Reddit Stories - Secret REVEALED_ My Partner's MYSTERIOUS Weekend DISAPPEARANCES for 3 Years_

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

#redditstories #askreddit #aita #secretsrevealed #mysteriouspartner #relationshipadvice #mysterysolved #relationshipquestionsSummary: A Reddit user shares their story about their partner's mysterious weekend disappearances for three years, seeking advice on whether to confront them or investigate further.Tags: redditstories, askreddit, reddit, aita, tifu, secretsrevealed, mysteriouspartner, relationshipadvice, mysterysolved, relationshipquestionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/reddit-stories--6237355/support.

I hope you enjoy this story. My partner has been absent every weekend for the last three years, and I recently discovered that he has been deceiving me about his whereabouts. My significant other, a 27-year-old male, and I, 24F, have been together for three years. We don't live together but are close enough to spend a lot of time together. However, it is very rare for us to spend a whole day together. When we have, it's been a weekday where our schedules have just happened to line up. i.e., no work and no class. We have never spent a day on the weekend together. He works as a research

assistant while getting his PhD. Every single weekend for the three years we've been together he insists he has work. I realize how stupid I've been now, but foolishly I trusted him. I trusted that he had work every single weekend for three years. That was, until today. I've been studying for finals and it's the toughest it's ever been, so I would have. was craving some time with him. Just a day where we could kick back and relax with each other. Of course, he says he can't because he's working and I shut up about it. So, today I'm getting antsy anyway and hoping we could at least spend the evening together. I end up texting him, asking when he thinks he'll be back and we can spend the night. I've done this plenty of times

before and he always responds fairly quick. This time I'm waiting for a while. After two hours I decide to text a work friend of his who's also a research assistant with him. Wouldn't you know it, it turns out they don't have work today. In fact, he informs me in that same text that they rarely ever have work on weekends. Rarely ever. So now, I'm sitting here wondering WTF is going on. I have no idea how to confront him about this. I mean, this has been going on for three years. If he's cheating on me, he basically has a second family at this point. But obviously that's where my mind goes and I have no clue what else it could possible be. Like, is there any possible explanation for this besides cheating?

How in the world do I confront him about something he's been doing for three years? Since he's doing whatever it is tomorrow, do I just drive over to his place in the morning and wait and then follow him? Has anyone had anything like this happened to them before? Update 1. So I logged into this account for the first time since making my original post. and find that there are a lot of messages. I haven't read them all, but I will. The recent ones all ask for an update, so here it is.

When I logged off, things seemed to be pretty split on what I should do. Most people just decided to call him a cheater or say that I'm the side chick. Frankly, I wasn't sure I could wait another day to confront him, so I confronted him the night of that post, no games or stalking or anything. Anyway, I had texted him telling him to come over when his work. was done and he did. I waited about five minutes, if that, for him to settle in before telling him that we needed to talk about something important. He immediately responded with a oh which was a bit demeaning but that sarcastic response honestly matches his personality.

I tell him everything that happened, how hurt I was, how I didn't feel like I could trust him about anything considering he's been doing this for three years, and then asked if he had anything to say. He told me he wasn't cheating on me or anything like that. He was just a embarrassed about what he had been doing. I asked him what he could possibly be so embarrassed about as to hide it and lie to me about it for three years. He takes like a minute to compose himself and then mutters something. He clearly feels guilty but I obviously don't hear it so I ask him what he said because I didn't hear. He tells me that he volunteers at a homeless shelter every weekend since coming here for his PhD, volunteering at a homeless shelter. I swear to you,

whatever emotions are coming across here were multiplied 10x in the moment. I could not comprehend what he was saying. Like, he was embarrassed for volunteering at a homeless shelter? It didn't, still doesn't, make any sense. So I asked him what he meant and he repeated that he volunteers at a homeless shelter for six hours on Saturday and six hours on Sunday, every weekend. Of course I ask him why he would be embarrassed about that and he asks if we can talk about this more tomorrow, Sunday.

and he can instead show me that he isn't lying by taking me to volunteer. I don't know what I was really thinking. I think my mind was just blank so I agreed with a sure and asked him to leave. He apologized for the whole thing and left and then sent a text that he'd pick me up in the morning so he can prove to me that he's not lying. Of course my mind races all night and I tossed and turned all night but Sunday came anyway. He wasn't lying. He takes me to a homeless shelter slash soup kitchen place.

