Have you ever stumbled upon an item that shocked you? What if it belonged to the person you trusted most in the world? While you might have a few things of your own that you wouldn’t want the world to find out about, these folks took to Quora and Reddit to confess what strange item their partners owned.
1. Stumbling Upon A New Family Member
My husband suddenly passed at the age of 49 of an aortic aneurysm. The week following his demise, my oldest daughter was home and helping clean out some stuff that she knew I wouldn’t get done alone. One afternoon, a few days into the cleaning process, I heard a scream.
She had found a "pet" he was hiding in a small plastic terrarium in the garage: A black widow, to be exact. The rest of us are arachnophobes.
2. Now That’s Creative
One day when my (now ex) husband "came back" from the Rhodesian Bush Conflict, I found a pair of lady’s panties in his case. I asked him about it and he came up with the worst excuse.
He said it was the latest in men’s underwear. I made him wear them every day for ten days and wash them every night. One day he came home with no underpants. He said they had torn. I never believed anything he said again.
3. Secret Collection
When my husband moved into my mom’s place back in 2012, when he was just her boyfriend, he brought a small black box from his childhood room and told me to never open it.
Of course, the next time he went to work I opened it. It was full of Yugioh cards.
Wikimedia Commons, Timothy Tsui
4. That’ll Cause Some Trust Issues
I found a nearly empty packet of "female viagra"—but that wasn't the craziest part. He had been secretly giving this to me in my food and drinks for some time in an attempt to make me want to sleep with him more often. He is a heavy drinker and a narcissist. I confronted him and we are now separated.
5. It’s Strictly Protocol
I found contraception! We have never used them. I threw a fit. It turned out they were part of his military medic’s kit! Don’t worry—I checked out his story. He had to show me the packing list of items he was required to carry as a part of his kit when being deployed overseas.
I never found out if he used any while he was deployed. It’s better that I not know.
6. Collecting The Little Things
I was blown away when I found out that my fiancé kept an empty cologne bottle given to me by my old ex-girlfriend! My fiancé explained to me that she kept the bottle simply because it was something I owned—and not because another woman gave it to me.
She had even kept a silver button off my favorite shirt that had run its course.
Freepik, KamranAydinov
7. Awkward Silence
Right after my husband and I were married, he told me to go ahead and read some of the journals he had. One day I did. He had told me before that he had two grown kids by his first wife—but in these journals, there were references to two more young kids with his second wife.
So, I called him at work and asked him how many kids he really had. He was silent. I felt like I had married a complete stranger.
8. What Else Are Nightstands For?
My ex inadvertently left her purse open with her pay stub showing and I looked at it. When I saw how much she was really making compared to what she told me she was making, I realized that she was definitely not carrying her share. She had even created a savings account with her mother. I left her the next week!
9. We Need A Fact Check On This
Once, I went to get some vegetables out of the crisper in the fridge and discovered it was full of batteries. He insists keeping the batteries cold extends their shelf life. I would eventually like to convince him the same thing is true for lettuce.
10. Oh, That Actually Makes Sense
My husband was an officer and on rare occasions would drive his detective’s car home. He was getting something out of the trunk and I noticed a box of sanitary napkins. It turned out they absorb blood really well—so they’re used on wounds before the ambulance arrives.
11. Betrayed by Technology
It was an iPhone. We were a firmly Android family. However, eventually, my wife admitted that Android was just too difficult for her and an iPhone was much easier to understand even if it consistently refused to connect to our home WiFi, printers, and other Smart devices. We did forgive her and set it up for her.
12. Why Would You Keep That In Your Car?
While sitting in the car with my partner’s two kids, waiting for him to run a quick errand in a store, I popped open the glove box. A stack of letters addressed to him at an apartment fell out. But it was not our apartment.
It turned out he was not only having an affair, but he also had a whole love nest on the side. It was all I could do to keep myself contained when he returned to the car.
13. A Hidden Talent
I found pictures: Beautiful wildlife pictures. They included photos of his dogs playing and gorgeous landscapes. He took them on his camera and they live in the bottom of our cabinet with our passports and birth certificates. They are obviously sentimental. He has never shown me them to me, but he knows I've seen them.
What is shocking, in my mind, is that he has such a talent for photography, yet the camera is long gone. He just uses his phone for taking pictures now. Family life got in the way, I guess.
