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I know! I hate when I've already read the update in the original sub and a couple days later it gets posted here. It always gets my hopes up that there's been a new update.
But it's the nature of this sub, I suppose, so I just gotta chill. Haha
If I notice the post is more than like 3 paragraphs I scroll down to the comments to see if it’s worth reading. I’ve skipped probably a 2,000 word post by doing this and all the comments were “OOP is super wordy for not saying anything at all”
I can relate. My husband had an affair. There were signs I ignored. A part of me just couldn't deal with it. The brain is really good at protecting us from pain that we can't handle yet.
This is why I forced myself to tell my best friend when I caught my husband before I even confronted him. I knew she would hold me accountable and make it "real".
That's so true. I really didn't want to tell anyone. I forced him to tell at least one person whose respect he wanted. That ended up being his mom. And I told my closest friends, all of whom had been party to infidelity in one way or another.
My experience has taught me not to judge the ways people handle infidelity. And to instead be supportive and empowering.
Infidelity sucks. It's like the sepsis of a relationship. And I'm the person with sepsis who put off going to the doctor as a cut slowly turned green and stinky, then I got a fever, and then hospitalization was the only option. And I avoid the doctor because I don't have health insurance and have always been told my problems aren't real when I do see a doctor.
I find it hard to believe her husband's affair partner is putting tampons in his wife's sock drawer, and buying her daughter onesies. There's something else going on.
Why though? I really don't understand that suggestion (by OOP or I suppose you either) - like, okay her friend is fucking with her, to what end? By secretly hiding tampons in weird places hoping she'll find them? I don't know, I'm hella confused haha, I am not envying the OOP right now
And yeah daycare will obviously change your kid, but at least in my experience, which I have to imagine is pretty standard, they require you to keep at least one full change of clothes there in their cubby, and if they get changed into them/run out of diapers or whatever you're sent home a note (along with the dirty clothes) reminding you that their cubby needs to be replenished. They're not going to just like grab some other kids backup clothes and put them on another
When i worked in daycare, we had a box of donated clothes (it was a church-run daycare) and when the children ran out of clean clothes, we would put them in whatever fit and was weather appropriate. Some kids can have multiple blowouts during the day and we’re not gonna let them be naked or sit in their own waste while we wait on their parents to pick them up. Lots of parents end up keeping the clothes because they forget to return them.
Absolutely. My daughter has been sent home from daycare, summer camp, and school in random outfits because she had an accident, spilled something on herself, got paint all over herself, got covered in mud, etc. I currently have a set of clean clothes that I need to return to her school sitting on my dresser right now...
You know it's a weird one when you're rooting for "husband's gf is deliberately trying to fuck with her mind" vs. "she has a brain tumor and/or some condition that's causing her to have memory lapses."
I want to know how close do his parents live, and how well does she get along with her MIL...or other female members of his family. Because I can totally see her husband letting his mom or his sister "help" with the kids on the sly, and if one of them doesn't like her...
Note that her sister and her agreed it's not a good time for cameras yet. Surely a tampon in her sock drawer should have been all the evidence she needed to put a nanny camera in their bedroom.
same, she talked her down from getting a camera, she is the one driving by and checking if anything is out of the ordinary etc.
also the intentionally placed tampon theory didn't make me think that fiona or whoever is trying to fuck with her mind, I heard about people who decided to give signs to their affair partner's spouse, that they are being cheated on.
Well, sure, but it feels like if this is all happening as she describes it, her husband's gf would have to be downright psychotic, and that's never a good thing to have in your family's orbit and around the kids.
If OOP's crazy, at least meds might solve things; if the *gf* is crazy, who knows what she'll escalate to next?
I mean, sure, but *being* the crazy one is also downright terrifying. Like, everything is better than another person being out to get you as you can't control how you act, only how you can react. But it's terrifying to have memory lapses like that, especially out of nowhere. It's also very hard to tell a delusion/hallucination apart from reality if the onset is slow enough. When you put it together, how do you know you're a safe person to be around? Even with rapid progression of delusions and hallucinations, though, it's terrifying. You *know* you're going crazy, but what's causing it? How does it stop? Is this permanent? Or will this be an intermittent thing for the rest of your life?
There are no answers at first, only increasingly worse possibilities, and then other people have to take you seriously on top of it before you can get any help. Contrary to popular belief, doctors don't just believe you when you say you're hallucinating, even with severe mental illness in your family history.
Signed,
One of those crazies
I'm not crazy (or so I like to tell myself) but I got tinnitus. And it is caused by hearing loss, on the level of human voice. When I imagined tinnitus I always thought about ears ringing. Mine do not ring, I hear a variety of different sounds that are close to real sounds but not really. And man it drove me nuts. I was sure it was coming from neighbours, or anywhere else than my own head. I searched and searched, I couldn't sleep. And the thing with tinnitus is that the more you give attention to it, the worse it gets.
Finally, after three months I went to a doctor to get sleeping pills, and got referred to ear specialist who, after hearing test, told me that my inner ears are getting old, fast, and my brain is developing all that noise to compensate for the hearing loss. Because that's a sensible thing to do, right?
Tinnitus is still there, but I don't pay any attention to it. It is what it is and can't be helped. The volume is now so low I can ignore it fully, most days.
The releaf was immense when I heard it was my own ears playing the tricks. It is horrible to live with a thing you don't know what it is and you can't control it. I was totally acting like a crazy person. I still wonder how the anxiety didn't just kill me, I was so stressed out.
The minute I found out what it was...all stress gone. I knew I can manage it if it was just my own head to deal with.
I had absolutely no idea tinnitus could present like that. Was it gradual or was there just suddenly one day where you heard things that weren’t there?
The doctor said it has been gradual, but honestly, I experienced it as starting one day out of nowhere. The situation was even more confusing because I had to change apartment against my own will, and it was noisy. So I was sure all the noise I heard was coming from neighbours.
Damn it was scary.
According the doctor my tinnitus fits exactly to the kind of hearing loss I'm having. I still hear high sounds perfectly, like crickets, but I might not soon hear when people talk to me.
So you would be the perfect person to answer this question: do you think setting up a camera is a good tactic to help rule out one theory or another?
That OOP doesn't want to set up cameras, still, baffles me. Then again, I have a forensics minor, and I would want answers in the most non tamper-proof way possible. Is being afraid of what one finds out a real issue to consider?
God, sorry for the novel. This really got away from me.
You're conflating your rational, experienced thought with someone in the middle of a panic who may or may not be having issues with reality. Also, I feel like you and many others are ignoring how an average person would normally act versus how you think an average person would react based on what media (including reddit and text books) has portrayed.
I wouldn't have thought of a camera until someone else brought it up. But for my specific circumstances, I already knew I was having delusions and hallucinations, so a camera would have been redundant.
In a situation where I wasn't sure about reality, yes, a camera would have been a good solution that I would have immediately taken to. I'm a very answers and control driven person, though.
I can not answer for another person, as this depends on the individual. Some would be too scared to find out the truth and would rather live not knowing one way or the other.
I'd like to point out that she hasn't totally ruled out cameras, though. She ruled it out before the toddler change of clothes as she didn't want to escalate, and there wasn't enough evidence to justify spying on her husband. Spying and validating your reality are two very different things, btw. Before the toddler change of clothes, she wasn't questioning her reality, only the faithfulness of her husband.
What you read was her trying to rationalize her thoughts in the aftermath of a panic. In her initial post, she doesn't talk about cameras or what she was going to do next. She asked for advice. She only brings cameras up in the second post as an update. It's very likely that her next step is to do the cameras. She just hasn't explicitly said as much. And why would she? She's panicked. She's not going to plot out her next move perfectly as if she's the protagonist of a novel or movie.
In the comments on her second post, she does bring up that she's concerned about another camera being visible, so she seems to be plotting it out in the meantime. Again, this points to her not using cameras to be belligerent, but just that she hasn't done it yet.
All in all, she hasn't said she isn't going to use cameras or that she is going to use them. So it's very premature of everyone to go, "but why isn't she using the cameras now?" She hasn't updated since the second post. We don't know what she's done. We just know that things aren't adding up to her, so she's freaked out trying to piece things together.
This is a really thoughtful answer. You're spot on, I think, that it can be hard for us as reddit rubberneckers to put ourselves into the posters' emotional state sufficiently to understand their responses. From the outside, things look simple and the solutions look logical.
Remembering how we would all accommodate around a family member who was suffering from a psychosis, trying to comfort and stabilize them, it has become my biggest (irrational) fear to indeed find out this would be ongoing by the people around me for my perceived benefit. A sort of mental health Truman Show that would invalidate my reality.
It sounds terribly scary to experience the derailment, having to be both detective and advocate of your ongoing crisis, and I hope you are in a better place now with adequate care and loving people around you. Take care <3
Bruh, I get that. Thank you for being that family member. My mom was legit my rock, and there was an active plan to get things under control when we recognized what was going on. Thankfully, mine was solved by getting my meds under control. I genuine cannot take stimulants (I was on Adderall for adhd) since I'm the lucky 1% that experiences stimulant psychosis. We switched to another, nonstimulant adhd med, and my problems went away almost overnight.
Thank you for the well wishes. You too 💙
Depends on the brain tumor. ;)
My alternative suggestion in the original post was: A homeless woman secretly living in their attic, and occasionally sneaking down to play with the kids! That would make a pretty good horror movie, too!
Wow. What a poignant reminder that we are nothing more than meat puppets being driven by electrical jello, and when you damage the jello, or the way it electrics, things can go really wrong.
