In August 2018, my marriage of 26 seemingly blissful years came to an abrupt end. The discovery of incriminating messages on my husband’s phone shattered our union into countless painful fragments. This experience taught me that while heartbreak and infidelity are common, they possess a unique ability to devastate one’s life.

Six months later, I candidly shared the story of my breakup in Red magazine. For ten years, I had written a light-hearted column about my joyful family life, and readers felt personally connected to our story. The response was overwhelming; thousands of messages, cards, and emails poured in. Many were from friends, but the majority came from women who had endured similar betrayals. These women hadn’t chosen to end their relationships; instead, they had their hearts torn apart by partners who could be angry, sometimes abusive, and often cruel.

Rosie Green received an overwhelming response when she first wrote about her husband’s affair. 

My Instagram became a refuge for those nursing broken hearts. As we navigated our personal pain and solitude, we found connection and support through social media. Many followers began sharing their own stories with me.

With their permission, I anonymized these stories and posted them on Instagram, linking them to my website where I curated an online library. These stories also became part of a book I was commissioned to write—a blend of manual and memoir titled How To Heal A Broken Heart. Followers expressed that writing their thoughts was therapeutic and that reading others’ experiences offered them comfort and hope, making them feel less isolated.

The letters continue to arrive. Just today, I received two more. They always present a paradox; while the actions of those who cheat can be outrageous and shocking, their behavior is all too common.

Here are some letters that, from the thousands I’ve received, best illustrate the predictably shocking reality of infidelity.

The bare-faced liar

Dishonesty is at the heart of an affair. It’s mentally destabilising in the extreme to have someone you have loved and trusted look you right in the eye and lie (sometimes swearing on their children’s lives). For some deceit in extremis, see below.

‘My husband and I have been together for 24 years, married for 22. We are both 47. We have three amazing kids aged 17, 19 and 21. It has been a marriage where we have had many ups and downs, but largely I’d say we were happy except for one thing. To get out of occasions he didn’t want to attend, he would always exaggerate his stories, manipulate the truth and make stuff up with such ease it left me wondering, if he can lie that easily, am I missing something? From early on in our marriage he was working away and I discovered phone bills where he would be texting women through the night. I found condom wrappers in his washbag – he denied it. I found Viagra – he denied it.

My daughter was ten when she found cocaine hidden in the ashtray of his car. Again, he lied and said it was something for his diabetes. Skip forward some years and 18 months ago I was driven to look at his Apple watch. Lo and behold: texts from a woman the previous night apologising for running late.

He had allegedly been to meet friends. I confronted him only to discover this woman was his drug dealer. He admitted it as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He was using cocaine regularly. I threw him out – however, after three months he wore me down with promises of being a changed man and saying he couldn’t live without us and he’d change and do anything to make things right. Now we are sleeping in the same bed – however, there is no intimacy. He has erectile dysfunction, which he blames on me for being no good in bed and cold.’

The cheat who used sex workers younger than his daughters

A particular kind of betrayal – one that throws up issues around money and STIs, and invokes a deep distress at being exposed to your partner’s seedy side. The women who experience infidelity of this kind often suffer from crushed self-esteem and feel anger that their partner is seen as a loving family man yet is paying to have sex with often much younger women.

‘By searching my husband’s laptop and other devices, I discovered that before every business trip he had been on, he had pre-arranged to have a prostitute visit him. And this had been going on for years! I was so sickened by the betrayal and the sleaziness of it all. I feel I really don’t know him at all. He has devalued me completely.

The fact that he chooses prostitutes online makes me feel that there is nothing about me he finds attractive. These women are younger than his daughters. Of course I’m not going to have the same body as a 25-year-old girl.

I feel there isn’t any part of me that he cannot find better elsewhere. My eyes, my face, my sex, my nature. I am so undesirable to him yet he doesn’t want me to leave him. He says he loves me. He doesn’t know what love is. You do not treat those you love with such contempt.