14. A Diary Confession
I was looking for any evidence that my fiancé had written a will a few days after he passed. I decided to flick through his diary. He was definitely on the spectrum, so I wasn’t surprised to find that he’d put down the most inane details of every day since he was seven years old.
In a recent entry, I discovered that he’d been meeting men and women for intimacy, but mostly men, all the time I’d known him. I hadn’t even known he was bi. He gave no hint.
Freepik, yanalya
15. What Else Are Nightstands For?
When my children's father and I divorced he took one of our custom nightstands and I took the other. Later, I bought the matching nightstand of the pair from him. After it had been in my possession for several years, the drawer wouldn't close, so I removed it.
Jammed up under the drawer was a terrible work evaluation and a mail-order catalog for all kinds of "magic" candles, spells, and witchcraft items. Weird.
16. A Sketchy Matchmaker
I found a text message from a former boss in another country (someone who should have been well forgotten about when we moved to Europe),
He and his mother had planned a visit, and the mother was trying to play Cupid for her recently divorced and man-child of a son. She thought my own partner would be a good match, since at that stage we were having a rough time.
The two of them hooked up.
17. That’s A Good Campfire Story
My husband was doing some minor repairs that required removing two stairs. It was the first chance that he had ever had to see what was under the deck. He was surprised to find the headstone of a two-year-old boy named Johan who passed in 1862.
It had apparently been stolen by the previous owner’s son and some of his friends from a historic cemetery in a neighboring town, and the previous owners didn’t feel like moving it when they built the deck. The town historians had been looking for it for a very long time.
18. A Disturbing Diagnosis
After my better half passed from a malignant growth in 2017, I was cleaning out his office space when I found a letter from his malignant growth specialist. The second I started reading it, I burst into tears. The letter said that his disease was terminal and he had four to six months to live. I had no clue he was terminal.
He had never referenced the letter or the diagnosis the specialist gave him. The letter was dated November 2016. My better half went into liver failure on April 9, 2017. He passed on May 26, 2017.
19. That Might Affect The Monthly Budget
After my husband passed and I was cleaning some things out, I found court papers stating that he’d been sued just a year after we were married. It wasn’t for much, although at the time, it would have been a lot of money for us.
He paid the amount off without me ever knowing with a payment plan that was phenomenally cheap. I wasn’t mad when I found it but I was shocked. We weren’t the richest when we married but we spent our money wisely. I guess he didn’t want to mar the happy bubble of our new marriage.
20. Talk About A Missed Red Flag
This was shortly after my wife walked out in the middle of the night with no warning or even a hint she was unhappy. The relationship seemed fine as far as I could tell. There were no fights, no violence, no substance use, healthy "relations," and common interests.
As I was sorting through the junk she had left behind, I found something truly unsettling: a straw doll that looked like it had been purchased as a Halloween decoration. It had a photo of my face glued on to it, gray tape covering both eyes, and a wooden, "shishkabob" style skewer pierced into the heart.
I have had no contact with her since she left, and just thinking about it still creeps me out to this day.
21. Not A Great Moment To Capture
I was 20 years old and had been married for a couple of years to a guy that was eight years older than me. He had become distant and my attempts to engage him in conversation about what was going on between us did not seem to make any difference. I knew something was wrong so I started looking through his personal stuff to find clues that might help me figure it out.
In his sock drawer, I found an envelope of photographs—and they made me sick to my stomach. There were pictures of him and my sister in a hotel room...and he was in his underwear. There was even a selfie he took of the two of them!
22. Hoping For A Hole In One
About a year or so after my wife lost her battle with a brain tumor, I was looking for something in our file cabinet. I came across a folder marked "golf" in her handwriting. I play a lot of golf, especially now that I’m fully retired. She played a little, although she didn’t want to take lessons or practice very much.
We would play a local course occasionally just because it gave us another thing to do together. The folder included every scorecard for every round she ever played (paper clipped together by course in the order she had played them). It was her way of keeping track, I think, of whether she was improving over time. I never knew.
23. The Photos That Changed It All
Nearing the end of our 27-year marriage, I found a card-sized envelope. It was addressed to my spouse but I recognized the name of the sender. We were friends with him and his wife. Not thinking anything about it, I opened the card, thinking it would be an invitation or thank you note. It was not.
The "card" turned out to be a package of scandalous photos of men involved in a variety of intimate positions. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I felt physically ill. I hurriedly hid the photos until I could figure out a way to broach the subject with him.