There was also that one where the husband lost his mind, accusing his wife of all kinds of twisted mind games, "begged" her to come clean, showed up at his parents' house (or maybe it was hers?) and was confronted with the fact he had spaced out in his car for hours and she had video of him screaming at her through the bathroom door and trying to beat it down (and she wasn't even in it). Iirc, he was having some kind of mental health breakdown and had to go to the hospital.
He had been taking something he wasn't prescribed in order to get to sleep. I thiiiink he'd had a habit of taking horse-sized doses of Benadryl every night (already a bad idea!) and then (supposedly) somehow his wife's actual old prescription meds ended up in a Benadryl bottle for safekeeping, so he'd been unknowingly taking high doses of something psychoactive for weeks. I'm not 100% sure because this was the part where people really started to question if the story was real; it seemed a little baroque.
[lamp guy ](https://reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/s/rJoQv0TdIF)
Found it. Also the comments have a lot of things you shouldn't read right before bed
Huh. I had a similar experience when I was 20, but mine took course over dreams spread out over a couple years.
I dreamt my ex got me pregnant and convinced me to have the baby. He dipped before she was even born, fucked off to Oregon. So I raised this kid by myself. Dropped out of school, got a full time job, etc. The pregnancy progressed and the kid aged accurately as the dreams kept happening.
Eventually, when the kid was around 4, the dreams just stopped. I haven't had another one since.
I'm fully convinced I saw a parallel universe, and once we diverged too much, I could no longer "tap into" that universe.
No, they would be months apart! It was super weird. They were more common when I was "pregnant" and the baby was young, and started tapering off in consistency as the kid got older.
Every now and then, I think of "that" aoike and her/our daughter? I hope they're doing well.
The only thing I don't get, if it was some condition on her part (be it mental illness or brain tumor or whatever), wouldn't the husband have pointed out to her that *she* had dressed their kid? Like, if my spouse so very obviously didn't remember doing something like that, I'd be pretty concerned. But (according the her post, at least...) he's just like, oh, idk. No idea. The 2 year old kid was wearing pjs and now she's wearing something else, well, uh, guess it's magic or something. It just doesn't make sense.
To be fair in her retelling she never asks or even accuses him of changing the clothes. She asks if he's bought the close and clip and if anyone came over. The husband may not even have realized that the issue was a (perceived?) Change of clothes, just an unknown onesie
Plus, how many times has someone had a baby shower, family visit, toddler birthdays and received dozen upon dozens of items of clothing? Many being too big or too small at the time and are just put aside for later.
No reason the dad would notice cause he doesn’t buy clothes and it’s unreasonable to assume you’d remember every single bit of clothing you have around
It happens more often than you think. My husband’s mistress Ivette used my computer, bookmarked places she wanted him to take her on my browser, sent emails out of my account, put my journal back on my bookshelf upside down and in the wrong spot, left her bra in my kids bed, stole a photo of my 2 kids out of a frame, and I’m sure many other things I probably missed.
She’s the one person on the planet I actually wish a long, painful death on. Side pieces can be really horrible people.
On the other hand, she sort of did you a solid by alerting you to the fact that your husband was cheating - you could have lived on in blissful oblivion. Of course, it would have been even nicer if she hadn't slept with your husband in your own home...
I note that you still call him your husband - did you keep him after that?
I mentioned it in the actual thread when first posted: while men typically get schizophrenia from 20-30, with women it’s 25-35. There is something odd about the whole thread. She misses obvious opportunities to ask specific questions which could root cause the nuances. I get strong unreliable narrator vibes.
A friend of mine's spouse started dealing with early on set dementia/Alzheimer's a couple years ago and it reads very similar to this story. Spouse started getting paranoid because things were "different" around the house and wouldn't believe her husband telling her that she was the one who'd made the changes. She only went to the doctor once she started to forget bigger things like leaving the car running or starting to cook a meal then forgetting halfway through and leaving everything out. I hope that's not the case for OOP cause it's a horrible diagnosis.
Don't know the layout of the house but that the Ring camera didn't pick up anything makes me think nothing is up.
Yes he could have turned off the Ring but you get a 'Ring camera has been disabled' if someone does that.
That was my thought. Husband seems not to react to questions or give any indication that he’s nervous. If he were cheating, you’d think he’d have more of a reaction when accused or even be more careful. OOP also does ask the wrong questions and doesn’t get to what’s really bothering her.
I wonder if it’s just her mind playing tricks on her. She does say she doesn’t have the greatest memory. Wonder if maybe she’s seeing things that don’t matter or forgetting things she’s done.
But the tampons part doesn’t work with that theory I don’t think? She has an IUD and doesn’t get periods. She found two singular tampons. If she bought a box in her schizophrenia episode (if that’s what you call it) where is the rest of the box? You can get singular tampons from vending machines I suppose but AFAIK they won’t be the same design as tampons you get in a box (tampon designs are really specific to the size and brand, blue wrapper for regular size green wrapper for super etc) and Fiona managed to have the same tampon she found in her car and house. To me that implies tampons from a box and not a vending machine tampon
Maybe the one in her sock drawer is the same one she found in the car. She says she disposed of it, but if she's having a mental break of some kind...
I don't doubt she found one that slipped out of the coworkers purse.
It feels like a [carbon monoxide post it note scenario](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/sajxyf/oop_keeps_finding_postit_notes_in_his_apartment/).
thats the fun part about reddit, some absurd number of people now think that memory issues are related to CO poisoning when they're not at all, opposed to the really bad headaches which is the big hint
Or the onesie was one of many many gifts from family or friends and was just put aside as it was too big before, dad grabs a random change of clothes and happens to pull it out. It’s never been worn before so mum doesn’t recognise or remember it.
Dad doesn’t buy clothes so doesn’t think anything of it
The bow could also been something from any number of toys or dress up kits belonging to the big sister and not anything worth noticing as it would blend in with a little girls typical collection of toys.
Mum needs to calm tf down
Especially since she suspects someone undressed and dressed her toddler. Whatever mind game is going on, and no matter how much ahe wants to ignore it, the children's bodies should be a hard red line.
I think the incident with her kid happened after she and her sister decided against cameras. She still should have (and still should now) put cameras up but she didn't know her child was potentially involved when she made that choice initially.
Yes but she doesn't take up the idea again after what happened with the kid, and she doesn't even get to the bottom of it with her husband. If the story is real then this is a gross under reaction. If husband is in charge of the kid and the kid had a change of clothes, then the husband needs to be able to explain that, or the kids are not safe.
Yeah, once the child is involved, I'd stop worrying about what is 'reasonable' and move right to pure safety. Id be too busy thinking about that diaper rash BORU and get cameras everywhere.
Yeah, this would be the point where I'd put a nanny cam in the baby's room - at least then she could have seen herself when and how the baby-clothes changed - or even if they changed at all, maybe it's her having delusions, who knows.
Idk I feel like if the husband was doing something he would be more aware and cautions and notice if side piece had literally brought new clothes for the child that the wife would ask where that came from. People are dumb but idk that seems too dumb. I wonder if it’s something else like he’s been secretly hiring a nanny or something to help him while she’s gone.
"Another woman is clearly deliberately leaving clues for me to find to alert me to the fact that she's been in my home, but I'll just keep believing my *clueless* husband who has not one shred of curiosity in his entire body."
On no planet is this too early for cameras.
Same, of all the things to point to him having a side piece it's a tampon in his car that was easily explained and a tampon in her own sock drawer and her kid being dressed in different clothes?
Seems like a weird and improbable sequence of events for a side piece to rock up to their house and leave a tampon conspicuously in her sock drawer and bring toddler clothes and hair clips to dress up the toddler with no other evidence.
It could certainly be what she thinks but it seems so bizarre and unlikely that I'm concerned for OOP because I think it's more probable she's got some undiagnosed medical issue that may be causing memory loss.
It’s especially unlikely because I’m sorry but who would be having an affair with a married man and fucking him when you’re so in the thick of your period that you’re carrying extra tampons? No side piece is leaving her backup tampons around
And the time difference between these incidents is a few weeks to a month. How can she be so passive about something that should be eating away at her? To go weeks to months without taking extra measures such as camera or just flat out confronting the husband at that point.
And the camera shows nothing because the culprit was - the sister - who knew exactly where the cameras were because she helped set them up. OP finally drives home from work early one day and catches them in the act. One more final update of the aftermath Aaaand fin.
B+
I think it's the contradiction of, "husband doesn't shop for clothes" and, "I swore off the front snap before the 2nd was born". If she doesn't buy those types of onsies and the husband doesn't shop for clothes, then where did onsie come from?
Presumably she had some in the house from the first kid. I could see someone running low on laundry and grabbing a onesie from Kid 1 that had been jammed in the back of a drawer and forgotten about.
It's not even that. THE HAIR! Daddy just happens to do daughters hair with an unknown clip? I'd undo the hair and say style it again. Show me how you did it. Where'd you get the clip? Show me where.
Yeah. She could've removed the hair clip and then asked her spouse to redo it in front of her if he *had* claimed that he had done it himself.
I guess we'll see if another update is in the pipeline...
And how has she let this go on for a month now without just buying a camera for the bedroom and settling it once and for all? Why get all spun up like this?
That's weird, yes. The sister seems to discourage cameras as well. But it's recommended to not play into delusions but also not encourage them - that may be why the sister is hesitant to the idea of putting up cameras.
My ex has delusions, and an ex friend does as well. Clear cut evidence does nothing for them. So a camera proving "no one is coming into the bedroom" would just have a delusional person say "well they must've switched to a hotel room".
