My husband believed my brother when he said I was unfaithful, but four years later he showed up at my door crying.

My husband believed my brother when he said I was unfaithful, but four years later he showed up at my door crying because he’d finally learned the truth. A couple of years ago, I went through the worst period of my life. My ex-husband, Andrew, 33, left me, and my family cut me off. It’s all my brother’s fault; he somehow convinced my husband that I was cheating on him.
Andrew believed my brother and told me he was going to divorce me. If anyone has doubts like my ex-husband did, no, I never cheated in my life, much less during my marriage. And I don’t know why my brother wanted to destroy my life like that, but he did. Andrew and my brother were best friends. I started dating Andrew when we were in school. We got married when I was 22.

I had a pretty good married life with him until my brother ended it all. Andrew didn’t even give me a chance to defend myself. My brother made sure to thoroughly convince Andrew that I was a lying, unfaithful witch. It’s been four years since the divorce. A few days ago, Andrew showed up at my door and told me he’d finally found out the truth.
He literally burst into tears and said through his eyes that my brother had confessed to setting me up and making it look like I was cheating on Andrew. Andrew was crying so hard and literally got down on his knees to beg for my forgiveness. He said he made a huge mistake believing my brother, that his life was miserable, and that he needed me.
He also said he never dated anyone again and never loved anyone else because he couldn’t get over his feelings for me. He wanted me to forgive him and maybe have a relationship with him. He said he’d also be okay with just being friends. Seeing him after so long felt so different. Yes, I finally felt validated and I was glad to know that the truth had come out, but my heart also broke when I remembered what I went through during that time.

I told Andrew that nothing that was happening now was important to me at that moment, because unlike him, I had already moved on with my life. Andrew left, but begged me to at least give him a chance to explain himself before I cut him out of my life for good. Exactly the chance he didn’t give me when he believed my brother without question.
Since then, my phone hasn’t stopped buzzing with messages. Andrew is pleading to meet with me and let him explain his side of the story, all from different numbers, because I’ve blocked him and don’t want anything to do with him. My family also contacted me after four years because they, too, knew the truth now and wanted me to forgive them.

They’re saying my brother has seriously messed things up and that his fiancée is going to leave him. She was the one who somehow discovered his secret and blew it out in front of everyone. My brother confessed to her for some reason. Maybe to get into the relationship without lies, because he thought it was funny, or because he’s an idiot—which, looking back, he is in all three cases.
My family wanted him to forgive them and Andrew so my brother could save his relationship with his fiancée and his friend. To be clear and leave no room for doubt, everyone who believed my brother’s lies now wants him to forgive them. My ex because she wants to get back together, and the rest of the family to protect my brother’s relationship with that blockhead.

I don’t know how to say this without sounding violent or spiteful, so I’ll try to use the gentlest words I can think of. There’s no way I’m going to save that filth from sinking into the lava of hell if it were up to me. Yes, I think that’s the gentlest thing I can think of right now.
Like I said, I’ve moved on with my life. New circle of friends, a new life without my family and ex, but what they’re trying to do is absurd. I’m glad they saw the truth. I don’t care about them at all right now. To try and explain why my brother did what he did, although it doesn’t justify it, I think my brother had been frustrated by the fact that his girlfriend had cheated on him.
So he decided to take out his anger on my marriage. He went through a phase where he thought all women cheat and are bad, so even though she was his sister, that didn’t matter if he could do some “good,” in quotes, by helping his friend. He’s always supported my relationship with Andrew, so it’s not like there was any bad blood involved.
I don’t know why he did it. I haven’t heard from my brother yet, and for that I can thank God. He’s the last person I want to hear from right now. I stopped considering him my brother a long time ago. As for my family, they had cast me out when I was most vulnerable. I was deeply depressed and had suicidal thoughts because everyone in my life was rejecting me and cutting me out of their lives.
It was my best friend, Laura, who stood by me. She lived in another state, but she flew over to me and helped me through the pain. After the divorce was finalized, she invited me to stay at her house for as long as it took until I could get back on my feet here, which turned into a permanent stay. I’ve been renting here for a while now, ever since Laura moved out with her current husband.
I think Andrew knew I was probably staying near Laura or thought she would know where I was. Laura recently got married and shared some pictures where I’m in them. I think Andrew came to the house hoping to get my contact information from Laura. This is Laura’s childhood home, so Andrew and I have flown here a few times and stayed with her.
Laura knows exactly how much I’ve suffered because of everyone. I came very close to ending it all. She was the one who dragged me out of bed and into the shower on days when I didn’t even want to open my eyes. I went to therapy and I’ve been doing much better. I have a good job now, and I have some friends too.
