If you've come here to revel in stories of cheaters getting their comeuppance, you might be disappointed—turns out plenty of cheating redditors end up marrying their new partners and living happily ever after.
But don't worry, schadenfreude-lovers of the internet! Hiding a side-relationship still sounds impossibly full of anxiety. Between the secrets, the guilt, and—last but not least—the scheduling (oh god, the scheduling), cheating sounds like a lot more effort than it's worth.
Also, some of these people still feel really, really bad about it.
I was the mistress in a marriage. The guy was an old bf from high school, we dated off and on. When we were off he would date this girl Kelly, and when we broke up for the final time he went and married her. Almost a year after we broke up, I was back in town on summer break from college and ran into him at my summer job.
He gave me this sob story about how Kelly wanted a divorce and was taking his kid from him. I (stupidly) believed him, we exchanged numbers, started talking daily. He invited me over to "his" apartment, showed me his divorce paperwork, and ultimately things got sexual for a couple weeks.
One day I swung by to pick up a pair of earrings I'd forgotten the day before. His best friend from high school answered the door. I asked if guy was around, best friend said no why would he?
Turned out Guy was actually house sitting for best friend, it wasn't his apartment. Best friend also informed me that Guy and Kelly were in the process of BUYING A HOUSE, their marriage was fine.
I was livid and disgusted. I went to work the following day, and in walks Kelly. I ask her what she's doing later that night and if she's available to talk. We meet up after I get off and I lay it all out for her. She teared up a bit, but ultimately she was pissed. She gives me their address and tells me to show up there unannounced the next day.
I do and Guy is white as a sheet trying to get me to leave. Kelly shows up and they end up in a screaming match. So Guy ended up getting divorced and settled with a chunk of child support because Kelly informed the right people about Guys pot plants. None of us talk anymore. When I think about it, I have to shower at least twice.
I just met someone so much better for me. I met someone that was basically my female twin and we hit it off instantly. I ended up breaking up with the girl I was with and dating her for 6 months. Turns out there's such a thing as "too much alike".
Was in a 5yr relationship with my girlfriend at the the time. I started to talk to an old coworker from my teens that I always had a thing for, but she lived a couple states away so I knew nothing would come of it. Well, it turns out that she still had family in my area and regularly visited.
We made plans to get some dinner and catch up, for old times sake. It ended in both of us getting drunk, renting a hotel room and having some fun. This happened a few times over the next several months until I get a text from her... It's a picture of a sonogram of our child.
I was going to come clean to my gf, because I never had a father growing up and I didn't want to put my child through that. However, she ending up losing it a month or so into the pregnancy and we stopped talking.
It left me feeling very guilty and anxiety stricken. 0/10 would not do again.
EDIT: To answer some questions...
No, I never told her. We broke up a few months later for unrelated problems in the relationship.
No, we're not still together.
As far as I know the sonogram was legit.
didn't get with the coworker, I have a healthy relationship now and I love my GF. I'll never repeat this mistake.
I was in a dud of a marriage. I married too young and against my better judgement. My husband was a controlling and sexually repressed man who did not respect me and I did no respect him.
I found out that my husband was on dating sites and talking to women online attempting to solicit dates. He was actively seeking to cheat and the only thing stopping him from taking it to a physical realm was the fact that none of the women were interested in him.
We worked on our marriage over the years to try to resolve his online cheating, but he'd always start up again. Eventually I got so emotionally worn out by it that I just didn't have it in me to care much anymore.
I met a man at work who I was instantly attracted to on a mental and a physical level--something I'd never had with my husband. We started out with harmless conversations and became work friends. We then found excuses to text each other when not at work.
We'd grab lunch together here and there...at first with groups and then with just the two of us. I couldn't wait to go to work every day and see him. I thought about him all the time. I knew I was heading toward dangerous ground but I didn't want to stop.
We started flirting and I began to sneak away from home to meet up with him for hikes, dinner, you name it. I met up with him for hours at a time on evenings and weekends, and my husband never really noticed because his attention was always occupied with his friends or his online chats with women.
