I found out my wife was on a dating app, so I created a fake profile to see if it was really her. To my disbelief, we matched. We flirted back and forth for a few days, and then I asked her to send me a photo. When it arrived, I felt frozen. It was a picture of her when she was 20 one of the first photos we ever took together. Only now, she had cropped me out of it.

That evening, when I got home, I found her sitting on the edge of the bed, crying. Without saying much, she handed me a small box and asked me to open it. Inside was her wedding ring. My heart sank. She said she wanted to leave that she was deeply unhappy and had been for a long time. I told her I already knew about the dating app, and that I was the one she’d been talking to.

For a second, she looked shocked. But then she nodded, her voice calm. “It doesn’t change anything,” she said. “I made this decision a while ago.” She admitted she had been unhappy for nearly two years, and just couldn’t pretend anymore. I sat there, speechless, as everything I thought was solid in my life seemed to unravel all at once.

I never saw it coming. She never said a word about feeling this way. No fights, no big arguments just small signs I must have ignored. Now, looking back, I realize how far apart we’d drifted. And it hurts, knowing that while I was still trying to hold us together, she had already let go