I Blew My Cover While Spying on My Cheating Husband’s Mistress

Ogling eyes and a salivating mouth gaped openly at my toxic mother-in-law —we’ll call her Cruella — who met my father’s gaze with unfiltered repulsion. She stepped over the mountain of duffel bags and suitcases he’d deposited in our marble foyer — and made a beeline for my husband’s office, her oversized sunglasses only partially concealing the pepperoni-like pattern that adorned her Botox-filled face.

My father’s pupils trailed Cruella’s every move with the same misplaced lust that led him down a widowed neighbor’s rabbit hole, into her assisted living facility, and out of his 40+ year marriage to my mother. It’s as if his brain has somehow reverted back to that of a recklessly horny teenager, devoid of morals or responsibility, and magnetically drawn to every pair of boobs that walks his way. Perhaps saving him from the assisted living money pit — and their throngs of calculating female patients eager to pounce on a sex-starved soon-to-be divorcé with raging hormones — is my daughterly duty.

Then again, inviting him under the same roof that’s barely concealing my cheating husband’s blatant sex addiction and rampant extramarital affairs may not be setting the best example… From one den of dysfunction to the next, I suppose.

. . .

When your mother-in-law’s BFF is your cheating husband’s ex-fiancé…

It’s no secret my mother-in-law is far from my biggest fan; though her continued friendship with my husband’s most recent ex-fiancé (we’ll call her Michelle) certainly serves as a stark reminder.

Apparently her morning spent at the med spa with Michelle — which explains the splotchy post-chemical peel pepperoni mask that stormed past my oblivious father — tipped her off to a few concerning rumors she had to clear up in person. Hence her abnormally perturbed entrance, and the explosion to follow:

“She’s not your mother! She’s no one to you — and then he’s here in your house? What is this? The gold digger charity brigade?”

My mother-in-law may be the only person I’ve ever seen successfully talk down to my husband. Typically, he’s the loudest, largest, most domineering presence in the room; not this time.

“They’re eating your lunch! Can’t you see that?”

By now, I’d edged to the cracked door of his office, straining to decipher her panicked whisper-yells over his muffled attempts to diffuse her anger.

“Ma, it’s temporary — ”

Within seconds, my husband’s initial attempt to stave off her probing accusations morphed into an apologetic, submissive tone, assuring the fire-breathing dragon before him that the $2M townhome he’d gifted my soon-to-be-divorced mother was a temporary solution. This was news to me — and news I didn’t plan to break to my mom anytime soon…or ever.

The dragon continued her tirade, masterfully emasculating her son, while gently and intermittently stroking his ego just enough to retain his favor. Hearing the cringe-worthy exchange almost convinced me psychopaths are created, not born. Then again, his apple sure didn’t fall far from her short-fused orchard…

To be fair, I can almost sympathize. If I feared that my self-made multi-millionaire CEO son were being bled dry of his hard-earned fortune from a greedy family of vultures, I might say something, too. However, I’m guessing she isn’t privy to the whole story…

• Does she know that I’m keeping his Laguna bungalow brothel under wraps, while he’s blown millions on escort-housing real estate?
• Or that I have a folder full of his $460k+ indiscretions, and little reason not to pull the trigger on a very public and costly exposé?
• Is she aware that in addition to buying my mom a $2M townhome — which is likely under his company’s name, anyway — he’s also the proud owner of the $3M adjoining front unit keeping his mistress (and maybe nefarious sexual services business partner) in 7-figure accommodations?

Sometimes the devils really are in the details…

It also bemuses me that after 16+ years of marriage, she still dismisses me as invisible — or a temporary phase, to be kept on the outskirts of the “family”. It’s almost reminiscent of my husband’s continued efforts to keep me at arm’s length of his business engagements, no matter how close to home or financially intertwined they may be with our joint lives.

