Her phone vibrated in my hand, and I glanced at the screen thinking it was mine. It wasn’t. The message was from a contact saved simply as “Boss,” and it read: “I’m glad you received it. Maybe more next week.
”
We were in the grocery store. I was holding both our phones because she’d left her bag in the car, and she didn’t have pockets. I didn’t think twice about reading it. She’s my wife.
There shouldn’t be anything I can’t see. But my stomach dropped. I tried to tell myself it could mean anything. Maybe it was a work bonus.
Maybe a favor. But the phrase “maybe more next week” sat wrong. Too generous. Too familiar.
I knew I wasn’t crazy. I knew something was off. I didn’t confront her that day. I needed to be sure first.
I always hated people who checked their partner’s phone. I thought it was invasive and desperate, a sign the relationship was already dead. But that night, while she slept, I picked up her phone anyway. I had to know.
I scrolled through the chat with “Boss. ” It wasn’t her actual boss. There was nothing work-related about it. It was flirting.
Lots of flirting, and lots of talk about money. He’d send her cash, and she’d thank him. Sometimes she’d ask for it outright because she was broke. Sometimes she’d ask for favors—expensive bags, shoes.
It was obvious she’d slept with him. You don’t do that much for someone without getting something physical in return. I took screenshots of everything. My heart was pounding the entire time.
We’ve been married for five years. Before that, we dated for almost five years. We met young and grew up together. In our country, people marry young, and most marriages fall apart within a couple of years, especially the ones rushed for religious reasons.
I thought we were different. We had history. I honestly thought Lola wasn’t like the other women who chased money. When we were dating, she never demanded more than I had.
She was grateful for the small dates, the theater trips, the occasional nice restaurant. She seemed loyal. She seemed like the girl who’d stand by you when you had nothing. It feels like my heart is burning knowing she isn’t that person anymore.
I didn’t say anything to her for days. I couldn’t sleep. I’d just lie there, my mind fixated on her and that man. I wanted to confront her, but I didn’t want to be sloppy.
If we were heading for divorce, I wanted to protect everything I’d worked my whole life for. I didn’t want a woman who cheated on me walking away with half of what I had built. So, I waited. I recorded the conversation when I finally confronted her.
I wanted proof for court. I told her I knew about her sugar daddy. She looked confused. Then I said the name “Boss,” and her face gave her away.
I had hoped, right up until the very last second, that there’d be some explanation I could accept. There wasn’t. She stuttered for a long time, trying to speak. I asked her why I wasn’t enough to provide for her anymore.
Eventually, she said it wasn’t about me. She said she had her eyes open to great things in the world. She said it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in us, she just didn’t want to wait for opportunity to come. She wanted to enjoy life now, not later.
I asked if she slept with him. She paused and nodded. I told her I couldn’t hear her. She said yes.
I asked how many times. She said she couldn’t count. More than twenty. I thought my head was going to explode.
Even then, she tried to convince me it meant nothing romantic, that it was purely physical, that I should find comfort in that. I told her I didn’t care whether it was physical, mental, or emotional. The fact that he’d climbed on top of her was all that mattered. I pointed out that all that money she collected from him never benefited our home.
She was selfish in every way. I asked her what she thought was going to happen to us. She suggested we could work things out if we really wanted to. I told her she was right—we could.
But I didn’t want her that badly. I told her we were getting a divorce. She started to panic. It annoyed me.
It was like killing someone and then panicking when the police knock on your door. She slept with him more than twenty times, and now she was acting like I was the cruel one. I told her she had to move out. I paid for the place, and she was the one who cheated.
She packed what she could and called an Uber to her parents’ house. From then on, whenever her parents asked me what happened, I told them to ask their daughter. I hired the best divorce lawyer in the city. The papers were drawn up and served to her at her parents’ house.
She signed them. We were on our way out of each other’s lives. Where I live, divorce is still a big deal. People only do it when things get really bad.
It’s more common now with younger generations, but I still felt like I’d failed at something, even though I knew it wasn’t my fault. That feeling sucks. But life goes on. We used fault-based divorce, and I had the proof.
The screenshots. The recorded confession. It was convincing enough for the court. Alimony isn’t a big thing in my country, thankfully.
We split marital property, but I didn’t have to worry about anything else. No kids, so no custody issues. We were so close to trying for kids. If we had, the link to her would have been permanent.
That would have been a massive mistake. Before the split, my lawyer helped me reduce the assets in my name. I had a plot of land that was hard to get rid of, so we protected that too. But here’s the irony.
Lola had tucked all the money she got from her sugar daddy into her regular bank account. She hadn’t tried to hide it. And it was a lot of money. Almost three times what I had saved up.
All of it was from him. Which meant I got a pretty substantial payout from the money she’d been sleeping around for. That felt fair to me. She was furious about it.
I told her she had little to be angry about, since she hadn’t actually worked for that money. She got the apartment we lived in. I didn’t mind. I preferred the land.
It’ll be worth a lot in the future. After the divorce was finalized, she was handling the apartment on her own with a lot less money than before. She has an okay job, so I wasn’t worried. But she’s not frugal like me.
I knew that would become a problem. She went through a heavy shopping phase after the divorce, posting everything she bought on her Instagram story. I assumed her man was funding it. Eventually, the shopping slowed down, and I thought she’d settled.
Then she messaged me. I could tell from the typos that she was drunk. She said she made a mistake. She wanted us to get back together.
She said she didn’t have “Boss” anymore, that he wasn’t going to be a problem. She said she’d never make that kind of mistake again. I asked what happened with him. She said she pissed him off during the divorce.
She got more irritable, and he just blocked her. That was it. I laughed so hard. Then I blocked her too.
It felt like the perfect timing, the last piece of satisfaction from the divorce. Still, she tried reaching out on other platforms. I blocked her on those too, telling her to stop contacting me. It hurts to let go of someone I thought was the love of my life.
I’ll admit that. I’m not a robot. But I know I’ll get back on my feet. For now, the thought of dating is the furthest thing from attractive.
I’ve been scarred. That’s one way to learn, I guess. What she did takes a special kind of detachment. Sitting across from your spouse, talking about the future, planning exams, migration, children—while quietly monetizing your marriage on the side.
Sleeping with someone more than twenty times isn’t an accident. And trying to reconcile only after your financial backer disappears? That says everything. I’m still young.
I’ll get my head above water. But right now, I’m done with her for good.
