There’s nothing better than being in a safe, loving relationship. You have a best friend, confidant and biggest fan all in one, and you never have to worry about scrolling through dating apps or creating a cringey profile ever again. As long as your relationship doesn’t crash and burn due to infidelity, that is...
One 2021 study found that between 30-60% of married individuals will cheat at some point, and 74% of men admitted that they would have an affair if they knew they wouldn’t be caught. So to remind all of you pandas out there that karma always catches up to cheaters, we’ve got some wild stories down below. Redditors have been detailing the craziest ways unfaithful partners have been caught in their lies, so enjoy scrolling through. And keep reading to find a conversation with Rebecca Williams, LMFT, Couples Therapy Expert and Owner of Inland Empire Couples Counseling!
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His mom called me to ask if we could put the cat inside while we were at her place, she saw my ex’s car in her driveway on her Ring camera and saw “us” go in. I was not with him, as he told me he was going to the grocery store. Turns out he was taking his side piece to his Mommy’s house while she was at work. She promptly sent me the video. She may have been a not so great MIL but she doesn’t play well with cheaters 😂
In an argument she insisted that I randomly changed my opinion on Mike and Ikes because I used to despise them and now I suddenly love them? She was going on about something related to me hating the texture (chewy candy is my favourite) and wouldn't drop it.
I always absolutely loved Mike and Ikes, even though they're overly sweet and kinda cheap, they're delicious. They're an import item here in the UK you have to buy somewhere like Costco, so it's often a rare and pricey treat.
So obviously very strange that my girlfriend of seven months doesn't know this about me, or has it wrong. I thought she was either psychotic or trying to gaslight me, but it was worse than that.
The other thing is though, I realised when hanging out with one of my coworkers he said that he was absolutely disgusted by jelly beans and all other chewy candy when I offered him some. That's when it hit.
She got us mixed up, and she'd been f*****g him the entire time. He didn't know either, so we broke up with her and are still friends to this day. Sometimes he reads my posts so hey Jason!
My Auntie heard from her hairstylist that her husband was cheating on her. She found the address of the affair partner and went on google earth. Her husbands truck was in the driveway when google earth had taken the picture.
To gain some insight on this topic from an expert, we reached out to Rebecca Williams, LMFT. Rebecca is a Couples Therapy Expert and the Owner of Inland Empire Couples Counseling in Southern California, offering online couples therapy and couples therapy retreats, and she was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda about cheating.
"It's hard to say definitively how common cheating is because it's something many people don't talk about or don't admit to," Rebecca shared. "And not all couples or individuals have the same definition for what counts as cheating. We've seen survey results that report that 15-20% of people surveyed admitted to cheating."
One of my exes told on himself, lol.
I was trying to plan a surprise party for him, so I was definitely being secretive. I was excited, and on my phone a lot trying to organize everyone and finish preparations.
He started acting weird (I expected it a little, all things considered). Then he was accusatory. I kept reassuring him and made little hints, but he lost his damn mind at one point. He kept escalating, and I was getting the feeling something was wrong.
The night before the party, he confessed angrily. Said he knew I was cheating on him, but it’s okay because he had been f*****g his coworker for months. I just walked out. Told everyone to show up tomorrow anyway. Let them in, watched his face turn pale white, told him this was why I was secretive and I wished him well with his side piece in front of everyone, and left.
It was awful, but man I’m so glad I found out. I didn’t suspect a thing, though I’ll admit I was overly trusting and naive in my past lol.
Some people will cheat on you, other won´t. Trust and naiveness don´t play a part here.
Wife went on a business trip that she SWORE was on her own. Called her hotel room late one night, no answer. Called the hotel front desk and asked if they could connect me to name-of-someone-she-worked-with, and they put me right through. He answered the phone, and when I told him to put her on, he handed it to her.
"What I do know is that it is possible for relationships to heal from cheating," the expert continued. "You might be surprised to find out that there are people you know how have experienced infidelity in their relationships and recovered from it."
"When a couple heals from infidelity and stays together, it's not usually something they joke about over dinner with friends," Rebecca added. "So if you're in a place where your partner has cheated and you're wondering if you're crazy to want to stay, you're not. Lots of couples are able to recover successfully."
