“That the little girl I had raised from birth through the age of seven was, in fact, not my biological daughter.”

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Disclaimer: This post contains mentions of drug abuse, sexual assault, and pedophilia. Reader discretion is advised.

"She wanted to move to get away from her family, who were very controlling and in each other's business and ours. Small-town stuff. I can't possibly explain it, all hours of the day or night because she couldn't say no to her mother. So we moved, and she was an incredibly supportive partner. 

She wanted nice things, expected nice things, and I worked jobs that required some amount of travel. I was so committed, and it sure seemed like we had the best life and I had the best partner anybody could ask for. In between years four and 20, there were four more affairs. The kids became incredibly wonderful teenagers and incredibly wonderful young adults, with lives of their own.

Between years 20 and 30 were five more affairs. Sketchy friends. Moving money I wasn't aware of. One year, on a Friday before New Year's Eve, she told me she was leaving. That day. Out of the blue. That it wasn't about me and it was all about her. I had enabled her so much in a lifetime that she wanted me to tell the kids, the relatives, and the longtime friends. I was stunned. 

We never fought. We always talked a lot to each other and with each other, and there was no outward sign this was coming. We had fun. But the parents had passed in a relatively short period of time, and I encouraged counseling for both of us. Nonstarter. She told me she had never loved me and marrying me was the only way to get out of a little town and away from her family. She had had a childhood most of us can only dream about. Indulged, loved, comfortable. 

I felt there was nothing that could ever mess with this bond, this thing between us. Everything I did, she was aware of and part of. That was not the case when it came to me. I was so committed to this relationship that I thought it overcame and meant more than anything else, even the bumps in the road with her affairs and family crises that we all experience. She was banking her money for years, and we lived on mine. It took a little while to come to terms with the fact that 36 years of my life were a wonderful fantasy—for me."

"This was the same gun he used to try to get me to carry concealed, but it didn't have a safety, so I refused. The irony was always so interesting to me."

"That she was gay. Yup. Her religious, right-wing family background forced all those gay feelings deep into the closet. Then the hinges fell off, and now I'm on Hinge as a single father looking for the impossible."

"He was cheating on me with his brother's girlfriend, who was also the mother of his niece and nephew and pregnant with his child at our wedding. (Obviously, I didn't know that at the time.) We split five months after getting married, and they got together. They now have two children together, and she has two children with his brother. The kids are biological siblings and cousins. I found out recently that they split a while back because he stole thousands of dollars from her inheritance to spend on drugs. It took a long time, many years, but my divorce was finalized at the beginning of this year."

"That he really was polyamorous, and so our entire marriage has felt like it was all fake. All the “I love yous” and telling me how beautiful I am now feel meaningless. I’m in a constant state of anxiety, thinking about how I can’t compare to all the other women out there."

"Ugh, same. We were almost 14 years in. I had to send pictures of our kids in bathing suits to the police so they could determine whether he had taken pictures of them on his computer. It's been 20 years. My kids were not on the hard drive. He went to prison. We're all doing just fine now!"

"They were all laughing and thought she already knew, going on about how "it all worked out" when, to her, it was her prison. 

She eventually was able to run away from him, leave her mother, and start her own life. It was super hard for her, and I hate that this happened to her. My father also had skeletons in his closet that eventually came out. She is the most resilient person I've ever met, and I love her so much. Now she has a husband who spoils her endlessly and would never think to lay a finger on her."

"She just had SOOOOO many lies. And she had so many individual lies for different people. And now I understand why she had to leave the city when we split. Guys.... She lied about EVERYTHING. We were together for around 10 years, and I don't even know who she is. Everything. And it has really started to fuck me up."

"I tried to make a gradual transition to make it easier for him, but I was repaid for that kindness by being forced into nearly total financial ruin. Finding out the truth about the finances was the final straw that made me realize I had to leave him, and I divorced him in 2010. Happy ending, though... I met my present hubby in 2011, we married in 2012, and have been very happy ever since."

"She had BPD and never shared that detail with me. It eventually became excruciatingly obvious. Combine that with hiding an alcohol addiction and an absurd amount of debt, which I only found out about after we filed our taxes jointly and our entire refund was garnished."

"I was one of those too! She met her next husband on SugarDaddies.com and then the one after that on SugarDaddies.com as well. She locked that third one in by having a kid with him... sucker!

Ultimately, I look at it as a blessing because I went on to meet the love of my life and have now been married for 15 years, with two great kids. But shit sucked at the time.

One very satisfying day, though, was when she was in between husbands and showed up on my doorstep in tears. Telling her to fuck off was incredibly satisfying."

"He was a sociopath, possibly a psychopath. He didn't know when we first got married, either. Everyone thought he was just melancholy and a bit selfish. His family and friends thought I was lying and gaslighting him because it was clearly coming from one of us. They simply picked the wrong one. His brother texted me years after the divorce to apologize."

"When I confronted him, he said it was a mistake and paid it all back to me in a lump sum. But I still think about two things: 1. What if I hadn't realized it? And 2. What didn't I find? It was especially hurtful because he accused me of wanting to be with him for his money when, in reality, he used me for mine, despite having a likely eight-figure inheritance."

"He used to have threesomes with his brother and sister-in-law, and I didn't find out until years after we divorced."

Text has been edited for length and clarity.