I found the message by accident. My phone was upstairs, and I just wanted to check what we’d discussed about patio furniture. Victoria’s phone was right there, and she saw me pick it up, so she didn’t panic. I opened our chat, and right below mine, a name I didn’t recognize—Will—had sent her a message: “Do you want to make it a thing?
”
I shouldn’t have opened it. But the message was left on read, and she wasn’t watching. I took the quickest glance at the context and then backed out. What I saw made me stare at the back of her head for a long time.
Someone was appreciating the time they’d spent together, acknowledging that she was married and he was too, and asking if she’d like to make it a regular thing. I told myself I might be misinterpreting it. But the way they talked, the emphasis on being married—it was clear that whatever they were up to wasn’t appropriate for married people. Even if it wasn’t physical, it was emotional cheating at the very least.
I went back to the patio conversation and didn’t let her know I’d seen anything. I couldn’t get my hands on her phone again for a while. I didn’t know if she’d responded to him. I just knew something was happening that didn’t look good.
It made me sick because I thought we had a good foundation of trust. Apparently, I was wrong. I decided I had to either dig deeper or confront her. Probably both.
I couldn’t keep living with that knot in my stomach. I needed to know if she still wanted to be married to me. The quicker we ended things, the quicker I could move on and heal. Then I got the answers I didn’t want.
She really was cheating on me. All those years of marriage, and Victoria was cheating. I didn’t think I was immune to being cheated on, but I thought I’d made enough intentional moves as a husband that it shouldn’t have been my fate. Sometimes your actions have nothing to do with it.
I thought about confronting her and getting the truth that way. Normally, I would have trusted her enough to get the truth from her. But I realized I didn’t know enough about her anymore. So I waited for the first opportunity to go through her phone, and I took it.
I felt immense pressure, but I didn’t get caught, and it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. She had replied to Will: “I don’t think so. That was a one-time thing. ” He tried to convince her to change her mind, telling her he’d make it worth her time, but she refused to budge.
That made me even more convinced it had been sexual. No one was explicit enough for me to be 100% sure, but I could use my common sense. After that, they only focused on scheduling the interview she wanted. I took screenshots of the messages and his phone number, sent them to myself, and deleted the paper trail.
I didn’t want her to know I was onto her until I was ready to pull the trigger. I also had preliminary discussions with a divorce lawyer, just to know what to expect. Then I confronted her. I asked what she’d been up to with the story she was working on.
She said it was very interesting, but she couldn’t tell me anything about it. I told her I knew more than she might have reckoned. She looked interested and asked what I knew. I told her I knew about her and Will and the interview she was scheduling.
Her face changed. She asked if I’d gone through her phone. She wanted me to cower, but I didn’t. I nodded firmly and told her I did.
She started to talk about how I was never supposed to go through her conversations with her sources, but she stopped mid-sentence and sighed. She wanted to know how much I’d seen. I told her all of it. It was up to her to explain what I’d seen, because I had my conclusions.
She wanted me to share them, but I wasn’t going to do that. She was in a spot where she could choose to negotiate with me. She had to come forth with the truth. And she did.
Even now, I have trouble accepting it as truth. The only reason I do is because it’s so unflattering to her that I wouldn’t understand why she’d lie. She told me she was working on a story about women of the night. She’d been doing a lot of work on it, which explained the late nights.
She got interviews from the women themselves and even watched how they did business sometimes. Then came the part I still find hard to believe: she decided to see how things went for them on an average night, but in a more interactive manner. She posed as one of them, got picked up by a man, and spent the night with him. She told him at some point that she was a journalist and not actually one of those women, and he didn’t mind.
It didn’t change anything. She got her first-hand experience of how the women booked and negotiated with men and how the logistics worked. She also planned a more in-depth interview with Will to understand the mindset of a married man who engages in that kind of stuff. The first thing I thought was that if that story was true, she was incredibly stupid.