One time when I knew my ex was cheating and I was trying to get him to admit it so I could break up with him, he started sending screen shots of our texts to show me “how crazy I was being” - one of those screenshots had the little box at the bottom of the text chat of his camera roll open I guess while he was sending me the screenshots.
There was a picture of another girl, pics of him at her house, etc.
I actually laughed out loud when I saw it-something about him trying to convince me I’m insane while simultaneously sending me evidence by accident was weirdly hilarious.
My fiancée got drunk one night and started talking about how much she enjoyed the sex we had last night. I was working last night….
I get mundane dreams at times. About regular stuffs. After a day or two, I get confused whether it happened really or I dreamt. I never drinks. I hope the poor girl didn't have a similar scenario
Rebecca also says that cheaters don't always get caught. "Sometimes things happen that a partner never knows about."
But that doesn't mean that a cheater's actions won't have any impact on their relationship. "I do believe that cheating always has consequences," the expert noted. "The consequences might be distance or disconnection in the relationship, lack of intimacy or even the ending of the relationship."
My ex lived in an apartment 15 miles away. The night in question at approx 1am, a neighbor of hers accidentally fired a round while cleaning his gun. The bullet went through their mutually shared wall, through another, and lodged in her refrigerator.
The cops were called by another neighbor and she ended up with a police report and stuff. I ended up reading the police report and it mentioned her and a guys name I didn’t know were reported in bed at her place at the time of the accidental discharge.
She confessed right there she had a f**k buddy. 1.5 yr relationship down the drain.
Figuratively shot through the heart and she's to blame. She bloody gives love a bad name... -_-
I was at work and a buddy was scrolling through match dot com while we chatted. Up pops a picture of my girlfriend. In my living room where she lived.
I went home, logged into the computer and pulled up her profile. Shut off the screen saver and went up to my room. I heard her come in, start crying and leave again. The next day when I came home from work all her s**t was gone.
Rebecca also shared some advice for anyone who believes their partner may be cheating on them. "If you suspect your partner is cheating and you want to end the relationship anyway, seriously consider ending [it]," she told Bored Panda. "I trust that you'll consider all the consequences of the breakup, but take care of yourself, prioritize your own wellbeing, and kindly walk away. If you know you don't want to be in the relationship AND you suspect cheating, going down the road to try to find evidence of it will only cause you a lot of pain and wasted energy."
He left his phone in the bathroom and she texted “I’m pregnant what are we gonna do?”
That must of sucked edit you people realize that everyone doesn't talk like they have a freaking dictionary on hand 24 /7 everyone talks differently but here are some different ways to say this ( that sucks ,that really sucks oh man that really must suck and , that must've sucked or finally that must have sucked.Freaking grammar Nazis downvote if u must
His mom told me.
"On the other hand, if you suspect cheating and you want to keep the relationship, talk to your partner," Rebecca says. "Have some open conversations about what's working and not working in the relationship."
"You might be right about the cheating, or your brain might suspect cheating as the reason for some other problems in the relationship, which may or may not be true," she noted. "Identify where there is disconnection, unhappiness, or distance and make a plan to close those gaps. Get the help of a trained couples therapist if this is something you think you can't do on your own."
I walked in on him with our landlord.
It was also how he came out of the closet. Super fun.
This reminds me of something that happened to this guy I know. So, lets get into it, my friend was renting this two bedroom flat really cheap in a good area of London, Zone 1, it was amazing how cheap it was.. well, one day he had left for work and forgot something, he came back to find his landlord with some guy he'd met off grindr. Turns out the landlord had been using my mates flat as his shag pad.
Many years ago I was visiting my GF in her city, we were long distance. She had a roommate, we'll call her Sandy, who was one of her best friends. One night, we had all gone out with some other people, drank, had a good time, and we were back at the apartment asleep. Sandy had still been out when my gf and I crashed.
