AITA for calling off my wedding after finding a second phone hidden in my fiance closet. I am going to lay out everything that happened three days before my wedding, and I still cannot believe how close I came to marrying a stranger. My name does not matter, but the man I was about to marry, I will call him Mark, had been my partner for four years. We met in college, moved in together after graduation, and everyone around us said we were the perfect couple. His family adored me, my family adored him, and the wedding planning had gone smoothly for almost a year. Three days before the wedding, I was looking for an extra phone charger in his closet because mine had stopped working. Instead of a charger, I found a small black phone hidden inside an old shoe box. My stomach dropped immediately. I did not want to believe what I was seeing, but curiosity took over. The phone was locked, but I knew Mark used the same passcode for everything since the day we met. I typed it in, and it worked. What I found inside broke something inside me forever. There were months of messages between him and a woman named Jenna. They were not just friendly messages. They were plans. Plans to meet up after the wedding. Plans to keep seeing each other quietly while he stayed married to me. I read one message where he told her that marrying me was about stability and family expectations, but she was the one he actually wanted. I felt like the floor disappeared beneath me. I sat there in silence for almost an hour, staring at the screen, rereading every message until the words blurred together. When Mark came home that evening, I confronted him with the phone in my hand. His face turned pale. He tried to explain that it was a mistake, that Jenna meant nothing, that he was scared of losing me so he never ended things properly. I asked him how long this had been going on, and he admitted almost two years. Two years of lies while I was choosing flowers and dress fittings. Two years while I trusted him completely. I told him the wedding was off right then and there. He begged me to reconsider, saying he loved me and it was just a mistake he could fix. I looked him straight in the eyes and asked him one simple question. If I had not found that phone, would he have married me anyway while planning to keep seeing her. He hesitated, and that hesitation told me everything I needed to know. I called my parents that same night, and my mother nearly fainted when she heard what happened. My father wanted to drive over and confront him immediately, but I stopped him. This was something I needed to handle myself. The next morning, I called every vendor to cancel the wedding. The caterer, the florist, the venue coordinator, all of them were confused and sympathetic once I explained briefly what had happened. Mark kept calling and texting, sending long paragraphs about how sorry he was and how he wanted a second chance. I ignored every message. Then something unexpected happened. Jenna herself reached out to me. She said she also had no idea Mark was engaged until two months into their relationship, and by then she was already emotionally invested and afraid to walk away. She apologized for her part in it, though I still have mixed feelings about her honesty. Now I am sitting here, surrounded by wedding gifts that need to be returned, a dress hanging in the closet that I never got to wear, and a ring I mailed back yesterday. My family says I dodged a bullet, and part of me knows they are right. But another part of me mourns the future I thought I was building for four years. I keep replaying our relationship in my mind, wondering how many other lies I missed, wondering if the version of him I loved ever truly existed. Some friends say I should have confronted him privately without cancelling everything so publicly, that I embarrassed him unnecessarily in front of family and friends. Others say I did exactly what needed to be done to protect myself from a lifetime of betrayal. I have not spoken to Mark since the day I handed back the ring. I do not know if I made the right choice by ending things so abruptly instead of trying counseling first. Was I wrong for calling off the wedding completely instead of giving him a chance to fix things.
