I caught my wife cheating on me, and I know exactly when it started.
I am 44, male, and my soon-to-be ex-wife is 39. We were married for 11 years and had no children. We used to be a pretty chubby couple until two years ago, when I had a blood test and found out I was at risk of developing diabetes, gout, and hypertension.
That really scared me. Bit by bit, both of us started living a much healthier life. I went from 117 kilograms to 85 kilograms, and my wife, whom I will call Jane, went from 83 kilograms to 65 kilograms. We felt great, and needless to say, I never developed those diseases.
We started going to the gym almost every afternoon. That was where her affair partner worked as a coach. I will call him Baldi.
When Jane started getting in shape, I noticed most guys turned to look at her. I felt proud of her. She was fairly busty and had magnificent legs, and of course, Baldi was no exception. I had noticed before that Baldi liked to check out women’s bodies, especially their butts.
I had seen him doing it several times. He liked to show off how ripped he was. When Jane and I were regulars at the gym, I noticed she was enjoying the attention she got from men. At first, I tried to shrug it off.
One day, we were using elliptical machines. In front of us, there was a cable machine. Baldi took off his T-shirt and started doing crossovers. I turned to Jane with a face that said, “Can you believe this guy?”
But she was staring at him. She even wet her lips. I looked at Baldi, and I swear he was grinning. I felt crushed.
I was getting in shape, but I was not as muscular and fit as he was. When we were driving home, I made a comment about Baldi showing off. Jane said, “Really? I didn’t notice.”
I told her she had been staring. She said she didn’t remember and must have been thinking about something else. I shrugged it off and kept driving. But from then on, I noticed they were talking more frequently at the gym.
A few weeks later, Jane was doing squats using the Smith machine. Suddenly, Baldi went over to help her. He was grabbing her by the waist, and I got angry. She finished the first set, and I went over and told him, in a not-so-nice way, “I’ve got it from here.”
Baldi just smiled and said, “No problem, buddy.” He calls everybody buddy. Then he walked away.
Jane knew me very well, and when she heard my angry tone, she said, “Oh my God, OP.” I told her, “We’ll discuss this at home.” And at home, the drama blew up.
She called me immature and jealous. I told her I had noticed he was trying to get into her pants. She said she knew that, but she would never cheat on me. I asked her why she had let him touch her, and she said she didn’t want to be rude.
After about an hour of arguing, we agreed to change gyms. So we went to another place to exercise. But Jane was resentful toward me in the following months. Her argument was that I didn’t trust her.
During the third month after we changed gyms, a very good opportunity opened up at my job, but it was in the afternoon. We discussed it, and I took it. That meant we had to go to the gym at different hours. I went in the morning, and Jane went in the afternoon.
That was when everything went south. Jane’s resentment increased, and we barely spoke. I sent her messages telling her about my day, telling her that I missed her, sending her memes, but she rarely replied. When she did, it was just, “Yes,” “Okay,” or “Same here.”
I was very worried and proposed couples therapy. She said I was the one who needed therapy because I was the one with trust issues. I agreed. I was so desperate to fix our marriage that I even thought it was all my fault.
So, during the following year, 2022, I went to therapy. But Jane’s behavior did not change. We were not intimate anymore. She was never in the mood.
I snooped through her phone but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. I looked in her car for a second phone. Nothing. I checked her phone again to see her map history.
It only showed home, work, home, gym, home. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she said she just felt like she was having a “40s phase” and that it would pass. I never had any evidence of cheating. So I continued working and worrying.
We live in a condo. The security guard, a very cheerful man named Mr. P, greeted me often. We chatted a lot. One day, he was touching his shoulder and told me that the day before, he had to move a heavy sofa, and now he had some pain.
I was sympathetic. Then he dropped the bomb. He said, “Maybe you can arrange a meeting with your massage therapist.”
I asked him, “Who?” He said, “The guy who came yesterday to massage Mrs. Jane.”
It took me a second to process it. I asked him if he had a video of the man. I think he noticed I had gone pale, because he hurried to show me. Guess who it was?
Baldi, of course. He had come over a few times to “massage” my wife. I took the day off and started investigating. I asked a co-worker for his car, and that afternoon, I followed Jane.
She parked her car at the mall where the gym was. Baldi was waiting for her. They giggled and behaved like a couple. There were kisses and hugs, and I nearly broke down in tears.
They walked a couple of blocks and went into a residential area. I tried to follow them with my phone ready to record, but the guard stopped me and asked, “Can I help you?” I just said, “What a nice couple. Do you know them?”
He said he thought they were newlyweds, but he couldn’t tell me anything else. I called Jane, but she never answered. I went to her car at the mall and wondered why that place didn’t show up on the map. I dialed again, and I could hear her phone inside her car.
That was why the map history showed nothing. I also found out Jane had not attended the gym in eight months. I didn’t know it then, but the previous night had been the last night I would ever sleep with Jane in the same bed.
I returned the car, went home, and called my parents. Fortunately, my dad answered. I told him everything. I was crying, and he comforted me.