and her husband called me at work (found me via LinkedIn). Took everything I had to walk to my car to cry in private.
8. Back when cell phones had limited minutes, I got notified that we were over our limit. Checked the last bill and nothing but her and her boss talking at all hours of the day. Then she stupidly left her e-mail open on my computer and I got to read how he enjoyed touching her boobs a lot.
9. Just got on a flight in London headed to Vegas. Sitting next to my GF and she wants to show me something she has planned for the trip so gets out her phone.
It opens to the Messages and shows a chat with a guy (I know him) saying how much she is gonna miss him and how she doesn’t wanna go away with me anyway.
The doors close on the plane and that was a really fucking fun 10-11hrs…
10. I know this is cliche and I’ve definitely bitched about it before, but coming home from a 12 MONTH deployment to a BLACK baby when we’re both white were strike one and two. Strike three was telling me she had black relatives (whom I’ve never met) so that could be what happened, sure. Doesn’t matter what excuse You have there isn’t a magical 12 month gestation period. Makes me very fucking angry.
11. The dude told me. We used to go to school together. Saw him in Facebook and requested friendship. He asked me how I was doing and I told him that I was great. Girl and I were about to celebrate our anniversary. He apologized to me and said he had to tell me that they had been fucking for the last week. Said he didn’t know we were together and I believed him. He sent me screenshots of pages of text as proof. She got called out by the both of us and we are still very good friends, he and I. Fuckin lying skank.
12. I woke up in the middle of the night when she was in the bathroom. Used her phone as a light. Saw texts from her ex about how good it felt to cum inside her the day before.
13. She forgot to end the call, you know, press the red button. I heard them talking about who was going to shower first.
14. She was in the toilet. Her phone flashed up. The message notification read “Did you tell him?”.
Apparently the message was about something completely different, but after I bluffed her into thinking I know more than I do – a name and that something’s up, she “confessed”.
10 years relationship destroyed. No turning back. Easier to build up trust with a new person the. with someone that cheated on you. And in long term relationships, marriage, you have to trust each other.
Theodore Lee is the editor of Caveman Circus. He strives for self-improvement in all areas of his life, except his candy consumption, where he remains a champion gummy worm enthusiast. When not writing about mindfulness or living in integrity, you can find him hiding giant bags of sour patch kids under the bed.