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infidelity

A man considers divorcing his wife after learning she cheated 20 years ago.

Is there an expiration date for infidelity? If you learned your spouse cheated on you 10, 20, or 30 years ago, would it be any more or less significant than if it happened last week? Is it easier to forgive something that happened years ago or does their silence over all these years make the indiscretion even worse?

A Redditor recently posted that he’s divorcing his wife after learning she cheated on him 20 years ago and the commenters overwhelmingly support his decision. Why? It wasn’t necessarily that she cheated, but how she handled the situation.

“My wife (44F) and I (43M) have been married 20 years,” the poster wrote. “We started dating in high school when I was a junior and she was a senior. We were long-distance for her first two years of college while I was in high school and did one year at community college, then we went to college in the same city for a year and have lived together since.”


The poster later clarified that they were “long-distance,” but they were only about 3 hours apart and saw each other a couple of weekends a month.

The couple has two children, who are 19 and 17 years old. The poster says that their 20-year marriage had been “pretty good” until he learned the truth about what happened during the 2 long-distance years in college.

divorce, infidelity, ami

A group of friends having some drinks.

via Lisa Fotios/Pexels

The couple got together with some of the wife’s college friends after Christmas when the conversation strayed into some very sensitive area. “Her old college roommate commented that it was crazy that we met in high school, had a few wild years in college, then ended up together,” the poster wrote.

The problem was they were together the entire time.

“The roommate started to tell a story, but my wife cut her off and said she was uncomfortable about it. I sensed something was up, so I said that we actually started dating in high school and were together for my wife's entire time at college,” the poster continued.

When it came out that they were together during his wife’s “wild” years, the old college friends got really quiet and the rest of the night was extremely awkward. When one of the roommates was leaving, she told the poster to have an “honest” conversation with his wife about their college years.

The next day, the wife admitted to sleeping with at least 10 men during her first 2 years of college when the couple was in a long-distance relationship. She also admitted that she introduced her future husband to 3 of them as “friends.” But she didn't think it was a big deal because it was a high-school relationship she didn't think would last.

infidelity, divorce, reddit

A couple having a heart-to-heart conversation.

via Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

The wife is still in contact with one of the men.

Now is where the husband has a real dilemma. Can he forgive his wife for cheating on him with a significant number of men while they were in a long-distance relationship and never telling him? The answer was no. The big reason was that she showed a complete lack of respect by parading the men in front of him.

“I've stood by my belief that cheating on me with multiple men for years is unacceptable no matter when it happened and the fact that she continued to maintain relationships with these guys right in front of me was an unacceptable amount of disrespect,” the poster said.

On January 2, the man filed for divorce from his wife. Five days later, he posted about the situation on the Am I Wrong Reddit subforum and the commenters overwhelmingly took his side. Some could understand a little cheating happening while they were long-distance, but no one could abide by the way she introduced her future husband to the men she slept with.

"I actually came into this thread thinking, ‘Well, I could understand him getting divorced over cheating in the past, but if it's a 20-year happy marriage and a one-time mistake while they were in the very beginning of dating, I'd try to work on it.’ But the continuous humiliation of having your girlfriend cheat on you while you're getting introduced to those men and still know one of them? Man, how do you get over that," Candy Puppet wrote.

“It was 20 years ago, but that amount of savageness would be hard to look past, especially when she still associates with the other men. That is just a continual slap." Thanos13 added.

They also praised the friend who told the poster to have a conversation with his wife.

"Honestly, her friend who took OP aside is a good human. Could have let it slide & let him go on clueless about the wife's past." Likeapuma wrote.

The post goes to show that there are no hard and fast rules to deciding how to deal with infidelity and some people are okay with forgiving an indiscretion that happened years ago. Getting carried away and sleeping with someone while in college is one thing, but few could forgive the way the wife seemingly shoved it in her husband’s face without him being aware years later.

A woman is torn between a friendship and the truth.

Sometimes, the quest for the truth can push people to make extreme choices, especially when not knowing the answer eats away at them daily. Such is the story of Reddit user FooFooBunnyLa, who was so concerned over the identity of her best friend’s child that she forced her to get a paternity test.

Her best friend had a son with a man she claimed was a one-night stand, so she raised him alone. As the child grew older, FooFooBunnyLa started to get suspicious.

“The issue is this: this kid looks EXTREMELY like my husband like to an insane degree,” FooFooBunnyLA wrote on the Reddit AITA subforum. “The hair color, eyes, face, everything. He’s even been out with my friend and her son, and people have mistaken him to be the dad before. Needless to say, for three years now, I’ve had my suspicions, but I haven’t said anything. My husband is also close to my friend, and the timeline works out. We were all living almost in the same neighborhood around the time she got pregnant.”


Over the years, the resemblance began to gnaw away at the woman, and her friend wouldn't show her a picture of the child’s biological father, no matter how much she asked.

