<a class="postlink" href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/09/david-petraeus-cia-resign-nbc/1695271/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... c/1695271/</a> So, after Gen Petraeus resigned from his post at the head of the CIA, its been leaked that the FBI found out about his affair while in the middle of a different investigation. He got busted....accidentally. FOCUS: We've all done crazy things were not proud of- cheating, shoplifting, lying, etc. What's the one way you were caught that will stick with you forever? Was it completely by accident, or did a group of friends spring a trap on you to catch you? What, if any, were the consequences? ALT FOCUS: What measures have you gone to to catch a cheating spouse, a co-worker skimming off the top, friends lying through their teeth, etc?
Through a combination of being a sneaky bastard and clean living, I have been able to avoid any major situation in my life where I've been caught red-handed. In other news, sorry about the title edit dchavok - welcome to James Bond Week here at TiB!
Focus: As a kid, I used to steal Jolly Ranchers from Jewel. Then later I stole a PSP and a memory card from Best Buy. No idea why I did it. Stupid as shit, but just wanted to see if I could get away with it. Al Focus: I followed a girl to college, after we dated for a year and a half, not even to the same school, just the same region, left all my friends and put myself a good 60k+ in debt at a more expensive college. Surrounded myself with people that sounded and acted like the season 1 cast of Jersey Shore. A 45 days after getting there, started to suspect something was up. Facebook clued me in, pictures went up of these two looking very couply. She didn't tell me anything, I asked for answers, still got nothing. She forgot I had her passwords to her email and facebook. Locked her out of both, and told her to call me for the new passwords. She still didn't come clean, but it was super obvious she was hiding something, so I then checked her messages and boom there it was. She emailed herself pictures of them kissing. What a dumbass. Sidenote might be another thread: Waiting to see what comes out of the Petraeus thing. It'll be total bullshit if a qualified guy resigned because he got his dick wet on the side. We need to stop getting up in arms because someone had an affair. Is he good at his job? Yes? Great, let the man do his fucking job.
Focus: Disclaimer: Cheating is stupid. Don't do it. Spoiler I guess in this instance, I never got caught cheating--per se. But she knew. I knew she knew. The words were just never said. My girlfriend of 3 years, who I was crazy about, had broken up with me in my junior year of college, just as she was entering freshman year at her college. She wanted to be "free to explore," which at the time sounded like a lame excuse, but looking back, I don't blame her. About 5 months later, I started dating a girl from my hometown who I had reconnected with randomly. Sweet girl, great laugh, wholesome. A girl I could introduce to my family and they'd love her, but was a minx behind that girl-next-door persona. She got along with my friends, I got along with hers. It worked really well. But despite how well we worked together, there were always underlying feelings for my ex, and eventually, she came back into the picture. She had sent me a message on AIM (now the carrier pigeon of the instant message world) and things sprouted from there. Eventually, she wanted to come down and check out the party scene at my school. A very platonic and innocent sounding thing, but after arriving, she was naked in my bed before the front door shut all the way. At first, we kind of let the dust settle and decided that it was a one time thing and to chill out, but that didn't happen. The feelings were back, and strong. I began juggling two women--one who knew nothing and thought the world of me, another who knew she was the one on the side and didn't care, she just wanted me (should've been a sign). There were times when my ex would come down on Friday night, leave Saturday morning, and my girlfriend would come midday on Saturday for the rest of the weekend. For a brief moment, I'll admit, having sex with two women within--at one point--three hours of one another was kind of cool. But that faded fast and I was constantly paranoid. I began to get pressure from the ex to break up with the current girl, and eventually, like a shlub, I did just that. Since I had played it off like nothing was going on, I had been treating her the same I always had and the breakup was really sad. I hurt her a lot and I felt like shit. I told her something stupid, like that I needed some time to get things in order since I was graduating and didn't want to be unfair to her if I couldn't give her enough time. Just lies on top of lies. She actually accepted that, and unbelievably appreciated how mature and honest I was being--twisting the knife with her unwielding kindness. It would've been easier for me if she just flipped out and cut off all contact, but my "nice" way of breaking up with her only kept her close enough so that when word got out that I was back with my ex, all the pieces of the puzzle began to align for her and while she had the saintly ability to not tear into me, I knew that she knew. It's really the worst thing I've done to anyone. Not just because I cheated on her, but because she was one of the sweetest girls I had ever been around and I really took her for granted. In the end, about 5 months after my ex and I got back together, I got a call from her to say that she had hooked up with a guy the night before, and that she wasn't sure things would work out (ya think?). I had been sensing that something was up, but before I found anything, she came forward. So there I was again, alone and bummed out after a second dumping by the same girl I thought loved me and who I loved, wishing that I could've kept my dick in check and had the sense to tell her to stay the fuck away that night she asked to come to UConn.