I don’t have a partner or anything, but I’ve been seeing people. Laura and her husband have become like family to me now, so I wanted to get this off my chest somewhere. I haven’t told Laura yet, and I don’t plan to for now. I’m hoping you internet strangers will at least lend me a look and maybe offer a few words.
I’m not confused about what to do. For me, all the people in my past who abandoned me are dead. I’ve been blocking out as much as I can, though some are more persistent than others, but remembering that painful past can definitely have a negative effect. Four years can be a long time or a short time, depending on how you look at it.
Therapy and friends have helped, but it’s all come back too quickly. Edit: I’m just popping in to address a few things you all keep asking me about. I don’t know all the details of what was discussed between Andrew and my brother, so I can’t say for sure how my brother convinced my husband that I was cheating on him.
Andrew just kept telling me he had proof and that he would use it against me in court if I made the divorce process more difficult. I even tried a lot to talk to him, but he just wouldn’t communicate with me without a lawyer present. Even when we met to discuss the divorce, I would often cry and beg him to believe I hadn’t cheated on him.
Maybe I was stupid for not pressing him to show me all the evidence, but in hindsight, I feel like convincing him I wasn’t unfaithful wouldn’t have been in my best interest. My guess is that he was shown some fake chats or something. The evidence never came out because I gave Andrew an easy divorce when I knew there was nothing I could do.
After the first few weeks, I was extremely devastated by his behavior. I couldn’t believe he would doubt my loyalty and integrity. He knew he had always been my first in everything, and I never expressed any need or desire to be with anyone else. There’s also the fact that he said some really hurtful things, and his constant dismissal of me was incredibly insulting. He did
n’t even give me a chance to explain myself. I was so offended and upset that I decided to just give him what he wanted. I’m not going to lie and say he was stoic and seemed very calm. He wasn’t calm or composed. He seemed to be physically hurting. Whenever he was around me and needed to talk to me, he avoided eye contact and usually only spoke to his lawyer and my lawyer.
He did everything he could to avoid even looking at me. After a few weeks, I thought enough was enough. We were both suffering, and there was no way we could save the marriage. So I decided to do what Andrew wanted. I see a lot of comments telling me I should have been vengeful and all that.
Look, I was mentally out of it because of everything that had been happening. I lost my husband and my family all at once. I had no one to turn to, and even some of my friends started distancing themselves from me. Thank God my best friend was there. Otherwise, I would have been homeless and probably dead from my depression and mental health crisis.
I don’t know what I could have done at that point either. It’s not like I gave my ex all my money or anything. I just decided to sign the papers and be done with it. Update one: I’ve been feeling really down and a little lonely these past few days. Single life can really suck when you’re dealing with a crisis and you don’t have anyone to share it with.
I know I have my best friend Laura, but I really don’t want to bother her right now. She recently got married and is now enjoying her newlywed life with her husband. I really don’t want to burden her with my problems anymore. She’s already done enough for me. Yes, I know she truly is my best friend on this planet.
I’m alive and well because of her. That’s exactly why I didn’t want to bother her while she was enjoying her new life with the man of her dreams. I really didn’t want to involve her. But the news got to her anyway. Laura was extremely mad at me for not telling her what was going on, but she forgave me pretty easily.
She told me that my family and my ex were blowing up her phone, begging her to intervene and convince me to talk to them. I don’t know what she said to them, but knowing her, it probably wasn’t pretty. She can be really nasty when she’s angry, and she’s always been super angry at my family and my ex for what they did to me.
Well, you guys seem to be angry at them too. Laura asked me what my opinion was on this whole thing, so I told her I didn’t want anything to do with them. I could just block them all and move on. Maybe even threaten to sue for harassment if they don’t back off. That’s what you guys have been telling me.
But Laura somehow told me I should consider meeting with Andrew at least once. This was really weird coming from her because she hates Andrew. In fact, she said some really nasty things about him when we met and talked. Still, she told me that even if I didn’t meet with my family, I should think about meeting with Andrew.
She refused to tell me why and just kept saying it wasn’t her place to talk about it. She also said I might do it to get closure so we can all finally put this behind us. I think she’s right about that. Maybe meeting with him would be a good idea from a healing standpoint. I do have some unanswered questions, and I’d really like to know exactly what happened in the past.
Also, I think once I hear everything, I’ll be able to make it very clear that I have no intention of a romantic relationship or friendship with him, and that if he continues the harassment, he’ll talk to my lawyer. I trust Laura’s judgment because of her profession as a school counselor, so I think meeting with Andrew at least once would be a good idea if she’s suggested it.