I don't really know the difference, and we make food, clean, and pack daily necessities for six hours. It clearly isn't the place to have the conversation. So I spend most of my time doing the work and chatting with other people and they were really nice, but of course the whole thing was still weighing on my mind the entire time, so I start asking them about my boyfriend and they confirm that he's been working there as long as they remember and is there every weekend. He's been there longer than most of them, it seems. Finally our volunteering ends and we head back to his car and I try to start the conversation

but he shuts me down and asks me to wait until we get back to his place. I say fine, maybe I'm being a dormat here but I was just so confused and lost, and we head to his apartment. Once there, the talking begins. He asks if I believe that he's telling the truth about working at the homeless shelter every weekend and I say that I do since I confirmed it with a lot of people while there, but I also said that I don't understand the lying, especially for as long as he did. He apologizes again and asks if I really want to know why he kept it a secret.

I say, of course, D-U-H. He sighs and then tells me that he doesn't like people knowing that he likes helping people. Obviously I'm going WTF because this is so weird and I ask him to explain. He tells me that when he was an undergrad student he would always try to help his class behind the scenes by discussing problems they had or negotiating for. for curves or extensions on their assignments even when he didn't personally need it. He said he enjoyed doing it and kept doing it as a master's student but then started to do so before slash after classes publicly.

Apparently most of his classmates were still happy with him but a few basically hated him for it because he was babying them or something. So he went back to doing things behind the scenes and no longer tries to associate himself with any of the things he does to help others. Hopefully I'm not the only one who finds this so dang weird. Like the homeless shelter stuff and assisting your classmates aren't remotely the same? I say as such and he tells me it does the same thing. It helps people so he doesn't like people to know about it because then they might misinterpret

his intent and think he's masquerading as a good person. Then he assures me that he's not a good person at all but he still wants to do what he can for people so this is what he does, WTF. So I ask if he really thinks I would get mad that he's helping homeless people in his free time. He tells me he wasn't sure at first, especially since I wanted to spend weekends together when we were first going out, duh, every couple does. So he just lied to hide it at first, but he knows I wouldn't do that now but kept the lie going because he thought it would be too weird to suddenly say that he's volunteering at a homeless

shelter. I feel like I've come to the conclusion that he's just really, really weird. His way of thinking has always been odd, but this in particular is just so weird. Like, he seems to understand the situation and where I'm coming from but didn't think to tell me the truth on his own. We started going in circles so I ended the conversation and had him drive me home in silence. Since then he sent a number of texts and has tried to call me a few times. I didn't pick up on Monday or Tuesday because I felt like I needed time to think, but I finally picked up today and we had a talk in which we both reiterated what we had said. I know a lot of people, literally all of them at this time, were telling me to break up with him

but I'm still thinking things through. I'm going to try and get him to hang out this weekend and make my decision after that I think some more. This whole thing has been so weird. I'm sorry that I've repeated that so much but my brain is still rather scrambled. I don't think there will be any more updates to this because we either stay together or break up, but if there are, they won't be posted here. Edit, reading through a lot of the comments on the previous post now. To answer the most common questions, I haven't met his parents but I have met a few of his friends,

he doesn't have social media, he's met my family since I'm local, and we do spend holidays together if they aren't on weekends. Update 2. So I asked him to come over so we could talk and he did. I then asked him some of the questions people had on here that I had written down. volunteering for six hours but still not having time for me, he said he would get there a little early and leave late, but would then spend the remaining hours running errands and actually working on PhD slash assistant stuff. I asked if he could give me details, he gave some

details about academic articles that I don't remember. I asked why he couldn't spend more weekend evenings with me if this was the case. He said that he was really busy with work and that I would distract him, ouch. Out of all the things said, I think this is the one that bothers me the most. I asked if the volunteering was court-ordered. He laughed at that and was clearly confused by the question but answered that given the special population he works with doing his PhD, he doubts he'd be able to work with them if he had a record that required so many hours.

I asked if he was ever going to tell me about the volunteering. He initially says he doesn't know, then replies that he probably wouldn't have. He apologized for lying but then said that whether he was working or volunteering. doesn't make a difference to how much time he spent with me. Obviously I pushed back on this and he got defensive and we had an argument that basically reiterated how I felt like I couldn't trust him because he was lying about this while he kept apologizing for the lying slash making me feel that way but that it wouldn't have changed how we spend time together.