He went public because the CIA has had problems in the past with people getting blackmailed over this kind of thing. Focus: A fuckbuddy figured out I was seeing another girl when she found an earring in my desk drawer while looking for a pen. Stupid of me, I should have just thrown the damn thing away. It's surprising how well the ,"but we're not exclusive right?" doesn't hold up.
Alt Focus: I caught an ex cheating by complete and utter accident. It was the summer after I graduated college and, like all dumbasses do, I decided to stay in our college town and try to find work just to 'live on my own' and 'be my own person', but really it was just because we were fucking 4-5 times a day and she was only a junior at the time. Granted, this relationship perpetuated solely on sex. We were terrible to each other when we weren't fucking, but because we had sex so often, it was easy to forget that we just weren't working. Don't blame me- I'm just a penis with a body attached at this point. Anyway, one night she borrows one of my movies (I can never watch National Treasure: Book of Secrets without getting pissed off ever again), and says shes going to hang out with a girlfriend of hers. No big deal. Her friend lives on campus and campus is two minutes away. Later on in the night, I need to make a run to the grocery store, so I text her to see if she needs anything. No response. Head out the door, drive down to the store (the route to which intersects with campus/where her "friend" lives) and her car is not in the parking lot (this is summer break, so the dorms are empty except for maybe 20-30 people, so its not hard to see who's there and who isn't). I immediately text her again. No response. I get my things from the store, head back home, still no car there. She doesn't get back until a couple hours later, which has given me time to get more and more pissed off. Immediately question her- she lies. Give her another chance- lies again. Finally tell her what I knew and she came clean. At some guys house watching the movie. He made her dinner and they watched the movie with his kid. All they did was "kiss". Its the first time I ever threw a cell phone at someone. Also, the first time I ever experienced how truly awesome a hate fuck is. Unfortunately, also the first time I was cheated on. Took her back. We broke up again a few months later and, thankfully, that was that.
I may have told this story here before. In college, we used to climb up on the roof of the gym / pool / fitness center and climb in the trap door roof access. We would then crawl out on the rafters over the diving pool and jump in. It had to be done naked, because it was a clever way to get girls naked and because it was college, and because, you know, alcohol. We start doing it so often and running our mouth about it that everybody was doing it. So, they locked the trap door and cut down the tree we used to climb up to the roof. One night, we (2 other guys, and 3 girls) decided to go jump and find a way in. We got a ladder, climbed up on the roof, and pulled away an air conditioner unit (oops! vandalism!) to gain access. Climb out on the rafters, throw down clothes, jump in - weeeee! Back up to three weekends earlier . . . party at my apartment. The cops come, say we're being too loud and if they come back, they're taking me to jail (since it's my apartment). So, after about an hour, the music is back up loud, there are more people spilling in and out of my apartment - did I mention the alcohol? I half-heartedly say to one of my buddies (ROTC and future Apache helicopter pilot) who is standing on the coffee table singing at the top of his lungs, "hey man, if the cops come back, I'm in trouble." He whips out his wallet, jokingly hands me his credit card and says, "Screw that - you can use this for bail!" "Well, I will!" And I stick the card in the back pocket of my jeans. Okay, jump forward in time to the Wednesday after the vandal-skinny dipping. (Credit card buddy did NOT participate in this event.) At lunch in the cafeteria, credit card guy sits down with me. As it turns out, they found HIS credit card in the rafters while investigating / repairing. It was still in my jeans, he hadn't missed it, and it fell out when I was taking them off. If he gets in trouble, he'll lose his scholarship and probably get booted from ROTC, and he was a junior. I was a senior and had about 1 month and a half to graduation. So, I wasn't going to rat on the other 5 with me, but credit card guy and I report to the campus police to 'xplain. Accept for leaving out the part about the other 5, I tell them the exact, real truth about what I was doing up there and how I got the card. They asked how I moved the AC unit by myself, and I told them somebody must've done that before I got there. They didn't believe a word of what we were saying. They still didn't believe the whole story, but I finally convinced them that credit card guy had nothing to do with the damage incident. I was disciplined by the Dean - included sitting in his office pleading to not be expelled, agreeing to pay the few hundred dollars in repairs, and working for free in the advancement office for 40 hours. Alcohol and college. High five!