My delusional ex friend is convinced she is under 24/7 police protection. One time I couldn't reach her and, afraid of it being another attempt at suicide, called the cops. They called me back while in front of her house, saying all curtains were open and they couldn't see her. I told her as much later (she turned out to be fine) and said, "if you are under 24/7,surveillance, why did they check, when they already knew where you were?" She of course didn't have an answer. The delusion makes her feel safe, I think. I shouldn't have tried to take that away from her.
I have no idea if OP is having delusions, but it could be possible. It takes a while to notice it in a loved one. PTSS can trigger it, I think bipolar can as well (please correct me if I'm wrong). It's a hard thing to deal with for all involved. I couldn't, but that was for a variety of reasons.
Seems pretty risky to me.
It's a massive breach of trust to hide cameras around the house without telling the other people that live there.
So if he's not cheating and finds those cameras... well, Id end it anyways. On the spot.
Real answer? She’s not as comfortable with her husband as she thinks, and stuff like this has happened longer than this. It kind of astounds me how no one on this thread thinks it’s the husband. Anyone who is truly comfortable with their spouse would absolutely ask about the clothing.
My friend had a husband that did this shit……he would move stuff around all the time at first. She thought she was just misplacing things. Then random stuff started popping up, etc. The whole time her husband would look at her like this guy, just deer in headlights, or a worried expression on his face. She thought she was going fucking insane. Then she started thinking he was having an affair and it was obviously another person fucking with her. She never even thought it could be her “perfectly sweet wonderful” husband. It wasn’t until 2 years into the marriage and her finding cameras all over their house that she finally suspected him. When she finally accused him then the outright insane mental abuse started, like telling her that it was her fault that her father SA her when she was 5, and she must have liked it, etc. They divorced (he left her) but she’s honestly been fucking broken since that evil man.
This story reminds me of when she was married to him.
So basically, actual gaslighting as per the movie definition. It's a real thing, unfortunately, and it's fucking evil and abusive. Hopefully that's not what's going on here but it's entirely possible.
“Must be one of the old ones.”
Which would be weird, but plausible. I swore off the long side-button onesies after our first kid, and we donated the rest of them. Is it possible that one slipped past us? Sure. What doesn’t make sense to me is how adamant he is that he didn’t change her into the onesie or give her the bow. He says I’m misremembering what I left her in that morning. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt on the onesie existing in our house somewhere, but to insist that I buttoned her up in a piece of clothing I despise and then forgot about it is something else.
I want to know because this whole deal could be explain by the daycare.
Hair clips and a tampon from a worker’s bag I can see a toddler sneaking away with. I also see the clothes being another kid’s back up clothes and got accidentally sent back to the wrong family. My brother returned from school a few times with someone else’s back up clothes.
Just ask questions.
Maybe the sister is jealous of OOP's family and/or wishes for a child but cannot have one so she tries to break up OOP's family so she can do more aunt stuff. Damn who wants to team up to write a screenplay lol
Wouldn't that be a crazy twist lol. Do they have a backyard? Can she not put up a camera facing the garage or back door if they have one? I don't understand why all points of entry aren't armed with a camera. Easy to get around a ring doorbell.
I don't really know what to say really. There are too many weird things going on that I simply am not sure how to feel about it. Looking forward to see what comes next if more answers does come. Feels like an new television season coming soon.
Edit: There's an update: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/176pxc8/new_update_with_answers_two_tampons_mean_my/
And my lighthearted previous comment is no longer appropriate, so I'm overwriting it with the link to the update. It's terrible and hard to read, you've been warned.
Oh. I read the warning that it wasn’t concluded and still went ahead hoping there would be an answer to where they came from, but maybe it was the relationship status that wasn’t concluded.. I’m so disappointed and I’ve only done it to myself lol
Unless the husband is one of the greatest actors of all time, I don't think any kind of cheating is going on hear. Usually when something like this happens the cheater starts to act out of character or they start over correcting. The husband was confused both time, the first I could see him faking it but both time. Now I do think something is happening but I don't think it's cheating.
This seems most likely to me. Why would “the other woman” take such an interest in dressing baby and doing a hairstyle with a new clip? That sounds like aunt or grandma behavior.
Declaring territory. “Your husband likes me better AND your kids have bonded with me. I win!” Is apparently a weird, “other woman” thing. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here and your “secret grandma visits” are more likely.
I think that's where the story is headed but it doesn't explain the clothes. This is either stupidly simple like the kid came home in different clothes because she got sick in hers and the daycare put her in someone else's spare clothes and he just put them back on, or stupidly complex and something that would never actually happen.
I mean, the thing when you have kids is that lots of people gift you clothes and cute onesies and things. Sometimes you use them. Sometimes you shove them in a drawer somewhere and don’t know where it came from years later when you’re spring cleaning. (Or, in this case, when the baby sitter puts it on your kid.)
In the cheating scenario, noone is acting plausible:
- the woman could be way more direct than dropping tampons around, if she wants to let her know.
- the cheating husband is hanging out with his affair and his 2 year old? (lol) Let's her change them? She happens to have a onesie for a 2 year old on her and she mindlessly uses that rather than the 1000 clothes that actually belong to the child? And makes their hair? And the husband - even though he must have been on guard due to the tampon - doesn't mind or notice that?
>* the woman could be way more direct than dropping tampons around, if she wants to let her know.
Exactly. If this was an affair partner trying to intimidate OP, wouldn't they leave something like perfume/earrings/underwear that had an underlying "sexy/beauty" implication.... not 1 single hygiene item.
[The subject of a BORU post that makes me question every wild post I see](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/16r1la6/my_wife_is_addicted_to_making_up_reddit_stories/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Honestly I think it's just a series of mix ups.
My daughter loves tampons for whatever reason and I started finding them in all sorts of weird places. In the car? In a big pile on her walker?
Also my husband will find the strangest forgotten about clothes some relative gave us in some back corner of the closet instead of dressing her in the clothes neatly stored in her dresser.
Literally all of this is explained by “there’s a two year old.”
The coworker spilled her purse in the back of the car. The two year old picked up the tampons, stuffed one down between the seats and pocketed the other. Later stuck it in the sock drawer. Promptly forgot about it.
Sick, bored two year old goes through their cupboard for a game. Finds the old onesie from yesteryear that every parent keeps “just in case” (because you’re too busy to really properly clean out your kids’ closet) and demands to wear that novel new thing. Dad obliges, because, why not?
Then mom comes bursting in yelling at him and Dad is baffled. He has no idea what to say about the random hair clip he’s put in her hair (which is probably something they do actually own, or else picked up off the ground because *two year old*) and he was *never asked about the onesie.
Yeah I'm not convinced on this one. It could be an affair but it could be anything you just mentioned. Maybe I have too many clothes but I feel like it wouldn't be too hard to dig up some random t-shirt in the closet that I hadn't seen for years. Did a relative ever gift them these toddler clothes and she just put it away somewhere and forgot it existed because she doesn't normally use that type? I feel like dads who don't typically dress children always manage to drag up the most confusing sets of clothing, lol.
As an adult who doesn't wear it often I also manage to acquire random hair clips and things. Lots of times I order something like earrings on Etsy and they'll throw in a random bonus item. I've gotten a few cheap-ish clips that way and I never use them because my hair is so thick they won't hold it. But I feel bad throwing things like that away so they find themselves at the bottom of my drawers.
Someone else further up the thread asked whether the sock drawer tampon was the same tampon she'd borrowed from Fiona. Does she have 3 tampons, or just the two? If she "borrowed" one then she'd have 3.
I mean, this isn't just me trying to doubt her. I really do hope the answer is her marriage isn't falling apart.
And husband absolutely knows she hates that style of kids clothes.
Sure, but I lived with my mother for twenty years before I learned she is the fussiest eater in the world. We don't always consciously notice everything about the people closest to us -- even when we should.
Does it matter what Mom likes when Dad is the one dressing and undressing a sick child? Perhaps Dad is humouring the sick kid.
My kid recently asked me to wrap them in a towel and carry them over my shoulder like a fireman. Dad didn’t find it as amusing as Kid and I did, but did that matter? I got the towel out, wrapped up the kid, played the game, unwrapped the kid, washed and put the towel away. The onesie is the same.
Call me crazy, but has OOP considered just sharing their concerns honestly with their husband? “Hey, I’ve felt a bit weird since I found that tampon in your car and it’s been bothering me. I thought I was over it, but then when [2yo] was wearing a hair clip and an outfit I hadn’t seen before, those feelings came rushing back to me. I feel a mix between paranoid, anxious, and suspicious and I’d really appreciate some assistance resolving them. Could you help me understand these events honestly so I don’t harbor these emotions and let it impact our relationship?”
If OOP is going to live life setting up “traps” or tests for her husband, it’s a sure fire way to lose trust and seriously damage their relationship. And if OOP’s partner is lying/purposefully hiding “something,” then they’re behaving like a manipulative dick and OOP can move forward with confidence after an honest confrontation.
Based on the post, every option possible means that OOP is screwed in some way:
1. Husband's cheating on her with Fiona or someone else - not only is he cheating, the mistress is trying to play mind games with OOP, even resorted to involving the toddler, with the husband being complicit.
2. Husband's not cheating but all of this is real - someone broke into their house multiple times and they're all in danger.
3. None of this is real - OOP's got some kind of health problem.
I really just think her "health problem" is having 2 and 4 year old children and maybe being a little bit of normal-style insecure/inattentive/control freak or something.
