A TikTok creator who posts as @kikimamaoriginal says she knew her marriage of 13 years was over the moment her husband told her he had been cheating on her.
In the first part of a video series titled “Divorce after Cheating,” the woman, who identifies herself only as Kiki, speaks directly to the camera and takes up a question many of her viewers have asked: whether women should stay in a marriage after infidelity.
“Here’s why I decided to divorce my ex husband of 13 years immediately after he told me he was cheating on me,” Kiki said. “Um, it was almost an immediate decision in my mind. Like the second the words came out of his mouth, I knew, um, and I wanted to explain why that was such an easy decision for me.”
She said that after learning of the affair, she researched infidelity and came to sort it into two categories.
“So after I had been cheated on and I found out this information, I did a lot of research and I realized, like, there’s two types of cheating in my mind,” she said. “There’s the cheating where it was impervious of judgment or, you know, it was like a slip up or. By the way, I’m not condoning cheating at all in this video, I’m. But I. What? But what I am saying is I do categorize cheating in two different ways.”
“The second way is long term or serial type cheating,” she continued. “Like, it just happens over and over again, maybe with like multiple people or in my case, like a relationship, basically a full courting situation.”
Kiki said her husband never told her the details of the affair, so she uncovered them on her own.
“Um, which I wasn’t told this information, but I had to find out myself and basically open a full on investigation and become a private detective, um, to be able to figure out all the details, because to this day, like, those details were never like told to me,” she said.
She said the cheating was only the final blow in a marriage that had been unraveling for months.
“Um, and so that was like, that was one thing, but then there was much more leading up to that. Before he even found out about the cheating that. When he told me, I was like, oh, OK, well, this is over. Like, you can excuse yourself, and we’re done,” Kiki said. “Because it wasn’t just the cheating that had caused me to get to this place where I was ready for divorce.”
Her former husband is not named in the videos, and her account could not be independently verified.
Gaslighting, abandonment and panic attacks
Kiki said the trouble began about 12 years into the marriage and centered first on the couple’s sex life. She said they were both raised in the Mormon church and married in a Mormon temple.
“What has started happening in the relationship after about 12 years was gaslighting around sex and full disclosure. We were raised in the Mormon church. We were married in the Mormon temple,” she said. “Sex relationship. It kind of, like, stayed the same for, like, the full 12 years until the last year. Basically trying to say that I was the problem.”
“It was being said to me that I had trauma around sex because of the way I was raised,” she said. “And I did question that because I didn’t really ever think that, and I always felt very comfortable with my sexuality, so I kind of always fought back on that. But that was definitely one thing where I was like, I just am not sure. And then I’m also not understanding why you’re unhappy with what’s been happening in the relationship. All of the sudden. Like, it just wasn’t, like, clicking or making sense to me. Um. And it was very much feeling like it was my fault.”
She also said she felt abandoned, describing a husband who frequently left and took little responsibility for their child.
“The next thing was just abandonment, like, through the roof. There was so many times where, you know, he would be, like, doing things and, like, fleeing and taking off, and, like, me telling him, like, you need to be more present,” Kiki said. “Like you. You can’t just like go do whatever you want and live on your own schedule and do things that you know you wanna do. Like there was no responsibility inside of watching our child or like doing anything like that.”
She said she paid for a full time nanny with her own money.
“If you did. It was very rare, maybe every couple of months because I, with my own money, had hired a full time nanny, so he would call it babysitting and it was like almost never,” she said. “We’d go on these work trips all the time and I would be telling him like, you can’t just leave. Like, I need you, I need support here.”
Kiki said she plans to post a separate video about warning signs she now believes she missed.
“Like, there’s I. I will make a video later about all of the things that he was doing that were like signs that he was cheating. And like, I don’t understand why I wasn’t clocking it,” she said. “Regardless, it was just like this abandonment of leaving me and just like making me feel like I was all alone and everything to the point where I just started feeling so alone and isolated.”
She said their conversations became circular arguments that never reached a resolution.
“So conversations would turn into this gaslighting and then this emotional abuse where it was like back and forth in like loops of conversations that would like never end anywhere,” Kiki said. “Because I think he was generally trying to create conflict and not ever come to a resolution because he wanted to justify his cheating.”
“So this, this loop would happen all, all the time. Like we would have these like, really intense conversations that would just loop and loop and loop, and we would never get down to anything,” she said. “And after, like, six months of this, I started having panic attacks at the end of the conversations because there was nowhere for us to go.”
She said she had never had a panic attack before.
“And I was so exhausted mentally that my body would break down and I would fall apart and. To the point where I would fall apart on the ground, and I would be, like, breathing heavy. And this is not the type of person. I’ve never had a panic attack before this in my whole life,” she said. “So to me, this was so foreign, I didn’t even know how to, like, cope with it. And. And he would just be, like, confused.”
“That psychological abuse just. I call it psychological abuse because it just kept happening so often, and it wasn’t even acknowledged,” Kiki said.
She said the breakdowns at times left her bedridden, and that their child, then 3 years old, saw her in that state.
“Um, to the point where I had been having so many breakdowns that I would be, like, bedridden with, like, the pillows over my head, so stimulated that I couldn’t even speak,” she said. “And he would be allowing our child, who was, like, 3 years old at the time, to be, like, coming in and seeing me, like, having these crying spells. And, like, this, I. I was generally going through a situational depression, and he just, quite honestly, just didn’t care.”
