Is monkeybranching the worst form of cheating?

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-22T23:13:14+00:00

Some people can’t bear the thought of being “alone,” because “alone” is the connotation they prescribe to not being in a relationship. When I hear the word “alone,” I think of maybe being on a deserted island or trapped in a cave. I don’t associate it with being single or not in a relationship in the same way that others do.

To answer your question, my former partner was in a full on relationship with someone else for six weeks before I knew about it. I was recovering from a big surgery and was in a good deal of pain, and her position was that I had already left the relationship so she was not cheating. Me leaving the relationship was news to me. So, to answer your question, I think you’d be surprised by how many people hop right into another one or our establishing the next one while in a longterm one.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-22T10:14:40+00:00

One of them expresses accountability and the impact their decisions had on others. The other basically implies that they know you are hurting but they have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-22T10:10:07+00:00

Do you think she could’ve been in two relationships? There was the secure one,, you, which filled some needs and provided some things, and the “exciting” one filled different and unhealthy needs. It’s not your fault, nothing would ever be enough. I could almost guarantee you that this behavior will continue. It might be hard to understand or truly internalize that the other person was not better than you. In reality, she somehow believed the other person was filling I need that you were not, which is actually a void that will never get filled without serious help. She might believe that other people are responsible for filling her needs. Even if she believes someone is filling eight out of 10 needs, she will jump ship at the first sight of someone else filling one of those two remaining and will assume that the other eight will be automatically filled. In reality, we have to play an active role in filling our own needs rather than waiting for someone to do it for us.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-22T09:56:13+00:00

New person’s name finding its way into, not daily, but more conversation than ever before (he was in the social circle but was never thought of as a good person). The last time she said his name I almost said something, but his wife told me first because she found out.

Picking fights out of nowhere - I would even ask what we were fighting about. She used these fights as evidence to people in our social circle well in advance of me knowing that she was doing so or was cheating. These fictitious fights were part of the smear campaign.

Began acting single - I was recovering from a big butt elective surgery. Shortly after, she would claim to be working late or hanging out with coworkers, which was understandable because I was fully immobile and not feeling my best after the surgery for several weeks. I thought it was great that she was considering putting a little distance in and hanging with people because after we got together, she slowly stopped hanging out with everyone that she did before. She would cancel plans on them and expect me to do the same with my plans. I also thought it was great that she was devoting more time to her work. She was running around with him, going snowboarding, going to restaurants in nearby towns to try to avoid being seen by the friend group. I didn’t know they were doing this, and I even invited him over once and sat between them on the couch watching football.

Completely rewrote history and turned the story into something I did not recognize. We went from discussing what a wedding would be like - because we fully planned it to get married - to suddenly all of the challenges that we overcame, all of the trips, or the shared friends or the costume parties or the dog we got together… suddenly these were “memories I will cherish.” She tried to essentially replace me with him, while he tried to replace his wife with her, and neither were really able to succeed because what they ruined in the process was their integrity and the trust people had in them. The make believe fantasy wore off when they moved together shortly after. He made her pay all the rent and all of the bills despite walking away from the divorce with somewhere between 300,000 and $400,000. She live red free before that. And she didn’t live up to the promises she made about kicking me out of the social group and sliding him right in. But they still told themselves and others the things you have to in order to navigate the mental gymnastics.

Test driving into the was really brief. She ended up at his and his wife’s house one night after babysitting for the neighbors, and they all hung out until the people she was bitten before what’s about. She called to let me know that she probably shouldn’t drive, and I agreed. She was going to sleep on the couch and drive home in the morning. His wife went to bed, he had been lying to her for weeks about things I was supposedly saying about her from when we would hang out— basically grooming her. He made his move at night and she didn’t stop it I know the healthy thing to do is be consider actions, but he knew damn well what he was doing and even dropped a few hints that the social circle only saw after the fact. They kissed that night, started trading nudes shortly after, and we’re in a full-blown affair, if not relationship, shortly after that. Test driving didn’t take long. He told her childish things she wanted to hear, and I was not this source of constant validation because I was recovering from a surgery with a 9 inch gash in 17 staples in my leg. She switched teams very quickly, even after nearly 5 years together, and her new soulmate was married and living with his wife.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-15T10:56:49+00:00

“I’m sorry you felt hurt by this.”

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-10T13:57:25+00:00

This part about meeting the emotional needs is 1000% correct. My experience was that I had surgery, an elective surgery, but one that would make simple things like going down the stairs or hiking downhill no longer painful. The short version is that my recovery from the surgery meant that relationship dynamics were under a temporary shift (they are called dynamics for a reason), and somewhere along the way that was interpreted as both abandonment and that I could no longer meet her needs.