That event turned out to be the next to last nail in the coffin of our marriage.
24. A Lighthearted Find
My husband passed unexpectedly. I had never cleaned underneath our bed. I knew he had a lot of books and things stuffed under there, but I couldn’t move the bed by myself and just wasn’t motivated. Three years later, I set about cleaning up.
One thing I found was the cardboard cover of a videotape, though not the tape itself. It was a raunchy tape (and I had zero problems with that).
But the woman portrayed on the box, the star of the movie was none other than Stormy Daniels. I laughed when I saw that. It was as though my hubby had made a little joke, and joking had been a significant part of our relationship.
25. Humble Hero
When my dad passed, my mom found all of my dad’s records and ribbons for his service. He served for over 20 years in the USAF, but we had no idea of his accomplishments and awards until we started going through his things.
He was awarded two very prestigious medals, one of them was the Distinguished Flying Cross for leading a successful mission over Vietnam under very heavy fire. He also had numerous other high levels of ribbons given for the missions he made.
We had no idea of his high level of accomplishments because he never talked about them.
26. Sketchy Locker
My late husband was a letter carrier. All of the stuff from his work locker was packed up and given to me after he passed. When I went through it, I found something that didn't make sense.
There was a box of rubbers in there. We had been married for over 15 years and together for 19 when he passed. He had a vasectomy before we met so I could never figure out why he had them in the first place. He had an affair when he was married to his ex. These things made me wonder if he cheated on me as well.
27. Wish I Hadn't Seen That
When my current husband and I were still engaged but getting ready to combine households, I was deleting a bunch of files from his computers so we could sell them. He had some pictures of his ex-wife and him on there (nothing racy or anything like that). But one picture caught my attention.
It was a close-up of my husband with his ex, nothing special at all—except the absolute happiness that exuded off him. It stopped my heart for a second. His eyes, his smile, all of it.
He had been with his first wife since he was 15 years old. They were high school sweethearts and had two children together. They were married for 20 years before she told him she was lost. She had met someone else. I had never seen him look so happy as he had in that picture.
It didn’t make me think he didn’t love me or that he would always love her more, I just wish I had known him like that.
28. Missed Prescription
I had married a sweet young lady from England who had two children from a previous marriage. One rainy weekend, we were snuggled on the sofa while I was reading a book she had on the Kings and Queens of England. A folded bit of paper fell out onto my lap.
My wife looked at it, a bit puzzled, and said, "Oh, Dr Jones was my doctor when I was pregnant with Kim. He gave me that for morning sickness and I lost it. I must have left it in the book". When I read the prescription, my jaw DROPPED.
The paper was a doctor’s prescription for a drug called Thalidomide. Although its use in the USA had been banned, it was prescribed in Britain for morning sickness. Thousands of babies born to mothers that had used it lost their lives in their first year, and many had severe deformities.
Our daughter is now a healthy woman because her mother had used a prescription as a bookmark and lost it.
29. Secret Love Letter
My husband took his own life and left me destitute. It is still difficult for me to imagine how anybody, especially somebody who is supposed to love you, can leave you penniless in the world. Before he passed, he arranged for his pension to be paid to the Humane Society and left me $6,000 of credit card debt.
I sorted out my husband’s clothes and possessions with my brother. I found a lot of new clothes that he had never worn: a really nice suit, a gray, wool jacket, three sweaters and a beautiful pair of shoes that had never been taken out of the box.
Then when I looked in his wallet I found a love letter from an old girlfriend he had known before we met. He had been carrying that love letter around in his wallet throughout our 18-year marriage and I knew nothing about it.
30. A Secret Cash Stash
I knew a 42-year-old man who was a very successful dentist. His wife worked with him at his office. They were both very good-looking and physically fit. They looked like Ken and Barbie. One day, the dentist dropped onto the kitchen floor. His wife immediately did CPR, but it didn’t help.
She would later be told that he had had a massive heart attack and was probably gone before he hit the floor. At that age, he had not been thinking about the end of his life and had not made any preparations. He had many secrets that his wife would learn, and she was the defendant in several lawsuits after he passed.
She found $30,000 in cash in their closet. She never found out where it came from or what it was for. A year later, I asked her what she would say to her husband if he were still alive. Her response made my blood run cold. Without hesitating, she said that she would take his life herself.
