A man on Reddit was left feeling conflicted after discovering his now-wife lied to him while he was away on his first military deployment.
“We started dating at 18, right after I joined the military (she is a local where I got stationed). About three months into dating I found out I was being deployed. I pretty much gave her the option to break off the relationship. Because that’s totally not fair to her,” the man wrote.
She told him they should “keep in touch,” and that’s what they did.
“We officially started dating again around the end of my deployment. I knew for those few months at the beginning of my deployment [that] she was probably dating around. But when I came back, she had told me that she never met with any other guy or dated since I’d been gone,” he recalled.
His now-wife told him “she waited” until he got back from deployment. He believed her, so he decided “to pop the question a couple years later.”
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“Fast forward, I’m happily married to her with two sons. Recently, our toddler needed a tablet to watch dancing fruit and such. We decided to use her old iPad (this iPad hadn’t been used since the beginning of our relationship). I forgot to turn on guided access before putting our other son down for a nap. Welp, our oldest son figured out how to FaceTime people. He pretty much FaceTimed a bunch of her family members and a couple of her old ‘friends,'” the man continued.
“Some of the people my son called had hearts and heart-eye emojis. I got curious and opened the messages (they didn’t pick up my son’s FT attempt, thank God). Then I saw some sexual messages dated back when I was on my first deployment,” he revealed.
That’s how he discovered his wife had lied to him and had indeed been dating around while he was on deployment, back when they were both still single.
“Should I even bring this up to her? It was so long ago. We weren’t officially dating and she hasn’t talked to those guys since then. But, her saying she ‘waited for me’ was a big factor in asking her to marry me a couple years later. I know I shouldn’t have clicked those old messages, I wish I never did,” he concluded.
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Users rallied behind the man in the comments section, with many urging him to see his wife’s side as well.
“Veteran as well and I see this situation go differently a lot. You come back and they moved on, but she still thought of you after all that time and at that age? She’s a keeper. Even if she did date around, she chose you. You’re the winner. Feel like a winner,” one person wrote.
“Maybe she desperately wanted you back and thought if she brought this up you [wouldn’t] take her back,” another commented.
“Her not getting into a relationship was her waiting for you. Don’t ruin a good thing, if it’s a good thing! She didn’t cheat because you ‘kept in touch’ rather than dating. I would say if she is a good wife, that hasn’t cheated or done anything of the like, don’t fret over the past,” someone else weighed in.
