Man Felt ‘Deceived’ After Wife Left Once Youngest Child Moved Out

A woman on Reddit says her cheating husband claimed she “deceived him” because she promptly left him after their youngest child grew up and moved out.

The woman first discovered her husband was cheating on her 10 years ago.

“I got a call from school saying that our youngest, then 9, was sick and needed to go home. When we arrived I heard them in our bedroom. I panicked and made loud noises to let them know they weren’t alone and that our daughter was with me. I’m crying just writing this, I still cry whenever I remember that day,” she recalled.

Over the course of the following year, she felt “insignificant and inadequate; ugly and undesirable.” Despite that, she and her husband tried to make things work. They attended couples therapy, moved, bought new furniture and started a “new habit of changing the sheets every night before bed.”

However, one morning she “woke up and realized that I wasn’t in love with my husband anymore.”

“After this realization everything seemed easier moving forward. I saw him as a roommate and a great support raising the children. A good friend. We love our children and we wanted the best for them. For these next 10 years we hardly ever fought and we raised [three] beautiful, happy and successful young people,” she continued, adding that the revelation also released her from her fear that he might cheat again.

“It was one of my nightmares in the beginning. I didn’t care anymore as long as I slept in clean sheets every night,” she detailed.

When their youngest child got their own apartment, the woman knew she was “free” and began planning to move out, get her own apartment and file for divorce.

“When I told him and handed him the divorce papers he was in shock and when I moved out the day after my daughter … he was even more shocked and distraught,” the woman continued, explaining her husband told her she had “deceived him” by acting like everything was fine for a decade, “while he lived in regret every day for how he hurt me.”

He called her “cold, calculated and vindictive,” but the woman doesn’t “see things that way.”

“I saw it as me (and him of course) doing the best with what I was dealt to make a happy and content life for our children … and I think that I succeeded,” she concluded.

Reddit users comforted the woman in the comments section.

“Good for you. My ex pretended to be blindsided too and it was a ruse. He berated me every day for hours on end and for months. I know I made the right decision,” one person wrote.

“You didn’t deceive him. You have been fine all these years. You just never told him why and he clearly never asked,” another commented.

“Your husband has some audacity blaming you for deceiving him. He was cheating on you in your own home. He was living in guilt because of his own actions. If this was me, I wouldn’t care about what he says about this, I wouldn’t really even bother giving an explanation,” someone else weighed in.