Should we forgive cheating or get a divorce right away? This question isn’t easy to answer, especially after living together for 15 years with a settled life and kids. Some people choose to ignore signs of cheating, but not the woman in our story — she seemed to have learned deduction from Sherlock Holmes himself.

A user with the nickname Infinity222 shared a story about her friend who outsmarted her cheating husband.

“So I went Christmas shopping and ran into my friend, who I hadn’t seen for six months.

Me: Hey, how are you?

Her: I’ve divorced my husband.

Me: Sorry to hear that! But you’ve been together for almost 20 years and everything seemed so good.

We decided to have a cup of coffee, and she told me everything.”

“In February, my husband started having financial problems: some months there was no bonus, other months his salary was lower. By summer, we were mostly living off my income. He brought home some money, but it was much less than what I was making. He also constantly had issues: his car broke down, his parents needed urgent help, etc. I didn’t mind because there were times when he supported us financially.

One day, he went on his annual fishing trip with friends. When he got back, I went through his belongings to wash them and found a fancy plastic bag from an expensive shoe store. I thought he just grabbed the first bag he found on the boat and didn’t think much of it. I even felt happy for one of his friends’ wives who might have gotten luxury shoes.

A few weeks later, I was going to the supermarket and got a flat tire. I called my husband to bring his car keys and help with my tire. When I opened his trunk, I found two more bags from the same luxury shoe store with his athletic clothes in them. This made me suspicious. I called the wives of his fishing friends — none of them had bought shoes from that store, which made sense because the prices started at $500.

The next day, I went to the shoe store, tried on all the shoes in my size, and secretly took photos of all the sales associates. Later, on my husband’s birthday, he came home with a new iPhone, claiming it was a gift from his colleagues. I knew an iPhone costs $1,000 and doubted his story. He gave his old phone to our daughter, so I checked it, wrote down his contacts, and started calling them.

One contact, ‘Jack, tire master,’ had two numbers: a landline and a mobile. The mobile number belonged to a girl, while the landline was the shoe store. Bingo! I checked the store’s Instagram page and found a girl named Hilary among the followers. Her page was full of photos with huge bouquets, fancy restaurants, and captions like ‘A present from my significant other’ starting from the spring.”

The final blow was a photo of my husband with a woman and a comment saying, “On vacation with my beloved.” It turned out that my husband had been promoted and was earning more money, but he was spending it all on this woman — renting her an apartment, buying her gifts, and more.

By the time we finished our third cup of coffee, I was still in shock. “So, did you confront this woman? Why did you let her take your husband so easily?”

I expected her to say something about pride and never forgiving him, but her response was different. “Do you want the truth? I think I could have forgiven him. At first, I didn’t let on that I knew. I just stayed quiet. In September, when our daughter started her final year of school, we talked about hiring tutors because she wanted to go to medical school. He claimed he didn’t have the money and tried to steer her toward a different path. It had been her dream to become a doctor, so I sold my car to pay for the tutors and even called friends to borrow money just in case. I even called my husband’s boss, and he told me my husband had already borrowed $5,000 for our daughter’s tutors. That’s when I realized everything. He had become a stranger to me. I filed for divorce immediately. He begged me not to and swore it was over with the other woman, but it was all lies. He betrayed not just me but our daughter too.”

We sat in silence, feeling the weight of the story. I had known their family for a long time and would never have expected something like this. My friend then said, “It doesn’t matter anymore. Isn’t it amazing how I uncovered the truth with just one plastic bag?” The lesson here is clear: never underestimate a woman’s intuition.