18 Devastating "Truth Bombs" That Completely Destroyed Relationships Forever

Yahoo

4 days ago

We previously covered this Reddit thread where people shared *the* secret they uncovered that made them leave their ex for good. Then, BuzzFeed Community members shared their own stories of partner deceit and betrayal. Here's what they revealed:
Warning: This post mentions sexual assault.
1."He was definitely not the person I thought I had married. For starters, he cleaned out my bank account and charged more than $30,000 to my credit card. He pawned my jewelry, which I had received from my father for graduation. He made a continuous practice of gaslighting me, making me doubt my sanity, and he cheated on me with some guy. Only after I finally kicked him to the curb have I learned how much more he kept from me, like getting fired for sexual harassment."
—Anonymous
2."My husband was a top city official. I realized he was having an affair with a married woman at the office. He couldn't stop talking about her. I found out they even had a wedding ceremony without papers. He took the whole family to Hawaii and then would leave the hotel room for sightseeing before we got up in the morning. I told him on the way home that it didn't even seem like we had a vacation together. I later realized that they were meeting up. I found a note he had written to himself that said he was secretly hoping to be caught. She can have him. Happily divorced."
—Anonymous
3."I found out four days before my birthday that my husband of 23 years had been having a nine-year affair with his high school sweetheart and that my brother-in-law had gotten her email for him so that they could connect. Turned out that he had made numerous trips to visit her under the guise of business trips and high school reunions. I found out by picking up his phone because he was outside and expecting a call from his doctor, only to see it was a very personal text from a woman. I then learned that his visit two months prior to help his brother on a building project for two weeks was actually another of his lies. He had flown her cross-country to stay with him at his brother's, and the three of them had a great time seeing the sights and going to restaurants with his brother's friends."
"He got so tangled up in his lies that he was lying about his lies. I haven't spent one day missing him. I learned that she dumped him when she realized what type of man he is."
—Anonymous
4."My ex-husband would say he was going to his second job, which he had taken, to support our newborn son. He was, in fact, going to sleep with a 19-year-old girl from his main job at the hospital. I discovered a box of condoms in his backpack that certainly weren't for me, accompanied by texts from her. He bought her the morning-after pill, so I guess they also skipped the condoms sometimes. I took my kid and left."
—Anonymous
5."He had dating apps that he was actively using to cheat on me while my sister was dying from cancer. I found out the week of the funeral."
—Anonymous
6."We lived about an hour and a half from each other and saw each other once a month, but texted every day at first when we renewed our relationship. I had my rings, and we were talking marriage. Eventually, I noticed a pattern that he was never available after 6:00 p.m. or on weekends, so I would send texts and they would go unanswered. When I brought this up, he would say he's at work (nights), yet I never saw proof. He never gave me money for bills, yet knew I was working two jobs to keep a roof over my head, nor did he appreciate how hard I worked. He asked me to move to where he is, and something told me not to."
"Aside from his lying about working, I took a peek at his social media, where I discovered he was engaged to a woman out of state who, by the looks of it, had a drug problem. I realized I deserved better, sent my rings back, and started putting my life back together. As for him, they broke up, and he started dating a married woman who used him to get back at her husband, who cheated on her with someone else, resulting in a baby. Karma came for him when his married woman left him and went back to her husband before she set him up to be a homicide victim. He survived, yet still won't admit he fucked up with me."
—Anonymous
7."Three days before Valentine's Day, I found out about over a decade of cheating. After 11 years together, seven years married, I found out from an anonymous text that he had been unfaithful for at least four years. She apologized for being a bad friend. After calling the number, it turns out the text was from our previously married neighbor, who had us over for dinner a few times and invited us to their weeknight church groups a few times. After looking for the proof first (she said she would send it to me but didn't) in his iPad and old phones, I saw messages, naked pictures, and videos from several women spanning the entire relationship. Several of these women were previous friends of his, who were 'like family,' and were at our wedding. Some even used to be friendly with me at friends' events."
