Cheating is incredibly heartbreaking, no matter how you look at it. But while sometimes the betrayal is impossible to miss, other times it’s much harder to spot.
On Reddit, people shared the subtle signs that revealed their significant other was being unfaithful—and some of them are genuinely wild. We’re talking about things you’d never even consider, like a partner suddenly using a completely different set of emojis.
Read them below so you know what red flags to watch for in your relationships. Hopefully, you’ll never have to deal with any of it yourself.
#1
The dog loved every guy that ever stopped by the house.
Except one.
She would bark at him, look at me, and then continue barking at him.
Checked wife’s phone. Filed for divorce a week later.
© Photo: freshdrum
#2
The way they stopped including me in their future "we" sentences. it wasn't a fight or anything big, but suddenly it was 'I’m going to do this' or 'I might move there' instead of 'We should do this.' The future just started shrinking until I wasn't in it anymore.
© Photo: ProofGrab7994
#3
They suddenly started accusing me of cheating. Projection is the loudest confession.
#4
I'd come home from work at lunch to surprise her, she wasn't there.
I went back to work and come home normally. Asked her how her day went.
"Nothing much, just hanging around the house."
© Photo: SnooPeripherals1914
#5
The recent emojis on the keyboard of the phone were ❤️💔💋.
They were not being sent to me.
© Photo: namednone
#6
The showerhead angle was adjusted. She can't reach it.
© Photo: bill1024
#7
It was Valentine’s Day and we were going out for dinner. We lived in downtown Toronto so it was super snowy and we walked a fair bit. I was wearing heels and he always gives me his hand to climb steps or whatever when I wear them.
But this night he didn’t help me once. He didn’t help me get off the streetcar, he didn’t help me through the snow, he didn’t help me get over curbs… I found out 2 days later.
© Photo: himmieboy
#8
I got a text explaining the (intimate) things she was looking forward to us doing later that night. It got deleted as I was reading it. When I replied asking what she deleted she said "sorry. It was to remind (sister's name) not to forget we have to get mum a present this weekend and I sent it to you by mistake."
A 12yr relationship was ended right there.
© Photo: redwolve378
#9
He called my dog by a different name and it rubbed me wrong. Later that week he got a flirty text from his coworker and told me she was obsessed with him but he kept turning her down 🙄 (ya ok) I looked her up on Instagram and she had a dog with the same name as the one he had accidentally called my dog.
#10
This sounds incredibly odd... it was FB advertisements. I kept getting ads for "Is he cheating" or "How to save your marriage". It made me take notice his behavior had changed. He had been chatting with her on FB messenger.
© Photo: _iron_butterfly_
#11
Got herpes out of the blue.
#12
A chunk of glitter. I have tons of glitter makeup. He tried to pass it off as mine. Wrong. This was big, cheap glitter. I know my glitter.
#13
I went from being his favourite person to him suddenly being annoyed at everything I did. That's when I knew something had changed.
Fast-forward to me checking his phone one night while he was asleep (I usually believe in privacy but I needed answers) and the first three text conversations were him telling different girls that he loved them. This happened in 2019 and I have genuinely never been the same again.
#14
I have a habit of listening to the same song over and over again on repeat until I am sick of it.
There was this one trendy hip hop song I liked and my then partner would get irritated because I would play it everytime I sat in their car. Got to the point where they would force me to change it or turn it off.
Then one day the same song came up on their Pandora or Spotify as a random suggested song and to my surprise my partner turned up the volume and said "oh [coworker's name] loves this song".
idkmybffdw:
My ex hated music from a specific artist I loved and one day started listening to them. I found out a few days later he had an entire second relationship.
© Photo: Faysian
#15
Found a toll road bill open on the floor with multiple 12am-3am trips on it to another city. When confronted he said he was “going to the mall.” I was like … bro what mall is open at 3am? That quickly changed to “oh sometimes I go sit at the pier by myself to think.” Then I was accused of invading his privacy and being a psycho.
#16
His clothes.
He suddenly had sandals and button up shirts, that I'd tried to get him into for literal years.
