The anonymous text came in around noon, and it ruined my entire day. All it said was: “Clarissa is getting too close to one of the people at work, and I thought you should know. ”
That was it. I tried calling the number back, but it rang twice and then went dead.
I tried from a friend’s phone in case I was blocked. Same thing. I searched the number online. Nothing.
Whoever sent it had used a burner, likely someone from her office who wanted to do the right thing without getting dragged into someone else’s mess. I’m thirty. My wife Clarissa is thirty too. We met halfway through college, and by a few years out of university, we were married.
She studied social work, spent her time volunteering with NGOs and charities, and I was always impressed by how genuinely kind she was. I co-founded a game studio with some mates from school, and our first game had done well enough to give us real financial breathing room. She stuck with the same organization and climbed the ladder. I was proud of her.
The organization she worked for helped underprivileged neighborhoods, children from rough families, homeless people, and ex-convicts trying to reintegrate. It wasn’t unusual for her to travel a day or two for projects and outreaches, so she came and went without raising any suspicion. I worked remotely most of the time, so there was never any tension about her schedule. For four days, I tried to shake that text out of my head.
I couldn’t. It started driving me nuts. I knew my wife could technically find the space to cheat, but I never thought she actually would. I had to know for sure.
One night, after she showered and fell asleep, I grabbed her MacBook. Her phone was always beside her when she slept, so that was too risky. I started with iMessage and read through as many conversations as I could, looking for anything off. Nothing seemed suspicious.
Then I moved to Facebook, since I knew she used it heavily. That’s where I found him. It wasn’t a co-worker. It was someone who looked like one of the people her organization helped.
From the look of his profile, he lived in the worst part of town. The messages were right there on her screen. The guy typed like he was half illiterate, but that didn’t stop him from being aggressively sexual with her. And she returned the energy.
The texts were dirty, the kind that made it clear they had already done more than flirt. She had sent him photos of herself in lingerie. He had sent her pictures of his privates, and she responded exactly the way a thirsty person would. I closed the laptop.
Then I opened it again and started taking evidence. I checked other platforms for more, but there was nothing else. And that disappointed me. I wanted to hate her as much as possible, and knowing she’d been cheating for ages would have helped with that.
I wanted to wake her up right then, but I decided to investigate first. I wanted to know exactly who I was dealing with before I made my move. I tried digging on my own, but I ended up hiring a private investigator. It felt more efficient, and it turned out to be.
While the PI worked, I went cold with her. I stopped sleeping in the bedroom and moved to the living room couch. I didn’t care about keeping up appearances anymore. If she pushed me, I was ready to tell her everything I knew.
Things escalated one night when she came to me in the living room while I was watching something on my tablet. She took it out of my hands and straddled me. She only initiated when she was really in the mood, and that wasn’t often. I tried to push her off, but she resisted.
I told her plainly I wasn’t in the mood, but she tried to kiss me to shut me up. I didn’t return it. I pushed again. She kept resisting.
I was careful at first because of the coffee table next to the couch and didn’t want her to hit her head. But when she got her hand in my pants and started forcing the issue, I stopped caring. I shoved her off me forcefully. She didn’t hit anything, thank God.
I asked her what her problem was, since I had made it clear I wasn’t interested. She didn’t say a word. She just looked stressed, not angry. Then she left the room without a sound.
The irony of that moment wasn’t lost on me. She had never been that aggressive before. I knew something was off. About an hour later, she came back with two cocktails, one for each of us, and said she wanted to talk.
She asked what was up with me, but I refused to say anything. I just said I was fine. She kept prying, and I kept deflecting. I drank my cocktail, and she offered to make me another.
I wasn’t in the mood to drink much, but I noticed she kept pushing me to drink more. Either she was trying to get me drunk, or she was trying to drug me. A thought crept into my head right then, and I ended up being proven right before the night was over. I refused the drinks until she gave up, looking angry as she went to bed.
Once I was sure she was knocked out, I went back to her laptop. The messages with her affair partner, a guy named Dwayne, were from hours earlier. She had sent him a picture of a pregnancy test. Her messages were panicked.
She was expressing so much regret about letting him not use protection, repeating over and over that he had said he was going to pull out. He treated it like it was nothing. She kept bringing up the fact that she was married. She wrote: “Dwayne, you effed up.
I love you, but you effed up so bad. ”
I lost it. I burst into the bedroom, but she didn’t even wake up. I stood over her for God knows how long.
I’m not proud of the thoughts that went through my head in those moments. I didn’t do anything, and I think that’s what matters most. But I can tell you honestly that I hated her with everything in me at that moment. I left the apartment and went for a long walk.
She called at 2 a. m. , panicked because she woke up to pee and I wasn’t home. I told her I was fine and hung up.
She called again and again, but I let it ring. By the time the sun came up, the whole picture had clicked. The reason she had tried so hard to sleep with me, the reason she had tried to get me drunk, was because we hadn’t been intimate in a long time. She was pregnant with Dwayne’s child and she wanted to pin it on me.
If I hadn’t known about the affair, I would have caved that night and ended up a man raising a child I falsely believed was mine. I called a divorce lawyer as soon as I could, paid the retainer, and started getting the papers drafted. Then I called the PI and asked what he had. He said he was still working on things, but I told him I didn’t care.
I just wanted what he had so far. Dwayne, he told me, had one arrest for domestic violence, one for assault and battery, and one for unlawful possession of a firearm. He already had four baby mamas and six children between them. He didn’t pay taxes and had very little substantial income.
Clearly a prize. I told the PI that was enough. I collected the printed evidence and pushed my lawyer to get the papers done by that evening. Clarissa had been calling me an absurd number of times.
I kept texting her that I was fine so she wouldn’t file some kind of missing person’s report. When I got home that night, she was in a panic. The moment I walked in, she started crying, asking what was going on, asking about my mental health. I could see the things I once loved about her right then, but I felt none of the love.
I told her my mental health was in the gutter and it was her fault. She looked shaken. I sat down, and she sat beside me. She tried to touch me, and I pushed her away.
I told her I knew about her and Dwayne. She jolted, moving away from me on the couch. I don’t know if she was scared I was going to hit her, but I hope she was. I told her I knew she was pregnant with his child.
Tears started rolling down her face silently. She didn’t make a sound. When I asked her to explain herself, she didn’t give me the usual “it meant nothing” speech. She told me she didn’t know how it happened.
There was just something about him that drew her to him. When I asked how he could ever be good enough for her when he couldn’t get his life together, she defended him. She said he was a good guy who had fallen on hard times, and that she knew all about people like that from her work. She was actually defending him.
She wasn’t trying to minimize the cheating. She was trying to convince me that it made sense. I told her to stop talking. I told her we were done.
She went quiet, and then she asked, “Are you sure we have to go that way? ”
She looked pathetic. I stood up and walked out, but before I left, I reminded her that she had slept with a deadbeat thug, that she loved him, and that she was carrying his baby at that very moment. I told her there was no other way this was going to go, and that I was going to make sure she didn’t get a single dime of what belonged to me.
I left without waiting for her reply. I went to our room, packed as much as I could into suitcases, loaded the car, and left. I knew I shouldn’t have been the one to leave, but I was too furious to wait for her to go. If I lost the apartment in the divorce because of it, so be it.
I just wanted to make sure she didn’t get anything significantly more than that. Now I know it sounds harsh, but I don’t care how sweet and kind you think your woman is. They can still turn on you and choose someone who is the polar opposite of you. You’re never as safe as you think you are.
As an update for everyone who sent messages after my last post: things have finally settled. Clarissa is now my ex-wife. The divorce was messy. She was very insistent on getting half of what was mine, and I couldn’t help but feel like she wanted it so she could share it with her new man.
There was no reason to think she wouldn’t run straight to him after our marriage was clearly over. Leaving the apartment bit me in the butt. She ended up getting it, but it was rented, and if she had to deal with that on her own, I didn’t care. I had plenty of evidence of her cheating, including the fact that she tried to pin the pregnancy on me.
By the time of the divorce, she was already showing, and she hadn’t been able to hide it. The judge seemed conservative, and she didn’t take kindly to Clarissa cheating on me and getting pregnant, especially with the kind of person she cheated with. She got the house and rent covered for the next six months, annoyingly out of my pocket. But she got little else.
My major assets stayed with me, and, most importantly, I escaped alimony. That was the most important thing. She’s far enough along that she’s clearly going to keep the baby. It’s insane that she had such a good life and chose to become the fifth baby mama of a violent, criminal deadbeat who has never married any of them.
That’s the life she chose for herself because she thought she loved him. I know it won’t end well for her. She’ll regret this decision soon enough. The guy isn’t just poor; he’s violent and has a criminal record.
I don’t have to warn her because she made this choice on her own. I don’t wish her the best. I wish her the absolute worst. And if it ever comes to it, I’ll be there to laugh in her face.
I’m just glad to be free of it all. She made her choice, and I made mine. I hope I can bounce back and truly be happy again.
That’s what I’m working toward now.