My friend from work and I were always careful not to make physical contact, until one day in his car when he leaned over to help me with my jammed seat belt and he kissed me. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever felt in my life.
Over the next few weeks meeting up to have dinner turned into meeting up to find a secluded spot and make out in his car. Then that eventually turned into groping, hand jobs, oral sex...you get the idea. I could not get enough of this guy.
I felt tremendously guilty the entire time because I never thought of myself as the type who would cheat. I came clean with my husband before my affair progressed any deeper.
I broke off the affair and agreed to try marriage counseling. I quickly changed my mind when during the course of an argument (I didn't want to go to his church and he wanted me to) my husband slapped me and told me I wasn't allowed to have any unsupervised visits with my family or friends anymore.
After I told my husband I wanted a divorce, he attempted to destroy my life. He tried to get me fired, told all the neighbors and everyone at his church what happened, posted our business on Facebook tagging my friends and family, you name it.
He also threatened to "beat up" the guy I had been cheating with which, honestly, would have only ended up in severe embarrassment and injury for himself.
It didn't take long after filing divorce papers for me to hook back up with my friend and officially start dating him. My husband harassed and threatened us both until my boyfriend called his bluff and then he just sort of faded out.
My boyfriend is now my husband and we have been together for 10 years and going strong. I love him more than anything and I respect him more than anyone I've ever met. I would never dream of cheating on him and I feel confident that he'd never cheat on me.
tldr: It started because I was married to a jackass and it was a disaster, but it ended well for me.
I was young - 19. I had been with a girl for a year when my parents decided I needed to pay rent, so I found a roommate and got an apartment. Day 1 I go to the office to turn in my walk through paperwork. The girl in the office made my heart skip. . She made me a believer in the idea of love at first sight.
She moved in across from my apartment a couple weeks later and we started to hang out. One night we slept together. The next day I broke up with my girlfriend. Me and new girl talked and we both wanted to be together. She moved in with me a month later. That was 17 years ago. She's currently asleep upstairs next to our daughter.
Started with drinks after work and ended when I was in love and he wasn't. My relationship was ending when I met him. We became good friends and told each other all about how messed up our current relationships were. The night it went too far was after drinks, a kiss in a bar and a dui; I bailed him out.
After we slept together the first few times I ended things with my boyfriend. He always said he was going to break up with his girlfriend and he never did.
Long story short, it was months and months of him telling me he wanted to be with me and loved me and months and months of him not doing anything about his current situation. When he finally did break up with her he stayed with me for a few weeks and things were great.
Then in a company wide meeting (yup, coworkers) he texted me to tell me he was getting back together with her. A year later and a half later, I am married to someone else and they are still together.
A few years ago, I met this amazing guy. Let's call him Guy A. Fell very much in love with him, he was so kind and sweet. We kissed a few times and hooked up once, but he was starting to see this other girl, so it never went further than that. I was pretty heartbroken over it.
Fast forward a few years. I'm a year and a half into this horrible relationship. We'll call him Shithead. Shithead is a compulsive liar, yells at me, threatens to break up every time I do something he doesn't like, like whenever I had a panic attack.
I'm at a concert without Shithead and I look across the dancefloor, and I see Guy A, dancing his heart out, laughing and just being amazing. Hadn't seen him since the time we hooked up, which was a few years ago.
My heart skipped a beat. I approached him, we talked for hours, and I told him I was living with a really shitty guy and that I wanted out. When he kissed me goodbye, I just knew.
I continued the relationship with my Shithead for about a week (while still seeing the other guy on the side) before I finally worked up the courage to break up with him.
I've been with Guy A ever since, and haven't looked back once.
Started with tutoring me In math back in high school while I had a serious girlfriend(for high school). I ended up living a double life where everything I did with my "math tutor" I would end up doing with my girlfriend as well at a later point.
It got so bad with the math tutor that I went on vacation with her and told my girlfriend I was going to see family. After I graduated I cut things off with both of them and through some sort of witchcraft after they found out about each other I was able to stay friends with both of them.
