What was supposed to be the happiest day of my life turned into one that I’ll never forget. I went from being the bride-to-be to the uninvited wedding guest who crashed the event because she wanted revenge. But karma arrived at the venue before I could.
He made me feel like the luckiest woman in the world.
When I met Ethan two years ago, I was convinced I had found my forever. He was charming, witty, and knew exactly what to say to make me feel special! Seven months ago, when he proposed, I felt like the happiest woman alive—but I didn’t know I’d never become his wife.
A man proposing | Source: Midjourney
Another thing I came to love about Ethan was how hands-on he was. We planned our wedding together, down to every last detail! From the elegant banquet hall venue with a garden; to the cascading white roses and other flowers.
We also went to cake tastings to find the perfect one and even chose the song we’d dance to as husband and wife! Every moment felt perfect, like a fairytale—until it all came crashing down a month before the wedding.
A happy couple | Source: Midjourney
It happened on an ordinary Wednesday. I had left work early to surprise Ethan with his favorite takeout. It was something small, just a gesture to show how much I appreciated him.
I let myself into his apartment, already picturing the delighted look on his face when he saw me standing there with a bag full of burgers and fries.
But the moment I stepped inside, I knew something was wrong.
A suspicious woman arrives with takeout | Source: Midjourney
A woman’s coat was draped over the back of a chair. At first, I thought maybe he had a guest—a relative or a coworker. But when I heard soft laughter coming from the bedroom, my stomach twisted into a knot.
I approached the door, every step heavier than the last. My hands trembled as I reached for the doorknob and slowly pushed it open.
There, tangled in the sheets, was Ethan. With my older sister, Lauren!
A couple in bed | Source: Pexels
Time stopped as my mind struggled to process what I was seeing. My sister—my own flesh and blood—was in bed with the man I was supposed to marry in a month!
Lauren gasped and scrambled to cover herself, but Ethan? He just sat up, completely unbothered.
“Wait,” I choked out. “What the hell is this?”
My so-called groom sighed, running a hand through his hair like I was the one being unreasonable. “You weren’t supposed to find out like this.”
An unapologetic man | Source: Midjourney
“Find out what?!” I asked, my voice shaking. “That you’re a cheating liar?! That my own sister betrayed me?!”
Lauren’s face was pale, but she didn’t say a word. She just clutched the sheets to her chest, avoiding my gaze.
Ethan, however, dared to look me in the eye and say, “I love her.”
The words knocked the air out of my lungs. I wanted him to deny it, to say it was a mistake, but instead, he looked relieved—like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. I couldn’t believe this was the same sweet man I had wanted to walk down the aisle with after he became my husband!
A shocked woman | Source: Midjourney
It was like he was two different people—the man I had gotten to know and this guy in bed with my sister.
“You love her?!” My voice cracked. “Then why the hell did you propose to me?!”
He exhaled like he was explaining something painfully obvious. “I thought I loved you. But things changed. Lauren and I… we’ve been seeing each other for a while.”
For a while…
My stomach turned. This wasn’t just a one-time thing. They had been sneaking around behind my back for who knows how long!
An angry and hurt woman | Source: Midjourney
I turned to Lauren. “How could you do this to me?!”
She finally spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “I didn’t mean for it to happen, sis.”
I let out a hollow laugh. “Didn’t mean for it to happen?! You didn’t trip and fall into his bed, Lauren!”
Ethan stood up, wrapping an arm around her. “Look, I get that you’re hurt, but we didn’t want to keep lying to you.”
My hands clenched into fists. “Oh, you didn’t want to keep lying? That’s rich!”
I stormed out, shaking with rage and heartbreak. I thought that was the worst of it. I was wrong.
A heartbroken woman leaving | Source: Midjourney
A few days later, my parents called me over to talk. I had been bawling my eyes out since I made the discovery. My friends and bridesmaids came to comfort me, but I hadn’t heard from my parents until then.
I foolishly believed they would be on my side for a change. Instead, I walked into an ambush.
“We understand you’re upset,” my mom said, her tone patronizing.
“But Ethan and Lauren are in love,” my dad added. “You wouldn’t want to stand in the way of true love, would you?”
A man talking | Source: Midjourney
I stared at them in disbelief. “True love? Are you serious?!”
Mom sighed. “Sweetheart, you’ve always been independent. You’ll move on. But Lauren… she needs stability. And Ethan makes her happy.”
I felt like I was drowning. “So, what? Are you just replacing me with her?! Pretending like none of this even happened?!”
“We’re not taking sides,” my dad said, though his tone made it clear they already had.
Then, the final blow.
“They’re still having the wedding,” my mom said. “And, well, Lauren will be the bride.”