Ultimately I asked him to explain to me again why he hid it in the first place. Like he said previously, he used to talk to professors during undergrad about extensions and questions others had behind closed doors and then make sure those things were stated to the rest of the class. He did the same thing in his master's program. This is where I got lost before. One of his professors was a hard ass and some of his classmates were scared to talk to him about their grades, so he thought he could show them that he was willing to discuss grades and he made a joke about his own grade in class. The professor didn't find it funny and went on a tirade about respect and showing him up and apparently the class ended shortly thereafter because it was

so tense. He said that some of the other students felt like they needed to cut ties with him to show the professor they weren't in on the joke and that a few of them made a show of hating him from that point forward. Hearing it more in-depth at least makes this make a little more sense to me. I stated again that helping homeless and helping classmates seemed like entirely different things altogether. He said that they felt like the same to him but that I was probably right and he was wrong. I asked him why he said he's a bad person. He replied, asking if he said that and I said yes. He said that he didn't want the volunteering to make him seem like a good person because he's not. I asked what he meant and he replied that I know him.

I said I'm not sure I do. He said that I know what he means. I don't, you do, etc. in circles. Personally, I think he has low self-esteem, but this is a weird way to express it and I'm not sure what else it could be. I told him I wasn't sure I wanted to continue the relationship because of the lying. He seemed hurt but then just said okay and that it's my decision. I told him that he should at least get therapy for the classmate thing because it's clearly affected him negatively. He replied that he probably should but he won't. After that I gave him an ultimatum, either spend more time with me on weekends and go to therapy or we break up. I told him to think about it and that he is until Saturday. He said he would and he went on his way. Update 3.

This will probably be my last post here. Saturday came and he asked me to compromise. He would take a day off from volunteering if I volunteered with him the other day and he wouldn't have to go to therapy. I said I needed to think about it. I told him later that night that I'd accept the compromise if he was willing to go to one therapy session. On Sunday morning, he told me he wouldn't be willing to go to therapy and asked that we go out to dinner. We went to a local diner and basically talked about ending things. He apologized for ending things this way and said that he knew he wasn't exactly being

reasonable but he's doing what he feels like he needs to do. I basically said that that's up to him. We wished each other the best, he gave me a parting hug, and I went on my way. So yeah. Three years of commitment for this. Kind of sucks. Have a good day. Update 4.

I'm pretty intoxicated while writing this, so let me just first say sorry for you. for my incomprehensableness. Is that even a word? Anyway, I've been keeping myself busy with school and stuff, but some casual stuff every once in a while has been good stress relief. What isn't good stress relief was a text message I received today. I should have blocked him but I didn't so here we are. I didn't respond to him but here's the message verbatim. Hello, sorry for contacting you. I am sorry for how I acted. After you left I really gave a lot of thing some thought. I didn't want therapy because I didn't need a professional to tell me that I'm different or weird or diagnose me with something that jeopardizes my profession and I especially

didn't want them to try and change me. I bit the bullet in January. I was diagnosed with schizo-typal personality disorder, you can look it up, I guess. I'm not seeing the therapist frequently, especially after he suggested altering some of my behaviors and told me that I'm coping using my volunteering. Sorry, I'm just saying that you were right, and and I wasn't being fair to you. Please do not feel burdened to respond. I hope you are happy. God, he hopes I'm happy.

I mean, really, after everything he acts like some sort of victim. Just, ah, I hate it so much. Every single time I've thought of him since we broke up I just get more angry. I guess it is nice to know that I wasn't imagining things and there is something actually wrong with him, but did he have to contact me? Gross. Anyway, I was huffing and drinking and spotted my login details still on my laptop desktop

and figured an update wouldn't be too hard. I hope you guys know how to pick them better than me. Next story. Husband and I agreed we don't want more kids, but when I suggested he get a vasectomy or I get my tubes tied, he screamed that it would take away our manhood and womanhood. Okay, Reddit, I need some unbiased outside opinions because I truly feel like I'm going crazy dealing with this situation. I, 28F, and my partner, 28M, have two children together and have been married for eight years. For those eight years I've either been on birth control

when we were preventing pregnancy or tracking my cycle when we were trying to conceive. Adding this just to give the community the context that reproductive responsibility has always fallen on my shoulders. Recently we discussed the possibility of being done with children since we have our two and the family really feels complete. My partner is in agreement that a third child is off the table for him as well. So with that I thought great. I can bring up sterilization for either him or I. The reason I wanted this is because I've had every form of birth control before and none of them ever left me feeling 100% okay so I wanted to be done with birth control completely since we both agreed we're done. It's been about three months since our talk about more

children, so I brought up either getting a vasectomy for him or me getting a salp-injectomy, removing my fallopian tubes, what I thought would be a productive conversation completely blew up. He outright refused a vasectomy and when I was okay with that and said I'd happily get a salp-injectomy he completely flipped his shit on me, screaming at me about how he forbids it from happening and he won't allow me to damage myself like that. I ended up just leaving the conversation and headed to get our kids from school, but on the way I ended up calling my gynecologist to schedule a consultation for the salp injectomy after making sure I won't need my spouse's approval. So Reddit Ada if I go through with the sterilization against my partner's wishes?