31. A Moldy Memento
My husband and I were both in the military and moved around a lot. We decided to settle down in Texas. Sadly, many of the items in our memento boxes were forever damaged by mold.
There were destroyed journals, books, notes, and love letters. There was one book, though, that made my husband’s heart drop. It was the first Bible he received—full of handwritten margin notes and highlighted lines. He got it from a friend after his brother had lost his life.
It was full of mold but he couldn’t throw it away. There was even a personal inscription in it from his friend. I found a professional book restorer online and contacted him. He said he usually didn’t work on projects like this, but he made an exception.
I sent him the book and a few months later he had created a new cover for it, personalized it with my husband’s name in the corner, and got rid of all the mold.
32. The Traveling Photograph
His ex-girlfriend warned me about an old Polaroid my partner had of his ex-wife. His ex-girlfriend told me she found it in his pants pocket when doing laundry. It was at least ten years old when she first saw it. I rolled my eyes. I’d never met his ex-wife.
She lived in Paris and couldn’t stand him. I’m sure she’d be creeped out if she knew he had an old photograph of her. Still, it’s not really my business. It showed up in the laundry about a year later.
I carefully placed it on the dresser along with the loose change, receipts, and guitar picks that were collected in his jeans pockets. It vanished the way I hoped it would.
A few months later I found it on the floor under the bed. I put it back on the dresser in a prominent spot and casually mentioned he should probably find a safe place to put it.
A few months later, I found it in a stack of mail on the kitchen table. I placed it to one side and handed it to him when he got home. I said to him, "I found the Polaroid again". He responded, "Oh. Okay". I asked if it was a hint if he wanted me to see it. He said no.
I mentioned the Polaroid of his ex-wife to his ex-girlfriend after I broke up with him. It felt a little mean-spirited to laugh, but we did it anyway.
33. The Mysterious Dresser Drawer
I was out of town visiting my parents with my oldest son. Right before I left, I misplaced an item. My husband decided to continue looking for it while I was away. His search led him to my nightstand drawer. Inside he found my big pink friend (no batteries required).
The thing that stunned him was that the toy was much larger than he is. I had ordered it online and it looked much smaller than it was in real life. I have no idea why I even kept it. But finding the item hit his self-esteem in a very big way (no pun intended).
After finding it, he took to Facebook to express his feelings on the matter without mentioning the reason for it. My mom saw his post and became worried about his state of mind. She told me to call him to check in, so I did. When he told me what was bothering him, I was mortified—I felt so bad.
We talked about it for a while and by the time we hung up, he was assured that he was all that I needed.
34. Dear Diary
When my partner was not at home, I began to search through his belongings. I was trying to find some of his secrets.
I found his diaries written in Montreal just after he arrived there. It described in detail how he had met his wife in Dallas before he arrived in Montreal. He asked her to give him a reason for why she wanted a divorce. She said, "You call me a pig when I eat my food". I was shocked.
How could he be so rude to his dear wife? In his other diaries, he said that in his thousands of dreams, he recalled his loving memories with his ex-wife and how he wished that the broken mirrors could be reunited to become one round one.
They had already separated about two to three years ago and he was still deeply in love with his ex-wife.
35. Searching For An ID
My ex often gaslighted me. I didn't come to realize it was a thing, until I was in therapy, years later. One day he said he lost his ID. We both searched for it but when it wasn't found, he accused me of taking it. Insanity.
He used this excuse to rummage through my stuff. I had nothing to hide but I felt violated. He took apart pictures, pulled out and dumped drawers, "accidentally" breaking my things in his carelessness. I cried, begged him to stop, knowing I never touched his ID, but he kept on until my part of the room was destroyed.
For days he shunned me, told our kids that I was sneaky, told me he knew I had it. About two weeks later, I made a chilling discovery. I found his ID stashed in a box under his side of the bed. He'd hidden it. Destruction, accusations, making my kids doubt me…all for what, I will never know.
Freepik,DCStudio
36. A Hidden Stash
I met my husband at a rehab clinic five years ago. We had been clean for a while before deciding to get together. After detoxing and becoming the people we were before opiates, I was petrified of having opiates reintroduced into my system. So much so that I got a tattoo of "do not administer opiates".
We were finally free and felt life was beautiful again. That was over three years ago.