As much as Cruella’s gold digging accusations towards my family thicken the bad blood between us, I hardly care what she thinks at this point. There are a few things that do make my blood boil, however:

• Cruella’s utter disregard for involving me in a conversation surrounding my own mother’s living arrangements — which really aren’t her business
• The fact that the Corona del Mar gossip circle has infected parties as far north as Los Angeles with rumors swirling about our family (and our financial situation)
• The fact that Hubby’s ex-fiancé was stoking the flames
• There’s also the fact that my blabbering mother has made her new place of residence no secret at all — and seemingly pointed an unwelcome microscope on my family at the worst time possible

A familiar vibration jolted me from one awkward exchange to the next, and I quickly scampered away from my eavesdropping perch to enlarge the Ring app’s latest finding in private. As a quick rule of thumb: “Private” does not exist in high-ceiling, open-floorplan homes with sound-reverberating marble flooring throughout.

For those who forgot their popcorn up to this point? Have no fear — Jerry Springer has just arrived, and you’re about to get a front-row-seat to every snooping wife’s worst nightmare.

Spying for dummies, rule #1: Don’t get caught

“Motion Alert: There is motion at your Front Door.”

I tapped the motion alert, expecting a false alarm (like a moth or a package delivery) that would allow me a swift return to the wings of my husband’s dressing-down at the hands of my evil mother-in-law. Before I could expand the motion recording to view the supposed trespasser, the app vibrated again, this time with a very deliberate notification:

“Ring Alert: Someone is at your Front Door.”

The trespasser wasn’t a moth or a false alarm, and it had graduated from triggering the motion sensor to ringing the doorbell.

I clicked the dashboard on my Ring app and tapped to go “Live”: My husband’s mistress from the front unit filled my phone screen. She backed away from the door, as if cornered by some creature in the alley beside the house, out of view of the camera.

A quick aside: Technology is great — until it isn’t. For those hoping to use Ring (or any other surveillance app) to catch a cheating spouse’s scandals, learn which button is the microphone versus the speaker before tapping icons, willy nilly.

She continued to move towards and back away from the doorway, while mouthing something and repeating an odd, frantic gesture. I don’t know if the app defaults to a muted mode or if my phone’s settings silenced the audio, but two little icons sat below the mistress and her strange mimicking: a microphone and a speaker; I hit both.

Instantly, the buzzing background noise emanated from the phone, quickly overshadowed by a high-pitched wailing. An oddly familiar wailing that I just couldn’t place…

And the woman wasn’t actually crazy or hallucinating; well, she may have been, but that wasn’t the cause behind her repetitive mouthing, gestures, and tepid dance back and forth.

The wailing turned into a crystal-clear howl, and two new figures burst into the camera’s view.

“Rufus?!”

“Rufus?!”

My parents’ dog, Rufus — well, my dad’s dog who my mom had kidnapped as leverage in her first revenge-focused act of their separation — exploded into view, defending the doorway from the mistress, who coaxed him near.

My mom flew out the front door, calling Rufus’s name in utter shock.

My dad, a true dog father who couldn’t help but recognize his fur child’s howls, even miles away through the phone’s dampened audio, had rushed up behind me, gazing down at his long-lost son from the bird’s eye vantage point of the doorbell camera.

Shocked to hear my dad over my shoulder, I committed yet another fatal error. I “shushed” him — directly into the app’s microphone, hoping to keep this canine reunion out of earshot of my husband and mother-in-law — and to refrain from drawing the attention of my mom or Hubby’s mistress through the doorbell speaker. Too late…

Big mouths must run in my family, because neither my dad, nor my mom, seem to grasp the concept of discretion.

“Why is Rufus outside?!”

By now, the third time we’d projected our confusion through the Ring app’s microphone, both my mom and the mistress whipped their heads towards the slim, black doorbell. A talking doorbell isn’t exactly inconspicuous…

I untapped both icons — still unsure which was the mic versus the speaker, but aware it wasn’t worth drawing any more attention to find out. The audio went silent, but the video remained.

I could feel my jaw drop, then lock, and my brows furrow as I helplessly watched my mom strike up a silent friendship with my husband’s mistress, who was now the heroine that had rescued her escaped dog. At least, that was the narrative she’d know of her…

“And how are you seeing that? Is that his dog GPS collar?”

My failed attempt at a covert mission — also known as checking a phone notification without getting caught — wasn’t just a bust; I’d officially attracted a crowd. Well, my dad’s inability to keep his mouth shut, coupled with Rufus’s howling — and probably a bit of my panicked, terse whispers (attempting to shut everyone up) — had drawn the unwelcome party of two: Hubby and Cruella stood there, over my shoulder, with a front-row-seat to the meeting of my mother and the mistress.

