19. Out You Go
It's simple. My old girlfriend wasn’t doing much for our relationship to grow. She seemed happy with just having a place to stay, but she was contributing zero to the situation or to us. She would come home from work, expect dinner to be there, and just walk off into our room and watch TV. She didn’t want to talk about her day, make plans, or open up to me. All I got were one-liner responses.
She’d get frustrated with me, asking questions about what our plans were or when we’d have a romantic date again. It basically became platonic after the first six months. I was friends with other girls and I started making excuses that I had to work late. Secretly, I was meeting up with some of them. Eventually, one of the girls and I ended up seeing each other as we had a lot of chemistry.
Her personality was much more active and forward thinking. I eventually dropped the news on my girlfriend at the time and told her it was time to end this relationship, as she was doing nothing for me or our situation despite my effort to get something out of her. Of course, she caused a major scene and acted like she was hurt by it.
Truth be told, I felt like she was putting on a show just so she could have a place to stay other than her parents’ house. She was a waitress and occasional bartender, so I covered a lot of the living expenses. I wasn’t having any of her act.
20. Rock Bottom
My friend was supposed to get married the week following his bachelor party and instead, his wedding became a funeral. No, really. The whole situation messed me up as I was creeping up on 40 and already starting a midlife crisis. I had been with the same person my whole life and we had become friends. I talked to my wife about how I was feeling and she brushed it off as she was busy with her career.
I had a friend die in my arms, and I spent all night drinking and pondering the frailty of life. Then I looked at mine. In a broken state, I made a drastic decision. I decided to get with other people before life got away from me. I made mistakes, hurt people, and lost friends. I don’t have shame around it; instead, I openly tell people about my life decisions in hopes that they can take something away from it.
My ex-wife and I are still good friends. We talk often. It was my path. In the end, we got divorced, and I truly believe this was our path. I blew up my life to find myself in the rubble. I'm a better person for it now.
21. Good Looking Out
My ex-husband took advantage of me on my birthday, and I was extremely depressed after the incident. I began to realize that his behavior wasn't new and I just accepted that many of his actions in the past were products of his childhood trauma. I had justified it before, but I had still discussed it with him and asked him to change his behavior.
At some point, a co-worker who I'd become friends with noticed that I was extremely depressed and he sort of looked out for me. He struggled with depression and had it really bad in the past, so he knew that something was horribly wrong and began to check in with me every day. He'd also try to do things to cheer me up. Eventually, he confessed that he had feelings for me, and I confessed that I had feelings for him.
Nothing really came of it immediately afterward, and we didn't even talk outside of work (I only started once I had come to a solid decision I wanted a divorce). But my ex considers it an emotional affair and for the most part, I agree. I strongly think, however, that I may have ended myself if he hadn't shown me he cared. Later on, that coworker and I got together, after I'd separated from my ex and both of us got new jobs.
I am now happily divorced and he and I have been together for a year or so. It's the happiest, most uplifting, caring and loving relationship I've ever been in.
22. Wrong Decisions
I was having issues in my relationship. The girl I was with at the time (let’s call her Mary) said that we might be over because she wanted to be with someone who was religious. I went over to my friend's house to talk it out—her name was Kate and she was a good friend of mine. After talking to her about it for a while she convinced me that Mary would leave me and that there was no point in talking to her about it.
I was pretty upset about it, so she offered to hang out with me to distract me from everything because I really was in love with Mary at the time and wanted so badly for her to be the one. When Kate dropped me off later that night, she kissed me and from that moment, our closeness escalated even more over time. I should’ve said no and just tried to talk to Mary about it.
Kate later apologized for manipulating me, but man, I just should never have given in. It was never about Kate just being better than Mary. I loved her so much but I was convinced I’d lose her.
23. Love/Hate Story
I haven't had an affair, but I am the product of one. My mom married her first husband back in 1992. She was 22, and he was in his 40s. My mom, when she was younger, was a sucker for tall, dark, and handsome men, and older men, and this guy was both. Anyway, things were fine at first, but eventually, my mom was ready to settle down and start a family.
Her husband wasn't, even though he told her he was. He still went out partying and drinking all the time. About a year after they got married, my mom got pregnant with his baby, but the constant stress and drama of their arguing about his partying and drinking took an absolutely brutal toll. Sadly, she miscarried. Afterward, things continued to get volatile.
Her husband started an affair with a woman they both knew, but he denied it up and down. Then, during one particular argument, he actually pinned my mom to the wall by her throat. She pushed him off of her, screamed and cursed him out, and told him it was the last time he'd ever lay hands on her. A while later, on one fateful night, she met this army guy, who would eventually become my biological father.
