"He Started Hitting The Gym Out Of Nowhere": People Are Revealing How They Caught Onto Their Partner's Affair And What Happened After, And It's Heartbreaking

Lately, we've been hearing stories of famous couples getting rocked by cheating scandals. It's easy to wonder how the partner being cheated on didn't immediately catch on, but denial, fear, or an unwillingness to handle heartbreak, especially when there are kids involved, can make even the strongest of us feel powerless. So, I asked people in our BuzzFeed Community who'd been cheated on and didn't speak up immediately, "What is your relationship with the cheater like now?" Here's what they had to say:

Apple TV+ / Via giphy.com

1."I moved my life two hours away from all my friends and family to live with my (now ex) boyfriend. I lived with him for six months before things suddenly started to feel different between us. He often stayed up late, slept out on the couch, and was not nearly as affectionate as he once was. One morning while I was getting ready for work, I heard his phone go off, and something in me told me I should go through his phone — I’m usually trusting and not this type of person, normally, but I listened to my gut. Sure enough, the first thing to show up was a dating profile. Further investigation into his messages led me to find he’d been chatting with other women like he was single. I instantly threw the phone at his face and yanked him awake. He had no answers for me other than, 'You’re too good for me.' Pathetic. I packed up as much stuff that would fit in my car and left him.

2."I was the one who cheated. I just had my second baby, my father died six weeks before she was born, and my mom moved in with us. I'd suffered from postpartum depression after my first kid, and I became severely depressed again. I drank to the point where I couldn’t remember if I was taking my regular medication. My husband was at work, and I had a graphic and inappropriate conversation with a dude I hadn’t seen since I was 16 years old and lived over 2,000 miles away. I came clean to my husband because I felt extreme guilt. Of course, he was devastated and very angry. I didn’t apologize for a week or two because I felt if I apologized in that moment, he wouldn’t take it seriously. Luckily, he took time off work, and we went to counseling and stayed together, and we still are together. As bad as it sounds, I don’t think we'd be as strong as we are now if it hadn't happened.

3."We weren't 'technically' together, but we had been seeing each other for over a year. I thought we were exclusive. We even had a talk where I told him I don't do multiple partners, and if that was what he wanted, to just end what we had. After a year, I thought that we were on the same page. I noticed that his habits had changed, and some of his going-out stories didn't add up and make sense. One morning while he was gone, I was doing laundry and found condoms in his pants. He left his smart watch, and I discovered that he had been sleeping around. I was devastated since I had fallen in love with him over the year. I confronted him about it, and he admitted to sleeping around. I feel like I can't be mad because we never explicitly defined the relationship, but we were even talking about moving in together. It's taken a few months, and I definitely don't trust him like I once did. We're trying to work through it."

4."We'd been married for almost 10 years and were expecting our second child. During the pregnancy, he started feeling very distant. He was exercising and dieting a lot. While I was getting nice and round, he was getting in the best shape he'd been in for years. He was going out a lot in the evenings to work on his poetry and art, and wouldn't respond to my texts and calls. I felt that something was really wrong, but I also felt like my pregnancy hormones were amplifying things. I didn't trust myself. A week after our baby was born, he announced he was filing divorce papers. A couple of weeks later, I found out he had a girlfriend. He never admitted that they were together before filing for the divorce. I was devastated at the time. Now, I'm way happier to not be married to him. He sees the kids regularly. I try to put the kids' needs first, though I honestly still don't like dealing with him all the time. I would be happier to not have him around.

5."He was making a bunch of cash withdrawals from our bank account. Completely out of character. He said he was getting cash to pay our pool cleaner. Lie. I paid the pool cleaner, and he used Venmo. It could have been so many other things, but I just had a gut feeling he was having an affair. I waited a week before I confronted him about it, to gather myself and figure out what would happen next for me. He admitted to cheating, and it had been going on for weeks. It wasn’t a long conversation. We both knew we were done. That night, he slept in the spare room, and the next day, we started packing up the house and dividing up our stuff. We’re not on bad terms now, but when we do see each other, we don’t go out of our way to say hi.