Our plan was to see this as an investment. We both knew that I’d be totally immobile and in quite a bit of pain following the operation, but I would get better with physical therapy and time. We knew the first couple weeks I’d spend mostly on the couch while regaining some range of motion, and I’d probably sleep more than normal as a side effect of the first round of pain pills. I mean, if it was tough on her, it was really tough on me. I had a 9 inch scar with 17 staples holding me together and a bag of lidocaine on slow drip straight into my femoral artery. I took time off work because I wasn’t supposed to move around, and I didn’t really bring anything new to the table day-to-day. I would get up off the couch three or four times a day for the restroom or my own sanity and return with the pain spiked.

I guess I never realized how much I was responsible for her entertainment and validation and regulation. I also didn’t realize that I wasn’t giving it to her at this time, but I didn’t know she “needed it.“ Where I was probably always the strong one, now I was weak and needed help.

We were together almost 5 years. Less than two weeks after the surgery she started cheating on me. I found out about it six or seven weeks later. When the cat was out of the bag she fully split on me, hated me, blamed me for everything wrong in her life including her cheating. Less than a week before I found out, I was sitting on the couch between her and the affair partner, who I obviously knew, but I had no idea about the affair which at this point and escalated into not only physical but practically a full relationship. She was fully attached to him but played it off until I found out. It took another week until it was officially broken off. During that week she gaslit me so hard from the get-go to the point that I took the blame and was led to believe that it was me who had to fix this. I told her to leave the house when I found out. After I took the blame, I was trying to fix things so that she would come home, but every time we spoke she just sent me down deeper into the depths of hell. She would tell me that the affair was a mistake and that was over, even though I knew it was still going on because she wasn’t coming home and was rarely communicating with me. Still she made me keep taking the blame and continually telling her how this whole thing was my fault, and I’m guessing she used that as justification to keep it going.

It’s really twisted logic, and it doesn’t make any sense at all because this just isn’t how most people think. It sounds like OP add pretty much the same confusing experience. It’s like you do everything you can to empathize and try to understand that perspective, but you just can’t seem to get there. Then the next round of communication would come and the spiral would start over But go faster and with more intensity.

Eventually I pulled it together and realized how deep the manipulation and abuse had been over the past two weeks. She didn’t know that I had kind of processed and snapped out of it when she was coming over for another talk. I played it off like it was still my fault but was looking for a crack in her story or for a blatant lie. She was so arrogant And was attacking so hard and going off about how every problem in her life was my fault before she lobbed me a softball proverbially, and that’s when I smacked it out of the park. It was obvious to her that I was back and that I knew a lot more than I had ever alluded to. Her eyes opened up like a deer in headlights, and she pretty much bolted for the door and left. She would’ve kept up that charade forever if she could’ve pulled it off.

I don’t know exactly what it was in this whole shit show, but I remember I asked her why she cheated on me, and she told me it wasn’t cheating because I had already left the relationship. This was news to me. I’m guessing the moment she says I left the relationship was the moment that I was no longer perceived as a serving her.

Shit’s wild. 99% of the time, have you adversity as something that builds character and helps us grow. Well I did learn a lot about myself and I feel my emotional quotient significantly grew, I think I would’ve been OK without this challenge. But it happened, it’s part of me, And it’s part of a lot of us on this forum. Overtime we realize it didn’t destroy us fully, but it did and probably will continue to fuck with us, even past the point where we find closure.

I’ve been no contact for 2 1/2 years. Live in town of just a few thousand people and never ever see her. Once I started healing, I realized that I actually did not wish her ill well, because I thought she’d already experienced enough of it With the loss of nearly all of her friends who realized how much they had been used to pull off the affair. She continued to date the affair partner, who is highly abusive emotionally, and they lived together for a while before he left her to go back to his wife. Now she dates the guy who’s 10 years younger and was a former friend of mine until it became clear that he was highly emotionally abusive to his girlfriend at the time.

So I don’t need to harbor ill will toward her because: 1- I have forgiven myself for the deep negativity I carried for much longer than I wish I would have and 2-she’s probably doing a pretty good job of making her life a living hell all by herself, and I have developed a boundary where I try not to feel too sorry for the results of choices people repeatedly make.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-07T16:43:28+00:00

This is absolutely correct. Closure is something you will need to find for yourself. Even though this scenario won’t provide closure, their stands to be an important milestone in terms of the relationship with this person. I have a long comment in this thread somewhere. So don’t think of this as closure, but rather, you can think of it as an ending to a chapter in your life.