They dated for a while, and after several months, my mom got pregnant with me. My biological dad wanted to marry my mom and have her move to Michigan with him, but she didn't want to, so they split. But that’s not the whole truth. The truth is, my mom only had an affair because she wanted to have a baby, and she knew it would never happen with her first husband.
She was upfront with her husband about the whole situation and told him everything. He said he would clean up, love, and raise me as his own. Needless to say, he didn't do that, and my mom took me and left him when I was only a year old. And she worked to take care of me all on her own, until nearly three years later when she met my stepfather. And the story doesn’t end there.
Later, I did meet my biological dad. It was when I was 13. After I spent a week with him and his family, he never talked to me again. That was something he promised my mom he wouldn't do when she was arranging for us to meet.
24. All Lies
I can tell you how my ex-wife’s affair started. A guy she knew was dumped by his girlfriend. He just needed someone to talk to and he confided in her. She told me I “didn’t need to worry about him” because he was fat and older, so she wouldn't be attracted to him. Suddenly, she stopped communicating with me and eventually started lying about being at his house.
I should point out she had cheated on me before, but this was her first affair. It was all really downhill from there. The funny thing is, I remember meeting the guy a couple of years earlier and I thought he was creepy a heck. I didn’t like him one bit. Turns out, that feeling was right. He's a creep.
25. Taking The Blame
I had an affair because I was a jerk who kept making excuses to do what I wanted to do. I didn't realize that the relationship I was in was not healthy at the time and I found another guy to have real, genuine fun with. I was telling myself that it wouldn't hurt anyone if no one found out and that I was just experimenting with being polyamorous.
The reality is that I cheated, plain and simple. It took me a long time after the relationship ended to realize what I had done and I feel terrible about it to this day.
26. Three Options
I spent more than a decade being completely used by my wife due to my naivete and sheltered upbringing. By the time I figured out it was okay to have my own needs and desires, I had a whole family that was completely dependent on me in every way with no support whatsoever from my wife. Everything you might suggest that I try to improve the relationship, I tried.
Multiple times, too. So I had a choice: 1) Live the rest of my life without my needs being considered and much less met 2) Divorce my wife and basically support her for the next 15 to 20 years, robbing my children of the opportunities I had spent a lifetime working for, or 3) Discreetly get my needs met by someone in the exact same situation.
I chose #3. I know that it's morally wrong. I wrestle with guilt and shame. But in my situation, it was the least bad option I had in my judgment.
27. Out Of The Blue
My ex had an affair. She ran an in-home daycare. One of the dads of kids was going through a divorce, and my ex, who was my wife at the time, helped him through it more than I knew. One day, she told me that she wanted a divorce. It seemed out of the blue to me...until I saw the two of them together when I followed her to her work one day.
28. Thank You, Next
I came back from Afghanistan with undiagnosed PTSD. My wife told me to "fix myself," so I did. I found someone who cared for me more than I could ever imagine. I regret the way I went about it, but now I have a three-year-old, a one-year-old, and an amazing 16-year-old stepson. We have all been together for ten years.
29. Craigslist Selection
A lot of people meet on Craigslist for affairs that end up being ongoing. My friend hooked up with a guy on Craigslist who turned out to be married with kids. My friend told him that he wanted to stop because he felt bad for his wife, and his response was: "Why? It's not like you know her personally." So I guess what my friend learned is that the world is full of people who won't think twice about cheating on their wives.
30. Girls First
I was the other woman. I ended up befriending him and his wife. She and I went to lunch one day and I spoke with her about open relationships. I told her she should try to date other people outside of her marriage if she wasn't happy...and she did. She left him a few months after I left him. Both of us did so because he treated us so poorly.
31. The Switcheroo
They were polyamorous. I was with both of them on a physical level. He eventually became jealous of the connection that she shared with me. He wanted things to go back to platonic friendship, but she ended up leaving him for me. Yikes.
32. Long Road Ahead
My affair resulted from a manic episode within a raging case of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. I felt like I had “so much love to give” that I couldn’t possibly bestow it all upon only one person. I wasn’t sleeping much, so 21 hours a day was open for courting. I pretty much ruined my marriage and my own life.
33. Fighting Temptation
I'm a paramedic. After sending a patient to the hospital, my co-worker and I stayed in the parked ambulance while the rest of the crew went to eat their lunch. We had worked with each other quite often and were quite close. He and I were chilling at the back and we just started talking. He told me, "Isn't it sad that the inside of the ambulance has only seen the loss of life but never the creation of one?" I thought it was a joke—but it was so much more.
I laughed and that's when he did it—he kissed me. I had a boyfriend at the time, but we still kept seeing each other. No matter how undeniable the sparks were, I still feel like a total jerk for giving into my co-worker's temptation.
