Marriage crumbles when woman talks in sleep and reveals secret to husband

Mary Duncan

*This is a work of nonfiction based on actual events I experienced firsthand; used with permission.*

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What would you do if you had suspicions of your wife cheating on you? If there were clues here and there, little things that may or may not add up, but then what if there’s one glaring fact you can’t escape from?

The fact that your wife talks in her sleep, and she’s been talking about your cousin.

I met Christina when I worked at a restaurant years ago and shortly after I started working there she began dating one of the cooks, Ben. He was one of the sweetest guys I’d ever met and was very soft-spoken and sweet. Nothing like Christina, who could be loud and brash and loved to be the center of attention.

They were definitely an odd pair, and I wasn’t sure what they saw in each other or why they thought it would work out because their personalities were so different. But, time passed and eventually Ben proposed to her and Christina accepted.

They had a big wedding full of family and friends, and they seemed so happy on their wedding night I really thought that they might have a chance at things working out.

After the wedding life went back to a new kind of normal for them. They both still worked at the restaurant with me, and as the months went by I noticed that Ben started becoming even more quiet and withdrawn than usual, and Christina was the opposite, more loud and flirty with the customers.

One night about a year after they were married, Ben suddenly quit working at the restaurant, and Christina came in on the evening of the last shift he was supposed to work looking totally devastated.

“What happened?” I asked her on a break.

That’s when Christina explained to me that she’d had a lifelong problem of talking in her sleep. She’d tried to do things in the past to stop it, because it annoyed her partners and sometimes really embarrassed her. She tried sleeping pills and anxiety meds before bed to try not to talk in her sleep, but it just kept happening anyway.

“I was talking about Rob in my sleep,” Christina said.

“Rob, Ben’s cousin?” I asked, and she nodded gravely.


“Well, what were you saying?”

“Very inappropriate things,” she admitted.

Then, Christina told me that she had been having an affair with Ben’s cousin Rob since shortly after the wedding, which is where they first met. Apparently, Christina said, sparks flew between them and they had amazing chemistry, more chemistry and passion than she and Ben had ever had, and she wanted to leave Ben for Rob, who, admittedly, she was much more suited for.

I was shocked - not so much that Christina had cheated, I could see that coming from her, but I was shocked at the way Ben had found out.

What a horrible thing, to be laying in bed next to your wife and have to listen to her talking about intimate things that were going on between her and your cousin.

It wasn’t long before Ben filed for divorce from Christina, and Christina moved right in with Rob.

How would you have reacted if you were Ben?

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I write about the weird complexities of relationships to make a better life for me and my daughter through words. https://ko-fi.com/maryduncan

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