@kikimamaoriginal It’s time to share my story ❤️🩹 #cheating #divorce #infidelity
♬ original sound – Kiki🖤
A therapist, a deadline and a confession
Kiki said that after she ran out of places to turn in her community, she sought professional help.
“We got to the point where I basically had exhausted all of my options inside of my community and my friends. And everything. And, like, we just didn’t really know what else to do. We. It was just so out of character, his behavior and everything,” she said. “And this had been going on for more than six months. And so, um, I just knew, like, I. I couldn’t exist anymore.”
“So I, uh, contacted a therapist who specialized in part people who have partners with narcissistic behavior. And I didn’t even know if he was a narcissist. I didn’t know anything,” she said. “All I needed. All I needed was support and to understand what was happening. How can I figure out how to cope with what he’s doing.”
In a second video, Kiki picked up the story there.
“Now, I didn’t even know if he was a narcissist. I didn’t know anything. All I needed. All I needed was support and to understand what was happening,” she said. “I started seeing this therapist on a weekly basis.”
She said her husband knew why she was in therapy but treated it as a joke.
“And he knew why I was seeing this therapist because I told him, you’ve driven me to the point where I’m hopeless, and I’m so depressed that I. I need support and help,” Kiki said. “And. And so every Friday, I would go to therapy, and he’d be like, oh, did you talk about me today in therapy? And. And I’d be like, yeah, we talked about you today in therapy. Like, I don’t. Almost like a joke to him. Like, he wasn’t even taking it seriously.”
She credited the therapist with helping her see the relationship differently.
“Therapist asked me, like, how long. How much longer can you live with this? She really was the one who very first taught me, it’s not OK for a partner to treat you this way. It’s not OK for a partner to, like, not take responsibility when you have a child together,” she said. “It’s. And in my mind, I’m like a. Light bulbs were going off, like, oh, yeah, that isn’t OK.”
“Questions were asked, has he always displayed behaviors like this? And it was like, I mean, yeah, like, he always has. Uh, it’s just. It’s gotten worse. Um, but it’s always been there,” Kiki said. “So for me, it was a very definitive moment where I had fully realized, this person may get a little better, but he’s always going to be who he is. Um, and maybe he could change in therapy, but that’s not to me. And that would require him to change his entire personality.”
She said her husband left on a business trip just before Christmas Eve, despite her asking him to stay.
“She asked me this question. She said, how long do you think you can last at this, how this is going at this rate? Because it was just constant leaving me. Like, he literally went on a business trip, like, two days before or one day before Christmas Eve,” she said.
“Told him before the trip, I said, I. I don’t want you to go. Why aren’t you here for the holidays? Why do you have to go on a trip? And. And I said, is it mandatory that you need to go on this trip? No. OK, then why are you doing this? Like, it was just time after time,” Kiki said.
She said she told her therapist she could not continue that way for more than six months, and that she had reached the point of not wanting to live.
“After I told my therapist, like, I don’t think I can make it more than six months with this type of behavior, and I think I just need. This is all, mind you, before I knew that he was cheating,” she said. “And I would. I think I would rather die. I think. I don’t think I would want to live anymore if I had to, be treated this way and have to survive this way in a relationship. So I would have to file for a divorce in six months, because I just. I. For my mental health, I could not do it.”
Kiki said she tried repeatedly to save the marriage.
“Oh, I was trying everything I could at this point. Because I believe in loyalty. Like, at my core, I didn’t want this relationship to end,” she said. “I tried to check him into some type of therapy. I tried to get him to do ketamine therapy. I tried to do visualization and meditative therapy with him and I together. I tried to do everything I could, and I felt like nothing was working. It was just this behavior was still going on and on.”
She said her husband confessed the same day she discussed the six month timeline in therapy.
“Actually, the conversation in therapy was, like, about the six months happened. And that same day, he came home that night, sat on the couch, and told me that he cheated,” Kiki said.
She said her reaction was immediate and calm.
“Right away, I was like, OK, we’re done. And it was that thing that your body does where you just know in your core. And I knew that my body knew in my core, because I didn’t even have a tear,” she said. “I. It wasn’t this dissociation. It was peace. Complete peace. The grieving came later, but separation happened that night.”
Sharing her story
Kiki said she is posting the series to help others in similar situations and to reclaim a story she felt unable to tell for years.
“If you find yourself in a situation that’s similar to mine, this is why I’m making videos like this. I felt, like, almost silenced for so many years. About the hardest journey of my life and the hardest thing that I’ve ever gone through,” she said.
“And I have chosen to finally share my story because I’m no longer going to just be a victim and be on the defense with a shield up. I want to be able to be a mouthpiece and share my story,” Kiki said. “And I think it will be cathartic for me, but I also feel like it will help other people inside of what I’ve gone through and just be a tool for people.”
She said more videos are on the way.
“So keep following. I’ll be posting more about this. It’s basically a reality show. And yeah,” she said.
@kikimamaoriginal The massive support from my last video has been the most shocking part for me inside of sharing my story… I don’t know if it’s because I’ve gaslit myself or been manipulated so much by my ex about talking about these things, but I genuinely believed I would get backlash in the comments. There has not been ONE NEGATIVE COMMENT from hundreds on my last video. The opposite of so many people sharing their stories similar to mine. This is all I wanted. Transparency, conversation, community, support. So if you are reading this and you find yourself in a similar situation, take this as your sign to share your story. #cheating#divorce#infidelity
♬ original sound – Kiki🖤
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