I know she wouldn’t do anything to put me in a situation that would affect me. She saw me at my lowest point. With my family or my brother, the situation is completely different. There’s no way I’m meeting with them. There’s nothing I want to know about them or that would interest me right now. For now, I’m going to focus on meeting with Andrew, and then we’ll go from there.
Update two. This is going to be a very long update. You’ve been warned. I met with Andrew yesterday, as I predicted. If you were against that meeting, I want to tell you that I believe I made the right decision because of everything I’ve learned recently. I’d also like to address something very important that keeps coming up in the comments.
You guys think I still have feelings for Andrew. We were together for eight years, but I don’t think there’s anything left that you could call love from that. I don’t even think I had any feelings when I sat down with him. It was like a business meeting—just going over objective data, and that was it. I’d say the conversation was both good and bad. I discovered some awful things, but the meeting ended on a good note.
Andrew ended up telling me everything that had happened before the divorce. My brother’s girlfriend had cheated on him, so he was pretty devastated. That’s why the two of them had suddenly started spending a lot of time together. They were friends before, but my brother needed someone to spend more time with him, to distract him from his own heartbreak.
Andrew said that one day my brother started crying and told Andrew that he’d been keeping a secret. He told my ex that I was cheating on him. He also showed him some text messages on his phone that were supposedly from me. Andrew showed me those screenshots, and in those chats, my brother was telling me that I needed to be honest with Andrew and tell him that I was having an affair.
In those chats, I was telling my brother to get lost and shut his mouth. Basically, my brother kept begging me to be honest because he couldn’t lie to his best friend for me. She said she’d been feeling guilty ever since she saw me go into a hotel with some guy she didn’t recognize. It makes me laugh to think that if it had been someone she knew, it wouldn’t have been so bad.
She said I needed to understand that I was doing something awful and then stop cheating on Andrew. I replied that I wasn’t going to end my affair because I was already in love with my partner and he was way better than Andrew in bed. I also said a lot of horrible things about how unhappy I was with my life with Andrew.
So this was my only escape route, and it was making me really happy. Andrew told me he was 100% sure of it because my brother showed him those texts directly from his chat. My theory is that he created the conversation while we were hanging out together. I wasn’t that in control of my phone, so he might have just picked it up and written this conversation before deleting it to cover his tracks.
Andrio was right when he told me that my brother had meticulously planned all of this just to blow up my marriage. He’d been angry at the world and angry at women in general after being cheated on. He also didn’t like how Andriu was so happy in his married life while he was miserable and didn’t even have a girlfriend.
Now my brother has confessed everything to Andrew. It’s really ironic that he decided to take out his anger on me, his own sister. Want to know how my brother’s fiancée found out about his secret? She stumbled across his chats with our mom. I was probably trying to send some wedding-related stuff to Mom from my brother’s phone and instead discovered this masterpiece.
So, Mom has known for a while that my brother had set me up. She was telling my brother that she sometimes felt guilty about his secret. Yes, I have the most messed-up family of the decade. My brother had confessed to our mom a long time ago for who knows what reason. However, they both decided to keep it a secret because they knew my brother’s fiancée would dump him and Andrew would end his friendship with him. My
mom chose my brother over me. I suffered for basically nothing. You know what? I’m kind of laughing and crying as I write this. My family is just a bunch of twisted people who can’t think of anything but themselves. I see myself as a really lucky person to have such a loving family.
Sarcasm aside. I’m glad I found all this out. Andrew freely gave me his phone so I could check if he was telling me the truth. He wasn’t lying to me. There was a lot of information on there. After that, Andrew asked me if there was even the slightest chance, if there was anything inside me that would make me forgive him and give a fool like him another chance—someone who ruined his marriage because of a former friend’s lies.
I told him the truth: I don’t like to lie. I didn’t get that from my mother like my brother did. My answer was, “There isn’t a single ounce of me that wants to go back to that relationship.” And it wasn’t out of spite; I just can’t be with someone who basically dumped me the moment someone showed him something without even verifying it.
I also informed her that while I appreciated the information and the evidence was important, I preferred to keep contact limited. Here’s the situation and what my brain was able to process quickly during the conversation. Although I’m not certain yet, I believe I can sue my brother for damages and for impersonating me. And I’ll likely need Andrew’s testimony.
If so, I can’t completely cut off contact until I see if it’s possible and, if so, take it to court. I’ll need to consult with a lawyer before I know how feasible this is, but I didn’t want to leave you out of the loop. So, even though the meeting was partly bad for stirring things up, I believe something good might come of it in the end.