I wake up to my GF's phone ringing. Quickly grab it to make it stop, screen says Sandy is calling. I didn't hesitate at all, answered her phone, thought maybe Sandy was locked out or needed a ride who knows. On the other end of the phone was a man, looking for my GF. I'm like, who the f**k are you, he, likewise wants to know who the f**k I am. My girlfriend finally wakes up to me basically yelling at this dude on the phone.
One huge messy fight later. "Sandy" on the phone was the guy she was always texting. And regularly f*****g, mind you. She saved him as her best friend's name so she could freely text in front of me so I wouldn't be suspicious. Pretty slick tactics.
"Sometimes we suspect cheating and we are totally right. And other times, because of our own past histories or insecurities, we suspect cheating and we're wrong," the expert added. "If you find that you're always suspicious of a partner cheating even without any evidence, your brain is likely trying to protect you from experiencing the pain of cheating again."
"Your brain has become vigilant, always looking for signs of cheating even when they aren't there," Rebecca explained. "If this sounds like you, there's hope. Find an experienced trauma therapist (someone who uses somatic therapies, EMDR, or Brainspotting) and they can help you heal. We don't want to see the pain of the past harm your current relationships too."
If you'd like to hear more wise words from Rebecca or the rest of her team, be sure to check out Inland Empire Couples Counseling.
ex and i shared a bank account. one day the bank called me to approve an over limit amount… at an escort service in Nevada.
My (now-ex) husband used our joint account credit card to pay for an escort.
A colleague of mine was out doing shopping, when she ran into a family friend who happens to be a police officer. She asked how he was doing and he said he was good but that he was tired because they were out all night looking for a car that fled from a known drug and p********e spot. He mentioned that they never found the suspect but that during the chase the suspects car hit a curb and lost its front bumper so they were on the lookout for a white sedan without a front bumper. Later that evening her husband returned from an “out of town” business trip without his front bumper. He had a white sedan.
Back in college my then gf went on a study abroad trip to Italy for 6 weeks and I lived out in CA for a summer. She had filled me in on some cool experiences while over there and one of them just didn’t sit right with me. She had gone bike riding with 2 guys she met at a hostel one day and since she was away from WIFI we had no way of communicating.
Fast forward to when she meets me in CA to start a road trip home, she tells me that she had gotten into poetry while over there. On the first day, she’s driving and telling me that her poems are in her notes and at about the third one my jaw dropped. It was a VERY in depth poem about riding bikes and getting double teamed by two European guys. After confronting her about it, her excuse was that it was just a way to express herself through poetry and that it never actually happened. B******t.
Longest road trip of my life.
Fast forward even more to the next summer and my new girlfriend tells me she is going on a 6 week study abroad trip to the same city in Italy. I had reservations but ultimately was happy and supportive to her. Only when she got back did I bring up my bad experience with my ex. Long story short, we talked almost every day and have been dating for 6 years now, and soon to be engaged.
So don’t let one s****y experience ruin what could be a life changing one!
My boyfriend at the time wished me happy birthday randomly one day in July. My birthday is in April. He tried to play it off as a joke when I was confused, but I later found out that he was still seeing the woman that he claimed was his ex, and he had our birthdays and other info in his calendar to try to keep everything straight. He slipped up and wished me happy birthday on her birthday.
My ex brother in law had affair with a woman same name as his wife so was easy to not mix up names unlike the woman before
I'm a guy. My ex went out with his mates to the local gay bar. Met him for brunch the next day, and he was telling me how much fun he had and how drunk everyone got (nothing wrong with that, we were young and I also went out a lot). Anyway, he started showing me pictures from the previous night and I realized he was wearing the same clothes that he came to brunch with. Same t-shirt, same shorts, same shoes, same everything. I jokingly made a comment about it and he froze for 2 seconds before awkwardly laughing it off. That set off alarm bells and after some prodding, he admitted he went back home with another guy, stayed there overnight, and then came to meet me.
He did say he closed his eyes and was thinking of me the entire time he was f*****g the other guy, as if that was of any comfort 😂
We went to the same college. He was emailing me an assignment to look over for him to make sure it looked professional. I noticed the email was in a woman's name. He had forgotten to let her log off of his computer. That made me suspicious, so I waited until he was asleep, went on his phone and got solid proof, sent it to myself. Kicked his a*s out of bed and to the curb.