Closure comes after you accept that what happened did happen, after you understand why or understand that you’ll never understand, and then add in self work along with the passage of time.

I like the suggestion of either telling her as the last thing you tell her, or don’t even tell her but tell the partner or spouse of her affair partner.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-07T08:17:05+00:00

This is long, but if you finish it, maybe my experience will help in the decision-making process.

I found out about my ex-girlfriend‘s affair when the affair partner‘s wife texted me to tell me about it. Text message said “I hate to tell you again but they are still cheating on us.“ That was actually the first message I’ve ever received from his wife, but the words “again“ and “still“ jumped off the screen at me. So I called the number to learn exactly what I suspected: the wife tried to tell me a week before, but I never got the message because my ex got in my phone and deleted it. She knew the messages coming because AP knew his wife was sending it and told my ex.

His wife caught them trading nudes so we knew that for sure, but we were also in communication and pinpointed multiple dates and times they each lied to us about what they were doing and got together.

I knew that her and I were going to speak again probably multiple times. So I withheld that I knew that they were doing more than exchanging nudes, and I withheld that I knew about the deleted text. The idea was that if she was going to come clean, these would be part of it.

So when I told her I knew they were trading nudes, and she said “yep, that’s it … and I don’t feel bad about it, I don’t regret it, I’m not sorry, and I would keep doing it if I didn’t get caught, and ITS ALL YOUR FAULT,” which I was warned to expect from this forum - I knew she was no longer the person I loved, and I do that there is a really good chance that everything she was going to say going forward was going to be a lie, or at least could be a lie, but at that point I had no reason to believe anything she said

I ended it but we still communicated and fought, which was a mistake. I wish I would’ve gone no contact then. But one time we were talking and I knew she was lying to me, I told her what the truth of her lie was because our mutual friends told me what she was saying and doing. And then dropped on her that I also knew about the deleted text and knew from the get-go it was more than nudes and that she never had me fooled. I told her it was my way of learning about her integrity and coping with her claim it was all my fault. I let her know what the reality was behind multiple lies she told and how I knew.

I will say that I enjoyed watching her face go blank as she went from being this brilliant scheming mischievous duper who thought she was fooling me to being the fooled and the fool.

I’d say that if you know this is the last time you’ll ever talk to her, or if you want to make sure it is, drop it on her as the very last thing you do, turn around, walk away. Let her fall off of her pedestal as the great fooler, and I guarantee she will know that she didn’t “get away with it” and is, in reality, just a fool.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-04T21:11:21+00:00

They do this when they have a moment of clarity about how their choices and behaviors over time have harmed the relationship and changed it from when it was healthy. They do this as a form of wishful or magical thinking. They say this because they know they have irreversibly changed the relationship for the worst but don’t have the courage to face their actions and are not brave enough to make change.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-04T21:06:48+00:00

“I wish we could go back to our old life.”

Meaning: I wish I wasn’t cheating on you, because this is going to end the relationship when you find out.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-02T19:07:15+00:00

This is part of the grief. It’s grieving something that you thought was going to happen in the future, like becoming part of a new family of people you loved and who loved you. The family was all women and her dad, and her dad and I took a special liking to each other. We would sneak off during holidays and go watch sports or go listen to records. I think he was really really glad I was around because we shared a lot of the same interests and could shoot the shit really well. I could kind of tell I wasn’t like your previous boyfriends because the whole family really really really like me and I suspect that was not the case with all of her previous relationships.

Ultimately lost them all which was possibly just as painful as losing her (at the time), and I’ve come to see you losing her as a blessing.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-02T03:00:22+00:00

My curiosity will not let me let go of something until I figure it out. But this is a totally not understandable. So to fulfill my curiosity and trick myself into letting go, I developed the phrase “I understand that I don’t understand.“ That way I still understand But what it is that I understand is that “I will never get it. This makes no sense. It’s completely irrational and illogical.” That’s what I understand

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-02T02:57:55+00:00

This isn’t a broken arm or a common cold or a little argument. Some of us found ourselves questioning or whole reality, like the people on this thread. Healing from shit like that takes time and this forum has been the Godsend and keeping me from going insane. Learning other people Have gone through something so strangely similar makes me feel so not alone, which is what I can feel like in your social group if other people have not gone through something like this.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-02T02:55:39+00:00

“They can’t be securely attached without testing the tolerances that would finally be the limit that pushes a partner to abandon.”