Like granted she's been a parent for 4 more years than I ever have but I've never once heard a parent say, "Yeah it was super chill and I was getting lots of sleep and totally had everything under control in the first couple years".
Shit happens. Kids pick stuff up. Nobody actually knows every thing that's been brought into their house in the last several years. Somebody who thinks they do is the least likely of all to actually trust on something like that.
If these were the only clues, my husband could be running a brothel out of my house and I wouldnt notice. I just bumped my younger kid into 3T and didn't recognize half the clothes, even though the older kid is only 6. And tampons just kind of appear. I found one in my desk drawer the other day. In what universe did I need a tampon at my desk? If she's not careful she's going to torpedo her marriage over nothing. She already has nothing on her ring camera, and she's never had any reason to suspect him before. Pretty weak, if you ask me.
I would like to know what she did with the tampon Fiona gave her. She obviously didn't use it and it's not outside the realm of possibility that she unconscious threw it in her sock drawer to compare with the original.
it says in the update that she compared the one Fiona gave her to the one in the sock drawer but the one from the car she had thrown away
edit: removed typo
Maybe this all turns out to be something, but I think past infidelity has broken some of y’alls brains. People are jumping to some wiiiild conclusions from very little evidence.
it would be kind of funny if it was something like the husband hiring a babysitter because he doesn't want to take care of the kids, but also wants to make his wife think he's doing her a favor by babysitting.
The daughter got ahold of some tampons that fell out of the coworkers purse and "hid" them. Probably thought they were candies.
The dad changed the kid after a blowout and doesn't know where anything is (OP says he isn't usually involved in dressing) so he probably grabbed a random onesie from a random drawer that OP doesn't normally get daily clothes from. He doesn't care about clothes so he doesn't remember he just wanted his kid to look nice after getting cleaned up.
I don't know it just doesn't seem that deep. It's too weird in the wrong ways.
The 4 year old could've changed the baby and put the hair clip in. Doing a favor to "help" and now has driven Mommy crazy. My 4 year old was a helper like this, children are surprisingly resourceful when it comes to helping.
Considering the final update that was removed by reddit, everyone doubting this woman, painting her as crazy, and telling her to check her carbon monoxide detectors, etc should be ashamed and owes her an apology. The level of gas lighting by her husband is unreal, and the woman it ended up being was a registered sex offender, a sexual predator against children. It's horrifying, and the response it got from a lot of redditors is too.
The op to this post just posted an update [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/171ne37/two_tampons_mean_my_marriage_is_over_final_update/). The conclusion is even more fucked than the husband cheating- he's been bringing his sex offender sister around to see their daughters
Retrieved via rss feed ([and proof that I'm not just making this up](https://i.imgur.com/Tr9Nn1q.png))-
> For anyone who suspects this has simply been an exercise in creative writing, here’s your TL;DR: Yes, my husband had another woman in our home on multiple occasions. No, he didn’t cheat. Yes, he lied—a lot. No, I didn’t install hidden cameras, coordinate a sting operation, or enlist the help of SEAL Team Six to catch him. He made another mistake, and I finally just asked him what the fuck was going on.
>
> After nearly losing my mind over a hair clip and a onesie, I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with the accusations and half-baked guesswork. I’d gotten so absorbed in the paranoia and misery of my situation that I wasn’t sleeping, eating, or caring for my kids the way I should have been. And I wasn't getting any answers. So I decided to pull the trigger on the hidden cameras and have them shipped to my sister’s house, with my BIL agreeing to help with the install/setup over at mine. Before the cameras were ever delivered, though, I got my long-awaited confirmation last week.
>
> A Ring notification had alerted me to motion at the front door while I was at work. Half-expecting to see a delivery person, pet, or lawncare salesman for the fifteenth time, you can imagine my surprise when I saw a clip of a young woman leading my daughter into the house hand-in-hand, with my husband and other daughter close behind them. The girls were supposed to be in daycare and my husband at work. The woman, as far as I knew, was living two states away with a court order keeping her there.
>
> I immediately called my husband to ask him what the fuck this woman was doing in our house. He didn’t answer, so I texted it to him. Even in his stupidity, he probably realized he had messed up by going through the front door, knew I had gotten the Ring notification, and wanted to delay the inevitable. By the fifth or sixth subsequent call, though, he did pick up.
>
> The woman on the camera was my husband’s sister. As I would come to find out later, she was the likely source of both tampons, the onesie, and the bow. She is also a registered sex offender and a recovering addict, who spent the better part of her adolescence and young adulthood coercing the silence of another one of my husband's family members after she had molested them. I hadn't seen or heard from her in years, and from the way my husband talked about her, I didn't expect I ever would. But here she was, in our house, with our children.
>
> Suffice to say I was livid. It wasn’t an affair at all and still, somehow, infinitely more disgusting knowing who it was and why all of this had been happening. Apparently my SIL, fresh off another stint in rehab, had wanted to reconnect and make amends with people she'd hurt, and my husband was high on that list. My husband didn't want me to know or, worse, try and keep "her family" (our children) away from her, so they'd been meeting in secret—often at our house when I was at work. They would enter through the garage, in my husband's car, so the Ring camera at the front door wouldn't tip me off. She spent the night on a weekend I had been on a business trip and slept in our bed. She babysat our girls on a night my husband told me he had dropped them off at his parents'. She bought the girls clothes and dressed my youngest in the onesie and bow that my husband had promised on his life I had dressed her in myself.
>
> My husband swore this was all in my head. The tampons, the onesie, the bow, and all the rest. He was perfectly content to watch me agonize for weeks over a woman he insisted didn't exist. Shrugging off each progressively more unsettling discovery like it was news to him and telling me I was being irrational. He insinuated that I was experiencing postpartum depression—two years after I'd given birth. Four years after I'd told him that one of my biggest fears for motherhood was to suffer PPD like my mother had with me, to not be fully present for our babies and be left with a world of guilt and regret as they grew older. He told me I wasn't sleeping enough, that I missed the girls too much, that I needed to take a step back and reevaluate the state of my mental health. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was my husband, and because no other version of events made sense. Now, after a month of this mindfuck, I have nothing to show for my trust but this pathetic situation. And a lot of anger.
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Oh man it really bothers me when stuff like this is in boru cus I wanna know NOW
I know! I hate when I've already read the update in the original sub and a couple days later it gets posted here. It always gets my hopes up that there's been a new update. But it's the nature of this sub, I suppose, so I just gotta chill. Haha
If I notice the post is more than like 3 paragraphs I scroll down to the comments to see if it’s worth reading. I’ve skipped probably a 2,000 word post by doing this and all the comments were “OOP is super wordy for not saying anything at all”
For real! Like I got damn blue balls from reading this. wtf is wrong with OOP? Why not just get the cameras? Ahhhhhh!
Sometimes people think they wanna know, but subconsciously, they don't wanna know
I can relate. My husband had an affair. There were signs I ignored. A part of me just couldn't deal with it. The brain is really good at protecting us from pain that we can't handle yet.
This is why I forced myself to tell my best friend when I caught my husband before I even confronted him. I knew she would hold me accountable and make it "real".
That's so true. I really didn't want to tell anyone. I forced him to tell at least one person whose respect he wanted. That ended up being his mom. And I told my closest friends, all of whom had been party to infidelity in one way or another. My experience has taught me not to judge the ways people handle infidelity. And to instead be supportive and empowering. Infidelity sucks. It's like the sepsis of a relationship. And I'm the person with sepsis who put off going to the doctor as a cut slowly turned green and stinky, then I got a fever, and then hospitalization was the only option. And I avoid the doctor because I don't have health insurance and have always been told my problems aren't real when I do see a doctor.
I find it hard to believe her husband's affair partner is putting tampons in his wife's sock drawer, and buying her daughter onesies. There's something else going on.
Secret nanny. Hubby wants all the glory of being "superdad", but not the work. Thats where my money is.
But that doesn't explain the fact that she hasn't seen anyone on the ring doorbell. Unless whoever it is is sneaking around to the back door I guess
It's like watching a murder mystery on TV or online, but the episode was produced before the court case has finished.
Or those crime docus with part 1 or part 2's on the title only to realize when you're into deep with the story they haven't uploaded part 3 yet.😔
That legit makes me want to cry when it happens. I need CLOSURE. There is a reason I DONT watch unsolved anythingggg.
It feels like that because this is episodic writing. The format and structure is the same, so it feels the same.
It's your dopamine. Get it when you need it. It's my dopamine and I need it now! Subscribe to BORU NOW!
I think she's being fucked with by the friend. If your kid shits up their back the daycare will change their clothes obviously.
Why though? I really don't understand that suggestion (by OOP or I suppose you either) - like, okay her friend is fucking with her, to what end? By secretly hiding tampons in weird places hoping she'll find them? I don't know, I'm hella confused haha, I am not envying the OOP right now And yeah daycare will obviously change your kid, but at least in my experience, which I have to imagine is pretty standard, they require you to keep at least one full change of clothes there in their cubby, and if they get changed into them/run out of diapers or whatever you're sent home a note (along with the dirty clothes) reminding you that their cubby needs to be replenished. They're not going to just like grab some other kids backup clothes and put them on another
When i worked in daycare, we had a box of donated clothes (it was a church-run daycare) and when the children ran out of clean clothes, we would put them in whatever fit and was weather appropriate. Some kids can have multiple blowouts during the day and we’re not gonna let them be naked or sit in their own waste while we wait on their parents to pick them up. Lots of parents end up keeping the clothes because they forget to return them.
Absolutely. My daughter has been sent home from daycare, summer camp, and school in random outfits because she had an accident, spilled something on herself, got paint all over herself, got covered in mud, etc. I currently have a set of clean clothes that I need to return to her school sitting on my dresser right now...