The woman he was cheating on me with looked at my LinkedIn profile. They’d worked together, so I asked him about it, and knew instantly from his reaction what was going on.
We'd been together just under a year. One day I was talking to my close friend and mentioned being excited to go to the movies with him. She looked super confused and said "You're still together?" Now both of us were totally confused and she just pulled out her phone and showed me a pic on the Instagram of a girl we both knew. My boyfriend was in the pic kissing her and the caption said something along the lines of "Life's easy when you have the best boyfriend in the world by your side." I was floored.
It turned out the everyone in our friend group knew. Most of them assumed I was just handling the break up super well and didn't want to pry because I'm a very private person and didn't really talk about my personal life too much. Others knew he was cheating and didn't say a word when I brought him up in conversation as my boyfriend.
To this day I think back and cringe. I felt like a complete idiot.
He tried sexting his brother’s ex-girlfriend. Claimed I was too sick to engage in those activities (to be fair at the time I had just gotten out of the hospital from septic shock, double kidney infection, and multiple other complications) and that I had “given him permission” to seek pleasure elsewhere. She screenshotted everything and sent it to me. He knew we were still friends at the time so I was shocked he attempted something like this with someone he knew I talked to frequently.
She drove two hours down to our residence to confront him with me there. He was such a deer in headlights when she showed up and we were all patiently waiting for him to come inside to confront him. I gave him back his engagement ring then and there.
I'm never sure of the proper protocol to "out" a no good lying cheater with a bad case of bastarditis. But creating the "deer in the headlights" moment does always sound astisfying.
Through an iPad lol. Apple can sync messages between devices, but at the time in 2012ish, it was a novel thing so not everyone had two Apple devices nor allowed them to sync. My ex did. While on her iPad watching some dumb video, I saw a message pop up from a girl named “Leslie” (not her real name) asking what song my ex wanted to hear next time. It was kind of weird, but I assumed they met at some girls night out thing recently and became new friends, so whatever. Until she started replying from her phone in another room with a selfie she took of her half naked saying something like “here’s some inspiration.” Turns out “Leslie” was a dude. Not just some dude, but a skinhead who wore a kilt and played the bass in some cheesy metal tribute band.
On a girls night out, one of her trashy friends took her to a dive bar where he was playing. They got wasted and hooked up and for a few months had a secret relationship going. So every time she had another “girls night out” where she would crash at “her friends house,” she was going out to bang him. So yeah, I got cheated on with a kilt wearer whose life aspirations included living in Santa Rosa, CA, breeding pit bulls, and working part-time as overnight security. They’re still together AFAIK living with his grandma. Through a mutual friend, she said the reason she cheated was because “he was in a bad spot and I needed to help him.” I guess having multiple felonies and being a racist is somehow irresistible lol.
Honestly, I had a series of dreams of her cheating on me. I started to snoop lightly and found texts, emails, pictures of it within a short period of time. I guess my unconscious picked it up?
The passenger seat of his truck was reclined all the way back and her sunglasses were still in the cup holder.
One day I was out at a vet with my dog, and he found a lipstick on his way back to the car. Good thing I've spotted it before he ate it up (would had to go back to the vet until he vomited it) or forgot about it (would had to go back to my mother's house until divorce settled)
The dog was playing with a notebook, didn’t look like a diary or anything. I pick it up, first page had a list of names, I didn’t recognize some of them. Her ex was before my name, my name was before someone else.
we were on a doctor's appointment, i was 3 months pregnant with our child. he was a happy father-to-be, or so i thought.
it was the first time we heard our baby's heartbeat. on our drive home, he was very quiet without even a hint of excitement on his face. that triggered me to investigate his social media accounts until i saw this girl with his comment of a heart emoji.
i messaged the girl and she said that they are in a relationship.
long story short - i got out of the relationship, gave birth to my baby, & they are still together. still waiting for karma to do its wonders.
I was driving, he was sitting in the back with the baby. I could see his phone screen in the baby mirror.