I do not trust him, and I know it’s only a matter of time before it happens again. Part of me doesn’t care. I’m not in a proper loving relationship with him. I don’t want to be. Not now I know the extent of his double life.

Over a year on, I’m still here. It’s the first thing I think about every day. And it can jump out at me at any time. The fallout of this is what stops me doing anything. It would destroy our family, possibly his work life, too. So many friends and their children who look at him and see a wonderful family man who has it all. I know that my daughters and their liberated friends would be horrified. And the shame! I cannot put my girls through that. My life has no moments of kindness. No gentle looks. No brush of a loving hand. No cherishing. And he just carries on.’

The extreme gaslighter

I hadn’t even heard of this word until I went through my split, but the dictionary definition of gaslighting is ‘manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, memory or powers of reasoning’. Cheaters do it to appease their guilt and to stop questioning. One follower even went so far as to go to therapy to fix her ‘jealousy issues’ when she wasn’t imagining things at all. Here’s one writer’s experience.

‘My husband and I shared an iCloud and I ended up with a message on my phone. It wasn’t just any message, it was a love poem, from him to his mistress. When I confronted him, it turned out this affair was ‘everything to him’, he told me he hadn’t loved me for years and I was a horrible and terrible woman he couldn’t stand. The man who promised to love me forever had turned into a man I don’t know.

He blamed me and my behaviour and asserted repeatedly that I had driven him to what he had done. When I found out she was pregnant with his child and told people, he said I was a vindictive cow trying to ruin their new happiness.’

The husband / best friend double betrayal

I’ve met many women who have experienced this scenario and I can honestly say I can think of nothing more devastating. Your husband says you are unlovable and then your best friend cuts you off, too. Often there’s an agonising moment when the woman realises that her strongest ally is actually her biggest betrayer. Horrific. Here’s one woman’s story.

‘My husband has been having an affair with my best friend. Someone I met at antenatal 16 years ago, sharing family holidays twice a year and all of the important occasions and festivities that exist in between. Someone who my children love and call ‘aunt’. Someone who I loved. He has only admitted to this relationship since I used the services of a PI to prove it. That is, if you class an admission as, ‘I am having a nice time and I can do what I want’. Great! Good for him!

She has denied it. No surprise there. He went to exasperating lengths to hide his infidelity – I’m sure to protect himself, and to protect her. I am certain that this has been going on for years. Now they’ve become complacent, continuing their dalliances right under our noses. Turns out our daughter had witnessed this on one of those aforementioned family holidays. Disgraceful. Unforgivable.’

PS… The mistress’s story

I have also had many messages from those who have cheated. They often assume there will be judgment from me, but if I’ve learnt anything it’s that we are all fallible and often acting out from our own hurt. I found the below letter inspiring in its honesty and self-awareness and helpful in understanding how people feel when they have affairs.

‘Three years ago, my marriage broke down because I had an affair. The man I was having the affair with did all of the things your ex-husband did: convinced his wife she was controlling, paranoid etc. I remember him even referring to her as a ‘psycho stalker’ because she wanted to run an errand alongside him. They went to counselling as our affair got more serious, and as I knew her (shamefully, we are all parents at the same school) I could see her disintegration before my eyes. I’m ashamed to say now that I could only feel my own disgusting high at ‘winning’ this man at the time. 

I treated my own husband terribly, lying to him, looking at him in the ‘icy, dead’ way you describe. When I told him I didn’t want to be married to him any more he crumpled on the kitchen floor crying. Rather than being disgusted at myself, which I absolutely should have been, I was just angry with him for being weak. I behaved like a heroin addict. I couldn’t see past myself and my need for this man (who later cheated on me, too – which I half expected, to be honest). 

I’ve never really thought about what we did to our spouses until I read your book. How it felt from the other side. I’d looked back on it selfishly as an inevitable need for us both to get out of unhappy marriages. That we broke two people never sank in because I didn’t want to face it. I’ll never, ever do that to anyone ever again.’

Rosie’s book How To Heal A Broken Heart is published by Orion, £9.99.