"After a few years, he wasn't the best husband in terms of how he treated me, but I never had a clue because he was always on time and never did anything to cause suspicion. He was cheating at work, on lunch breaks. He was calling women for quickies before going into the office, visiting strip clubs on lunch breaks, meeting up with women while out walking our dog late at night, while I put the children to bed, and texting them when I was in the shower or after I'd gone to bed. We have three children, ages six and younger, with one on the way (found out right after the scandal). I canceled going to our marriage counseling meetings (where he only wanted me to take responsibility for the marriage and his treatment towards me) and filed for divorce anyway."
—Anonymous
8."The guy I had been long-distance dating for almost five years had gotten someone else pregnant and married her. The kicker was that she's the one who emailed me from his email account to tell me. Still haven't spoken to him about it to this day. They have three kids now, and I have a 3.5 carat diamond ring from a super awesome man!"
—Anonymous
9."My wife of 20 years went to a Friendsgiving the day before Thanksgiving Day. She never came home. She called me at noon on Thanksgiving Day to tell me she was on her way home and that she had passed out at her friend's house. I was suspicious. A month later, I woke up in the morning to go to work and found her phone in her purse still on. Before the battery died, I was able to go through it and discovered she left the Friendsgiving that night to hook up with a random dude she just met. I had to endure reading the text messages of my wife, with whom I share two children, communicating with her friend about the man's penis size and color. All while her husband and children were asleep at home. I left her that very same day. All she could say was sorry."
—Anonymous
10."My ex-husband spent the last two years of our 10-year marriage actively sleeping with one of my very best friends. She came clean when she realized that he had manipulated and gaslit both of us into believing his BS excuses. He told her I had firmly stated I wanted zero information regarding their situationship. Meanwhile, he had me convinced that he was not attracted to her in any way because he viewed her as a sibling, and it disgusted him to even think about having relations with her. I left in 2020 and never looked back. Divorce was worth every penny."
—Anonymous
11."My ex lied about everything. He invented an entire false backstory of hardship and tragedy, like almost making the NHL before a knee injury ruined his dreams, rehabbing that injury enough to sign a contract as a professional mountain bike racer, and then in the very next race, crashing and shattering a vertebrae and ruining his ability to play any sports again. He has stories about traveling around South America and being arrested and extorted by police, about a job he worked on production for a Spice Girls tour in Europe, and where Geri Halliwell kissed him at the tour wrap-up party, about his time in the Coast Guard, and various heroic rescues he had pulled off. The most egregious lie was that he had survived bowel cancer. I'm a nurse, and everything he told me about his recovery, treatments, and medications was exact. He had literally studied cancer treatments and memorized the names of chemo meds."
"We had a baby together, and he was horrible to me in my pregnancy and postpartum. He body-shamed me, degraded and humiliated me in front of strangers under the guise of 'joking,' and even poured out my pumped breast milk and screamed at me when I would breastfeed so that my son had to be formula fed. He was away at sea in the Coast Guard when our child was 4 months old. He had borrowed my laptop to work on a course and left it signed in and synced with his phone. I could see in real-time as he and a woman exchanged nudes. I found out he had cheated on me during my pregnancy with 10-15 women. I had suspected it because he was averse to any intimacy at all during my entire pregnancy, but there was now plenty of evidence.
I called his sister and started telling her about things, and she confirmed that his backstory was lies he'd told many people, and they had a very privileged childhood. He had constantly been on social media talking to other women, but he would say that it was a friend's girlfriend, cousin, or coworker. But it turned out that they were all women he had slept with or was cheating on me with. He was telling these women all sorts of lies about me to make me seem like a monster, but they all knew about me, the pregnancy, and the baby. That one really hurt.
When I contacted the women, they seemed mostly mad about the *other* women he was involved with. They all thought they were something special to him. He came home from the sea, and for two weeks, I tried to figure out how to move forward. He ended up sexually assaulting me (it took me a long time to figure it out because I had wanted intimacy from him for my whole pregnancy, and now that I didn't want it, he forced it, and tried to convince me that I actually wanted it, and I was in the depths of postpartum depression hell). He finally told me he would not stop having other women in his life. I kicked him out, and he called child services and made up a bunch of lies about me, spread rumors about me around my workplace to try to ruin my career, and canceled about 50% of his parenting time to go get drunk and sleep with strangers during the pandemic.