My ex said she wanted to go out by herself on a Saturday afternoon. Said she was gonna go fishing. I stayed at her parents', and started to get worried when it got dark and she wasn't back yet. So I called her, and there was silence on the other end. She said she was in a park, but the silence clearly felt like she was indoors. Suddenly I hear what sounded like a small dog barking in the background, and I could swear it echoed?? She said it was someone walking a dog. I said ok, kinda in denial. I knew she was lying, just didn't know why.
Fast forward to a week later, I found some weird parking tickets assigned to our car's plate number in an app the city provided for parking purposes. Strange hours, car parked for way too long in a parking meter downtown, always the same spot, next to a residential apartment building, early in the morning and during work hours. And during the afternoon she said she had gone fishing.
I went on to look up her Facebook to find out who she was seeing behind my back, found her boss' profile, and lo and behold, he had a small dog with him in one of the pics. The same kind of dog I heard on the phone a week before. I also found a picture taken right in front of the building where our car had gotten those parking tickets. And that was it. When I confronted her, she started a very weird routine of admitting and then denying it, which drove me crazy for months. I forgave her, but it kept happening, and eventually it led to a divorce
TLDR; Found out my ex-wife was cheating because of a small dog barking and parking tickets
He received a letter in the mail for christmas with her panties in it
Sometimes it's the most mundane things that tip you off. My first husband liked to wear a type of sock made of some stretchy fabric prone to static cling. I had returned from a weekend trip to visit family, and was putting away some laundry. His sock drawer had a couple pairs of socks with long golden blonde hair clinging to them. I had short brown hair. And then other times the reveal is a shock, like years later, remarried, I answered the home phone and a young man asked for my husband. I politely asked who was calling. He told me he was the son of my husband's girlfriend, calling to inform him of her death in an auto crash. He was emotionally just blurting out the awful words. I handed the phone to my husband of 12 years and said "it's for you." No, I never remarried.
Our lifelong neighbours. They had been married for 20+ years. Husband (a prestigious doctor) was close to his 50's. One day the wife noticed that he changed all his underwear for the same type their late-teen son had. Weird but ok. Then he got also same t-shirts as the son (he always wore buttoned shirts). Then he started to get angry easily on her for silly things. When she confronted him, he said she was crazy. Then she got an STD from him. Again, he blamed her. People close to her started to tell her that they saw him in town with very young nurses. Every confrontation ended up with him insisting she was crazy. He started telling people that she was having a maniac episode (she had no mental illnesses). She was so confused that started losing sense of reality. She decided to divorce him. The same week after divorce he moves in with a very young nurse. He has always denied the cheating and still insists she was mentally insane. She is now super happy, and enjoying life single.
Sometimes it's the most mundane things that tip you off. My first husband liked to wear a type of sock made of some stretchy fabric prone to static cling. I had returned from a weekend trip to visit family, and was putting away some laundry. His sock drawer had a couple pairs of socks with long golden blonde hair clinging to them. I had short brown hair. And then other times the reveal is a shock, like years later, remarried, I answered the home phone and a young man asked for my husband. I politely asked who was calling. He told me he was the son of my husband's girlfriend, calling to inform him of her death in an auto crash. He was emotionally just blurting out the awful words. I handed the phone to my husband of 12 years and said "it's for you." No, I never remarried.
Our lifelong neighbours. They had been married for 20+ years. Husband (a prestigious doctor) was close to his 50's. One day the wife noticed that he changed all his underwear for the same type their late-teen son had. Weird but ok. Then he got also same t-shirts as the son (he always wore buttoned shirts). Then he started to get angry easily on her for silly things. When she confronted him, he said she was crazy. Then she got an STD from him. Again, he blamed her. People close to her started to tell her that they saw him in town with very young nurses. Every confrontation ended up with him insisting she was crazy. He started telling people that she was having a maniac episode (she had no mental illnesses). She was so confused that started losing sense of reality. She decided to divorce him. The same week after divorce he moves in with a very young nurse. He has always denied the cheating and still insists she was mentally insane. She is now super happy, and enjoying life single.