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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Go easy on me please, discovered my partner of 8 years is a serial online cheat

66 replies

Lifeisruined · 01/08/2025 21:07

I don’t even know where to begin really. About 6 weeks ago I asked if I could check his Facebook was set to private (I’m really funny about people seeing in to my children’s lives) and he has had NO issue handing me his phone before but this time he went grey, he was visibly shaking and I could see his heartbeat through his t shirt. He fumbled and went on to his Facebook messages, there was a work colleague and the only message was ‘If only you knew what was waiting for you on Snapchat’ he played dumb, I demanded he downloaded it - I say downloaded because I had NO clue at all he ever still used it. We used to send each other silly snaps of the dog back when we first got together so I’m talking I didn’t know he’d used it in 6/7 years.

He downloaded it and there she was sending him a nude. I went berserk, left the house and after a while came back and he admitted he’d used Snapchat to speak to her as friends only and that she was the one sending nudes with zero encouragement from him, yeah right I thought. Anyway, I messaged her, turns out she too has a husband so I also threatened to tell him. She knew who I was and replied almost instantly. She said she was an arsehole, a wanker, a piece of shit and it was all her and I shouldn’t punish my partner because of it. I didn’t believe it at first and thought she was covering for him but I made him also message her on his Facebook and ask her to explain herself, she replied again saying it was all her and ‘there was nothing more she could do to help him’. Best believe I also told her husband everything.

Anyway, I thought I could get over that, he left his job and has since found elsewhere working from home. But in the weeks he was out of work I just had this AWFUL suspicion in my gut and I checked his phone further. I won’t go in to too much detail about how this all came out but over the past 4/5 weeks I’ve slowly discovered all of his serial online cheating. Almost as though he’s been living a secret double life. I first downloaded his Reddit, it was FILLED with porn. Now I will say I told him porn was a hard no at the beginning of our relationship, that boundary has been there since the start and he agreed to it.

Unfortunately that was just the tip of the iceberg. Reddit lead me to a secret Snapchat I’d never heard of before. I couldn’t log in though for some reason and he CONVINCED me that it was because he’d already deleted it in a panic when the stuff with his work colleague came out. He said it was just messages to sex workers, where he’d try and get free content, photos he’d saved and he was part of group chats where men circulated photos of women. On his Reddit I also found his Onlyfans. Never in my wildest fucking dreams did I think he’d use Onlyfans. He denied it at first ‘NO WAY have I EVER had an Onlyfans account’ he protested. So I reset the password and there it was, a link through to his email and I logged in and saw it all. Endless subscriptions, paying for personalised content, paying for messages from sex workers and the real kicker? He’d subscribed to a friend of mine, an old neighbour of ours. He didn’t just subscribe, he pestered her for to her ‘play with her p*y’ it was honestly gut wrenching to read. He used to mock her all the time when we lived next door to her, constantly saying how desperate for fame she was and even saying ‘who’d subscribe to her honestly’ erm, you?

Over the next couple weeks I found out he’d also used Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr and TikTok to view porn. I found he’d regularly go on Chatroulette and Omegle to have sexual conversations with strangers. Then the worst for me was finding he was on Tinder for 3 fucking years of our relationship, not just at the beginning either, as though maybe he didn’t delete an old account, oh no he created a profile after we’d been together 2/3 years. I was mortified, heartbroken, sick to my stomach - all of the above. Again he used it to have sexual conversations with women he matched with.

Going back to the Snapchat, I saw he had a second email address when I logged on to his Apple account yesterday and I used that to reset the password and there it was, he hadn’t deleted it at all. There it all was in front of me. Multiple and I mean MULTIPLE conversations with every day, regular women he’d find on tinder. He PESTERED them like that fucking creepy guy you get in your inbox sometimes to send him pictures. Trying to butter them up first by calling them beautiful, messaging them sweet dreams etc at night. Saying how badly he wished he was in bed with them to wake up cuddling them ‘whilst he poked them in the back’ it was all very obvious he only saw these women as objects for sexual gratification, which is fucking disgusting I know.

Since this came out, he has started going to therapy. Has packed his PC away, deleted all his social media and all his apps, has Google family link on his phone so I can track everything he does. He gave up the job with the work colleague who sent him nudes and generally I could see he was much more present in our lives. We have 3 children together, 3 young children so it was hard at first to not give him a chance as fucked up as that sounds.

Since I found out he hadn’t really deleted the secret Snapchat and he lied about there being conversations with women from Tinder we have separated. I’m unsure yet if this can even be worked through. He’s begging me to give him another chance but I actually don’t want this, I don’t want a life where I have to worry like this. I have been fucking completely floored by this and I wouldn’t even know where to begin to start rebuilding things. Before the extra lies that were revealed last night I had started to somehow move on but I don’t know how to after this.

Thank you to anybody who has gotten this far and I know what most of your reactions will be, but I really could do with a handhold and some support through this as this man was my world. He was very much a golden retriever kind of guy, sweet, loving and kind. He always appeared to put me first, he’s nursed me back to health when I went through a major health scare a few years ago, he has been my rock. Like I said I’m devastated, totally and utterly fucking devastated.