Two months ago, I woke up before my husband and was looking for his lighter. I grabbed his pants from the night before and another set of shorts fell from inside of the pants. Tied to the inside of his shorts was a bag. My heart almost stopped right there.
Untying the bag I notice a familiar orange color. I screamed like my heart was taken from my chest while it was still beating. Everything I've ever known, in less than 30 seconds, was taken from me. Everything I thought was my reality was an illusion of the worse kind.
My life the way I felt it, saw it, lived it, and loved it was taken from me. I never thought it was possible. I thought he was capable of other things but not this. This never even crossed my mind. If someone would have told me a year ago this would happen I would have bet my entire life that it wouldn't. Well, I lost that bet.
Freepik, 8photo
37. Curious About A Plane Crash
Someone I knew married young because she got pregnant while in college. Her husband was a pilot in the military and he passed unexpectedly in a plane collision, leaving her with three boys to raise on her own.
She never remarried and kept all of his things (clothes, military papers, personal items, etc) and left them undisturbed for 30 years until she finally decided to sell her house.
As she was going through his old paperwork, she found letters from her husband’s male lover (whom she had no idea about) and papers that had shown he had taken leave time and spent it with his secret boyfriend instead of her and their sons.
She now wonders if he faked his own demise in order to be with his boyfriend, which would’ve been unacceptable both to the military and his conservative family in the 1970s.
38. This Anniversary Gift Backfired
For my wife, it was a shoebox. After we got married and merged all our things I had more stuff than she did. Some of it stayed in boxes that didn't get opened for a long time. For our 1st anniversary, I got her a Beretta handgun.
A couple of years later, she was going through some of the boxes and found a shoebox. Inside the shoebox were old photos of my ex-girlfriends, mostly from my high school years. There were also old love letters too. I had no idea these mementos existed and hadn't seen the contents since before we met.
One morning, I woke to find the shoebox on her dresser with a note taped to the mirror above it. It simply said, "Please get rid of these" with an arrow pointing at the box. Being a bit of a prankster I got an idea.
I took out all the pictures and love letters, unfolded them, and lined up all the photos facing the room with the notes below them. It covered the top of her dresser like a shrine in our bedroom. The next morning when I awoke they were all folded back up, face down on top of the shoebox.
This time, the Beretta was placed on top of the pile with a note attached. It read, "No, please this time, I mean it!" Needless to say, that box and its contents disappeared this time. We've now been married 38 years and we both still laugh about my prank and her reply.
39. Why Would You Lie?
My husband was encouraged to obtain US citizenship during our marriage. He refused to do so. He stated he didn't need it, and I was a sell-out for obtaining the same. He obtained employment in his country of birth, returning to the US every three months.
During his time abroad he was seriously injured in a car accident and was flown back to the US for life-saving treatment. He was hospitalized for three months. After rehab, he was determined to return to work overseas. Once again, he was encouraged to obtain US citizenship so he could obtain employment abroad as an ex-pat.
He refused to consider it. During his stay abroad we became estranged and I filed for divorce. As I gathered his personal items for him to pick up, I found Naturalization papers. Upon reading the document, I learned he filed for his naturalization papers prior to obtaining his first job overseas.
This was the most shocking thing I found in his files.
40. A Memory You Might Want To Forget
I found a crushed piece of metal. I looked at it. I turned it over and around and I just couldn’t imagine what it was or why my partner had it. When he got home I asked him about it and he told me what it was.
It was a bullet that was fired at him and got stuck in the light bar on top of his car. He was an officer in a major city in California. He was going down a dark alley responding to a burglary in progress call and he got fired at.
He wanted to get rid of the twisted crushed piece of metal I found because he didn’t want to see it again. I don’t really know why but I have it to this day.
41. A Painful Discovery
The most shocking thing I found in my spouse's possessions was a strange blanket full of blood. I did indeed put some work into it and did some research on the matter. Having lost all hope, I almost gave up, but then I remembered that my wife had a friend in high school currently living in Alabama.
Her brother and I got along great and due to our great relationship I got in contact with his sister. She then told me the awful truth: The blanket is the blanket of her 1st child whom she lost in a car accident.
Of course, I didn't blame my wife for not telling me after all there is no worse pain than that of a parent losing their child. My wife then told me that her ex-boyfriend had forced himself on her and she hadn't planned on keeping the baby. Of course, she fell in love with the child and decided to keep her...and then the accident happened.
