How To Catch A Cheating Partner — With These 15 Helpful Catch-A-Cheat Stories

Hey there, Steve here and welcome to this week’s private eye post.

Let’s face it, there’s never a good way to find out that your partner is cheating on you.

Below, you’ll learn the top 4 ways people find out that their partner is doing the dirty, and then I’ll share with you the single best way to discover what’s going on, and explain why.

To add some colour and context, as well as help demonstrate each point, I sourced some stories from Reddit, here and here.

Disclaimer: This information is for general education purposes. It will not apply in all situations. For help with your individual situation, please contact us or use the live chat feature on this page.

#1 The “Other” Person

In at number one is being told by the person who your partner is cheating with. It happens surprisingly often!

User: Mcmelon17

Her boyfriend got tired of being the other guy and he (rudely) told me everything I needed to know

User: je_ff

Got a Facebook message from some lady telling me that my fiancée was a homewrecker. Apparently my ex was sleeping with this woman’s husband, and she was divorcing her husband because of it. Fortunately this happened the weekend before our wedding, so I dodged a bullet.

User: totspur1982

Dated for 2 years until one day, out of the blue she says she’s not happy anymore and breaks up with me. It sucked but I figured it was for the best if she wasn’t happy.

About a week after we had broken up I saw her at the bar with some guy who she sheepishly admitted she was on a date with. Later that night I end up standing next to him ordering drinks. He apologized to me for the awkwardness.

“yeah it’s just weird since we’ve only been broken up for a few days and she’s already dating.”

He pauses “…..a few days? She and I have been seeing each other for like three months now.”

We stared at each other for second. And then my ex comes running up to pull him away from me. He shrugged her off and told her to go f—k herself and then left the bar.

That’s how I found out my ex had been cheating on me for 3 months before apparently guilt took hold and she broke up with me.

Update: I bumped into the other guy a few months later at a bar and we actually talked about it. It was weird hearing about it from his perspective. In his mind he had thought she was just really flaky but after speaking to me it just all clicked for him. And we went through some of the times when he couldn’t reach her because she was with me and vice versa. Not sure how I didn’t pick up on it. Either way I’m happily married now and I think she had to move home and live with her mom.

User: ScarletRue

I already was suspicious for a few months that something was going on with her new coworker, but she always said I was just jealous and there was nothing to worry about. One night she told me she is going out with a bunch of coworkers, including him. I don’t like the idea, but I can’t force her to not go. So I watch her shave her whole body, put her best clothes on and some perfume (she never used perfume, she had bought it recently). I wait for her, drowning my thoughts in vodka all night. She doesn’t come home until 4 in the morning, when I finally fall asleep. When I wake up the next day she acts like nothing happens. I decide to believe her and let it go.

Fast forward 3 days later. I am at an important convention for work and her coworkers wife calls me in tears, because a friend of hers had seen them in a bar, fully getting it on. I call my gf and she just says she doesn’t know what to tell me. Turns out it was a date, not a get together with all the coworkers. So I’m completely falling apart at this venue, trying desperately to hold myself together until I can excuse myself and cry hysterically behind the building.

The coworkers wife was a childhood friend of my gf and the two had just married a few weeks ago. In vegas and all, her parents paid for everything. I was together with my gf for almost 8 years at that point.

The cheaters are now happy together and have a family. I still hope that one day one of them will cheat on the other and they have a dirty divorce. I will celebrate with champagne when the day comes.

#2 The Technical Glitch

It’s no surprise that the internet opened up a whole new way of dating and made cheating easier. But it can catch them out without warning, as these users highlight…

User: kjlo5

iMessage linked to her computer. I was on her computer buying stuff off Amazon and she was sitting on the couch, feet from me, texting her ex. He was trying to get her to send him nudes and they were reminiscing about previous encounters. He was bragging about how he made her “leg shake” all the while I was watching the conversation in real time, right next to her. My adrenaline kicked in and I simply closed the computer and left the house without saying a word. This was over a year ago and I’m still fighting her for custody of our children.

User: pmcanc123

Asked me to fix something on her iPad…emails with airfare confirmations to see her ex boyfriend on the other side of the country popped up.

User: NorthMahkato

My wife tried calling and didn’t hang up once it went to voicemail. She accidentally left a 2:45 VM. The VM consisted of her and her BF talking shit about me and how much happier she was with him.

At the time I was home with our kids and I thought she was 1,800 miles away to be with her dying father. Two years later we are divorced and her father is still alive.

User: MirrorshieldOP

She needed a new phone so I put it in my name since I was working, 2 hours after leaving the store and having lunch with me joking about how excited she was to get married I found a photoreel full of pictures she had been exchanging with her ex whilst transferring her stuff to her new phone.