I busted and on-again-off-again ex thanks to a Burger Croissan'Wich. To make a long and boring story short, she tried to be sophisticated and slutty in a small-town-college freshman kind of way and told me that she loved to treat herself to a Croissan'Wich after a one-night-stand. I let it go and didn't say anything one way or the other. Fast-forward-two years and she drops a visiting guy friend off at my place (where he was staying) because he was too drunk to drive and leaves with the announcement that Burger King was about to stop serving breakfast. I called her out on it that afternoon. The look on her face was priceless. Then there was lots of crying.
Alt focusI have never caught anyone being dishonest in a spectacular way. 4 out of 5 times it has been completely based on intuition. Usually, after that I would do the usual means of snooping to find proof so that if I did confront them about it there wouldn't be a chance of me looking like a totally paranoid, suspicious nutto. But, this isn't always the case. How I found out that one of my boyfriends had cheated on me was that I was on vacation, failing to fall asleep as per usual, and then all of a sudden my eyes shot open and all I could think was "He cheated on me." Went home, hung out with him, and out of the blue asked something along the lines of "hey, by the way, have you ever cheated on me?" And he looked like a deer in the headlights and told me that he had. But, even if I do decide to try to find something before saying something, I have never once gone looking for something and not found it. I often don't even bother to call them out on it unless I think it would be productive in some way. Sometimes it just makes me feel better knowing that I was right, and I just adjust my levels of trust accordingly. Similarly, I'm rarely blindsided when I find out about dishonesty in some other way - usually either by them fessing up or someone else telling me. I think it's a perk of being cynical. The last time I remember being really surprised by catching someone being a dick (all through reports from friends that ended up being true) was with my first boyfriend, and I think that was almost entirely due to naivete about the realities of relationships and that he was A Nice Guy (TM) and I hadn't learned yet that that is just another way of being an asshole, just more covertly. Focus: I've been caught doing less-than-honorable things a few times, but the one that will always stick with me most is when I got caught shoplifting since it was the most dramatic. It was the whole being stopped right at the door and dragged into a back room where I was searched and interrogated thing. I was with my best friend and her mom and I was just so embarrassed and felt so guilty and was more upset about dragging her into it (and my dad) then about any consequences I ended up having. (They basically amounted to nothing, in the end.) I haven't shoplifted since. I also STILL think about how my dad caught me and a few friends drinking some of his liquor when I was thirteen because I, to this day, have NO IDEA how he found out. He was gone for the weekend, and as soon as he came back he started yelling at me about drinking. I've even thought about asking him now, but I'm not sure he'd even remember.
Cheating would imply being in a relationship, and that's just silly. Although I did once cheat on my Ben & Jerry's with Breyers. NEVER AGAIN. Granted I see Haagen Dazs on the side, but B&J knows about it so it's cool.
FOCUS: Got caught shoplifting when I was 15. My stepbrother and I would go in to this little Rite-Aid and one would walk around randomly looking at stuff before buying something cheap, while the other would "discreetly" tear off the top of a 25-pack of Black and Milds, yank a few, and calmly leave. I'm shocked that it took them 3 times to catch on, they did that not approaching you but watching from a distance, another tried to head me off as I left without touching me, we never went back. Incident scared the living crap out of me. Alt: Been cheated on once. We worked together, so when she walked in one morning with a giant hickey on her neck that I hadn't put there, I was slightly suspicious. Best part was all my male coworkers seeing it and congratulating me on tearing that up. As far as general lies, despite being cynical and suspicious I'm usually good at sniffing bullshit. Most people suck at lying, and unless they're very skilled something sets off my gut feeling and after thinking about the situation for a moment I can usually weigh the likelihood of them being honest. Not explaining it very well, but yeah.