34. Young, Wild, Free
My affair started after he told me I was a spineless worm for not standing up to my roommate. So I went and made out with a guy who had been interested in me for a while, then called my boyfriend back. I informed him that he wasn't going to want to visit me the following weekend because I had cheated on him. I lived a wild and wonderful single life for a while after that.
35. The Other Woman
I cheated on my ex not too long ago with a supervisor from work. I never really thought much about her except that she was cute. She invited me to her Halloween party. I was tipsy, but I’m not the type to use that as an excuse. She denies it, but I felt like the whole night was set up for her and me to hook up together. I noticed she kept bumping into me and I finally decided to follow up on my suspicions by subtly rubbing her back.
She kept trying to get some of us to watch a movie. She and I finally did and we didn’t take long to get to her room. We hung out the entire next day together at her place. I fessed up to my girlfriend and after a week or so, I decided to choose my supervisor over her. But there’s one thing that still haunts me. I'm still not sure if I made the wrong choice. Sometimes it still feels like I did...I keep wanting to call my ex because I miss her.
36. Room Full Of Stars
We worked together and spent many innocent late nights on projects, with oodles of tension between us. She went away for holiday with her husband to Egypt and I put a bunch of dayglo stars on her office ceiling. That blew her mind and somehow, she ended up back at my place. I fell in love...but in the end, she broke my heart.
She's still with him, and her husband still doesn't know she cheated on him with me.
37. Finding That Spark
I’ve been the “other woman” more than once. So many married men come to me for carefree adventures and relief. They’re usually more than seven years into their marriage and their wives punish them with a non-physical relationship. I don’t pretend to understand the pain either side feels, but to me, affairs stem from the need for passion and excitement.
Once you resign yourself to having lost being “in love” versus loving someone, a spark is gone. And once you find someone to reignite it, it’s intoxicating.
38. I've Made My Peace
I started flirting with people on Facebook when I didn't get the attention I so desperately needed from my partner at the time. He was actually so inattentive that I fooled around with this one guy almost every afternoon for about three months and he never knew. I was very young and inexperienced, and I know better now.
We are not together anymore—this happened about ten years ago, I don’t even speak to either one of them anymore. It’s not my proudest moment, but I can’t change it. I’ve made peace with the decision and I’m taking it to the grave.
39. New Beginnings
We met at work. We knew each other for 10 years before we started anything. Both of our marriages fell apart around the same time. There had always been a strong attraction between us and it just came together. We ended up living together for 12 years after that. We bought a house together, helped raise each other's kids, and remained close friends. It was totally the opposite of my first marriage.
40. No Regrets
My ex-husband cheated on me multiple times. I had resigned myself into thinking this was just how life was. After 11 years, I finally thought to myself, "Let me just see if it’s really me who's void inside or if he's the cause of that empty feeling." I made a profile on a cheating site and within 24 hours, this one guy messaged.
He and I had an instant connection—very similar interests, personalities, backgrounds, etc. I was able to feel things again and I decided I couldn’t live such an empty life. So I asked for a divorce. The guy I had the affair with was amazing and while it didn’t work out romantically, he is still my best friend. We have talked daily for the past two years and I’m currently dating a sweet guy who also gives me the feels.
I will say, in no way do I regret my affair. It was honestly the best thing for me and it helped me get out of my horrible situation.
41. Not Once, But Twice
I had been cheated on in two of my past relationships. Both girls left me completely devastated and they each went on to date the guy they cheated on me with. After that, I started seeing relationships as more of a casual thing and I figured my heart wouldn't be broken if I had someone else for when my own relationships inevitably fell apart.
At one point, I was dating two girls and getting intimate with four others at the same time. I know it sounds terrible, but I don't really regret it. It gave me confidence knowing I had a backup plan. I moved to a new city with a clean slate and married the first person I dated there. I never cheated on her, but I also learned not to be too much of a pushover.
42. Inside Joke
I'd like to think it started in the cramped lunchroom. With an extremely embarrassing moment. My co-worker needed to get past me and, this being in the morning, I was struggling with...well, that embarrassing thing that happens to guys in the morning. I leaned back as far as I could to make way for her to pass, but we still made unintentional contact with each other as there was no avoiding it.
We laughed it off and went our own ways. Then, seven months later, we had a group meeting and we laughed about our incident. Two weeks after that, we got tipsy and we shared an intimate moment at a party. We got together that night and while it was amazing, I immediately regretted it. All of that happened while I was still with my wife, and she did nothing to deserve that.