6."With my last ex before my husband, I just felt something was off...for a whole-ass year. We were having way less sex, he stopped saying, 'I love you,' and things just weren't right. I never went through his things, but I did find a very long black hair in the carpet when I was cleaning up one day. That settled it. We broke up for a lot of other reasons, but that was the last straw for me. I had been trying so hard to work with him, work on our relationship, trying so damn hard to make things right, and he had simply given up. On our last morning together (I was moving six hours back home), I asked him, 'Did you cheat? Don't lie to me.' His hung head was all I needed. That was it. We talked a bit after that. He ended up marrying the other woman, then divorcing shortly after. I haven't talked to him in about seven years or so."

7."My husband became very short-fused. He began accusing me of having an affair, and call it women’s intuition, but I just knew. I kept my mouth shut and just waited for him to slip up. I decided one night to put his phone on the charger, and my gut told me to snoop. I found my answer in the blocked messages folder. I just had our baby six months prior and was suffering from postpartum anxiety, so it was an overwhelming find. I confronted him. It was so hard to forgive, but deep down in my heart, I wanted to. We went to some counseling before deciding we would work through it on our own. We had a very open line of communication. I could vent and say whatever I wanted to if I was angry, sad, etc. We didn’t place blame on either party. He even works with the woman, and somehow, I have zero insecurities. Our communication is the best it has ever been, our love is deeper, and we are expecting our second child together.

Paramount+ / Via giphy.com

"I have completely forgiven him and don’t even bring it up anymore. My best advice would be to mourn the death of your old relationship, give it lots of time, and try and grow together. Find new activities for you both to do, go on dates, and remember that somewhere in your life, you, too, have done something someone wouldn’t forgive you for. "

—34, Illinois

8."My partner's ex-wife lived in the same town. She taped the love notes he wrote her on his door. I thought that was strange, but it didn't really click that he was cheating on me until she showed up at his house while I was there and started screaming at him. They squabbled outside for a bit, and I said, 'Babe, just come inside.' She scoffed at me and said, 'Babe?! Why don't you tell her what happened?' with a smile on her face. I flipped, went back to my home, and cried. It happened pretty early in our relationship, though he was 25 years older than me. Still, we went to therapy and worked through it. Now, we live together now and have a beautiful life with two cats. We were both broken human beings at the time, and over the years, we only grew closer together. We communicate everything. I was heartbroken, but I'm glad I forgave him and kept going. I'm in true love for the first time."

9."He was very distracted and started hitting the gym out of nowhere. I finally spoke up when he started to hide his phone from plain sight and powered it off completely at night — red flag. He denied, denied, and denied. When he finally got tired of me not letting it go, he admitted he was sleeping with his coworker. I immediately filed for divorce. They live together now. If he would have been honest with me, and not gaslighted me when I knew something was up, we might have been able to work through it. I think it is all for the best, though, because now he lives with his mistress, and I am happier than ever with my current partner and our new dog!"

10."We were married for 10 years. We had two sons, and I was seven months pregnant. My husband worked for film studios and had recently gotten a job which required him to live in Georgia months at a time, while the kids and I stayed in California. When he came home for Thanksgiving, he was acting distant from all of us. He complained about the house, my appearance, and even what I'd cooked for Thanksgiving for his entire family. That night, I got a phone call from one of his coworker's ex-wife. My phone blew up with pictures of my husband and a 22-year-old bartender hooking up. Then, a female coworker. Then, a waitress. I was devastated to say the least. Somehow, I managed to make Thanksgiving dinner for 30 people while keeping my shit together. After everyone left, he profusely apologized — yada, yada, yada. One week after our baby was born, he went back to Georgia and that coworker. We've been divorced for seven glorious years."

11."It began when I saw a ring around the moon, which is a sign of bad things to come. I started noticing my husband coming home a little later than usual. One time, I could smell a woman's cheap perfume on him. A month or so passed, and I woke up from a dead sleep with this intense feeling to check his phone. I told myself that I would open one app, because I did not like the idea of going in his phone in the first place — I should trust my husband, right? I opened Facebook, and the first message was from his affair partner, about how much she loved seeing him and him commenting on how beautiful she was. I read some more messages and discovered they were secretly meeting up at the bar he manages after hours. It ended up being an emotional affair that went on for six months. I exposed them online. I have no regrets. We decided to work through it, and it's almost been a year — it is difficult.