A woman talking | Source: Midjourney
I blinked. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s already paid for,” she said as if that made any of this acceptable. “It would be a shame to let all those plans go to waste.”
I stood up so fast the chair screeched against the floor. “Unbelievable.”
“We’d like you to be happy for them,” Dad said.
I laughed bitterly. “You actually expect me to celebrate this?!”
An upset woman laughing | Source: Midjourney
Lauren had taken my fiancé, and my parents had taken her side—like they always did. They had always treated her better, and now they wanted me to smile as they supported her relationship with my fiancé?!
I walked out of that house and didn’t look back.
An upset woman leaving | Source: Midjourney
When the wedding came, I obviously wasn’t invited. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be there. I decided not to cause a scene. I wasn’t going to scream or throw cake. I just wanted to sneak in and wait until the officiant asked for objections.
Then, I’d get up and tell their guests and our mutual friends that the man Lauren was marrying had been my fiancé first! I planned to embarrass them and make their “special day” the worst one ever!
But when I arrived at the banquet hall, things were… off.
A woman arrives at a wedding | Source: Midjourney
There was no music. No laughter. Just silence, thick with tension. Guests stood frozen in place, and at the front of the room, uniformed officers swarmed.
“What’s going on?” I asked the nearest cop.
Before he could answer, I spotted my sister—still in her wedding dress, tears streaming down her face. My parents sat at a table, looking utterly shell-shocked.
But Ethan was nowhere to be seen.
A bride crying | Source: Midjourney
The cop turned to me. “Are you a guest?”
I hesitated before nodding. “Sort of. I was supposed to be the bride today.”
He sighed. “We came here to arrest the groom, but he wasn’t here. He was caught at the city bus station trying to leave town.”
I blinked. “What?!”
The officer gestured toward a group of detectives speaking to guests. “Turns out, he’s been running a long con. He’s a scam artist. He never planned on marrying anyone.”
I felt my heart race. “What did he do?”
A shocked woman talking to a cop | Source: Midjourney
The cop’s expression darkened. “He’s done this before—to three other women in the city. He took off with all the wedding gifts, the deposits, decorations, and whatever money he could get his hands on. He’s currently on the run.”
“He even lied about having family coming from Europe. He has no family. No guests. Nothing,” the policeman informed me.
Shock rippled through me. My parents were still frozen in disbelief. Lauren—the woman who had betrayed me—was now abandoned at the altar, sobbing while her last-minute bridesmaids comforted her.
A bride being comforted | Source: Midjourney
And for the first time in weeks, I smiled as I stood there, taking in the chaos before me.
Justice had been served!
As the guests started leaving, one of the officers approached me. “Hi, I saw you arrive. I hear Officer James say you dodged a bullet.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Yeah. Guess I did.”
He gave me a small smile. “Would you like to grab a coffee sometime? You know, with someone who isn’t a criminal?”
I glanced at his name tag—Officer Matt.
A policeman | Source: Midjourney
For the first time in a while, I felt something other than anger and betrayal. Maybe a fresh start wasn’t such a bad idea.
That was a year ago.
And tomorrow? I’m marrying him!
Life has a funny way of working out.
A happy woman | Source: Midjourney
Sadly, Ethan’s first bride wasn’t the only woman ditched on her wedding day. the bride’s groom fails to arrive on time and instead, she discovers he’s been cheating. The heartbroken woman stands up tall and makes the most of the day.
This work is inspired by real events and people, but it has been fictionalized for creative purposes. Names, characters, and details have been changed to protect privacy and enhance the narrative. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
The author and publisher make no claims to the accuracy of events or the portrayal of characters and are not liable for any misinterpretation. This story is provided “as is,” and any opinions expressed are those of the characters and do not reflect the views of the author or publisher.
Man’s Wife Cheats with Best Friend, Triggering Revenge That Ends in Self-Destruction
Shithead and Sarah have been like famiIy to my wife and I for several years, practically ever since we moved in across the street from them. The four of us were extremely tight. Our kids are the same age as theirs and are all good friends. We were one big family unit. We did dinner together a few times a week. We went on vacations together.
I truly saw Shithead as a brother, and my wife and Sarah were very close too.
Five months ago, I was completely blindsided by the discovery of an affair between my wife and Shithead. My wife had left her emaiI open on our computer, and I saw an email from her to her longtime therapist saying that Shithead would be joining her at an upcoming session “again.”
Uh, WTF? My mind started racing – why in the world would Shithead be going to her therapy sessions without my knowledge? I did a search and found some other emails to and from the therapist proving that Shithead had been going to sessions together with her for about six weeks.