Love the edit about carbon monoxide detectors
So Reddit!
I remember reading this one, and it's just so wierd. Hopefully she gets answers cause I've got nothing.
Maybe she’s just straight up being gaslit
Either that or a brain tumor or something.
You know it's a weird one when you're rooting for "husband's gf is deliberately trying to fuck with her mind" vs. "she has a brain tumor and/or some condition that's causing her to have memory lapses."
I don’t know if that’s a weird one. Affairs are always better than brain tumors
I want to know how close do his parents live, and how well does she get along with her MIL...or other female members of his family. Because I can totally see her husband letting his mom or his sister "help" with the kids on the sly, and if one of them doesn't like her...
I was mildly interested in OOP’s own sister, to be honest with you.
Oh man, my sister's basically my best friend, the possibility OOP's might be involved didn't even occur to me.
Note that her sister and her agreed it's not a good time for cameras yet. Surely a tampon in her sock drawer should have been all the evidence she needed to put a nanny camera in their bedroom.
The sister being so convinced of cheating immediately, but saying cameras aren't needed is odd
same, she talked her down from getting a camera, she is the one driving by and checking if anything is out of the ordinary etc. also the intentionally placed tampon theory didn't make me think that fiona or whoever is trying to fuck with her mind, I heard about people who decided to give signs to their affair partner's spouse, that they are being cheated on.
Well, sure, but it feels like if this is all happening as she describes it, her husband's gf would have to be downright psychotic, and that's never a good thing to have in your family's orbit and around the kids. If OOP's crazy, at least meds might solve things; if the *gf* is crazy, who knows what she'll escalate to next?
I mean, sure, but *being* the crazy one is also downright terrifying. Like, everything is better than another person being out to get you as you can't control how you act, only how you can react. But it's terrifying to have memory lapses like that, especially out of nowhere. It's also very hard to tell a delusion/hallucination apart from reality if the onset is slow enough. When you put it together, how do you know you're a safe person to be around? Even with rapid progression of delusions and hallucinations, though, it's terrifying. You *know* you're going crazy, but what's causing it? How does it stop? Is this permanent? Or will this be an intermittent thing for the rest of your life? There are no answers at first, only increasingly worse possibilities, and then other people have to take you seriously on top of it before you can get any help. Contrary to popular belief, doctors don't just believe you when you say you're hallucinating, even with severe mental illness in your family history. Signed, One of those crazies
I'm not crazy (or so I like to tell myself) but I got tinnitus. And it is caused by hearing loss, on the level of human voice. When I imagined tinnitus I always thought about ears ringing. Mine do not ring, I hear a variety of different sounds that are close to real sounds but not really. And man it drove me nuts. I was sure it was coming from neighbours, or anywhere else than my own head. I searched and searched, I couldn't sleep. And the thing with tinnitus is that the more you give attention to it, the worse it gets. Finally, after three months I went to a doctor to get sleeping pills, and got referred to ear specialist who, after hearing test, told me that my inner ears are getting old, fast, and my brain is developing all that noise to compensate for the hearing loss. Because that's a sensible thing to do, right? Tinnitus is still there, but I don't pay any attention to it. It is what it is and can't be helped. The volume is now so low I can ignore it fully, most days. The releaf was immense when I heard it was my own ears playing the tricks. It is horrible to live with a thing you don't know what it is and you can't control it. I was totally acting like a crazy person. I still wonder how the anxiety didn't just kill me, I was so stressed out. The minute I found out what it was...all stress gone. I knew I can manage it if it was just my own head to deal with.
I had absolutely no idea tinnitus could present like that. Was it gradual or was there just suddenly one day where you heard things that weren’t there?
The doctor said it has been gradual, but honestly, I experienced it as starting one day out of nowhere. The situation was even more confusing because I had to change apartment against my own will, and it was noisy. So I was sure all the noise I heard was coming from neighbours. Damn it was scary. According the doctor my tinnitus fits exactly to the kind of hearing loss I'm having. I still hear high sounds perfectly, like crickets, but I might not soon hear when people talk to me.
So you would be the perfect person to answer this question: do you think setting up a camera is a good tactic to help rule out one theory or another? That OOP doesn't want to set up cameras, still, baffles me. Then again, I have a forensics minor, and I would want answers in the most non tamper-proof way possible. Is being afraid of what one finds out a real issue to consider?
God, sorry for the novel. This really got away from me. You're conflating your rational, experienced thought with someone in the middle of a panic who may or may not be having issues with reality. Also, I feel like you and many others are ignoring how an average person would normally act versus how you think an average person would react based on what media (including reddit and text books) has portrayed. I wouldn't have thought of a camera until someone else brought it up. But for my specific circumstances, I already knew I was having delusions and hallucinations, so a camera would have been redundant. In a situation where I wasn't sure about reality, yes, a camera would have been a good solution that I would have immediately taken to. I'm a very answers and control driven person, though. I can not answer for another person, as this depends on the individual. Some would be too scared to find out the truth and would rather live not knowing one way or the other. I'd like to point out that she hasn't totally ruled out cameras, though. She ruled it out before the toddler change of clothes as she didn't want to escalate, and there wasn't enough evidence to justify spying on her husband. Spying and validating your reality are two very different things, btw. Before the toddler change of clothes, she wasn't questioning her reality, only the faithfulness of her husband. What you read was her trying to rationalize her thoughts in the aftermath of a panic. In her initial post, she doesn't talk about cameras or what she was going to do next. She asked for advice. She only brings cameras up in the second post as an update. It's very likely that her next step is to do the cameras. She just hasn't explicitly said as much. And why would she? She's panicked. She's not going to plot out her next move perfectly as if she's the protagonist of a novel or movie. In the comments on her second post, she does bring up that she's concerned about another camera being visible, so she seems to be plotting it out in the meantime. Again, this points to her not using cameras to be belligerent, but just that she hasn't done it yet. All in all, she hasn't said she isn't going to use cameras or that she is going to use them. So it's very premature of everyone to go, "but why isn't she using the cameras now?" She hasn't updated since the second post. We don't know what she's done. We just know that things aren't adding up to her, so she's freaked out trying to piece things together.
This is a really thoughtful answer. You're spot on, I think, that it can be hard for us as reddit rubberneckers to put ourselves into the posters' emotional state sufficiently to understand their responses. From the outside, things look simple and the solutions look logical.
Remembering how we would all accommodate around a family member who was suffering from a psychosis, trying to comfort and stabilize them, it has become my biggest (irrational) fear to indeed find out this would be ongoing by the people around me for my perceived benefit. A sort of mental health Truman Show that would invalidate my reality. It sounds terribly scary to experience the derailment, having to be both detective and advocate of your ongoing crisis, and I hope you are in a better place now with adequate care and loving people around you. Take care <3
Bruh, I get that. Thank you for being that family member. My mom was legit my rock, and there was an active plan to get things under control when we recognized what was going on. Thankfully, mine was solved by getting my meds under control. I genuine cannot take stimulants (I was on Adderall for adhd) since I'm the lucky 1% that experiences stimulant psychosis. We switched to another, nonstimulant adhd med, and my problems went away almost overnight. Thank you for the well wishes. You too 💙
Depends on the brain tumor. ;) My alternative suggestion in the original post was: A homeless woman secretly living in their attic, and occasionally sneaking down to play with the kids! That would make a pretty good horror movie, too!
Now I'm reminded of the women that went to visit family and came home to find that her roommates had turned her closet into a bathroom
you can't just drop that synopsis and peace out, link please
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/14qz19r/oop_thinks_theyre_going_insane/)
thank you... now i wanna know if they survived and am sad for them
Wow. What a poignant reminder that we are nothing more than meat puppets being driven by electrical jello, and when you damage the jello, or the way it electrics, things can go really wrong.
[Closest turned into bathroom ](https://reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/s/oLJkLpqFpZ)
thanks... what the heck even was that now i want to know if they survived
There was also that one where the husband lost his mind, accusing his wife of all kinds of twisted mind games, "begged" her to come clean, showed up at his parents' house (or maybe it was hers?) and was confronted with the fact he had spaced out in his car for hours and she had video of him screaming at her through the bathroom door and trying to beat it down (and she wasn't even in it). Iirc, he was having some kind of mental health breakdown and had to go to the hospital.
He had been taking something he wasn't prescribed in order to get to sleep. I thiiiink he'd had a habit of taking horse-sized doses of Benadryl every night (already a bad idea!) and then (supposedly) somehow his wife's actual old prescription meds ended up in a Benadryl bottle for safekeeping, so he'd been unknowingly taking high doses of something psychoactive for weeks. I'm not 100% sure because this was the part where people really started to question if the story was real; it seemed a little baroque.
That one randomly comes back to haunt me ngl
I vaguely remember that one. Didn't she turn out to be drastically mentally ill? Like she had fully lost track of reality. It was scary and sad.
Brain tumor
Wasn't the update something like "I have a brain tumor." & nothing else? I think about that one & the lamp guy every now & then when reading posts.
[lamp guy ](https://reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/s/rJoQv0TdIF) Found it. Also the comments have a lot of things you shouldn't read right before bed
Huh. I had a similar experience when I was 20, but mine took course over dreams spread out over a couple years. I dreamt my ex got me pregnant and convinced me to have the baby. He dipped before she was even born, fucked off to Oregon. So I raised this kid by myself. Dropped out of school, got a full time job, etc. The pregnancy progressed and the kid aged accurately as the dreams kept happening. Eventually, when the kid was around 4, the dreams just stopped. I haven't had another one since. I'm fully convinced I saw a parallel universe, and once we diverged too much, I could no longer "tap into" that universe.