I also think that’s what Laura meant when she told me to go talk to Andrew, only I haven’t spoken to her yet. Update three: You don’t have to tell me. I know it’s been quite a while. I’m sorry you haven’t heard from me. I haven’t really been able to respond to your private messages because I’ve been a bit busy recovering from a sprained wrist.
I had a bad fall down the stairs at work that injured me. Let’s just say these past few months haven’t been the best for me, but things have happened since the last update, so here goes. For starters, my lawyer said we can sue. I gave him all the evidence I got from Andrew’s phone—messages with my brother—and he said he needed to verify their authenticity.
In the end, these messages could have happened as they did, in which I supposedly admitted to cheating. I also put him in touch with Andrew. He’s the star witness in my case. We’ve already filed the lawsuit and are now waiting for my brother’s lawyer’s response. The only problem is that some issues have been developing on his end.
Apparently, my brother was in a terrible place mentally and did something really stupid, which I’ll talk about later. He’s also paying the price because his fiancée broke off their engagement and left him for good. Extended family stepped in, saying she did the right thing because my brother doesn’t deserve to be happy after what he did to me.
I’m talking about the more distant family members, the ones who knew nothing about the lie until now. These people had the evidence, so to speak, against my brother. At that time, they were all quite angry with me and didn’t want to talk anymore. They focused their attention and energy on my brother and Andrew, who were the supposed victims at that time.
After the truth came out, Andrew tore my brother apart in front of the extended family. And now it’s hard to find anyone who wants to talk to him, except my parents, who keep begging for forgiveness and are doing everything they can to keep the family from leaving him in this vulnerable state. My family is distant. They weren’t people I dealt with regularly, and I’ve hardly been in touch with them in recent years.
I’m not worried about forgiving them or rebuilding a relationship. I’m beyond that. Not with my parents either, but I do care about them because I hate them. Especially my mother because she knew everything. It’s possible my father knew too. I’ve been getting calls again from one of my dad’s friends’ numbers. How do I know? Because after our conversation and hanging up, I was writing down the times to ask the owner of that number if he was helping my parents.
It was the same kind of garbage. That’s when he replied and told me who he was and that he didn’t agree. I had only lent my phone to my dad when they were having lunch at their house, and I didn’t even know what he used it for until I sent that message. He apologized to me and said it wouldn’t happen again.
Going back to my conversation with my parents, I told them they were hypocrites for worrying about my brother’s mental health when they didn’t worry about mine. I told them about all my mental struggles, since they probably never knew, and how much pain I went through because no one was willing to believe me. I told them they had four whole years to make amends, but instead, they kept hiding the truth until the news blew up in their faces.
Now they can keep all the shrapnel in their faces. Neither of them held my brother accountable for what he did. They just keep defending him like he’s some poor stray cat. If you look up the definition of hypocrisy in the dictionary, their picture is right there. Both of them holding hands, crying over the poor idiot brother I got stuck with.
And what’s worse is that my parents tried to make me feel sorry for my brother because he was finally facing the consequences of his actions. I told them to go to hell and forget they had a daughter. I also used a few insults that I won’t repeat, but between the pain of my sprained ankle and my parents’ lack of self-awareness, I had to throw a few at them.
That brings us to what my brother did. This happened between his fiancée leaving him and my call with my parents. That’s why my parents wanted to appeal to my emotions. My brother tried to take some pills and was caught by my mother. I don’t want to downplay these issues because I was in a very dark place like this myself at some point, but my brother took too few pills for it to be a serious problem.
They took him to the hospital and followed the protocol in this case, but the amount and medication he took wasn’t enough to do what he supposedly intended. That was a real wake-up call, which bothers me, because if it weren’t for my friend, I probably would have done it. But my brother tries something that didn’t even endanger his life, and they rush to portray him as the victim.
What he did to me isn’t much different from infidelity. However, what my brother did was real, and what he said I did wasn’t. Here we are. Poor brother, even before he tried what he did. I wonder if I had done it—which I’m glad I didn’t—would my parents have felt this way. I think I know the answer, and that’s what hurts the most about this. Update four:
The lawsuit is still ongoing. What my brother did doesn’t move me enough to drop the lawsuit. For those who think my lawsuit was part of what triggered it, it wasn’t. My lawsuit came weeks later. My lawyer was going to file it when I found out, so I asked him to put it on hold until things were a little better. Then it was filed.
My brother needs to know that he did horrible things, and just because he did what he did doesn’t erase all the damage he caused. I hope his mental health improves, but it’s not my responsibility, and his responsibility for what he did is to pay for it. He’s not going to get away with it. From what I hear, my father is absolutely furious with my mother for lying and keeping my brother’s secret.