I put 2 and 2 together and opened her text inbox and surprise! She had been texting him for months and f—king him for a few weeks.

#3 Figure It Out – Detective Work

Figuring out that your partner is cheating is hard. First you have to suspect them for some reason, and then you have to work out how you might catch them out.

User: Deleted.

I counted the pictures.

This was in 2000, before everyone had a camera on their phone and you had to get your holiday snaps developed at the Walgreens photo lab.

She brought home the pictures of her vacation to see her “old high school friend” in Vegas, but there was something missing. See, back in the day the rolls of film were made up of exposures of 12, 24, 36 pics, etc. depending on the film you bought.

I went through the photos and it didn’t add up. Literally. The 24 exposure roll only had 18 pics. Eventually I found the remaining photos…her and the new boyfriend looking happy.

User: iamfallen

Small changes in behavior, dress, and grooming habits… for working the closing shift at a fast food restaurant. Followed her to a motel after she got out of work and confronted them. Kicked her out shortly after(I tried to make it work) and eventually filed for divorce after finding out how miserable she was without him on a solo trip out of state (I paid for to “help her find herself again”) . Bad times. Basically became a solo parent while she found herself. She found herself alright. Found herself pregnant before the divorce was even final.

User: HoustonPhotog

I was married for about 6 months and something just wasn’t right… Finally one day her and I were driving in her car to her parents for an event and once I got there I dropped her off and said I wasn’t feeling well, that I was going to go back home instead of staying. On my way home I stopped at a grocery store parking lot and tore her car apart…. Finally found a cell phone hidden behind the trunk liner.

Turned it on and read the text messages. All of the texts she sent to her boss saying she missed him and that she was on her way etc coincided with all of the times she said she was meeting her girlfriends for lunch or something. It was a phone he bought for her. I called the number and he was surprised it was me, her husband on the other end. I chewed him out and he played dumb. I explained he can keep her… I’m done. I called the wife from the same phone and told her I found her phone, don’t bother coming home.

It was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. What I suspectedfor months was finally confirmed. I wasn’t crazy. I went to Walmart and bought new deadbolts for the house. It turns out she had been sleeping with her boss for at least 6 months prior to our wedding as well. I’m like why even marry me then? I don’t get it.

Man I wish I had access to gps trackers back then like we do now. That would have made things so much easier… hehe. Would have been much better to confront them at his house or at a motel etc. Oh well.

Once we separated… and I filed for divorce, Her maid of honor that was in our wedding reached out to me and next thing I know we’re having drinks and began to date shortly thereafter. The soon to be ex-wife HATED that. Bonus.

#4 The OMG Caught-In-The-Act

As the image of your cheating partner hits your retina, a fire hydrant of unexpected emotion blasts you in an instant—catching them in the act has to be one of the worst ways to find out!

User: Fakefat

She tried to silent her phone when I called, but I guess she accepted it instead… I heard her banging a dude loudly over the phone.

User: JimBobC00ter

My coworker told me he saw her being carried to her car at 4am by another co worker of mine. She left this part of the story out when she stumbled home drunk that night. Confronted her, she confessed they made out.

Fast forward to present day and I’m still trying to recover from what she did to me. After this “kiss” she kept going with him and eventually f—ked him twice. She told me both times. I literally had to walk into my apartment one day to find her in bed with him. I quit my job (we all worked together) and we broke up finally. That was three months ago. I’m still f—ked up. She was my best friend and all of a sudden set out to destroy me.

User: Deleted.

Had a female friend wake up next to her fiance. While their female friend was f—king him.

Summary

As I said at the start, there’s no good way to find out your partner is cheating on you.

Here’s the best way to find out—

when you aren’t anywhere near your partner.

The reason is that you can settle yourself, and get some distance from the immediate hurt and emotion, before deciding how to rationally move forward, in your own best interests—and NOT in some wild, emotional reaction, that could hurt you even more in the long term.

(For example, if you have kids, you may want to speak with a lawyer. Heck, you may want to anyway—there can be houses, finances and a whole heap of things to find out about first. You don’t want to be a further victim.)

For that reason, we recommend using our cheating spouse or partner investigations service.

And, even if you don’t have to worry about finances and children, you could even do something spectacular like the user below…

User: UknowNOTHINjon

There was one about a man who knew that his girlfriend had cheated on him with her boss at the Christmas do. He rang a radio station knowing that she would be listening and they played it out like it was a big romantic proposal and it ended up as a, ‘this is what you could have had’ kinda thing.

It was a thing of beauty and the radio DJ was brilliant. For those interested it was a British radio station called Galaxy FM, it’s on Youtube somewhere.

(Thanks u/whiskeysierra for the video share)