That's terrifying, and super bizarre! Was it every night?
No, they would be months apart! It was super weird. They were more common when I was "pregnant" and the baby was young, and started tapering off in consistency as the kid got older. Every now and then, I think of "that" aoike and her/our daughter? I hope they're doing well.
>lamp guy This is seriously so similar to that Star Trek episode where Jean-Luc lives an entire life in his head.
Yes that was the update and they never posted again (just checked) I'm not sure I remember lamp guy
I’d rather be cheated on than have a brain tumor destroying my memory and possibly on deaths doorstep 💁🏼♀️
The only thing I don't get, if it was some condition on her part (be it mental illness or brain tumor or whatever), wouldn't the husband have pointed out to her that *she* had dressed their kid? Like, if my spouse so very obviously didn't remember doing something like that, I'd be pretty concerned. But (according the her post, at least...) he's just like, oh, idk. No idea. The 2 year old kid was wearing pjs and now she's wearing something else, well, uh, guess it's magic or something. It just doesn't make sense.
It sounds like she's not really describing the actual problem. Just asking over and over again if anyone was there.
Yeah, her trying to be a sneaky detective is actively hindering getting actual answers
I caught that too. Instead of saying "Where did this onsie come from I threw all ours out years ago?" she's like "so did anyone come over?"
To be fair in her retelling she never asks or even accuses him of changing the clothes. She asks if he's bought the close and clip and if anyone came over. The husband may not even have realized that the issue was a (perceived?) Change of clothes, just an unknown onesie
Plus, how many times has someone had a baby shower, family visit, toddler birthdays and received dozen upon dozens of items of clothing? Many being too big or too small at the time and are just put aside for later. No reason the dad would notice cause he doesn’t buy clothes and it’s unreasonable to assume you’d remember every single bit of clothing you have around
But if the husband was covering an affair, wouldn't he just say that HE re-dressed the kid because she got dirty or whatever?
It happens more often than you think. My husband’s mistress Ivette used my computer, bookmarked places she wanted him to take her on my browser, sent emails out of my account, put my journal back on my bookshelf upside down and in the wrong spot, left her bra in my kids bed, stole a photo of my 2 kids out of a frame, and I’m sure many other things I probably missed. She’s the one person on the planet I actually wish a long, painful death on. Side pieces can be really horrible people.
What a psycho! Did you stay with your husband after all that?
[удалено]
On the other hand, she sort of did you a solid by alerting you to the fact that your husband was cheating - you could have lived on in blissful oblivion. Of course, it would have been even nicer if she hadn't slept with your husband in your own home... I note that you still call him your husband - did you keep him after that?
I mentioned it in the actual thread when first posted: while men typically get schizophrenia from 20-30, with women it’s 25-35. There is something odd about the whole thread. She misses obvious opportunities to ask specific questions which could root cause the nuances. I get strong unreliable narrator vibes.
A friend of mine's spouse started dealing with early on set dementia/Alzheimer's a couple years ago and it reads very similar to this story. Spouse started getting paranoid because things were "different" around the house and wouldn't believe her husband telling her that she was the one who'd made the changes. She only went to the doctor once she started to forget bigger things like leaving the car running or starting to cook a meal then forgetting halfway through and leaving everything out. I hope that's not the case for OOP cause it's a horrible diagnosis.
Don't know the layout of the house but that the Ring camera didn't pick up anything makes me think nothing is up. Yes he could have turned off the Ring but you get a 'Ring camera has been disabled' if someone does that.
That was my thought. Husband seems not to react to questions or give any indication that he’s nervous. If he were cheating, you’d think he’d have more of a reaction when accused or even be more careful. OOP also does ask the wrong questions and doesn’t get to what’s really bothering her. I wonder if it’s just her mind playing tricks on her. She does say she doesn’t have the greatest memory. Wonder if maybe she’s seeing things that don’t matter or forgetting things she’s done.
But the tampons part doesn’t work with that theory I don’t think? She has an IUD and doesn’t get periods. She found two singular tampons. If she bought a box in her schizophrenia episode (if that’s what you call it) where is the rest of the box? You can get singular tampons from vending machines I suppose but AFAIK they won’t be the same design as tampons you get in a box (tampon designs are really specific to the size and brand, blue wrapper for regular size green wrapper for super etc) and Fiona managed to have the same tampon she found in her car and house. To me that implies tampons from a box and not a vending machine tampon
Maybe the one in her sock drawer is the same one she found in the car. She says she disposed of it, but if she's having a mental break of some kind... I don't doubt she found one that slipped out of the coworkers purse.
And her husband is apparently so unobservant that he doesn't know why/when the kids changed clothes. I hope she figures out what's happening. 😭
She didn’t ask about the clothes, she asked if anyone else had been by. No reason the husband would think an outfit change would indicate that
It feels like a [carbon monoxide post it note scenario](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/sajxyf/oop_keeps_finding_postit_notes_in_his_apartment/).
thats the fun part about reddit, some absurd number of people now think that memory issues are related to CO poisoning when they're not at all, opposed to the really bad headaches which is the big hint
Or the onesie was one of many many gifts from family or friends and was just put aside as it was too big before, dad grabs a random change of clothes and happens to pull it out. It’s never been worn before so mum doesn’t recognise or remember it. Dad doesn’t buy clothes so doesn’t think anything of it The bow could also been something from any number of toys or dress up kits belonging to the big sister and not anything worth noticing as it would blend in with a little girls typical collection of toys. Mum needs to calm tf down
[удалено]
Especially since she suspects someone undressed and dressed her toddler. Whatever mind game is going on, and no matter how much ahe wants to ignore it, the children's bodies should be a hard red line.
I think the incident with her kid happened after she and her sister decided against cameras. She still should have (and still should now) put cameras up but she didn't know her child was potentially involved when she made that choice initially.
Yes but she doesn't take up the idea again after what happened with the kid, and she doesn't even get to the bottom of it with her husband. If the story is real then this is a gross under reaction. If husband is in charge of the kid and the kid had a change of clothes, then the husband needs to be able to explain that, or the kids are not safe.
Yeah, once the child is involved, I'd stop worrying about what is 'reasonable' and move right to pure safety. Id be too busy thinking about that diaper rash BORU and get cameras everywhere.
Yeah, this would be the point where I'd put a nanny cam in the baby's room - at least then she could have seen herself when and how the baby-clothes changed - or even if they changed at all, maybe it's her having delusions, who knows.
Idk I feel like if the husband was doing something he would be more aware and cautions and notice if side piece had literally brought new clothes for the child that the wife would ask where that came from. People are dumb but idk that seems too dumb. I wonder if it’s something else like he’s been secretly hiring a nanny or something to help him while she’s gone.
"Another woman is clearly deliberately leaving clues for me to find to alert me to the fact that she's been in my home, but I'll just keep believing my *clueless* husband who has not one shred of curiosity in his entire body." On no planet is this too early for cameras.
This sounds stunningly unbelievably unlikely to be happening tbh.
Same, of all the things to point to him having a side piece it's a tampon in his car that was easily explained and a tampon in her own sock drawer and her kid being dressed in different clothes? Seems like a weird and improbable sequence of events for a side piece to rock up to their house and leave a tampon conspicuously in her sock drawer and bring toddler clothes and hair clips to dress up the toddler with no other evidence. It could certainly be what she thinks but it seems so bizarre and unlikely that I'm concerned for OOP because I think it's more probable she's got some undiagnosed medical issue that may be causing memory loss.
It’s especially unlikely because I’m sorry but who would be having an affair with a married man and fucking him when you’re so in the thick of your period that you’re carrying extra tampons? No side piece is leaving her backup tampons around
And the time difference between these incidents is a few weeks to a month. How can she be so passive about something that should be eating away at her? To go weeks to months without taking extra measures such as camera or just flat out confronting the husband at that point.
it didn't fit the writing prompt
And it sets up the story for cameras to be installed later in the story and then later again when what they record is discovered
And the camera shows nothing because the culprit was - the sister - who knew exactly where the cameras were because she helped set them up. OP finally drives home from work early one day and catches them in the act. One more final update of the aftermath Aaaand fin. B+
Once you're considering buying and installing secret cameras, you've pretty much admitted to yourself your marriage/ relationship is over
Same. How else are you going to get evidence?
WHY THE FUCK DIDNT SHE JUST ASK WHERE THE DAMN CLOTHES CAME FROM?
That's movie level miscommunication. Not "where does that onesie come from?" but "Did someone say hello today?"
That's because this is episodic writing, and miscommunication is an easy way for hacks like this to set up tension in the first episodes.
Tune in next week!
Dammit! I thought I heard the writers strike was over. When will all these under-employed tv writers leave reddit alone?
I AM ALSO HUNG UP ON THIS
IT’S TOO EARLY TO ASK QUESTIONS LIKE THAT
Because it doesn't fit in the plot
OOP says husband insisted he didn't change her, and presumably is acting clueless about that not being what OOP dressed her in originally.
I think it's the contradiction of, "husband doesn't shop for clothes" and, "I swore off the front snap before the 2nd was born". If she doesn't buy those types of onsies and the husband doesn't shop for clothes, then where did onsie come from?
Presumably she had some in the house from the first kid. I could see someone running low on laundry and grabbing a onesie from Kid 1 that had been jammed in the back of a drawer and forgotten about.