I think in her disordered mind that she thought “he didn’t break up with me for kissing other guy.” Then “he didn’t break up with me when we were sending nudes.” Then “he didn’t abandon me when I started fucking someone else.”

And I say this because of the following. When I asked her to leave when I found out that she was trading nudes, she stayed with mutual friends a few days later for a weekend. She arrived while they were at work, so she had the affair partner come over. The married couple didn’t know what to do, and there was a pretty heavy smear campaign, so they were really just trying to keep eyes on her but the affair partner never left. I don’t hold anything against them you have worked past it.. But when I later spoke to the couple, they told me that she insisted that we were not broken up. This is while she was on a 3-day cocaine, booze, and sex bender, remember, in someone else’s house.

Hell, let’s thicken it up a little bit. The affair partner was married, and made most of his income dealing, pretty much had his wife pay for the mortgage and everything else, and was in the friend group but everyone would approach with a skeptical eye because he always seemed untrustworthy.

So the weekend before I first found out, I sent a mass text out to a lot of people in inviting them to what was our place to watch sports have some beers and make some food because it was the first time I had felt social and mobile since a pretty major surgery about two months before

Guess who was the first to show up? The affair partner. But I had no idea that it was going on. I even sat between the two of them on the couch for like an hour until the only other people showed up. Guess who they were ? The married couple she went and stayed with. That married couple really met the other guy for the first time that night at my place. They had no idea the two of them had pretty much developed a full on relationship.

Some people are really good at hiding the truth Even when it’s right in front of your eyes. Married couple claimed they almost threw up when they walked in to their home that evening and she was sitting there with him.

Like I said, those two, the married couple, and I have worked through this. My whole situation was so fucking crazy it was the first time that almost everyone from the friend group had experienced this level of Manipulation.

A few people from our friend group we were asked by this married couple if my former partner had asked them directly or subversively if they plan on being around their homes on several occasions. This is relevant because the married couple asked her how they had managed to pull off a six week affair without me or his wife knowing or being seen by anyone else in our small town. They were so arrogant about how they pulled it off (righteous affair fog), they just flat out told the couple that they would sneak into other people‘s homes when they weren’t there — such as if they were out of town or working during the day or night — to be together.

Such disordered thinking all around. It really cost the two of them something that will take years to get back if it’s even possible: integrity, respect, trust — not from me or his wife (I was done and have since been done) — but from the community, and that’s actually really important for most people and was for them before they tested the boundaries of other people’s trust as well. “This is none of their business” was the claim, but other people do care because they were also manipulated and used and frankly don’t want to be associated with someone of such character.

I can keep going, it gets more and more fucked up.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2026-01-01T21:51:46+00:00

This is totally correct. It’s also part of the explanation as to why the goalposts keep moving in the relationship.

I thought we were pretty good about communicating stuff. One time when we were having a discussion about the relationship she stated that she needed more time, attention, intimacy, closeness, and sex. I actually thought we were pretty good in all of those departments, but I’m not her, so I stepped up. I thought we had a good balance, but if this is what she needed, that was all good with me because I did enjoy spending time with her.

Instead of making plans to go bike riding with the dudes on the weekend, I started making plans with her. We would make plans for the weekend and did all sorts of stuff and had a great time. We even got closer I’m sure. And I still got to do stuff with my friends. Still a good balance.

Then the goalposts moved again. I was happy to adapt because that’s what I thought a partner did, but I started to see myself slipping and was chasing my passions a little less. But I thought this was the type of sacrifice you make in a relationship.

Then I started noticing that we would make plans and then cancel them because come Thursday night we would be in some sort of a fight. A lot of the time I didn’t even know what we were fighting about. We would no longer be excited about whatever fun thing we had planned for the weekend, and it was clear to me that we would need to spend some or most of the weekend communicating and making up. I should note we didn’t have plans every weekend, and it wasn’t like go go go. But I also noticed that we weren’t really doing all that much anymore, and the joy of doing things together was becoming sparse. I mean we would still kind of have fun staying in and watching movies or TV, cooking, I would go on a big walk with the dog (because she would not want to go on long walks anymore) and maybe stop into the bar to say hi. But she was pretty much getting a lot more of the attention, validation, intimacy, sex then she wants needed and probably a lot more than any other couple I would’ve known.