Those women get hurt all the time. I don’t know why she’d put herself in that position only to blindside the guy with her intent to write about it. That could have made things worse. I’m glad he ended up being reasonable, because it really could have gone left.
I noticed she was avoiding talking about exactly what they did when they got to their destination. I asked her what they’d been up to. I know not everyone who hires one of those people is looking for sex. Some just want to talk.
But I doubted this guy was one of those. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have harped on how they were married the way he did. She wouldn’t have told him it was a one-time thing, either. She didn’t want to speak.
I could see how hesitant she was. I reminded her that I’d read her messages with him. She lifted up her phone like she wanted to reference the messages to see how much had been said, which led me to bark at her to put down her phone. I asked her again.
She didn’t want to say anything, but eventually told me they had slept together. I just nodded. She told me it was just once. He’d worn protection, and it had been entirely physical.
She said she hadn’t even gotten any pleasure out of it. You might understand why I’m still having trouble believing this story. If not for the fact that it doesn’t paint her well at all, I wouldn’t even have thought it was the truth. But there’s no reason for her to tell such an unflattering truth unless the actual truth is somehow worse.
That’s something I’m not even in the mood to consider. I had to ask her if she was serious a million times, but she didn’t budge. I flipped out. I told her she knew she didn’t need that for a good story.
Either she saw a John she found attractive, or she was horny for both. She used “I’m a journalist” as an excuse to do it and act like it was some kind of cutting-edge research. I told her how ridiculous and unforgivable it was. Her story didn’t make any of it better.
In fact, it made it worse. I would have preferred to hear that she was horny and wanted to get off and it meant nothing emotionally. That genuinely would have been better to hear than “I was being a boots-on-the-ground journalist doing a story on hookers, so I decided to be one of them for a day, down to sleeping with a John. ”
I think she understood how dumb it was once I said that, because her face changed.
She maintained it was the truth, so I told her we were going to get divorced. That’s when she started to cry. She didn’t beg for herself because she was too smart to do that, but she just kept crying. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I left her there and came back hours later when I knew she’d have calmed down.
She tried to speak to me, but I was too angry to hear what she had to say. I told her not to bother unless there was some new fact that would drastically change the shameful things she’d told me. She didn’t need to speak. I wasn’t going to listen to begging or anything stupid like that.
She backed off after hearing that. I had her served with papers. She refuses to move out of the house despite me telling her to, claiming she still has a legal right to live there. She’s not wrong.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to move out. So we’re both going to exist here until the court gives one of us the house in the divorce. Highly uncomfortable. I do not recommend.
Enough has happened for what I think should be the final update to this horrible story. I’ve tried not to be too emotional in my telling of it all, but it hasn’t been a great time for me. A lot of my emotions surfaced at the very end, and I found it rough, but I’m glad to be done with it all. Knowing that it is done makes it a lot better for me.
We ended up getting divorced without too much fanfare. I had all the right in the world to try and milk her dry and make things as miserable as possible for her, but I didn’t do that. It just seemed really unnecessary because making the divorce difficult reflects on me, too. I would have to deal with the headache of it, too, and that was one thing I simply didn’t want to handle.
She ended up getting the house, which was no surprise to me. I wish she could have kept it, but I also don’t mind starting afresh somewhere else. Thankfully, we’ve never earned significantly less or more than the other for most of our marriage, so there wasn’t any alimony for me to worry about. Thank goodness, because I didn’t want anything to have to tie me to her for the next several years.
Ultimately, we split as the court commanded, and we moved on to different places. But for some reason, I just didn’t feel satisfied. It felt like I had had something really good and it had all imploded because someone decided to sleep with someone for a story. And by the way, I’m still not sure I believe that.
Everyone I’ve told immediately talks about how incredibly ridiculous that is. People say don’t marry nurses and party girls, but was I supposed to be worried by a nerdy journalist? How was I meant to foresee that? My point is that after the divorce, the more I thought about it, the angrier I got.