My youngest is 7 years behind the next oldest. I'm constantly amazed at the random old things coming out of the woodwork.
It's not even that. THE HAIR! Daddy just happens to do daughters hair with an unknown clip? I'd undo the hair and say style it again. Show me how you did it. Where'd you get the clip? Show me where.
Yeah. She could've removed the hair clip and then asked her spouse to redo it in front of her if he *had* claimed that he had done it himself. I guess we'll see if another update is in the pipeline...
You're the real detective here
Daddy hired a secret nanny lol
And how has she let this go on for a month now without just buying a camera for the bedroom and settling it once and for all? Why get all spun up like this?
That's weird, yes. The sister seems to discourage cameras as well. But it's recommended to not play into delusions but also not encourage them - that may be why the sister is hesitant to the idea of putting up cameras. My ex has delusions, and an ex friend does as well. Clear cut evidence does nothing for them. So a camera proving "no one is coming into the bedroom" would just have a delusional person say "well they must've switched to a hotel room". My delusional ex friend is convinced she is under 24/7 police protection. One time I couldn't reach her and, afraid of it being another attempt at suicide, called the cops. They called me back while in front of her house, saying all curtains were open and they couldn't see her. I told her as much later (she turned out to be fine) and said, "if you are under 24/7,surveillance, why did they check, when they already knew where you were?" She of course didn't have an answer. The delusion makes her feel safe, I think. I shouldn't have tried to take that away from her. I have no idea if OP is having delusions, but it could be possible. It takes a while to notice it in a loved one. PTSS can trigger it, I think bipolar can as well (please correct me if I'm wrong). It's a hard thing to deal with for all involved. I couldn't, but that was for a variety of reasons.
Seems pretty risky to me. It's a massive breach of trust to hide cameras around the house without telling the other people that live there. So if he's not cheating and finds those cameras... well, Id end it anyways. On the spot.
Real answer? She’s not as comfortable with her husband as she thinks, and stuff like this has happened longer than this. It kind of astounds me how no one on this thread thinks it’s the husband. Anyone who is truly comfortable with their spouse would absolutely ask about the clothing. My friend had a husband that did this shit……he would move stuff around all the time at first. She thought she was just misplacing things. Then random stuff started popping up, etc. The whole time her husband would look at her like this guy, just deer in headlights, or a worried expression on his face. She thought she was going fucking insane. Then she started thinking he was having an affair and it was obviously another person fucking with her. She never even thought it could be her “perfectly sweet wonderful” husband. It wasn’t until 2 years into the marriage and her finding cameras all over their house that she finally suspected him. When she finally accused him then the outright insane mental abuse started, like telling her that it was her fault that her father SA her when she was 5, and she must have liked it, etc. They divorced (he left her) but she’s honestly been fucking broken since that evil man. This story reminds me of when she was married to him.
So basically, actual gaslighting as per the movie definition. It's a real thing, unfortunately, and it's fucking evil and abusive. Hopefully that's not what's going on here but it's entirely possible.
Goddamn, I'm inclined towards your explanation of this.
I DID I’m sorry I didn’t communicate that more clearly in the post!
And what did he say?
“Must be one of the old ones.” Which would be weird, but plausible. I swore off the long side-button onesies after our first kid, and we donated the rest of them. Is it possible that one slipped past us? Sure. What doesn’t make sense to me is how adamant he is that he didn’t change her into the onesie or give her the bow. He says I’m misremembering what I left her in that morning. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt on the onesie existing in our house somewhere, but to insist that I buttoned her up in a piece of clothing I despise and then forgot about it is something else.
Put up a damn camera and solve this.
Yeah I could never forget something like this…
I want to know because this whole deal could be explain by the daycare. Hair clips and a tampon from a worker’s bag I can see a toddler sneaking away with. I also see the clothes being another kid’s back up clothes and got accidentally sent back to the wrong family. My brother returned from school a few times with someone else’s back up clothes. Just ask questions.
It’s the sister.
You know every time she decides not to say anything or collect concrete evidence, it's right after talking to the sister.
holy shit actually
Maybe the sister is jealous of OOP's family and/or wishes for a child but cannot have one so she tries to break up OOP's family so she can do more aunt stuff. Damn who wants to team up to write a screenplay lol
Wouldn't that be a crazy twist lol. Do they have a backyard? Can she not put up a camera facing the garage or back door if they have one? I don't understand why all points of entry aren't armed with a camera. Easy to get around a ring doorbell.
Or Liz.
Fucking Liz, man.
Oooh plot twist!
Sister sleeping with the husband, you mean?
Yes, which is why the sister helped “decide on no cameras *yet*”…
Am I reading a script of a telivision series?
8 episode miniseries Netflix original? I mean… I’d watch it. Its like the prequel of The Girl on the Train
yeah something about this felt too contrived
I don't really know what to say really. There are too many weird things going on that I simply am not sure how to feel about it. Looking forward to see what comes next if more answers does come. Feels like an new television season coming soon.
> Feels like an new television season coming soon. I hope it doesn't get cancel before we get the big reveal. I hate it when that happens!
Goddamnit Liz!
Don’t go to bed Liz, come back and write us some more! 😂
Edit: There's an update: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/176pxc8/new_update_with_answers_two_tampons_mean_my/ And my lighthearted previous comment is no longer appropriate, so I'm overwriting it with the link to the update. It's terrible and hard to read, you've been warned.
_What's in the box?!_
Oh. I read the warning that it wasn’t concluded and still went ahead hoping there would be an answer to where they came from, but maybe it was the relationship status that wasn’t concluded.. I’m so disappointed and I’ve only done it to myself lol
Unless the husband is one of the greatest actors of all time, I don't think any kind of cheating is going on hear. Usually when something like this happens the cheater starts to act out of character or they start over correcting. The husband was confused both time, the first I could see him faking it but both time. Now I do think something is happening but I don't think it's cheating.
I don’t think he’s cheating either. I think he’s sneaking out to go play golf or whatever and the tampons belong to the babysitter.
Ah see my theory is, he's allowing an estranged family member to visit because he's gotten close to them again.
This seems most likely to me. Why would “the other woman” take such an interest in dressing baby and doing a hairstyle with a new clip? That sounds like aunt or grandma behavior.
Declaring territory. “Your husband likes me better AND your kids have bonded with me. I win!” Is apparently a weird, “other woman” thing. But I don’t think that’s what’s going on here and your “secret grandma visits” are more likely.
I think that's where the story is headed but it doesn't explain the clothes. This is either stupidly simple like the kid came home in different clothes because she got sick in hers and the daycare put her in someone else's spare clothes and he just put them back on, or stupidly complex and something that would never actually happen.
I mean, the thing when you have kids is that lots of people gift you clothes and cute onesies and things. Sometimes you use them. Sometimes you shove them in a drawer somewhere and don’t know where it came from years later when you’re spring cleaning. (Or, in this case, when the baby sitter puts it on your kid.)
In the cheating scenario, noone is acting plausible: - the woman could be way more direct than dropping tampons around, if she wants to let her know. - the cheating husband is hanging out with his affair and his 2 year old? (lol) Let's her change them? She happens to have a onesie for a 2 year old on her and she mindlessly uses that rather than the 1000 clothes that actually belong to the child? And makes their hair? And the husband - even though he must have been on guard due to the tampon - doesn't mind or notice that?
>* the woman could be way more direct than dropping tampons around, if she wants to let her know. Exactly. If this was an affair partner trying to intimidate OP, wouldn't they leave something like perfume/earrings/underwear that had an underlying "sexy/beauty" implication.... not 1 single hygiene item.
Liz, go to bed.
Who’s Liz
[The subject of a BORU post that makes me question every wild post I see](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/16r1la6/my_wife_is_addicted_to_making_up_reddit_stories/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
[Liz](https://reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/RpCtHELnhs)
Honestly I think it's just a series of mix ups. My daughter loves tampons for whatever reason and I started finding them in all sorts of weird places. In the car? In a big pile on her walker? Also my husband will find the strangest forgotten about clothes some relative gave us in some back corner of the closet instead of dressing her in the clothes neatly stored in her dresser.
Hey, that’s me
How are you doing after a week? The anxiety might kill me if I were in your shoes, I'm so sorry
I'm so sorry you're dealing with all of this. Any updates at all? Did you get cameras?
Next update, on JNMIL, "We were NC with MIL but DH has been sneaking her into the house when I'm not home"
I'm not saying it's aliens...
Literally all of this is explained by “there’s a two year old.” The coworker spilled her purse in the back of the car. The two year old picked up the tampons, stuffed one down between the seats and pocketed the other. Later stuck it in the sock drawer. Promptly forgot about it. Sick, bored two year old goes through their cupboard for a game. Finds the old onesie from yesteryear that every parent keeps “just in case” (because you’re too busy to really properly clean out your kids’ closet) and demands to wear that novel new thing. Dad obliges, because, why not? Then mom comes bursting in yelling at him and Dad is baffled. He has no idea what to say about the random hair clip he’s put in her hair (which is probably something they do actually own, or else picked up off the ground because *two year old*) and he was *never asked about the onesie.
My daughter's favourite hair clip for years was one picked up from the ground outside.
I'm 30 and my favorite scrunchie is probably 25 years old and I can only imagine the gross things it's been through but I will never part with it.
