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Sharing her story to HuffPost, a woman revealed how she used some seriously impressive investigative skills to uncover her husband’s infidelity after 13 years of marriage. If you’re thinking it was lipstick on the collar or unusual charges to their credit card that sparked her suspicion, it was much more innocent than that. Turns out a simple text message gave him away, and he had no idea he was messing up.

Think about it. How often do you and your partner or spouse text throughout the day? Countless times, right? It’s not often you dissect the nonsensical banter between questions about what to eat for dinner and the latest work gossip. But this woman was probably more perceptive than most, and her behavior might have you looking back on some of your text threads with fresh eyes.

A woman noticed a suspicious detail in an innocent text her husband sent that revealed his infidelity.

Dr. Samantha Gray told HuffPost that her husband told her he was visiting North Carolina for a work trip back in 2018. While he was away, Gray received a text from him claiming he was at an amazing church.

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Gray wrote, “He sent me photos of the singers on the stage, noting the name of one of the singers in particular, so I could find her music later.” All it took was a Google search for Gray to learn that the singer in question was performing at an event in Knoxville, Tennessee, not North Carolina.

After this discovery, Gray was confused about why her husband lied to her, but instead of confronting him, she decided to look into it further. Through some research, she found video footage of the church service online. 

She wrote, “Eventually, I saw my husband standing big as day in a yellow sweater vest I bought him, texting me with one hand, and holding another woman’s hand with the other.” That was a difficult moment for her as they had been married for 13 years.

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‘I became my own private investigator and went on a quiet rampage.’

First, she checked the bills in the mail as her husband always handled their finances. “These bills provided records of shopping trips, dinner dates, and out-of-state concerts,” Gray wrote.

“I also found a Happy Holidays card thanking him for spending Christmas with another woman’s family in Tennessee (instead of his own two children, my step-daughters).” She went on to say, “That year, he had expressed his disappointment and frustration that he had to work on Christmas, but he attempted to assure me that he was out of state working on our hard-to-remedy financial hardships.”

She then went to check his old computer and cell phone, where she found numerous texts and emails from other women, which started a few years after they got married. Gray also read her husband’s conversations with as many as 15 women, where he detailed her very private infertility issues.

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Even with all this evidence, Gray had to see her husband cheating in person to face up to the truth. “I decided to make a few clandestine out-of-state trips of my own to see him cheating with my own eyes because, despite everything I had found, I was still in denial.”

So, she took a trip to Tennessee when her husband was on one of his “work trips.” She tracked him and found him at a dog park with one of his mistresses. At that moment, there was no room for any doubt. Gray couldn’t stay married to him anymore and decided to leave him. 

Her husband was shocked but didn’t admit to any wrongdoing. According to marriage.com, that denial is actually quite common among cheaters. The outlet noted that it’s a way they can separate themselves from the actual severity of the act and their roll in the consequences.

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The woman learned her husband had even fathered a child with someone else.

When they were in the process of finalizing their divorce, Gray found out that her husband had a baby with the last woman he was seeing. Gray had been changing her health insurance policy and saw that the baby’s name had been added to her plan by mistake. “My husband and I had been actively trying to get pregnant,” she wrote. “During grad school, I created a list of gender-neutral names I wanted to use for a girl. My ex-husband took my top name and gave it to his son.”

While she felt fortunate not to have such a deceptive man in her life anymore, Gray said the affairs left her with trauma. She wrote, “In the months after my discovery and our split, I felt disgusted. My weight fluctuated. I had constant headaches. I continually wanted to cry, but was too exhausted and dehydrated.”

She also mentioned that she developed some trust issues because of her experience; however, there is a silver lining. She is in a good relationship now.

Gray also felt that some of her trauma might be because her ex-husband died not long ago. “There are days when I wish I had told him that I knew everything he had done to me ― I’m still not sure he knew I was aware of the extent of his deception,” she wrote.

“Other days I feel empathy for him and the pain I know he experienced at the end of his life.” However, even after that, she is learning to leave the past in the past and move forward in life. Sometimes, simply moving on is the hardest and most important lesson of all.

As licensed therapist John Kim noted, what Gray went through and the trauma she faced afterward is totally normal. Even her empathy for the man who hurt her so deeply is normal. In fact, it’s that empathy for the person who hurt her that means she has truly healed. He explained, “There’s more to cheating than it being about you and the relationship. And once you understand this, you can take it less personally. You can cut the cord that ties the incident to your worth. With this distance, there is now room for empathy. And a 360 view instead of a two-dimensional one.”

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Sanika Nalgirkar is a writer based in Seattle. She has a master’s degree in Creative Writing and specializes in relationships, entertainment, and human interest topics.