OP posts:
Batherssss · 03/08/2025 15:46

Good. He will only drag you down.
He is crying for himself, not you.
Remember that.

beAsensible1 · 05/08/2025 19:34

What an absolute deviant I am so sorry op. But he isn’t able to have any sort of open honest relationship with your or even himself. He is just a massive liar and creep.

Livpool · 05/08/2025 20:09

He isn’t sorry at all - he is sorry he was caught. Ugh he sounds bike - he is a misogynist prick who sees women as nothing more than sexual objects.

I couldn’t get past this

ChersHandbag · 06/08/2025 05:22

Sobbing in his car? Makes me think of how many women get to indulge in a melancholic pity-fest for days when they’ve got three young children, that’s right….none. He can’t step up even now, it just seems like he’s falling apart because he’s lost his only self soothing tool: a bit of strange.

I’m in my mid 40s and seen this play out in a few marriages now. The man never turns ‘back’ into the nice man the woman first met, largely because he never was it in the first place. Get out before you’re further traumatised by this, you — and the children — deserve better.

babyproblems · 06/08/2025 05:52

He sounds like an addict tbh.
best of luck to you op… you deserve a better life than this! X

AnotherGreyMorning · 06/08/2025 06:36

There is something very wrong with this man.

You cannot damage your own mental health and self esteem further by staying with him and asking him to delete this, that and the other app.

He is beyond devious. You will never have peace of mind. His personality is deformed.

Run!

LoudSnoringDog · 06/08/2025 06:48

Oh goodness. I rarely find myself throwing a LTB into a post but honestly- put this one in the bin. He is a sex pest. He’s not a golden retriever- he’s a manipulative, sex pest. You deserve much, much better.

mirroryourlife · 06/08/2025 07:47

Hi OP
Just wanted to send you a message of solidarity and support.
You are clearly a very strong woman, even if you don’t feel it now! Well done for telling the other woman’s husband, these people get away with this horrid behaviour for far too long.
I was in a similar position with my now ex husband. We had twins who were a few months old when I discovered he had been using dating apps and escort websites. Like you, I went into detective mode and found this behaviour had gone on for years. To this day he says he didn’t ever sleep with anyone, but this wasn’t for lack of trying on his part!
It was unforgivable for me, I knew there was no going back, the lies and the gaslighting hurt more than anything else. I went through phone records and found dozens of women he had been meeting and trying to meet all whilst I thought we were building a life and family together.
3 years down the line, we are divorced. Life as a single parent to young children, is not easy, but staying in that relationship would have destroyed me and I didn’t want my children seeing their Mum disintegrating into an anxious mess because their Dad needed a constant ego boost from talking to other women and getting his sexual kicks elsewhere.
Stay strong, your life isn’t ruined- his is, you will rebuild and come back from this.

justanotherboymum · 06/08/2025 07:51

Sounds similar to my ex husband. They won’t change, they just get smarter at hiding. Thank goodness you found out and now you can start life afresh. Please get counselling for yourself but you WILL recover from this. He however, will always be a lying, cheat.

Frostednewt · 10/08/2025 22:03

Sorry for your pain.
I'm going through similar. Kicked him out Tuesday. 8 plus years of deception. I am broken , his step daughters are angry and hurt. 8 years of memories tainted. Luckily our son hasn't really worried too much that he's not here of an evening probably because he was always on the phone to his cyber affair and various other sites ect. Anyway.
It's like he was two different people.

There are not many words to help I know. I've never posted on anything like this before and just wanted you to know you are not alone.

ArthurBloom · 13/08/2025 10:25

I often lament the CONSTANT barrage of LTB for the slightest things here, but oh my god I cannot emphasise how much you need to leave this man.
I am a man, with male friends and I promise you he is just going to find another way to do this, he is WAY too into it, that's addiction.

AltitudeCheck · 13/08/2025 10:47

It sounds like he knows that being a creepy sex pest is not ok at home but some part of him thonks of women as sex objects and he uses his online life to fulfil that side of him so he can continue to present the acceptable part of his personality at home.

Some men unfortunately get a kick from conning and exploiting women, looking for with low self esteem or who are vulnerable, getting women they view as less attractive or weak to send intimate pictures by pretending to be a possible date. He behaviour would give me the ick so much, I couldn't ever imagine trusting or fancying him again after that.

namechanged221 · 13/08/2025 21:05

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TheGreatWesternShrew · 23/08/2025 15:46

He doesn’t get another chance. The entire relationship was his chance. It’s not like he did 1 thing - looked at one site, spoke to one woman, downloaded 1 nude it’s dozens and dozens! That’s his dozens of chances not to do that!

Christl78 · 24/08/2025 07:09

OP, how are you darling?

ByQuaintAzureWasp · 24/08/2025 08:29

Who you thought he was is incorrect. He's an XL Bully not a Golden Retreiver. Unfortunately there is mo going back. You will be fine, as will your kids.

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