43. Pics Or It Didn't Happen
I was the other guy to a married woman. I won't go into details, but her marriage wasn't that great. We were friends at work and she was always flirty; just her nature. One day, she got piercings and she told me about them. Then she sent me pictures, completely out of the blue, and later showed me in person. It was all downhill from there.
I broke it off after a couple of months because I wasn't comfortable seeing her while she was married.
44. 0/10 Would Not Do Again
I cheated on my girlfriend in college with an old fling when I thought we were breaking up. As time went on, my old fling and I fell even more in love with each other. I got so sick with guilt and anxiety that I had to tell my girlfriend about what I was up to (which, I guess, was even more selfish of me). We tried to work it out and even got married.
Obviously, things didn't go as well after. I'm almost 40 now and I still regret it. I still get anxious about it sometimes. Not worth it. At all.
45. Left With No One
I was stuck in a relationship I hated, and I met the other girl in a club. It was awesome initially because the new girl was everything my girlfriend wasn't. She was passionate, fun, and spontaneous. I couldn't see a future with my girlfriend, so I decided to end it with her. I liked the new one too much to not tell her what I did, so I did.
She didn't want to be a part of the emotional baggage, and we parted ways somewhat amicably.
46. A Name Idea
My sister was unwittingly the other woman—and she found out in the worst way possible. It was when she went on vacation with the guy and his wife called his phone. The wife informed her that he was married with four kids. That was bad enough, but to add to the creep factor, his wife had just recently given birth and he named the child after our younger sister!
47. A Crazy Coincidence
My husband’s affair started shortly after we got married. We lived in an apartment complex and all the mailboxes were in the lobby area. I checked the mail while he was at work like I always did. I opened a card, not paying attention to who it was addressed to. Its contents were shocking. But the front of the card read: “I miss you in the morning, I miss you in the evening…” and the inside of the card read, “…but I especially miss you at night!”
There was also a drawing of a woman in bed wearing a negligée. And it was signed, “I miss you and love you,” with a woman’s name. When I saw it was addressed to my husband, my heart dropped. We had only been married for three months. So I immediately gathered all of his items and threw them into the hallway. He came home and tried to come into the door, but I had the chain lock on it. He was like, “What the heck is going on?”
I said, “Your girlfriend misses you. We’re over and you can go stay with her.” and I opened the door wide enough to throw the card and envelope into the hall. About 15 minutes later, there was a knock at my door. It was my next-door neighbor. I had seen him around, but we hadn’t made formal introductions yet. Well, I was in for an even bigger shock.
I opened the door and my husband was standing down the hallway. The neighbor said, “Hi, you accidentally got my mail today. MY NEIGHBOR HAD THE EXACT FIRST AND LAST NAME AS MY HUSBAND. He said, “My wife has been out of town on a business trip, she sent the card to me.” I said, “Nuh-uh, I don't believe it!” and shut the door on him.
Five minutes later, there was another knock at my door. I looked to see my next-door neighbor again, but this time, he was holding up his driver’s license and the card envelope. His license showed that he has the exact name as my husband, and the card envelope has their apartment number on it.
48. Spicy Romance
I was really into reading romantic stories online for my daily self-improvement. I wrote a few myself and would even chat on the discussion boards. There was an older woman in her late 30s with whom I chatted, and I found out she worked near my apartment. We arranged to meet during her lunch break and I went to pick her up.
She was like, "Let's skip lunch and go back to your place." We did this a few times a week for a few months—until I found out the truth about her. She was married. Not happily, but still married. She eventually stopped calling me or messaging me for lunch dates, which was fine because I was not about to arrange any more of them for us anyway.
49. Lesson Learned
In high school, I had a girlfriend who was as sweet as can be. I cheated on her with one of the popular girls at my school. I thought it was going to be a new relationship, but I was so wrong. It was just a fling. The popular girl ended up using me and then moved on. I ended up confessing to my girlfriend and her heart was broken.
Her mom yelled at me. I couldn't even talk to her after I broke her down. The feeling of being THAT guy was painful. I hated it and I never want to be that again. Nowadays, I'm too empathetic to betray someone I truly like. Her pain hurt me so much that it is a lesson I will never forget. I have been cheated on since, so I guess that's my karma.
Instead of revenge cheating, I just end the relationship right there.
50. Where My Heart Leans
My co-worker introduced me to her single friend, and I eventually married her. But the entire time, I was hiding something. I was more interested in my co-worker. At some point, I let her know that, and we started an affair. It went on for a few years. Hotels, training rooms, quiet rooms, vehicles...it was amazing. But as time went on, I started feeling pretty guilty.
The pandemic ended up coming at a good time because it forced me and my co-worker to separate from each other for a little while. My wife still doesn't know.
Sources: Reddit,