Dad often thought about contacting me again, but my mom always found a way to talk him out of it. She knew his secret and didn’t want anyone exposing the skeletons in the closet. I’ve confirmed this with a few people, but I still have my trust issues. In my head, it’s like my father is trying to make himself look better than he was so he doesn’t get hurt by the family drama.
I feel like he wants to plant the seed of innocence in this, but at the same time, it’s not very innocent for a father not to speak to his daughter in four years. The utter disgust I feel for my mother right now is simply otherworldly. She would do absolutely anything to protect her precious little boy.
Anyway, it seems my father is separating from my mother now. He’s been living somewhere else. Like I said before, it seems I didn’t really know about this, but it still doesn’t faze me. That family has to implode, but I’m not going to pick up the pieces. It’s not resentment, just self-preservation.
None of them tried to contact me in years, knowing or not that it was a lie, knowing or not that they cut me off from everyone and completely isolated me. And now, let me talk about Andrew. There have been a lot of comments about me trying to get back with him or thinking about trying. Guys, I’m not marrying him, or even having a relationship with him.
We only talk because he’s helping me with my case. He wants to help because he feels guilty, and I’m letting him help because I deserve retribution. And no, we’re not jumping into a relationship. There’s too much damage for anything to be salvaged from that. When you reconnect with your ex, you relive the whole past, simmering there, reminding you why you broke up.
It’s not just a bad idea, it’s a waste of time. I’m seeing someone else, so I’m not going to cut that off for Andrew. I’m not going to throw away my chance at happiness. Update five: My brother is doing better mentally. He’s getting help from my mom, which is the least she can do after being his accomplice in the lie.
I need to start with this because I know there are people worried about what’s happening after my lawsuit. I also remember what I said in one of my posts, but not everything that’s said or written is literal, nor is it something anyone expects to happen. My brother is someone I wouldn’t wish on anyone, but I’m not going to be encouraging him to suddenly cut his life short either. It’s
just that in my anger at the state he was in, I said those things. I love the level of forensic analysis people do to find some problem with me and attack me. That’s how my brother was when he decided to lie and attack me just because I was a woman. Which I don’t just say because of my being a woman; I also see it in women attacking men because they think they’re all the same.
You saw what happened to my brother for generalizing and thinking that others are the enemy. The lawsuit was a bit more difficult than I imagined. Evidence, witnesses, and even his fiancée were on my side. Yes, his fiancée also decided to reveal the confession my brother made to her. More on his previous ex, the one who cheated on him, in a few paragraphs.
I could have agreed to an out-of-court settlement. I just wanted her to pay something, anything, not spend hours in court, because everyone knows how much fun that is. Well, no. He brought a psychiatrist as a witness to say that his trauma had driven him to do those things, that he wasn’t in his right mind, that he didn’t do it with malicious intent, just that he couldn’t properly express his feelings, and that for a time he had a period of hatred towards women as a result of the trauma caused by his cheating ex.
We already knew that, but he was looking for some sympathy because he wasn’t in the best place mentally. I’m also amazed at the kind of professionals you can find. If you pay, they’ll say almost anything to justify a defendant. My lawyer thought it would be a good idea to contact his ex, which was a bit difficult, but it was worth it.
She told a different version of events, one that’s very different from what my brother had been telling us. My brother said they broke up because she was unfaithful, and that was it, but the truth was a bit more complicated. And look, this isn’t a defense of the ex because she did her share of bad things, but my brother wasn’t as good as he seemed, and his trauma wasn’t as understandable as I thought.
What his ex testified was that my brother was unfaithful long before she was. They became one of those toxic couples where they both lied to each other to cope with the other’s infidelity. No, my brother wasn’t a poor victim, and he doesn’t deserve sympathy. I also wouldn’t have justified what he did if the ex had been the only one unfaithful.
You don’t hate a group of people just because one member of that group wronged you. The bottom line was that my brother was ordered to pay me $35,000 in damages, which he has already paid because my brother has assets and savings that have been seized to comply with the order. It seems like a lot of money for a lawsuit, but this lawsuit took over a year to complete because these things take time.
Hearings with the judge, witnesses, lawyer hours, and so on. Anyway, it’s over, and at the best possible time for me, because my aforementioned relationship has started to get pretty serious. Not serious enough to get married next week, but serious enough to think about moving in together and adopting a turtle. Maybe the turtle warrants a serious, serious, serious, but it’s that kind of serious, so this is a sad goodbye to you all, the people who have read all of this and tried to be objective.
There aren’t as many bad people on Reddit as you might assume. There are kind-hearted people too. M.