The friction — and secrets — building in this foursome felt like an iceberg-sized missile, launched towards our calm, pre-collision Titanic, just before the ship goes down and (most) everyone dies. Except this time, my husband and I were passengers aboard the doomed vessel, while Cruella and my father were the blissfully detached spectators in the movie theater audience, unaware of the magnitude of the unfolding before them.

In case you’re at all confused or lost, here’s where the friction lies:

• My husband and I just watched his mistress meet my mom, and then disappear into my mom’s townhome like new BFFs (Yes, the social butterfly I’m so lucky to call “mother” actually invited her in — and she went!)
• My husband doesn’t know that I know that’s his mistress — and maybe business partner — in the front unit. He does, however, now know that I’ve set up surveillance around the property, which is probably raising a few red flags…(but I definitely don’t plan to discuss it; like my discovery of the bungalow brothel, some things are best left unsaid)
• Hubby’s mom, Cruella, is likely eternally peeved that she’s seen the $2M townhome Hubby purchased for my mom, cementing the rumor into the realm of reality and infusing her anger with a bit more ammunition
• My dad is pretty oblivious to all of the above, but he’s definitely not overlooking my mom’s new multi-million-dollar life of luxury. If watching her kidnap Rufus wasn’t enough of a blow to incite some serious jealousy and spite, seeing her Italian villa-style townhome certainly will be.
• Oh, and everyone is probably looking at me like the very amateur stalker I am, wondering why I have a Ring app attached to my mom’s new townhome on my phone…
• Amidst all this, I am supposedly pursuing a divorce — hence the cameras outside my husband’s mistress’s residence. And the only person who might be onto me — and further spooked by my surveillance mishap — is the very person who can’t know yet: My husband.

Moral of the story? Technology can be your best friend or your worst nightmare; in my case, a little bit of both.

Moral #2: Always get indoor surveillance, as well.

My dad is about to bark up the wrong family tree

I’m not sure if social cues become duller or harder to grasp with age, or if my dad purposefully decided to reject reality, but somehow, he’s come out of his first — and very eventful — night at our house with a whole new outlook.

• He’s intrigued by my mom’s townhome — and the woman in the front unit. So intrigued he’s begging to stop by (under the guise of a visit to see Rufus).
• He’s wholly oblivious to the looks of disgust and contempt Cruella shot his way — and he was definitely out of earshot of her blowup with my husband. How do I know? Because he’s asking if she’s “on the market”. The last thing I need is for my toxic mother-in-law to double as my evil stepmother. This is turning into an anti-Cinderella story real quick.
• He’s convinced himself that my husband would be the perfect — and willing — partner to help him strike up a business, now that they live under the same roof. And he’s broaching the topic of mentorship or a full-on partnership between the two of them “to make the most of this new opportunity”.

I thought I was doing the right thing extricating my dad from a marriage he deemed toxic (and allegedly abusive), while also protecting him from the old age homes who made their financial-first motives very clear. However, watching his erratic, irrational thought pattern evolve, I wonder if I’m doing more harm than good bringing him here…. . .

How do the wealthy really deal with scandals and explosions?

If this were a semi-scripted Kardashian-esque TV show, rather than an awkward and dysfunctional reality, we would have escalated the confusion and revelations from the Ring production into a full-on brawl, all hands on deck. Instead, we did what we — subtly dysfunctional, seemingly harmonious, uncommunicative family members — do: Delay and disperse.

My husband rushed out to his office. Cruella returned to her own chemical peel-loving gossip circle, likely spreading the news of my parents’ drama (and “gold digging ways”) all across Southern California. My dad recoiled back into the imaginary world he’s been crafting inside his head.

The Ring-fueled scandal-embroiled explosion didn’t wait five minutes for a commercial break; it’s simmering beneath us right now, bubbling up like lava from a dormant volcano, due for its next grand eruption.

How do we deal with conflict that greets us at our front door? We don’t.

—

This post was previously published on Hello, Love.

***

You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything