Goodstorie

My husband of 3 years dropped me from his high school reunion trip, claiming that there were sudden changes in plans and no spouses were joining. But it turns out it was a blatant lie because everyone came, even his newly divorced high school sweetheart of an ex, who he posed happily with in all of the photos. So, I did him one good and filed for a divorce too, so that they can both rekindle their flame. But it turns out he was just a bank for her while she was there. Now he wants me to give him another chance.

2 months ago, my husband Dan asked me to accompany him on a trip that he was taking with his high school buddies. It was an informal trip they were organizing themselves as a reunion of sorts, so I agreed. But then about weeks before the trip, he told me that there had been a change of plans and no spouses were joining the trip anymore. I was a little disappointed, but I didn’t think too much of it because I believed him. Later on, I found out that he had lied to me, and I immediately filed for divorce because I also found out that coincidentally, he had been spending all his time with his high school ex while he was on the trip.

I found out about it because Amy, one of his friends from high school, reached out to me on social media on the third day of the trip. She told me that Dan had been spending all his time with Rachel, his ex. Even though it was none of her business, she wanted to let me know because a couple of hours before she sent me that text, she had seen them sneak into Rachel’s hotel room together while everyone was out, and she did not get a good feeling about this, so she felt like she had to let me know. I was shocked because I never expected Dan to cheat on me, since we were in a relatively happy marriage and weren’t even having any problems.

I didn’t know what to say to Amy, so I didn’t reply, but I decided to call Dan up because I was desperate to believe that this was not happening. When I called him, he sounded pretty drunk, but I still asked him if he was having a good time before jokingly asking him if he had any high school exes on the trip as well. He seemed a little shocked by that question and went silent for a few seconds, but then he just laughed it off and told me that he had only dated one girl in high school and she was not there, so I had nothing to worry about. Until that point, I had been willing to believe that maybe Amy was just trying to prank me or maybe she was trying to stir up drama, but when he lied to me and told me that his ex was not even on the trip, I knew that Amy was telling me the truth. I hung up without saying anything else and immediately started packing my stuff so I could move in with my parents. I didn’t want to think about what was going on, so I chose to cope by keeping myself occupied for the next couple of days.

The very next day, I spoke to my brother since he’s a divorce lawyer himself, and after explaining the entire situation to him, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the divorce. My brother had been a bit skeptical about filing for a divorce because he thought I was being too quick. Right now, that’s the problem that Dan has with this as well, that I’m throwing our marriage away way too quickly. I had found out about Rachel being on the trip on the third day when Amy had texted me, and he came back home days later. By then, I had already moved out and was staying with my parents, and I had already spoken to my brother and was planning on going ahead with the divorce.

After he came back home, when he did not find me there, he started calling and texting endlessly until I finally replied to him. I feel like I have to mention that before he came back home, he hadn’t called or texted me by himself even once after that phone call that I had made to him. Anyway, I replied to his messages asking me where I was by telling him that I had spoken to Amy, and she had told me that he had been spending all his time with his ex and apparently they had even snuck into her hotel room together when nobody else was paying attention. After getting to know all of this, I had no interest in staying with him anymore, so I had moved out and I had also spoken to my brother, so I was filing for divorce now. Then I blocked him so he wouldn’t be able to reply to that, but he showed up at my parents’ place in the evening and started begging them to let him meet me. I had told my parents that I did not want to see him if he came, so they tried to get him to go away, but he refused. So eventually, I agreed to speak to him just so that he would leave and stop bothering my parents.

When he saw me, he immediately went down on his knees, started sobbing, and told me that he had screwed up and he knew it, but he just wanted another chance to make it right. The fact that he was not even bothered to deny anything broke my heart, and I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. But before I could say anything else, he told me that nothing had happened in the hotel room and they had only been there for a couple of seconds so she could borrow some cash from him, and since he had left his wallet in the room, they had to go back for that. He claimed that Amy must not have seen them come back, which is why she thought that something fishy was going on. But the only reason he had come to apologize to me was because it was true: he indeed had been spending all his time with Rachel, but that was just because she was newly divorced, and she was the one who had approached him because she felt really alone on the trip.

He started telling me that they were only spending time together in a platonic capacity, and the only reason he hadn’t told me anything about it was because he did not want me to feel insecure or suspicious. But he hadn’t realized that lying to me would just make the situation worse. That was not it for me though, because I had reached out to Amy even after she had sent me that message to thank her, and she also told me that she had found it suspicious right from the beginning when everybody else’s spouses had joined the trip except for me. So that had come as another shock to me, and on speaking to Amy some more, I found out that Dan had told everyone that I had to leave for an emergency work trip, which is why I had been unable to join them. So I figured out that he had lied to me, and I’m guessing that he must have found out that Rachel was going to be on the trip and she’s divorced now, so he decided not to have me tag along with him.

So I brought that up as well while he was trying to tell me that it was all platonic with Rachel, and he did not deny it. He told me that he had indeed known that Rachel was divorced now, and that was a huge part of the reason why he did not want me on the trip. But it wasn’t because he wanted to hit on her or whatever. He claimed that he was only avoiding the awkwardness on the trip by having me join them while Rachel would be there as well, since they had a very long relationship and an abrupt breakup. So that’s why he knew for a fact that having his wife and ex on the same trip would be really awkward for him, and he did not want that because he wanted to have fun. And then he told me that even if they were hanging out as friends on the trip, he was sure that he was never going to see her again because she was a gold digger. Apparently, she had made him pay for every little thing on the trip, and if he would hesitate, she would bring up her sob story about her terrible divorce and how she just wanted a break from all of that, so she had joined this trip at the last minute in spite of the fact that she had been a stay-at-home mom and didn’t have enough money of her own. He felt bad for her, so he had allowed her to treat him like her personal bank, but after this, he was sure that he was not going to stay in touch with her even platonically.

While he was telling me all of this, he was still on his knees and extremely emotional, so even I was finding it very difficult to keep my emotions under check. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I just told him that I needed some time to think about things, but in the meantime, I wanted him to leave. Initially, he didn’t want to leave and kept telling me that he was not going back home without me, that he loved me and he couldn’t live without me. But somehow, I convinced him to go away so I could think about everything for myself. It’s been days since then, and I’ve spoken to my brother about it, and he has put the process on hold for me, so we haven’t yet filed the divorce petition, but it’s ready for whenever I want to go through with it.

The thing is, right now, I don’t even understand what I want to do. It’s true that I don’t have anything apart from Amy’s words to go off on, but that can be fixed if I just speak to a couple of other people who are on the trip and ask them if whatever Amy has been saying was true or not. I haven’t done that because I don’t want to get other people involved at the moment. It’s also true that Dan and I have had a happy relationship so far. Maybe he’s right, maybe I shouldn’t throw it all away over something like this, and I don’t know, we could try marriage counseling or something. The problem is I just can’t imagine myself moving on from something like this because he lied to me repeatedly. That’s what just doesn’t sit right with me because if there was nothing going on, why would he lie? I don’t understand what to do. I don’t want to be the bad guy here, but I’m so confused. Am I the AITA for wanting to divorce my husband over this?

For those asking, Amy is very trustworthy. Dan has very few friends from high school who he’s in touch with on a regular basis, and Amy is one of those people. She was even there at our wedding and has known me for many years, so she has really no reason to lie about anything that she said. Apart from Amy, Dan has two other friends from high school that he is in touch with regularly, and I was planning on asking them about what he was up to on the trip. But I found out that neither of them had been on the trip because they were busy with work. So unfortunately, it seems like I’m just going to have to go by Amy’s word, but I trust her. And besides, Dan himself has confessed to everything, so why would I doubt her? Anyway, this is not about whether Dan is telling the truth right now or not; it’s about the fact that he has lied in the beginning, and that’s what has messed it all up.

Hi, I have made up my mind, and I’m going through with the divorce. It’s been a couple of days since I posted, and I thought about everything, but the bottom line is, I don’t think that I can just forget that this happened and pretend like everything is fine. He lied to me, not just one thing but about so many things, and I’ve had issues with cheating in the past. He knows that very well, so I do have trouble trusting people, but I’ve given him 5 years of my life, and so I trusted him wholeheartedly. But I can’t deal with this.

I had always known that he had a soft spot for Rachel because he used to talk about her a lot when we initially started dating. It was not surprising because she had just gotten married at the time. They had only been broken up for 3 years back then, but I thought that with time he would have gotten over her, and eventually, the longer we stayed together, the less he talked about Rachel or anyone else, so I thought that he must have moved on from her. He didn’t, and I just feel like a fool now.

I’ve been speaking to Amy about all of this because I don’t want to talk about this to any of my friends, and she’s the only person who already knows. She has told me that even though Dan has been a good friend to her, she can’t deny the fact that he’s screwed up on a colossal level. I also asked her if he and Rachel had been in their room for only a couple of seconds because that’s what he had told me, but she said that she had kept track of their coming and going, and she was sure that they had been in the room for more than half an hour. She even got her husband to vouch for that since she had mentioned it to him as well, and yeah, I don’t think they were lying. They wouldn’t even stand to gain anything from lying about something like this, and that’s all I needed to know to cement my decision.

So I’ve said everything that I needed to say to my brother, and he’s going ahead and filing the petition tomorrow. Dan has been texting me from a burner phone, and I haven’t blocked him yet, but after tomorrow, I will. I’ve been finding it very difficult to come to terms with all of this because years is not a short time to spend with somebody, but after what happened, I realized that those probably didn’t mean as much to him as they did to me, and it hurts so bad that I can’t even begin to explain what I’m going through right now. I’m just lucky that I have my family by my side right now, and soon enough, when I talk to my friends about this, I’m sure that they will be with me as well. I just hope that the divorce is drama-free because that’s the last thing that I need to deal with.

I finally spoke to my friends about it, and they have been very supportive of me. They think that I’m on the right path because after I explained the situation to them, they told me that his behavior was very fishy. The fact that he had found out that Rachel was joining the trip last minute, and that’s why he had made me back out of the plans, and then he had lied to me about spending time with her or her being there – it was just overall weird, and I made the right choice by leaving. I had been worried so far that I was overreacting and that one incident couldn’t be enough to ruin years of marriage, but it is, and I’m not overreacting.

So I chose to reply to the messages that Dan had been sending me from his burner phone as well, and I told him that I had made up my mind; there was no changing it anymore. I told him that I had thought about it long and hard, and I couldn’t move on from something like this, so he had better stop texting me. I was also worried that he would show up again to talk to me in person, so I told him that right now, I didn’t even want to see him, and if he really wanted me to forgive him, then he should just stay away and let the divorce take its course. Then I blocked his burner number as well, but he decided to send me messages from a new account that he created on Facebook.

He told me that I couldn’t just throw away years of marriage over one stupid little mistake, and he insisted that even though he had lied, it had been for my own good because he did not want me to get insecure, and he did not want me on the trip because he didn’t want things to become awkward. He had already said these things, and I didn’t think that it made a difference. But then he told me that everything had been platonic between him and Rachel, and I just needed to trust him on that because apparently Amy wasn’t even aware of what was going on, but I trusted her more than him at this point. He brought up the fact that Rachel was just using him for his money on the trip, and ever since he came back, he hasn’t even spoken to her. But I don’t understand how he thinks that’s supposed to make me feel better about the situation. It just makes it sound like if Rachel hadn’t been using him for his money, then he would have stayed in touch with her and put our marriage in danger. Clearly, he still hasn’t moved on from her, and the past years have been a waste of my time. Anyway, I did not reply to his messages, and I just blocked that account.

He has already been served, I’m assuming, and in a couple of weeks, he’s going to have to respond to the petition, so whatever it is that he has to say, he can say it to me during mediation. Outside of that, I really don’t want to talk to him. I’m still staying with my parents for now, but I’m planning on moving out soon because I obviously don’t want to make this a long-term thing. I don’t know how long the divorce is going to take, and I can’t stay with them forever. They have told me that I’m welcome to stay with them for as long as I want to, but I need my independence, and I haven’t stayed by myself in a really long time, so I really think I need to move out soon so I can get used to living on my own again. I’ve already started looking for apartments near my workplace, and I’m hoping that I can find something soon.

My friends have also offered to help me out because there are still a lot of things that I have left back home, but I really don’t want to go back and collect them myself because then I’ll have to meet him in person, and I’m not ready for that. So I’ve spoken to a couple of my friends, and they’ve told me that if I want them, they are going to go and bring all my stuff and help me move out permanently. I’ve been on the fence about it for now because I don’t know how Dan is going to behave with them because in the messages that he had sent me, he sounded pretty annoyed with me. That’s also a whole thing I don’t understand. Why he’s annoyed about it when he really should be sorry for lying to me about so many things. His being annoyed makes it feel like I’m the one who’s overreacting and he’s being perfectly reasonable here. Initially, he had been very sorry about everything, but as soon as I told him that I was not going to change my mind, his attitude towards me changed as well. I guess that just shows that he wasn’t really sorry about anything in the beginning; he was just upset that he had been caught red-handed.

It also makes sense because I found out recently that he has also cut Amy off after saying some pretty nasty stuff to her and her husband in an email that she forwarded me. He accused them of stirring the pot and trying to create drama by reaching out to me, even though she was just telling me the truth about him. Amy was very upset about it because they used to be very close, but obviously she can’t just stand by and let him screw me over because it’s wrong, and I told her not to feel too bad about it because she chose her morals over her friendship, and that’s what made him so upset. So it really doesn’t matter.

Hey, it has been weeks since my last update, and finally, Dan responded to my petition, and he’s not contesting the divorce. We might not even have to deal with mediation because he’s agreed to all my terms. I found it kind of shocking at first because it’s not like we haven’t had any contact in the past 2 weeks. I had mentioned in my previous update that I wanted to move out of my parents’ house, but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a suitable apartment yet, so I’ve still been staying with them. And a couple of days after my last update, he showed up again, and this time my parents were not at home. They were out for dinner, but I hadn’t accompanied them because I was feeling very low. I wish I had gone out with them though, because then I wouldn’t have to deal with him.

Obviously, I did not let him in when I realized that it was Dan standing outside the door, and I told him that I wanted him to leave because I had nothing left to say to him anymore. But I don’t know why he has these weird ideas that he can win me back with some grand gestures. That’s what happened the last time that he visited too, since he went down on his knees and started sobbing like he was in a film. I almost fell for it, but that was just because I was still having a hard time dealing with the truth, which is not the case anymore. This time he decided that he was going to stand outside my door, and he even told me that he would stand outside all night if that’s what it took for me to forgive him. He made all these declarations of how much he loved me and told me that I was making a huge mistake by letting him go over something stupid like this because apparently nobody could ever love me more than he did, and the whole thing with Rachel had just been a mistake on his part, but he was willing to change. All I had to do was forgive him. But I told him that I didn’t intend to forgive him, so it would be better for him if he left. I wasn’t even taking him seriously; I just wanted him to go away so I could go back to scrolling on my phone. But eventually, when I realized that he wasn’t going to go anywhere on his own, I decided to bluff and pretended like I was calling the cops on him. I made a whole show of it because I was really bored, and also I wanted to know what his reaction would be. So I spoke very loudly on the phone and pretended to speak to the cops, and then he started screaming at me asking if I was serious about this, and I pretended like I had indeed called the cops on him. He immediately started cursing at me, and within minutes, he got back into his car and drove off. That was pretty funny, and I’m guessing it was part of the reason why he did not want to contest the divorce. Obviously, after that, he must have figured out that I didn’t actually call the cops on him, and I just made a fool out of him.

Anyway, a few days after that, I decided to send a couple of my friends to collect my things from his house so I could bring them here and make it easier for me to move out permanently, and just like I had feared, he behaved terribly with them. At first, he accused them of being thieves and started yelling at them, saying that he was not going to allow them to enter his house at any cost. So my friends had to call me up and put me on the phone with him, and I reminded him that I had paid my share of the rent earlier, and if he didn’t allow me to take back my things, I was going to sue him. We had a really bad argument on the phone, but eventually, he did allow my friends to enter and pack my things so they could bring them to me. They told me that even when they were in the house packing my things, he kept walking behind them everywhere they would go and kept an eye on them while mumbling about me. As if that was going to make me feel bad, especially given his recent antics. At most, it was just embarrassing for him because now they think that he’s slightly cuckoo, and I don’t even blame them. His behavior has been really weird and childish recently. I would feel bad for him, but it’s all his fault. He could have chosen to accept his mistakes and deal with them with grace and dignity, but I guess he wants to act like an immature teenager. That’s his call to make, can’t help it. All it has accomplished so far is to make me even more sure of my decisions to leave him. Now I have no second thoughts anymore because obviously, if he’s acting like this, he’s not the guy for me, and it’s not like he’s acting immature all of a sudden. Even earlier, when we were happy together, he did have a childish streak that would come out whenever he would get mad at me, but at least back then, I was able to ignore it because I was in love with him, and it wasn’t as bad as this. But lately, he’s just been embarrassing, and I’ve honestly been questioning my own taste. I don’t even feel half as bad as I was a couple of weeks ago when I first found out about him. Right now, I’m just happy that I’m getting to leave him and start again. I’m also happy that I only ended up wasting years of my life with him and not anymore because I had been planning on having kids with him too. That would have been another nightmare to deal with had that been the case, but thankfully, I’m getting to quit while I’m ahead.

So, a really interesting update, you guys. It’s been 4 weeks since my last update, and I’ve moved out of my parents’ house and I’m staying in my own apartment now. I’m trying to move on and forget about everything that happened in the past, and it’s been slightly easy because obviously I have no contact with Dan anymore. But he decided to reach out to me a couple of days ago by writing me an email, and in that email, he was basically just bragging about how glad he was that he was getting divorced now because I was obviously not the kind of woman who was good enough to be with him. If one stupid little incident was enough to drive me away, it meant that I was the one who had issues and not him. And then it was just one whole paragraph of him telling me that I was a fool, that I was too egoistic, and nobody would ever love me, blah blah blah. And then towards the end, he said that he was really thankful that he had chosen to go on the trip by himself because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to spend all that time with Rachel and hook up with her. So there it was. I had been right all along, and Amy actually had been telling me the truth. It actually boiled my blood the way he was bragging about it, but then I realized the fact that he is who he is, is punishment enough for him, and I don’t want to get involved with him anymore.

I did not respond to his email because I knew all he wanted from me was the satisfaction of getting a reaction. I could have tried to get revenge on him during the divorce or whatever, but we just have to get the waiting period over with, and then both of us will be free, so I did not want to mess with that either, and I’m just letting everything go because I think that’s what’s best for me right now. Engaging with him will only lead to more drama, and that’s not what I want. So he could have hooked up with more women for all I care. All I want to do is put this in the past, and that’s what I’m focusing on right now. Anyway, even if I don’t have him, it doesn’t matter because I have friends and family who love me, and I’m doing pretty great at work too. I’ll be fine. I don’t care about this anymore. Stay tuned for more stories.