Started with a broken g-string on 17 year old girl and ended with me moving 900 miles away before I ruined my entire marriage.
I was 30 and had been married for 2 years.
I took a part time job managing a cash office at an amusement park on the weekends. There was a very attractive girl working there but she was 17 and I never had any intentions towards her at all.
One night we were in the cash office counting money and she got all wiggly. She told me her thong just broke and the she reached down her shorts and pulled out this skimpy g-string and put it in her pocket. I was distracted the rest of the night.
She got more and more flirty as the weeks went on. Then she turned 18 and invited all her co-workers to go to a restaurant to celebrate, me included. Told my wife I was working late. At the end of the night the girl asked if I could drive her home. Half way there she told me to pull off onto a dark side street and stop the car. I did and she started kissing me.
I kissed her back and we made out for about 10 minutes. She told me she wanted to do that for months but knew she needed to wait until she was 18 and the party was a ruse to get me alone.
I drove her home from work a couple more times and she was getting bolder each time. The last time she took all of her clothes off and I fingered her to climax.
The drive home I felt guilty as hell and I knew where the next driving her home trip was going to lead. I called the park the next day and quit. Told my wife the hours were getting to be too long.
I started looking for jobs in my hometown 900 miles away and landed one that paid twice what I was currently making and I convinced my wife we needed to move.
I look the girl up on FB every once in a while but never friended her. Never spoke to her after that night. She just got married. She seems very happy. I'm still married. I'm very happy and have 2 kids. Never told my wife about what happened. Never will.
Edit: For a bit of context, this happened 15 years ago and I have never cheated on my wife again.
My long term boyfriend and I had to be long distance for about a year. At first it was fine, but then we started working opposite hours, and he stopped responding to my texts. I missed him immensely. And it's not like I played hard to get or coy, I messaged him frequently and told him that I wanted to talk to him more, have Skype dates.
I guess I didn't communicate how important I thought that was to our relationship. In addition to that, although I was planning to move 600 miles away from all my friends and family to be with him, and we'd been dating for nearly 5 years he still got awkward when I brought up getting married.
Cue my male friend from my college program. Our program was pretty rigorous. We basically had to teach 2 high school classes M-T and had master levels classes on Fridays. Oh, and our work was unpaid. We commiserated and drank cheap beer together and watched movies played board game etc.
Pretty much on the weekends we were attached at the hip. At this point, I was probably emotionally cheating (he played with my hair, I tickled him, took naps in his bed) but we hadn't passed a physical threshold yet
The last day of our program he begged me not to move to be with my boyfriend and grabbed me and kissed me. So kissed him back. Again and again and again. I called my then boyfriend 3 hours later and said I had to end it because I cheated. My then boyfriend said "We can work through this" and I said "I don't want to"
That was 2 years ago.I'm marrying my friend from my program in a couple months. I wish I wouldn't have let my resentment of being ignored fester because I felt pretty blank while breaking up with him. I wish I would have done it sooner so I didn't hurt him as badly. But tis life.
I (gay guy) was seeing a guy (let's call him A) nothing crazy serious but headed that direction. He was at a college pretty far away but was from my area. Started talking to a guy (let's call him B) I had a class with who I was pretty attracted to.
We start talking, turns out B has been seeing A for the last year or so too, and they actually got arrested together fairly recently. B and I got along really well and started seeing each other. B stopped seeing A but I was still talking to him.
It all ended when A was in town and came over one night and saw a sext from B show up on my phone that was sitting on the table. He didn't know we knew each other and he definitely didn't know we were hooking up. He wasn't happy and we broke up.
B and I had a short summer affair and realized neither of us wanted a relationship. We're now best friends and there's nobody I trust more in the world. I moved across the county and we still talk all the time and go to music festivals together. A occasionally snaps me flaccid d*ck pics so not sure what that's about. I've never really got around to asking.
Cheating—if you can handle the anxiety, you can get a new spouse.