In the wake of the Coldplay kisscam saga, a Herald reader shares her story of betrayal. Photo / Getty Images
In the wake of the Coldplay kisscam saga, a Herald reader shares her story of betrayal.
It had been a tumultuous five years.
We’d had a great courtship – movie dates, dinner dates, lots of laughs, him driving all the contact and affection. Then early on in our relationship, I fell pregnant and his mask fell to the floor. From the moment I told him the news, he was a completely different person.
Here came the control, the devaluation, the chipping away at my self-esteem, the desire to dictate every aspect of my pregnancy and plan to dictate everything in the future about this little human we were bringing into the world.
Physically my pregnancy (at 39 years old) was great, mentally it was torture. In the later stages of my pregnancy, I ended up in hospital overnight with some concerns and an indication that things weren’t as they should be. This was during the beginning of Covid times, so I had to endure this entirely alone.
He picked me up the next morning and as we drove home, I began to cry – from worry, from being overwhelmed, from an entire night devoid of sleep. He calmly and nonchalantly said: “Your crying has no effect on me. If it was my mum crying, sure; but not you.” And this is representative of the continual psychological abuse he dished out every day.
Things only got worse when our baby was born. He made sure his own wellbeing was prioritised and that he got his eight hours’ sleep by moving into the spare room and doing as little as possible to help.
Skip forward two years and my sister was diagnosed with an aggressive and incurable brain tumour. His approach to support was non-existent. He took pleasure in periodically reminding me that “she’s going to die so you might as well just accept that”.
My sister endured two years of surgery and gruelling chemo and radiation, and my parents and I painfully watched everything that made her who she was slowly disappear. Then, one October, her condition deteriorated quickly and she went to hospital for the last time.
I spent every day with her for the next three months, trying to make the most of what little precious we had left. I would come home at night, exhausted, depressed and helpless, and he wouldn’t ask how she was doing or even acknowledge the trauma I was immersed in. He preferred to guilt-trip me that I was spending too much time away from our baby.
Each year, we had an extended family holiday at Christmas. This particular year, with my sister only weeks or even days away from dying, he saw things no differently. While I couldn’t possibly leave my sister for a whole week, his holiday had to forge ahead.
I suggested he go and spend the first three days there before we joined him. Well, he didn’t spend them alone – he met a woman through some mutual friends, went on a dinner date with her the following night, then proceeded to execute a secret, emotional affair made easy by Instagram.
When I discovered this, it wasn’t just a message here or there. It was hundreds – if not thousands – adding up to constant contact, day and night.
My sister passed away a month later. Two months later, he ended our relationship. But during the almost three months prior, I had noticed things. The extreme and sudden guarding of his phone – taking it for every bathroom visit, changing the PIN, changing all notification settings so there was no indication who the messages were from. Then there was the Viagra prescription found on the bed when I came home early one day. The foundation smears and lipstick on the collar when he arrived home the next morning after being away for a friend’s party (conveniently, an outer circle friend I had never met).
Then one night, my determination took hold and I was going to find out one way or another. While he took up his nightly residence on the couch with phone in hand, and after I had put our child to bed, I crept out into the cold and dark and positioned myself perfectly to peer through the window and read over his shoulder. And there it was. The woman he’d met during that small window of my absence while I was caring for my dying sister in hospital, discussing their next liaison.
What followed was a whole lot of denial, justification, gaslighting, lies and serious ongoing bullshit, but the facts don’t lie and the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. His inability to accept what he did as an outright affair (because “they didn’t sleep together until after we’d separated”) is likely due to vocalising his disgust towards his own father’s behaviour throughout the years of his parents’ marriage.
The hurt never seems to end there and, as they say, it takes two to tango. It transpired that the other woman knew about me, knew why I wasn’t there the night they met and no doubt thinks I’m the toxic psycho he’s convinced her that I am (classic narcissist rhetoric once they’ve been caught).
She ended the relationship with him after almost a year but I know they’re still in contact.
The Coldplay kisscam saga was quite triggering, although the stolen opportunity for Andy Byron to spin an alternative narrative was something I felt a little envious of. To this day, my ex continues to publicly deny what he did, and convince people of his innocence, playing the poor solo dad victim role.
The gravity of this betrayal at unquestionably the worst point in my life continues to haunt me. Losing my sister (my only sibling), then suddenly spending only half of my child’s life with him, all while witnessing the depths of grief of my completely devastated parents, has felt like blow after blow.
Cheating is devastating. The long-term effects are far-reaching, and at this point in my life, I feel far too damaged to ever trust a man again. Regardless of how nasty and abusive he was throughout our relationship, I honestly never believed it would end with an affair.