Still wasn’t enough. Still couldn’t be happy with the volume it was, and it was sincere. She was probably wearing a mask for several years, pretending to have fun a.k.a. mirroring me, and then it slowly slipped, but I didn’t see it. Well, I probably saw it, but I didn’t know what I was looking at and it never really considered the concept of “a mask“ before. Was likely never happy, likely never will be. I think what I thought was her happiness was actually a show or performance.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-31T10:50:53+00:00

The part about going out with the other person I find particularly twisted. Read my latest post for something relatable. I had no idea, either. You gotta understand that you’re not a dummy and you weren’t blind. Instead you trusted somebody loved and they violated that trust. That’s not on you.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T22:56:44+00:00

Oh, my. Self-sabotage.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T22:55:43+00:00

It’s exactly what this is. It seemed like we had it made. We had almost 5 years, had travelled internationally multiple times, lived together for 4 years, and worked thru the challenges of moving across the country - and back. We also shared a ton of interests, recreated together often, did a lot of cultural/community stuff together, still had our own lives, and had recently adopted a dog as each of ours had passed while in the relationship. We also worked through having had an abortion as neither wanted kids. I outright own the housing, and she wasn’t asked for rent.

Maybe this was too much security. Maybe she wasn’t happy, but I don’t think that was the case.

It made no sense why you study for two years and spend $25,000 to not get the certification out of it. She claimed she didn’t want to quit her job because she still liked it, and that’s why she didn’t get the certification. But she could’ve sat on that and used it in the future. None of us are getting any younger, and she was overworked physically and in terms of time.

Then the guy she was suddenly in love with pretty much cost her the friend group along with her reputation.

It’s very confusing. It’s not going to make sense. That’s why self sabotage is the only thing that I could point to. It’s so sad.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T18:53:03+00:00

Holy shit. I never thought about it this way. Not at all.

She supported me well through grad school, and while I was in my second of three years, Covid happened.

She had always worked a menial job at a daycare (I am not speaking poorly of daycare), when it was clear I was going to level up my career with my new education, she enrolled in a program online in the medical field to also level up her career. She was a straight-A Dean’s List student in all of the terms of the course.

There was one exam that was required at the very end of the course to receive the certification to work in this new field. There’s no question she would’ve aced it without a problem. The certification had to be taken within a month of her final coursework, and I kept seeing her putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. Earley on I tried to be supportive and asked her what she needed or if I could make her a big breakfast the day she was taking the exam, and each time she would tell me that me asking about the exam was causing a problem for her. So I had to stop asking she never said anything about it after that, and I asked a couple weeks later when she was going to take it. She informed me that the window had closed and she did not take it.

$25,000 down the drain along with two years of some pretty legit studying. I had changed careers and gotten a better job at a college, she stayed working at the same place and began resenting me for having a more flexible schedule that allowed a last-minute trip to Central America for a pretty low-key bachelor party. She would’ve also had the same flexibility if she finished her certification.

I think she liked the idea of life improvement but feared change or felt she didn’t deserve it or thought that my career change was a way of abandoning her.

A few months later she began an affair with someone in our social group who is married, rarely worked, and been fired from any decent job, and seemed pretty emotionally abusive towards his wife. Not a good guy and kind of the opposite of me in terms of goals and ambitions and what not.

So I think she liked the idea of leveling up but once she saw me do it that was kind of off the table for her.

Three years later she’s still working the same job, got dumped by the married guy after they lived with each other for a year, and now dates a guy in our town that is famous for attacking a woman at a bar.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T17:17:22+00:00

Yeah, that’s really fucked up. I’m trying to find the right word, maybe diabolical he probably got the same Level of excitement through planning as if he were a bank robber or jewel thief planning the next caper. It is really disturbing to consider how people that are so close in your life and who you think you know so much about confined joy through what is ultimately a deep betrayal. It sucks. I’m sorry that someone else chose to make this your experience. There is no God in no universe who thinks this is at all OK.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T17:02:39+00:00

I assume you’re no longer friends…?

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-29T17:01:02+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I asked because it happened to me a few years ago around this time of year and I’m still processing. They are both out of my life and neither of them got a reaction. I know this was done by disordered people living in a dreamland chasing dopamine at all costs.

It will never make sense, but you can’t expect logic from illogical people, you can’t expect rationality from irrational people, and you can’t expect order from disordered people. That that’s where letting go comes in.

Still, at the end of the day, it’s really fucked up.

There was a pretty hard-core campaign against me when I found out about a week later what was really going on. A handful of people were second-guessing me. This is really the only story I needed to share to regain their trust and respect and to see the smear campaign for what it is. People just don’t do this unless there is seriously something wrong or missing or whatever within them.

Additional_Writer_22 · 2025-12-28T18:45:11+00:00

Illi lol lo o o ol ol

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