"My Mum Knew My Partner Was Cheating: The Three Warning Signs I Overlooked"

A WOMAN whose partner cheated on her has admitted there were three warning signs she ignored – but her mum didn’t.

Jessica, 36, had been busy raising the two she shares with her then-boyfriend of 10 years, so was completely oblivious to any red flags.

Jessica May has revealed the three warning signs she missed ahead of discovering her partner had been cheating on herCredit: facebook/jessicamay She found out about his infidelity when she borrowed his phone and found text messages to his loverCredit: instagram/jessicamay

But, looking back, she said there were indications of her indiscretion, including always being on his phone, working long hours and staying over at friends’ houses – telling her it was because it was “impossible” to find a taxi.

However, it wasn’t until she was having a “silly” argument with her mum that the truth about his cheating came to light.

Mid-row, her mum suddenly declared: “Just because he’s having an affair doesn’t mean you can speak to me like that!”

Jessica , from Norfolk, then ran upstairs to confront her partner, to which he insisted he wasn’t being unfaithful.

Despite his denial, it was from this point that Jessica began to start looking further into her mum’s claim – investigating things like why she didn’t get much at Christmas.

But it wasn’t until she had the opportunity to look through his phone that she was able to get concrete proof.

When her device ran out of battery while out for lunch, Jessica asked to borrow her partner’s to soothe their baby with some white noise.

Seizing the chance, she looked through his text messages, upon which she found a string of texts exchanged with his lover – some of which he’d sent while she was giving birth to their youngest.

She walked out of lunch, and told the Made by Mammas podcast that she had no idea how, but “he knew” that she’d found out.

“As I was walking away, he came after us,” Jessica recalled.

“I very calmly said to him, you’re not coming home with us. It’s probably the only time I was really the strongest out of the whole thing… and I went straight to my mum.”

She said she was “completely and utterly devastated”, and had no idea how she and their were going to “survive”.

“I fell to the ground and I cried so many times, because it was just heartbreaking,” she added.

When she confronted him at a later date, he said it had been a one-night stand, and nothing more.

But she went on to discover he was lying, after finding proof that the affair had been a long-running one, including a receipt in his work bag for an expensive Mulberry bag.

While he said he’d bought it for Jessica, but returned it because she “didn’t deserve” it, she checked with the store, who said that no such return had been made.

The pair tried to make it work despite his infidelity – with Jessica even giving up breastfeeding in a bid to rekindle some passion – until he moved out in 2022 to be with his mistress.

He and the woman he cheated on Jessica with are still together, with her children even calling her “step-mummy”.

“She is amazing with my children, and to have someone step in that step-mum role, you hear horror stories, and you’re growing up with step-mums and villains in the Disney movies,” she said.

“But she’s not that. She’s great, and my youngest daughter absolutely loves her to pieces.”

While her eldest is aware of how her father and “step-mummy” got together, their youngest is not.