I've spent about $70k on legal bills and following court orders to try and get some semblance of peace in my life. He is now married to one of the women he cheated on me with, and the week before they announced their engagement, he came to me and said he just wanted to be a family again and asked me to give him a chance, so I doubt she's being treated any better than I was. I now have to try to co-parent with them, and I have a diagnosis of PTSD from the sexual assault and everything he did to us. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. I try to put it all aside for my son's sake, but I also want to protect him from how my ex will eventually use, abuse, and discard him, just like he's done with everyone in his life. They didn't even invite him to their wedding, and it seems they basically trot my son out for photo opportunities or to try and hurt me."
—Anonymous
12."One month after we got married, I found cards from the woman he had been cheating with for the entire three years we had dated before marriage."
—Anonymous
13."He was having an affair with our son's girlfriend (the mother of our grandchildren)."
—Anonymous
14."Got engaged and moved 1,900 miles away to be closer to her parents. For some reason, she was always combative. I was working three jobs to support us and her kid. In February, she went back to visit her friends. A few months later, I found a note from her best friend's husband saying how much he enjoyed the sex and couldn't wait for it to happen again. I didn't mention the note, but asked her if she wanted to break up. Thankfully, she said yes."
—Anonymous
15."He moved across the country with me. I never asked him to because I wanted to focus on school/my career path. He was kind of floating around in life, which is fine, no judgment. But I've never met anyone who had no edge or ambition. Any logic/advice I gave went in one ear and out the other. I made it clear he'd need a game plan, like learning a trade, going to school, or getting a job. I was supportive of his new possible opportunities. He had no savings; his parents paid for his rent, groceries, and brand-new cars — hence the lack of ambition. It always stumped me how it was 'all words, no action' while having a pity party for himself. He was in his early 20s. I felt like a therapist, mom, and life coach all in one. So many things bothered me. He'd talk shit about his family and only hit up his mom for money. His insecurities were through the roof."
"One of the small gigs he had, I remember he got upset that his coworker corrected him. He decided to describe her using very derogatory language. The final straw was when I picked his mom up while he was at work. She asked how I liked the new apartment. I was confused because I'd been living in the same place for over a year. She was told that we moved to a bigger place last week. For whatever reason, he lied on both sides. So he lied to them about where he lived and led me to believe they were in the loop. Like multiple full-on conversations about money differences for a bigger place. The level of disrespect sent me through the roof. Waste of time and energy is an understatement. Covert narcissism at its finest."
—Anonymous
16."I found out that my ex was sleeping with the barmaid in our local bar behind my back. I realized this when he called me her name during sex one time. She had a very unusual name. Safe to say he got dumped, and I don't drink in that bar anymore."
—Anonymous
17."I dated my ex-husband for two years before marrying him. I found out a couple of months later that I was his seventh wife and he had five kids, each child with a different woman!"
—Anonymous
18.And: "I had long suspected her infidelities, but having three children with her had me working two jobs and doing more than my share for the betterment of our family. I even had a guy at a bar ask me if he could date my wife, knowing everything about her, and to my surprise, even about me! That was traumatic. It turned me into an alcoholic just to forget. Months later, she left on a 'business trip.' This time, though, she didn't use a rental car, but borrowed her sister's car to travel and fly out of another city. I never thought anything of it, but the second night, I sat at the computer and once again noticed her email password under the keyboard. I took it as a sign, and upon opening her account, I saw the messages between her and her other boyfriend she met on a plane ride for work, which detailed their fling in New Mexico. That was 22 years down the drain."
"I was devastated and couldn't sleep the whole night. The next day, I went to tell my mother-in-law that I couldn't support her lies and deceit any longer. She understood and said she was sorry. That experience changed me for the better. I've found it hard to love someone again, but at least our children love me and appreciate all that I did and continue to do for them. Call me an optimist! Someday, I'll find the one who will fill my heart again."
—Anonymous
Have you ever been betrayed by a partner? What did you learn that ended the relationship for good? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.