12."I just found out this weekend. We've been together for six months and lived together for most of it. He travels for work, and I'm usually with him on the road, but sometimes go back to my house in Colorado for stability. Three weeks ago, I was back home for two weeks and just had an awful feeling. I called and told him I was having anxious and insecure feelings about him with other girls while I was away, acknowledging that he hadn't done anything to cause me to feel that way. He was very reassuring and validating. We reunited a week ago, and when I walked into the room one night, he suddenly swiped out of his Facebook messages. A few days later, we had a turbulent day filled with so much arguing. I woke up the next morning and grabbed his phone while he took our dogs out. I found so many messages that were explicit, flirtatious, and sexual. He'd even sent nude pics of me to some of these people, offering threesomes and swinging. I'm still heartbroken.

13."He cheated throughout our relationship and engagement. and I knew about one of them. I was 21 years old; he was 28. I do blame him, but I also blame myself for staying when I knew I should have left. The emotional damage was intense. It took me roughly eight years to heal from all of the trauma and toxicity. He is happily married to the girl he cheated on me with. They married a few months after I finally walked away. I now see the red flags I clearly chose to paint pink, the flags that he waved in my face and I ignored. I do not wish him any ill, but I do fear that one day karma will knock on his door. All that pain I felt, he will feel.

14."I had a molar pregnancy (a false positive pregnancy that can result in uterine cancer), which caused me to go into an undiagnosed depression. During that time, he started tutoring an economics student. I quickly realized he was talking to her more than me. I begged him to not talk to her anymore and work on our relationship. I was told she was just a friend. This went on for a year. After he stopped leaving his phone unattended around me, I knew he wasn't being true. I gave him an ultimatum: Stop talking to her, or leave. He left. Six months later, when he needed support for his dad's cancer diagnosis, he came back. I found out later that he continued to talk to her the entire time. I finally said, 'I need all of you, or nothing.' He walked away again. I found out recently they are now having a baby together. He never even tried for us once he met her."

15."He wasn’t very good at hiding it. I’m not sure he wanted to. He would leave his phone out with messages going off. He would even use my laptop to email them and 'forget' to sign out. When we first moved in together, he had a fairly large box with letters from an ex who he claimed he broke up with. A friend and I found it, and it was so awkward having to explain it away. He constantly needed his ego stroked, so he needed someone on the back burner — a runner-up, and someone to chase. As an 'artist,' he created chaos in his own life because he believed it elevated his art. He wrote a whole album on how he caused our divorce and had the audacity to seek praise for his vulnerability."

16."I thought my wife was cheating on me for various reasons. I went through her phone (I know, shut up) and confirmed her cheating. We were very close to divorce. Somehow, we talked it through, and after, our marriage was stronger than ever. That is right up until she died, like a dumbass."

17."I confirmed just days ago that my partner was cheating on me. I noticed he kept going out with 'friends,' staying out late or staying over, was being secretive with his phone, and we weren't as intimate as we were before. Overall, he just seemed tuned out of our relationship. I found out by going through his phone and found him on dating apps, and messaging and exchanging pictures with someone, and a text about them meeting up on a night where he was going out with 'friends' to celebrate a birthday. I confronted him, and we waited a few days to talk about everything. We decided to stay together for now — we share an apartment, and the lease ends next June. Our plan is to really put the work into our relationship and revisit in a few months. I have decided to trust him for now, but I told him that he needs to be more open and honest and communicate about his needs instead of fulfilling them elsewhere."

18."I found out years after getting married that he'd cheated with two separate women while we were dating, and again while we were engaged. He told me on his own. We actually had a conversation before we were married — lay everything out on the table so we could marry with full disclosures and a clean slate. He didn’t tell me then. The first reveal came out during couples grief therapy, and the second instance was while we were trying to conceive our first child. Both times were total gut punches and made me feel stupid; other people knew about it and said nothing. I mostly kept it to myself. The privacy has made it hard to receive validation for my lingering hurt feelings. Our relationship now is sturdy, but has its ups and downs. The deep trust and bond we had is gone, so feelings are a little more complicated or robotic. What we’ve built together is bigger and stronger than the two stupid strikes he’s earned. I won't forgive a third time, though.

If you were cheated on by a partner and you didn't speak up at first, what does that relationship look like now? What were the signs that you knew they were engaging in an affair? Or, if you were the one cheating, what ended up happening? Share your truth in the comments (or through this anonymous Google form), and it could help others in similar situations.

Note: Responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.