I guess that means he did listen. All those things I told him he'd look good in, he started wearing as soon as he cared about looking good for someone else.
© Photo: Sweet_Cinnabonn
#17
She was a co-worker and it was the way he spoke about her. It was different than the way he spoke about his other female co-worker "friends." He would get excited talking about her and his face would light up when he got a text from her.
I may just be a stranger in the internet, but please believe when I say - it usually is the one that they tell you "not to worry about." Also, for the women out there, it's called "women's intuition" for a reason. Your gut will let you know way before your brain catches up
Edit- Just wanted to say that I probably should have used the term "gut instinct" instead of "woman's intuition," as guys can also get a gut feeling when something is off with their partner.
© Photo: Usual_Sympathy3140
#18
The distance. It starts off small and incremental, but one day you wake up next to someone you don't recognize anymore.
#19
He had gotten a new phone when we were together for about a year and he let me program my fingerprint on it so I could unlock it for emergencies.
Towards the end of the second year, he handed me his phone to show me a video but the screen locked. Put my finger on it to unlock it and it didn’t work. Handed it back to him…he’d changed it to a number code.
© Photo: Weird_Bluebird_3293
#20
The mystery baby that he was tagged in a photo with.
Oh, you said subtle?
Similar_Climate_227:
SAMEEEE he was tagged in an ultrasound picture on FB and that’s how I found out :) after 6 years of being together.
#21
Showed up at 1:30 am drunk after being out with her girls… hey babe, where’s your wedding ring?
It really sucked but I was very appreciative of her at least taking if off because it was my grandmother's wedding ring and she was a saint.
© Photo: KA047
#22
Distance, feeling like you’re getting bread crumbs suddenly, somehow [intimacy] feels different or less frequent, they are suddenly very paranoid about your behaviors. So a combination of projection + subtle indifference.
© Photo: sethcera
#23
Constantly finding other women's hair & accessories, him smelling weird when he came home, having makeup on his clothes, change in attitude, he became incredibly cold and cruel towards me. I found evidence of him buying gifts for women that I never got. We even had a run in in public that was extremely weird. I became extremely sick.
Would never admit any of it & insisted it was all in my head.
#24
Cologne. I don't wear any and I noticed her clothes had a faint lingering smell of some expensive [stuff]. Checked her phone and she texted the guy that she couldn't believe she was pregnant. And couldn't believe I brought home a stray dog a few days before. Miss that dog.
© Photo: potsgotme
#25
The immediate shower as soon as he got home, and the random ATM withdrawal receipts of cash from our buildings ATM when I would never see him use cash for anything together.
#26
The entire list of suggested followers on my instagram was random women with ‘followed by *bf*’ under every one.
I asked him about it and they were all ‘old friends’, of course this prompted me to go through his phone and he was messaging all of them.
Never thought I’d say this but Meta’s a real one for real.
#27
Mostly about the phone. An interest in hiding it, silenced, no notifications etc. I went looking for reasons. And did not like what I found. I ended it 4 years ago.
itsobviouslymeduh:
Phone always on DnD, and takes it with her to the bathroom even to just wash her hands. Screen always facing down. It’s always the phone.
neimaacutie:
The sudden obsession with their phone and suddenly it's always on silent.
© Photo: Parking-City-6725
#28
I encountered myself in a dream and he (I?) said "She's cheating on you, dude."
Woke up instantly in a cold sweat. After a couple days of thought, I confronted her. Turns out dream-clone me was right. Never met myself in a dream before or since.
#29
Shaved her private parts after never doing it.
20 year relationship, she ended up confessing after she got caught up.
#30
Her twitter kept popping up in my “people you may know”. I joked about it with my ex and he seemed uncomfortable - she was “just some ex who was obsessed with him”. Sure enough, he dumped me a few weeks after this. I still had his location, and saw he was at a hospital. I found out that, right after he bought a new car, he went to go cheat on me with his ex and they got t-boned when he picked her up.
#31
It was an ldr, and every time we had an argument, he would either block me or refuse to talk to me until the next day. I found out he had been chatting up with other women and begging them to meet him while I was crying myself to sleep, waiting for him to unblock me or talk to me.