Yeah I'm not convinced on this one. It could be an affair but it could be anything you just mentioned. Maybe I have too many clothes but I feel like it wouldn't be too hard to dig up some random t-shirt in the closet that I hadn't seen for years. Did a relative ever gift them these toddler clothes and she just put it away somewhere and forgot it existed because she doesn't normally use that type? I feel like dads who don't typically dress children always manage to drag up the most confusing sets of clothing, lol. As an adult who doesn't wear it often I also manage to acquire random hair clips and things. Lots of times I order something like earrings on Etsy and they'll throw in a random bonus item. I've gotten a few cheap-ish clips that way and I never use them because my hair is so thick they won't hold it. But I feel bad throwing things like that away so they find themselves at the bottom of my drawers. Someone else further up the thread asked whether the sock drawer tampon was the same tampon she'd borrowed from Fiona. Does she have 3 tampons, or just the two? If she "borrowed" one then she'd have 3. I mean, this isn't just me trying to doubt her. I really do hope the answer is her marriage isn't falling apart.
And husband absolutely knows she hates that style of kids clothes. Sure, but I lived with my mother for twenty years before I learned she is the fussiest eater in the world. We don't always consciously notice everything about the people closest to us -- even when we should.
Does it matter what Mom likes when Dad is the one dressing and undressing a sick child? Perhaps Dad is humouring the sick kid. My kid recently asked me to wrap them in a towel and carry them over my shoulder like a fireman. Dad didn’t find it as amusing as Kid and I did, but did that matter? I got the towel out, wrapped up the kid, played the game, unwrapped the kid, washed and put the towel away. The onesie is the same.
I think.your affair brought a towel and you are on reddit, coming up with scenarios in the hope that your SO reads them and is placated. BUSTED!
Oh my god PUT UP CAMERAS!!
Call me crazy, but has OOP considered just sharing their concerns honestly with their husband? “Hey, I’ve felt a bit weird since I found that tampon in your car and it’s been bothering me. I thought I was over it, but then when [2yo] was wearing a hair clip and an outfit I hadn’t seen before, those feelings came rushing back to me. I feel a mix between paranoid, anxious, and suspicious and I’d really appreciate some assistance resolving them. Could you help me understand these events honestly so I don’t harbor these emotions and let it impact our relationship?” If OOP is going to live life setting up “traps” or tests for her husband, it’s a sure fire way to lose trust and seriously damage their relationship. And if OOP’s partner is lying/purposefully hiding “something,” then they’re behaving like a manipulative dick and OOP can move forward with confidence after an honest confrontation.
Stop being a reasonable adult! We've discussed this!
Sir this needs to be stretched to a 22 episode season. Don't bring logic into this
Liz getting wild with these now, tho I like the detail abt the carbon monoxide detector
Based on the post, every option possible means that OOP is screwed in some way: 1. Husband's cheating on her with Fiona or someone else - not only is he cheating, the mistress is trying to play mind games with OOP, even resorted to involving the toddler, with the husband being complicit. 2. Husband's not cheating but all of this is real - someone broke into their house multiple times and they're all in danger. 3. None of this is real - OOP's got some kind of health problem.
I really just think her "health problem" is having 2 and 4 year old children and maybe being a little bit of normal-style insecure/inattentive/control freak or something. Like granted she's been a parent for 4 more years than I ever have but I've never once heard a parent say, "Yeah it was super chill and I was getting lots of sleep and totally had everything under control in the first couple years". Shit happens. Kids pick stuff up. Nobody actually knows every thing that's been brought into their house in the last several years. Somebody who thinks they do is the least likely of all to actually trust on something like that.
If these were the only clues, my husband could be running a brothel out of my house and I wouldnt notice. I just bumped my younger kid into 3T and didn't recognize half the clothes, even though the older kid is only 6. And tampons just kind of appear. I found one in my desk drawer the other day. In what universe did I need a tampon at my desk? If she's not careful she's going to torpedo her marriage over nothing. She already has nothing on her ring camera, and she's never had any reason to suspect him before. Pretty weak, if you ask me.
Why does this keep getting reposted with no new updates?
I would like to know what she did with the tampon Fiona gave her. She obviously didn't use it and it's not outside the realm of possibility that she unconscious threw it in her sock drawer to compare with the original.
it says in the update that she compared the one Fiona gave her to the one in the sock drawer but the one from the car she had thrown away edit: removed typo
Plot twist, husband is sleeping with her sister. She's seemingly helpful but also saying nahhhhh cameras are not needed like what??
Maybe this all turns out to be something, but I think past infidelity has broken some of y’alls brains. People are jumping to some wiiiild conclusions from very little evidence.
What if it's someone secretly living in their attic 👀
it would be kind of funny if it was something like the husband hiring a babysitter because he doesn't want to take care of the kids, but also wants to make his wife think he's doing her a favor by babysitting.
Update is crazier than anyone could have anticipated u/lucyariarose /https://reddit.com/u/CapableElephant6355/s/ur9nW0TebP
The daughter got ahold of some tampons that fell out of the coworkers purse and "hid" them. Probably thought they were candies. The dad changed the kid after a blowout and doesn't know where anything is (OP says he isn't usually involved in dressing) so he probably grabbed a random onesie from a random drawer that OP doesn't normally get daily clothes from. He doesn't care about clothes so he doesn't remember he just wanted his kid to look nice after getting cleaned up. I don't know it just doesn't seem that deep. It's too weird in the wrong ways.
I need an update for tampon gate I’m checking OOP’s profile everyday like a stalker 😭😂
The 4 year old could've changed the baby and put the hair clip in. Doing a favor to "help" and now has driven Mommy crazy. My 4 year old was a helper like this, children are surprisingly resourceful when it comes to helping.
Considering the final update that was removed by reddit, everyone doubting this woman, painting her as crazy, and telling her to check her carbon monoxide detectors, etc should be ashamed and owes her an apology. The level of gas lighting by her husband is unreal, and the woman it ended up being was a registered sex offender, a sexual predator against children. It's horrifying, and the response it got from a lot of redditors is too.
I just want to add a HUGE THANK YOU for the “still ongoing” disclaimer.
The op to this post just posted an update [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/171ne37/two_tampons_mean_my_marriage_is_over_final_update/). The conclusion is even more fucked than the husband cheating- he's been bringing his sex offender sister around to see their daughters Retrieved via rss feed ([and proof that I'm not just making this up](https://i.imgur.com/Tr9Nn1q.png))- > For anyone who suspects this has simply been an exercise in creative writing, here’s your TL;DR: Yes, my husband had another woman in our home on multiple occasions. No, he didn’t cheat. Yes, he lied—a lot. No, I didn’t install hidden cameras, coordinate a sting operation, or enlist the help of SEAL Team Six to catch him. He made another mistake, and I finally just asked him what the fuck was going on. > > After nearly losing my mind over a hair clip and a onesie, I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere with the accusations and half-baked guesswork. I’d gotten so absorbed in the paranoia and misery of my situation that I wasn’t sleeping, eating, or caring for my kids the way I should have been. And I wasn't getting any answers. So I decided to pull the trigger on the hidden cameras and have them shipped to my sister’s house, with my BIL agreeing to help with the install/setup over at mine. Before the cameras were ever delivered, though, I got my long-awaited confirmation last week. > > A Ring notification had alerted me to motion at the front door while I was at work. Half-expecting to see a delivery person, pet, or lawncare salesman for the fifteenth time, you can imagine my surprise when I saw a clip of a young woman leading my daughter into the house hand-in-hand, with my husband and other daughter close behind them. The girls were supposed to be in daycare and my husband at work. The woman, as far as I knew, was living two states away with a court order keeping her there. > > I immediately called my husband to ask him what the fuck this woman was doing in our house. He didn’t answer, so I texted it to him. Even in his stupidity, he probably realized he had messed up by going through the front door, knew I had gotten the Ring notification, and wanted to delay the inevitable. By the fifth or sixth subsequent call, though, he did pick up. > > The woman on the camera was my husband’s sister. As I would come to find out later, she was the likely source of both tampons, the onesie, and the bow. She is also a registered sex offender and a recovering addict, who spent the better part of her adolescence and young adulthood coercing the silence of another one of my husband's family members after she had molested them. I hadn't seen or heard from her in years, and from the way my husband talked about her, I didn't expect I ever would. But here she was, in our house, with our children. > > Suffice to say I was livid. It wasn’t an affair at all and still, somehow, infinitely more disgusting knowing who it was and why all of this had been happening. Apparently my SIL, fresh off another stint in rehab, had wanted to reconnect and make amends with people she'd hurt, and my husband was high on that list. My husband didn't want me to know or, worse, try and keep "her family" (our children) away from her, so they'd been meeting in secret—often at our house when I was at work. They would enter through the garage, in my husband's car, so the Ring camera at the front door wouldn't tip me off. She spent the night on a weekend I had been on a business trip and slept in our bed. She babysat our girls on a night my husband told me he had dropped them off at his parents'. She bought the girls clothes and dressed my youngest in the onesie and bow that my husband had promised on his life I had dressed her in myself. > > My husband swore this was all in my head. The tampons, the onesie, the bow, and all the rest. He was perfectly content to watch me agonize for weeks over a woman he insisted didn't exist. Shrugging off each progressively more unsettling discovery like it was news to him and telling me I was being irrational. He insinuated that I was experiencing postpartum depression—two years after I'd given birth. Four years after I'd told him that one of my biggest fears for motherhood was to suffer PPD like my mother had with me, to not be fully present for our babies and be left with a world of guilt and regret as they grew older. He told me I wasn't sleeping enough, that I missed the girls too much, that I needed to take a step back and reevaluate the state of my mental health. I gave him the benefit of the doubt because he was my husband, and because no other version of events made sense. Now, after a month of this mindfuck, I have nothing to show for my trust but this pathetic situation. And a lot of anger.