I checked our mobile phone account and discovered that, since late summer, they had been exchanging hundreds of texts every day, peaking at nearIy 500/day by the holidays. Speaking of the holidays, my wife and I hosted both of our families (parents, siblings, etc) for both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, and Shithead and Sarah joined us either for dinner or after dinner on both holidays.
Text records showed that the entire time that they were at our house celebrating with our families, my wife and Shithead were texting each other across the room. They were doing that pretty much every time the four of us hung out, for months. And, you know, all day every day just in generaI. But what bothers me the most is that they were doing it with Sarah and I right there.
I confronted my wife with the evidence and she admitted that yes, she and Shithead had fallen in love. “It just happened! I don’t know how! But I love him and I just don’t feeI anything for you anymore, I’m sorry!” They had gone on a school district trip together, something had happened in her hotel room, and things had moved quickly from there. She explained, as I lay face-down on the couch, unable to look at her, that they had already made plans to move out and divorce me and Sarah, and while they didn’t plan to move in together immediately because of the kids, they’d probably do so eventually.
The meetings with the therapist were supposedly mostly for the purpose of finding a way to break this to me and Sarah as gently as possible, because they were so very concerned for our well-being. (Sarah and I are fairly certain that they weren’t pIanning on telling us about the affair at all, and were simply going to “discover” their feelings for one another several months down the line, after they’d come up with some other reason to divorce the two of us.)
My wife moved out two months ago. I was, and still am, utterly destroyed. I cry every day. I cried writing the first few paragraphs of this story just now. I worry non-stop about the impact on our kids. But I am also not exactly a shrinking vioIet when I feel that I’ve been wronged. And in this case I was, objectively, very very wronged.
So, a couple of years ago, Shithead ran for a Board of Education seat as a pretty extreme underdog. I helped him with his campaign materials and debate prep, and my wife, a well-known school district employee (this becomes important later), got the word out as best she couId. Much to our surprise, he actually won in a squeaker, by just a few dozen votes.
Being on the Board became the center of Shithead’s world. He joined every committee that he could. This turned into the foundation of his affair with my wife, as they were constantly going to school events and meetings together on evenings and weekends.
Once I discovered the affair, my thoughts turned pretty quickly to revenge, and it occurred to me that an extramarital affair between a member of the Board of Education and an employee of the school district was at least bad poIitics and possibly vioIated district policy. Making things far worse for them was that my wife was in the running for an open administrative position, and everyone knew that she was more or less guaranteed the job and the major pay raise that came with it. She had just finished her master’s degree in school administration, at the urging of her principal and the superintendent, so that she could be promoted to this specific position.
I had plenty of evidence of the affair – texts from both of them admitting to it, text records showing that they were texting hundreds of times a day, emails to and from the therapist, etc. I considered simply emailing all of the evidence to the Board and the superintendent, but felt like I, as the grieving, betrayed spouse, might not be seen as a credible source.
So instead, I invented a fictitious “furious friend” who was planning on showing up to the next Board meeting and publicly shaming the two of them for their affair. I told my wife that I’d tried to taIk this person down but couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t show up and humiliate them publicly. As I expected, this led Shithead to conclude that the only option was for him to preemptively admit the affair to the Board. The superintendent subsequently recommended that Shithead resign, which he did. Sarah said that he was utterly humiliated and crushed, and barely got out of bed for a few days afterward.
Once word of the affair and Shithead’s resignation started getting around, the superintendent (a longtime friend of both my wife and Shithead) contacted my wife and tearfully informed her that it was no Ionger politically appropriate for her to be promoted to an administrative position within the district.
The position that had been lined up for her was later filled by an outside candidate. This sent waves of confusion and rumor throughout the district, as it was pretty well-known that my wife was getting the job. The day after she was informed that she wasn’t getting the promotion, my wife and I, despite our crumbling marriage, took our son out to breakfast together on his birthday, and a parent stopped by our table to congratulate her on her new roIe. She said thanks, then excused herself to go cry in the bathroom for a while.
I let the dust settle for a couple of weeks, and then, right before my wife moved out, let them in on my little secret – there was never a “furious friend” threatening to expose them in the first place. Just me.
Word of all of this has gotten around our fairly small town, which Shithead grew up in and my wife has worked in for nearly 20 years. My wife refuses to taIk to me about how things are at work now, but I’ve heard from some people I know in the district that her formerly spotless reputation has taken a major hit.
Shithead, formerly a gregarious social presence in our neighborhood and at events and pubs in town, has completely gone underground and barely emerges to mow his lawn. He’s moving out soon, to a shitty little townhouse which is all he can afford due to all the child support he’s going to have to pay his wife.
My wife and Shithead claim that they plan on trying to make things work together, despite all the public humiliation. I wish them lots of Iuck with that. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun to show their faces together in town.
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