I wish I could understand the pain she went through.
42. Listening In
My ex-husband always seemed like a calm, normal guy. He never argued. He got angry about something about once a year. If I wanted to argue about something, he just wouldn’t answer. Things started going haywire when I told him I was unhappy in our marriage.
He started picking arguments with me. He started saying bitter, angry things to me. I didn’t realize he had other people talking to him and stirring him up, so I didn’t anticipate the things he started doing. He began contacting my friends and relatives to ask them to "make me stop" divorcing him and started to follow me around town.
Eventually, I filed for divorce and asked him to move out of the house. He refused because his "friends" told him that leaving the house would reduce his chances of getting the house in the divorce. They weren’t aware that my mother had put up the down payment of 50% of the purchase price.
It got to the point where I started sleeping in a different bedroom to get away from him and his bitter words. One night I woke up and saw a light shining out from under a dresser. It was a baby monitor he was using to listen in on me. I turned it off and went back to sleep.
The next day when he was at work, I ransacked the master bedroom looking for the baby monitor receiver. I didn’t find it, but I found something else: a duffle bag of AA batteries and the voice-activated tape recorder.
He had been hiding the tape recorder in different places in the house to listen in on conversations. I took the tape recorder to work with me the next day, and he never saw it again. It was another month before I could get him out of the house, and a year before the divorce was final.
When he testified in the divorce, he refused to answer questions about the tape recorder and his illegal surveillance.
43. Mementos From Another Time
My wife is disabled. When she became very ill and could no longer work she brought home all of her scientific papers, laboratory reports and summaries, piles of material on immunology, rheumatology, genetics, and certain specific childhood diseases. They took up several file drawers.
After a few years, I asked her if I could throw them away. She said she still wanted to keep them. After another decade, I decided that I would throw them out anyway. By this time she could no longer read, having lost control of the muscles in her eyes that she needed to scan lines of text.
I was careful to examine each paper just in case there were some that ought to be saved. When I got to the bottom of one of the file drawers, I found a letter that stopped me in my tracks. It was from a young man she dated before we met.
Our lives had become so tragic, so ravaged by illness and shattered dreams. I could not bear to discard this fragment of her life, saved from when she was young and healthy and full of hope and romance. I put everything back as it was.
44. It Just Had To Be In The Budget
When my husband of 12 years got the news that his cancer was terminal, the very first thing we did was organize his finances to make sure that my son and I would be taken care of when he was gone. We had a child with autism that needed constant supervision so I wouldn’t be able to go back to work.
I asked him to stop all extra expenses—one of them was a monthly donation to a charity organization that he supported. It broke my heart but we had no other choice. He told me that he had canceled the direct deposit. When he passed a few months later, I found out that he never actually canceled the donation.
I realized then that he didn’t have the heart to go through with stopping the payment and had lied to me about it. I decided that I had to be proud of him for what he had done. While facing his imminent demise, he never lost his compassion or his grace.
45. Did You Have Fun On Your Work Trip, Honey?
My husband walked into the house (looking quite healthy and remarkably tanned) after arriving from an overseas business trip in Poland. I questioned how he managed to look so tanned like he’d laid on a beach for a week. He said there was a heatwave in Poland.
I unpacked his luggage with him and then went into his office to put his laptop away. I noticed that a cupboard was slightly open. I realized that he must have ducked into the detached office before he came into the house. I found a bag hiding on the top shelf. When I opened it, I couldn't believe my eyes.
It was filled with all sorts of intimate accessories and antidepressants. He was certainly not using these items for our intimate moments and he had hidden the antidepressants from me. But that wasn't the only thing I discovered.
Shortly after that, I found a booking email on his laptop from a five-star hotel in Italy for two people in June. It got a lot worse from there onwards. The surprises never stopped. I've since divorced him.
46. A New Makeup Product
My now ex had been unbearable for weeks. He started coming in the car with me to work because he thought I was going to meet another man instead of going to work. Then he followed me, forcing me (physically) to unlock my iPhone so he could see my social media and emails. But that wasn't all.
He kept me awake at night by throwing drinks at me and smashing things in the home. He also put his hands around my neck and I ended up unconscious on the floor. Anyway, on this particular day, I broke down at work and decided to call the authorities to have him removed from my home while I wasn't there.