Update 1, March 7, 2025. Due to the support and advice I found on here I managed to get the confidence and level headspace needed to try to have another conversation with my partner. After getting our children to their school slash daycare for the day I went to our local coffee shop to pick us up each a cup, I figured it can either be seen as a show of care, or a peace offering. Once I got home, he was sitting at our island Doom scrolling through TikTok. I think we've all been there. I decided standing across from him would be a bit of a better choice, so I gave us our respective cups and asked if I could get his attention for a

conversation. Well, what I hoped would be productive turned unproductive quickly as he sighed with an eye roll and turned off his phone. I started by asking the big question of if he wanted any more children. I even suggested he doesn't think about what I said on the subject and just tell me his feelings about more children. With that he answered a firm no and told me as he said before a third child is and will always be off the table. I then asked him if he had any fears or concerns about surgery slash medical procedures, he said no to this question as well. So I asked if he understood the procedure and what it entailed and he said yes he does, which is why he doesn't want me to get it done, in his words I wouldn't be a woman if I got any part of my

reproductive organs, what makes me a woman, removed and he refuses to allow me down that path. I then followed up by asking about his getting a vasectomy and he said it's pretty much the same thing for men and he won't let anyone take away if manhood. The final question I managed to ask was did he just expect me to be on birth control forever and this man looked me in M face and said it's worked so well for me already why change things up, guys as I stated in my previous post I am miserable and in debilitating pain with birth control. At the end of this I just grabbed my coffee and went sit on our porch just trying to wrap my head around the conversation while he sit in the house acting like nothing is wrong and we're just having a normal day off together.

Update 2, March 9th, 2025. Hey, Reddit, I just wanted to give a small update. I've been reading all of your comments on my last two post, I swear. I appreciate all the advice and kind words, sometimes even the unkind words because it gives me more to think about. So to start I've been at my sisters with the children all weekend. I told my husband that she was feeling lonely and wanted us to stay over. He believed it as we usually try to do this once a month.

I called off of work Monday so my sister and I can meet with the divorce lawyer that handled her divorce. I'm unsure if divorce will be the path I go down, but I want to get my ducks in a row before laying it all down for my husband. Also, I would like to answer some questions that I saw a lot of in my last post. Yes, I still plan to go through with the sterilization. I absolutely don't want any more children even if this ends in divorce. I plan to tell him it's getting done no matter what he says or believes. There will definitely be no sex with him anymore. I feel like I lost all attraction and respect for him. The children don't know what going on, they just think it's a fun time at Andy's house.

Condoms are a no, I exist because of a broken condom. I currently have an IUD and while yes it has been the best birth control I've been on I still cannot function properly for a week out of the month due to pain, bleeding, and depressive episodes. No, he hasn't done anything like this before, which is what caught me so off guard with everything. Disagreements in our relationship have up until now been able to be discussed and compromised on. We grew up in a deep Catholic community but fell away from the church years ago. Update 3, March 17, 2025. So I would like to start off by saying thank you everyone for the amazing support I've received throughout the comments and messages.

I know I haven't replied in a while, but I have been really. reading it all. Now to start off I'll update everyone on the meeting with the lawyer, I was able to talk through my options as well as what legally would buy my husbands and what legally would be mine. I know my next steps of things would lead to divorce and I feel confident in taking those steps if needed. After the meeting I went back home and got settled back in. I ended up just doing normal task until the kids got home and when my husband got home I suggested getting the children to bed early so we can talk, so we did just that. He ended up starting. He ended up starting to the conversation by saying if I plan to get the sterilization, then he wants a divorce because

he can't be with someone who doesn't share his same values. At that moment I knew this was it for us. So I informed him of my consultation this week for the surgery and my intention to go through with it no matter what. There was honestly a lot of back and forth, I want to say it lasted for three hours before he said he's done and left the house. He's been staying at his moms and hasn't really asked about the children staying with him. I have offered personal. I have offered per the suggestion of my lawyer but to no avail. Currently I'm getting a legal separation agreement written up so hopefully start the divorce process peacefully or as peacefully as possible.

The kids ask about him but I just keep telling them he's helping grandma for a bit. I'm not sure how to tell them he won't be back. Thankfully my therapist suggested a children's therapist to me so I planned to set them an appointment soon. I'm honestly not too sure where everything went wrong with us. I always felt like we had true love but maybe I was just naive to any of the other signs.