#32
You can sense that something is off, TRUST YOURSELF. Do not let them try to tell you, you’re crazy, overthinking, over analyzing.
Honor your feelings.
My ex would gaslight me over this feeling, and when I would say let me go through your phone, “you should just believe me, you should trust me” then he would flip it around on me. It was awful and truly an evil thing to do to someone. Instead of just letting me go, he had to have me and her.
He would always sleep with his phone under him or close to his body, (never did that before he started cheating) I wiggled it out of his pocket and boom, everything confirmed. Jumped up gathered my [stuff] and left, the whole time he’s fumbling around half asleep trying to figure out what’s going on and stop me from leaving.
#33
The power cord was incorrectly wrapped around my electric razor. Think about it....
#34
She was out running errands and then told me that she was going to this guy’s place. It was already like 5pm. I had never heard of this man but didn’t want to seem insecure. She got home around 11pm that night. I spoke to her about it the next day because I wanted to be mature and regulated. She convinced me they were just friends.
Around the same time her phone location started being weird (I would normally check to see her ETA so I could start dinner), but it would be turned off most the time, and when I asked her about it, we’d “fix it” only for it to do it again.
Flash forward three months and she’s asking to open the relationship for her new guy “friend” and then refused to stop contact with him when I wasn’t down. Turns out she was being a lot “friendlier” with him than she was letting on.
I was open to repair, but she immediately wanted separation and divorce, and turned the matter into my reaction being the problem rather than her infidelity. 12 years down the drain. Never thought I’d be both betrayed and abandoned by my best friend.
#35
1. She hired a personal trainer, started working out twice a week religiously, and dieting strictly for months and months, but stopped going out on hikes with me and our dogs.
2. She started routinely exploding with rage, over the most minor of infractions.
2. Offering breadcrumbs of time, attention, and [intimacy]. (Always my fault, because of something I’d done wrong )
3. Phone locked down hard, and always in her hand.
Then, I found a well worn, wall mounted iPhone holder, hidden in a weird spot in her bathroom. I asked her about it, and she got flustered, then defensive, then raging pissed off.
Her phone and computer were on 24/7, high alert lock down. One day, she got an unexpected call, and left the house quickly, with her laptop un-locked. Which, she didn’t realize was set to back up her phone.
I found the mother lode of explicit pics/videos, she was sending to her AP. They were video chatting, and she would mount her phone on the bathroom mirror, and they would “perform” for each other.
Needless to say, I’ve moved on.
#36
He started calling me more often, which was unusual. This was so I would not call him, like because we already talked.
#37
When I saw he stopped using social media around me (especially instagram). I grew suspicious of it and I asked him politely if we can watch reels together on this account. He refused immediately and turned off his phone. It's been 1 yr since I ended that relationship. Never felt better. Found out about the other girl eventually by the end.
#38
The rage towards me. Suddenly i was at fault for everything. I mean i almost once put a glass on the wrong shelf and she broke down crying and screaming that i was a narcissist because i was taller than the other people in the house, and the glass was a sign of my [toxic] personality.
She met someone and became super [toxci] because she needed ti find a way to justify her actions. Tbh it was way worse than the affair. The gaslighting and crazy was horrible.
#39
He got really mean about random, petty [things] - I could literally do nothing "right" by the end. I now know he was looking for things to justify him cheating on me.
For instance, one day I cooked us breakfast & he got pissy that I hadn't cleaned up the kitchen he "just cleaned" 2 days prior, but he got mad while I was still actively cooking. It was like wth do you expect me to not cook for a week after you clean the kitchen? According to him, not cleaning as I cooked was all the proof he needed that I didn't value him.
#40
-his phone became an extension of his arm. Always having it face down and screen turned away from me. Smirking while texting and just constantly checking his phone in general. Never letting me touch his phone.
-being very emotionally [toxic] towards me for seemingly no reason
-coming home later than usual and claiming he had a lot of work to do. Also making excuse to leave the house on the weekend to go to “work” events
-stopped being intimate with me and rejected me if I ever tried to initiate.