The officers came to my work. I showed them my bruises and briefly explained my nightmarish situation. They took my keys and he was removed by about 3 pm. I finished at 6 pm and went home. I was an emotional wreck. I sat in silence and sobbed; I loved him and all I wanted was to be happy. How hard can it be? That's when I saw it.
Under the sofa, I noticed a shiny contour stick. It wasn’t mine and the only other female that I had invited in was my hairdresser. Luckily we were friendly enough that I could message her and ask if she had left anything at mine. She hadn’t.
That's when I realized that my ex had been inviting other women to our home while I was at work. After some digging, I found emails that he'd sent to women in my village (less than 400 residents) inviting them over. When I looked at the date, it was the afternoon before we went on holiday. It’s been just over a year now and it still hurts.
47. Secret Santa
As background: My husband has an ex and three kids in another country. When we were still young and new but definitely getting serious I tried to embrace the notion of potentially becoming a stepmom. He wouldn't let me talk to them on the phone though; he still hadn't told them about me.
Well, I wasn't thrilled about that; we were actively trying to start a family, but I took the "in your own time" approach. After all, conceding that you would not be moving back to where your kids can visit with you is a very hard conversation.
So, I approached the kids through a less direct avenue. Specifically, I would suss out every year what they were interested in and shop for things I was sure they would be excited to get. Then I'd have all the gifts wrapped and packaged up by September to allow for the vagaries of international mail. Then I would give them to my fiancee to post, since he would have current address information.
I did this for three years, and then one summer I stopped by his friend's house and asked to do some laundry. I was filling up the washing machine and looking for the soap when I made a truly upsetting discovery: Three years of unsent Christmas gifts.
I've got to tell you, it crushed my soul. Those gifts were the symbol and heart of my attempt to be a parent to them. They were my intentions and caring in a box, something tangible for them to hold in their hands and know about me. And they were never sent.
Sure, sure, the parenting advice and support I gave (and still give) to their father was actually probably more important, but this was something from me to them, my way of introducing myself, even if nothing said it was from me. It was my way of showing that I cared and taking ownership of the fact that they were family. Never sent. But that's not what hurts me the most.
The only thing his children ever knew about me growing up was that I was the Evil Gringa who kept their daddy from coming home. I got that reputation because he lied to them about his intentions and his relationship with me until the day his mother outed him by showing them pictures of my baby.
I warned him and warned him and warned him that telling them he was coming home when he wasn't would hurt more than the truth, and he just wouldn't listen. It took him ten more years to get to the point where he wanted his two families to talk, and by then…some things just happen too late, you know?
They don't want to know me and I'm past done too. I have advocated relentlessly for them and have never said one word against his support for them. Do they know that his support is only possible because I work? They get 2/3 of his income and I pay 60% of the bills.
I get tired of being hated for a person I never was. I suppose all stepparents say that. But I knew what I was seeing when I realized what those boxes were: It was the end of my dreams for a decent relationship with his three kids.
48. A Final Phone Call
My fiancé Richard was working for a civil engineering firm when I was still a student. We’d been a couple for almost two years by the time their firm offered them an opportunity to travel for a bridge project out of the country. They’d be away for three months but it was an opportunity only a fool would pass up. It would mean a great advancement for them and for us.
My blessing was given—on the condition that this wasn’t to be a regular occurrence. Every day, we’d call for a few minutes. International calls then were still pretty expensive and we tried to keep it brief. But, no matter the goings on of the day I’d always be home for when they’d call before bedtime where they were.
One day, their call didn’t come through. I assumed that after almost two months, missing a day when they were busy wasn’t the end of the world. The next day, they didn’t call either. I tried to call but their line wasn't working. I left a message on their boss’ line to check in on them.
I was walking to school the next day when a friend of ours came running up with a massive hug. They were crying their eyes out so I began to comfort them. There was a shocked look on their face when they sprung the news on me: Richard had lost his life in a car accident two days prior.
A man driving in a van under the influence had flattened the car Richard and a colleague were in when leaving their work site. His sister had called them and the assumption was that I had been reached as well.
The authorities found out that my partner’s father had commanded his brothers to empty our place (his grandmother's house that we'd purchased in his name). My name wasn’t on any of the documents beyond those for insurance, so they were legally allowed to do so. They were the official next of kin and even our photos and my tapes of his calls were gone.
Out of all of this, I’ve learned that the most shocking thing in my spouse’s belongings was how when they were no more, there was nothing left.
