I found out my boyfriend was married – his wife and I ditched him and became friends, there was a happy ending twist | The Sun

WHEN I found out my boyfriend was secretly married 13 years ago, I was devastated — even as I counted up the red flags I'd ignored.

But while I lost a boyfriend, I gained a new friend in his wife, and that led me to a happy ending I never could have expected.

Picture it: It was 2008. Flip phones and Blackberrys were essential, vampires were popular and sparkled now, and Instagram didn't even exist yet.

Online message boards, however, were all the rage.

I sat in my office job ignoring any semblance of responsibility and instead logged on to a weight loss website to talk to a group of six friends I'd made online.

Every weekday, you could find our group together talking in various threads, laughing, and making the day go by faster.

Within a few months of being part of this group, three of us discovered we lived within mere hours of each other.

One of those people was Bob.

What started as sweet flirtatious messages on the website quickly escalated to emails, text messages, and — let me date myself real quick — MSN Messenger. 

During these exchanges, we bared our souls to one another and made plans to get together in person.

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Insert red flag number one: Bob had no social media outside of the weight loss website. 

Everyone had MySpace and Facebook and people could always be found. But did I even try? No, because I was 23 and trusted that a man on a weight loss website had nothing to hide.

He lived five hours away, so we made plans for him to spend a weekend with me.

When he arrived, he instantly made himself at home, took me on a date, and met my friends.

But red flag number two was waving when I looked in the back of his car and saw that it was full of camping supplies. 

When I asked why, he said that he had told his family he was going camping for the weekend so that no one would be "in his business."

I made plans to visit him at the end of my college semester, but more than halfway through my five-hour drive, he suddenly had to “go on a work trip” and rush to the airport.

That — and the fact that he wouldn't be able to contact me during the trip — was red flag number three, slapping me in the face while my eyes were closed.

This was the beginning of the end for us though, because two weeks later, I receive a phone call from the third member of the group that was from our area, Susan.

Susan kindly informed me that they were also dating — and that he was married too

She wanted to know if I knew Bob outside of the website, and I confessed that we were dating.

Susan kindly informed me that they were also dating — and that he was married too.

It turns out, Bob's wife had noticed some suspicious calls on their phone bill and set up a fake profile on the weight loss message boards to try to find the women he was cheating with.

After hanging up, I spent the following hours crying hysterically — and Googling. He was, in fact, on both MySpace and Facebook, complete with profile pictures of him with his wife.

After I gathered myself and screamed many unsavory words, I reached out to the fake profile.

I had nothing to hide and zero idea Bob was married, so I left all the information I had, a timeline, and a phone number for his wife.

Meanwhile, Bob ignored my texts and calls, but someone surprising did get in touch: His wife, Barbara, who called to apologize that her husband was such a horrible human being.

She'd been with him since high school but wanted to say sorry on his behalf — she's a queen, if you ask me.

We spent hours on the phone talking about each of our relationships with Bob, as well as how she found out he was cheating.

Toward the end of our conversation, Barbara said: “I know this sounds crazy, but outside of this situation, I feel like we’d be great friends. We should meet.”

Without hesitation, I said yes.

Upon relaying the information to my mother, she promptly screamed, “Absolutely not. What if she kills you?!” 

Which, honestly, was a valid question. But something told me I had to go.

Thus began Tabitha and Barbara’s Awkward Weekend!

We even made T-shirts. Mine said: “My boyfriend cheated on me and all I got was his wife.”

Hers said, of course: “My husband cheated on me and all I got was his girlfriend.”

Naturally, we wore these shirts in public and attracted many curious passersby. We laughed and really soaked in how much fun we were having. We got the better end of this divorce and breakup.

That weekend, I met Bob's friends and his family. We partied and drank and friended each other on Facebook, knowing those notifications would pop up in his feed.

Over several more months, I went to even more parties, including one Barbara threw to celebrate their divorce, where she had a tombstone for their marriage and everything.

I will say, I’ve never met such a fun group. He really made the wrong move when he decided to cheat.

However, two weddings ended up coming out of this scandal.

The first was his to Susan. That’s right: Bob and Susan — his other girlfriend — found true love through this and are still married to this day.

And the other wedding? Mine, to a childhood friend of Barbara.

Little did I know at the divorce party that during this celebration of an end, my future husband was in attendance.

Barbara was a bridesmaid in our wedding and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Unfortunately, life moves on with marriages and kids, along with long distance, so Barbara and I are no longer in each other’s lives.

But I am so grateful for her every day. I wouldn’t have the life I have without her and she was a huge part of my healing.

My husband and I like to laugh every once in a while about how we found each other, and had I listened when my mother demanded I not take a chance at being killed, we wouldn’t be together today.

Recently, I opened up about the 13-year-old dating disaster on my podcast, Novels & Nonsense, and a clip from the episode went viral on TikTok.

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While it was an embarrassing story with my name and face firmly attached to it, it did offer an important lesson to listeners.

This, dear readers, is why you always Google your partner.

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