I couldn’t get my mind off the entire thing and how it had been a good guy getting a faceful of crap. I had to hit back. I just had to. By that point, Victoria had already released her article, and to keep it entirely honest and impartial, it was a great piece.
But I already knew she’s a great writer, so no surprise there. I saw her quotes from a regular patron who I knew was Will. I didn’t dwell too much on her writing. Our town loves a scandal, so I went to another publication, the one that she loosely considered to be a rival, and I contacted one of their writers to see if they’d be interested in a little bit of gossip.
She didn’t make a commitment, but she said she would hear me out. I told her everything. My wife was the writer of that piece, and she had slept with one of the sources while being married. I could tell that the writer, who we can just call Steph, was very interested in my story.
She said she might not be the one writing it, but she knew someone who would be perfect for it. Long story short, I got connected with another writer, got interviewed about the whole situation, and that was it. A few weeks later, the article came out. It wasn’t anything extensive.
It was a piece questioning journalistic ethics. It didn’t name me explicitly as the source for any of it, but it claimed that I was reached out to for comment. One of the comments I’d given during the interview was inserted there, talking about how very disappointed I was in her when I found that out. That was pretty much my direct involvement in the piece.
She got wind of it a lot quicker than I expected, but that makes sense since it is her industry. She called me as soon as she found out and wanted to know if I had gone to the publication to get the piece written on her. I claimed that I hadn’t, and her journalistic mind kicked in because she wanted to know how it was possible that they knew what they knew if I hadn’t mentioned it. I admitted I told friends, which she certainly wouldn’t be able to blame me for.
I knew she had spoken to friends about the situation, too. I also hadn’t been shy about what she had done during all the court proceedings, so there was a bunch of court workers who knew the situation, too. I told her that any of them could have leaked things for a little paycheck. After all, a lot of leaks come from government workers privy to that kind of stuff.
She didn’t believe me, as she shouldn’t have, but I refused to admit to things. She asked me why I hadn’t protected her when I was called. My comment basically confirmed the outlandish claims, but here’s the thing: I don’t have any reason to protect her from the press. She hurt me, and she wanted me to be the one to say things to protect her?
Nah. I only told the truth when I was asked a direct question, and she shouldn’t have done what she did in the first place. She was really mad. She told me that the piece was going to last forever, and I didn’t care.
She’d written critical pieces on others before, so this was her time to get similar treatment. She claimed that she was going to get legal on them, but I told her not to bother. I had text messages, and I knew that the claims that were being made could be backed up. If she wanted to take them to court, I would take their side.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. ” was her response, but I told her I wasn’t. I wasn’t looking for her life to be a smooth sail after what she had done, and I wanted her to know that. She really was convinced I leaked the entire thing, but I just continued to deny it just to frustrate and confuse her.
I had a few people I know reach out to confirm whether the story they read had to do with Victoria, my wife, and it pleased me to tell them that it sadly did. I wasn’t sad. It was the way some of them learned about the divorce, which was even funnier. I know this is going to last a long time, and that’s what makes me the happiest.
I don’t want her to get away from this whole situation with zero payback. So, I like that I was able to get this one last hit on her. May it follow her around forever. Hopefully, this is the last bit of drama I will need to endure with this woman.
She’s put me through enough, and I’m ready to move on. Victoria’s explanation is something else. I could understand “I made a terrible decision” or even “I was attracted to him and made a selfish choice,” but “I slept with a source because I was doing investigative journalism” is a level of commitment to the story that nobody asked for. The fact that Will wanted to make it a thing afterward really didn’t help her case.
Apparently, the Pulitzer Committee was very impressed with the research methodology. As for the article you helped to get published after the divorce, was it petty? Yes. Was it particularly mature?
No. But after everything that happened, I can understand why you wanted her to experience at least a fraction of the consequences of her choices. She’s spent her career writing about other people’s questionable decisions and eventually became the subject one herself.
There’s a certain poetic irony there.
