I was once dating a prominent New Zealand sportsman during the peak of his high-profile career. He would take me to games, red carpet events and I’d spend time with his family. It was very clear to the outside world that I was “the girlfriend” in this man’s life. That was until I walked past a news-stand and on the cover of a popular women’s magazine was this man announcing his engagement to another woman. Despite his telling me: “That was ages ago! They must have pulled an old story for the cover,” I let common sense prevail, dumped him and told the other woman. I’ve heard he’s been engaged another three or four times since, all of which, shockingly, didn’t work out.
I had been dating a guy for more than five years. We were young, but definitely committed and had lived together in Christchurch. I had moved to Auckland for work and decided to be fun and surprise him by turning up in Christchurch for an unannounced visit. I arrived at his house to find a distinctive car in the driveway – I knew instantly it belonged to a woman he’d gone through school with. It was odd, because she was in a relationship too. I tried desperately not to overthink it and approached the door which led straight from the outside of his house, into his bedroom. I walked in, flung the curtain back, and found the two of them ... busy. Needless to say, I was devastated, we broke up in pretty messy circumstances, and the two of them ended up together and having children. I think I ultimately dodged the bullet, but it was still horrendously painful at the time.
My fiance and I had set the date, booked the venue and were working through our to-do list for our wedding less than a year away. One night, he was on his laptop and I was on my iPad – both were connected to the same Apple account, and his Facebook messenger notifications started popping up on my screen. They were from a woman he went to university with more than 20 years earlier in England, who had got back in touch with him out of the blue. I was only seeing the start of her messages, but she was saying things like “wow, you don’t sound very happy”, “you deserve better than that”, and other quite bewildering things – we were VERY happy, thank you very much. Or so I thought.
I asked him what was going on and – after much lying and trying to weasel his way out of it – he confessed that he was having an emotional affair, he’d fallen in love with her, and he didn’t want to marry me anymore. I was completely blindsided.
He moved out not long after, proceeded to gaslight me mercilessly, and started making plans for her to come over from England to stay with him.
After a few months of my absolute heartbreak, shock and confusion, I was starting to recover when – of course! – he got back in touch, said he’d made a terrible mistake, and asked if he could see me.
I’d love to say I turned him down but, despite myself, I still loved him and gave him another shot. We went back and forth for another two months – we would start to get back together, then I would back off, realising I wasn’t ready to trust him yet. The final straw came when we met for coffee to discuss setting up couples’ counselling. It was at this point he revealed he’d been sleeping with someone else all the time we were trying to work things out.
This time I was furious, and vowed never to see or speak to him, ever again. I stuck to it and now realise what a lucky escape I had. If we’d got married, we would definitely be divorced by now.
Perhaps a common event, but I was alerted to my partner’s cheating by a text from the woman he was seeing. I was out for a drink with a friend at the time and on checking my phone and reading the short novel, I got that feeling where it feels like your heart has stopped and your blood goes cold. It turned out it had been going on for more than a year.
While supposedly on regular business trips, he was actually seeing this woman. She said she was aware of my “past” relationship with him, but had only just found out he was still seeing me and thought I should know. I had been “seeing” him for six years.
I immediately rang her to clarify and confirm, which she did by forwarding me what could politely be described as a photo of his privates, and I recognised the view. A few more calls to discuss our mutual devastation over the coming days, led to us thinking there could be more women and after a little detective work, we found two more and kindly let them know about his dalliances. There were probably more.
I did send a message to our group chat that we both used to arrange regular catch ups with friends, apologising that I wouldn’t make it to drinks the next night as I needed to go to the STD clinic and briefly outlined why. It was more the embarrassment that would cause him and a small public “f*** you”. It made me feel better.
Yes, I confronted him. Yes, it was ugly. No, he didn’t apologise. Yep, better off without him.
We were in our late 20s, engaged, and had been together for almost 10 years. We were the stable couple in our friend group – but still had a lot of laughs and affection. The couple that everyone (including me) thought would be together forever.
We had moved to London for my job and my career was soaring. Initially, he struggled to get work and spent a lot of time partying – I supported him financially and we worked through it. Or so I thought.
One night we were lying in bed talking and my head was on his chest. I can’t remember exactly how the topic turned to cheating. Maybe we were talking about a friend? For some reason, I asked him if he’d ever cheated on me. Honestly, I never thought he had, so I’m not sure why I asked it. But his heart started racing. I could hear it thumping through his chest and I just knew. I sat up and looked at him and asked again – and he confessed everything. It absolutely broke my heart.
The only person I told was my best friend. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t tried to deal with it on my own but I was in shock. We tried to go back to normal but the trust was gone.
We eventually broke up about a year later and it was actually because I cheated on him and then told him. I didn’t do it for revenge – it was more that it gave me the confidence to leave him.
I got a message saying “thank you for the titty photo”. I hadn’t sent one.
My first live-in boyfriend came clean about cheating on me when the other woman threatened to tell me herself. He then proceeded to offer to pay for me to get therapy so I could get over it, but claimed he didn’t need therapy as he had processed everything and wanted to stay together.
Safe to say he is now an ex-boyfriend.