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A distressed woman sits in a chair.

via Liza Summer/Pexels

The situation was suspicious. The child looked a lot about her husband, and her friend wasn’t forthcoming with any evidence to prove otherwise. To put the issue to bed, the friend took the DNA test. The results would have enormous ramifications for everyone involved.

“Long story short, my friend got a paternity test but said our friendship is over,” FooFooBunnyLA wrote. “The test says my husband isn’t the father. I feel so ashamed to lose my friend, but I thought my husband would slightly understand since even he sees the obvious resemblance between him and this kid. But he has moved out for the time being, and I’m worried this is the end of our marriage.”

The woman asked the online forum if she did the right thing.

“I honestly felt like I had no other choice,” she confided. “The resemblance was unavoidable and it was eating at me so much that no amount of therapy could help. I thought my husband would understand my fears most of all given my history with past cheating exes.”

depressed woman, paternity tests, woman in chair

A depressed woman sits in a chair.

via Liza Summer/Pexels

The woman received over 1400 responses, and nearly everyone agreed that she was wrong in the situation.

“Wait so you thought your supposedly cheating husband would just casually comment on his love-child like ‘oh gee honey doesn’t he look just like me’ to his already paranoid wife?” Toyworker, the most popular commenter, wrote. “Why the f*** would he do that if he was actually guilty? Why the f*** would either of them indulge you if they actually cheated?”

However, one commenter noted that if the woman successfully caught them with the test, people’s opinions of her would differ significantly.

If the results had come back positive, I think it would be mostly … praise for trusting her instincts,” DCPhoto78 wrote.

Ultimately, asking for the test ruined both relationships regardless of the outcome. Her friend and husband were sickened by the accusation, which created a point of no return for their relationship with her. Even if she were correct, the lying and the infidelity would have also caused severe and irreparable damage to the woman’s relationship with her friend and husband as well.

If FooFoo BunnyLa had to do it all over again, would she ask for the test?

A concerned woman gets a DNA test.

A woman, 35, and her husband, 38, had been married for 10 years and during that time became good friends with a neighbor in her 20s. Two years after they met the neighbor she had a son. She said the father wasn’t in the son’s life because he was a one-night fling.

The woman had health issues, so the couple happily took care of the child when she was in the hospital. Sadly, the woman died when the child was young, so the couple became his foster parents and legally adopted him at the age of 7.

Years later, when their adopted son was 10, and their biological child was 5, the mother noticed that both children looked a lot alike. “Now that they are 10 and 5 years old and they looked so much like each other that I begin to have suspicions,” the woman wrote on the Reddit Relationship Advice subforum.


So, she secretly had the adopted son's DNA tested.

via GIPHY

When the results came back, the woman found out that her children were half brothers. Her husband had cheated on her with the neighbor who passed away. In a strange set of circumstances, the man adopted his son. After learning the truth about her son and husband, the wife was beside herself.

“I don't know how I should act. I am so angry and feel so humiliated, but I love the three of them so much. I feel like I am just a tool and that my dignity was stepped upon,” she wrote on the forum.

To make things worse, she still loves her husband. She said that he was “never abusive” and was a “good husband” and a “good father.”

“It feels like I was not a mother but an idiot who was used like a babysitter for his child,” the woman wrote. “How am I supposed to react? Should I tell them the truth and try to cancel the adoption? Should I divorce him? Am I right to feel like it, or am I a monster to see this child as the source of my humiliation?”

depression, sad woman, dna tests

A depressed woman.

via Daniel Reche/Pexels

The post received 110 comments, and the most popular urged her to ask herself the big questions. Do you want to raise both boys? Do you want to stay married? Do you feel like he will slight you again in some way?

I think one question you need to consider is, Do you want to raise both boys? Setting aside whether or not your husband is involved, understand that the child is blameless and isn't responsible for his parentage. Deciding what you want to do regarding the child is important. Also note that it isn't wrong to decide that you can't handle taking care of this child. Only you know if you have the capacity to raise the child, knowing where he comes from. If you decide that you can't, it is better to not try, and end up conveying all the upset you are feeling to him.

The other question is, Do you want to stay married? There can be various reasons for and against divorce. Only you can decide which ones matter most to you.

A related question is, Do you feel he will slight you again in some way? You talk about your dignity being stepped on. Is he often acting that way in many things? Was this a one-time thing? Do you think he is likely to do it again? Knowing this will help you answer the prior question.

Trying to break down all the things you are struggling with into separate ideas may help you get some control over it.

The woman’s final words on her situation were that she couldn’t resolve to hate her husband or the adopted child and that her husband’s infidelity was the only thing that made her feel hesitant about him. Further, she is legally bound to the adopted child and couldn’t leave him regardless. But sadly, even though it appears she will stay in the situation, she feels like she has no choice. “I feel trapped,” she wrote.

Upworthy has reached out to the woman for an update on her story. We will update this story if she responds.