STARING at the screenshot message, widow Kaitlin Palmieri’s blood ran cold.
Three years after the love of her life died on their wedding day, here was the proof.
5
5
Kaitlin’s almost-husband had been hiding a terrible secret from her.
“I realised in a flash that our whole relationship had been a lie,” she says.
His betrayal seemed unimaginable from the man she had first met on a dating app back in February 2018.
“The minute we began talking I knew that this chatty, handsome guy was special,” Kaitlin says.
Read More on Relationships
Over the next two months Kaitlin, now 39, felt herself falling for Eric.
“I was developing real feelings for him, which meant telling him about the hardest experience of my life,” she says.
“As we sat on the sofa together on evening, I nervously turned to him and said, ‘I need to tell you about Mike.’”
In 2015 the New York school psychologist had been madly in love with Mike, a man she was sure that she’d marry.
“But on my 30th birthday, when my parents threw me a party at their house, there was a terrible accident,” she recalls.
Hearing someone scream Mike’s name, Kaitlin ran down the garden and saw Mike lying by the side of the pool.
“My brother, who was right beside him and white with shock, explained that Mike had been floating face down in the water,” she says.
“In hospital I prayed for him to recover. But with a broken neck there was nothing more they could do.
“Watching his life support machine being turned off was agonising. I felt like my heart was breaking.”
As Kaitlin finished telling Eric the story, she looked at his face, nervous of how he might react.
“Eric was amazing,” she says.
“He opened up about his own life and we had such a deep conversation.
“Our relationship became so much stronger after that. Six months later we moved in together.”
In December 2019 Eric took Kaitlin to Central Park and dropped to one knee.
5
5
“Seeing the ring on my finger was incredible,” she says.
“I thought that after losing Mike I’d never find happiness again. But here I was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I felt giddy.
“My friends and family were also thrilled. They loved Eric almost as much as I did, and after the tragedy of losing Mike, they loved seeing me so happy.”
Shopping for dresses and picking menus, Kaitlin couldn’t wait for the big day.
In August 2020 they sat down to their rehearsal dinner.
“I couldn’t stop looking at Eric, excited that in just a few short hours we’d be husband and wife,” she recalls.
“We kissed goodnight before heading to our own hotel rooms. We’d decided to keep with tradition and spend our last unmarried night apart.”
It was early next morning, her wedding day, when Kaitlin realised her phone was ringing.
She remembers: “I was so confused. Had I accidentally overslept? But even in my worst nightmares I couldn’t have imagined what I was about to hear.
“My mum told me I needed to go down to the lobby. Her voice was so strange and serious.
“I asked her to tell me why and there was a moment of silence that felt like it lasted forever.
“Then she said ‘Eric died early this morning.’”
In shock and struggling to breathe, Kaitlin was carried back to her parent’s house. There she lay silently for hours.
“When I saw my beautiful wedding dress hanging there, unworn, it broke me,” she says.
“I tore off my engagement ring and flung it across the room.”
The days ahead were an agonising blur.
“Instead of being on honeymoon with my new husband I was standing at his funeral, my heart shattered into a million pieces,” Kaitlin says.
I veered from furious to sick and dizzy, unable to catch my breath
Kaitlin Palmieri
“When I learned that Eric had died from a heart attack age 33, caused by an underlying health condition he hadn’t even known about, I struggled to process it.
“There were waves of anger, shock, physical pain. I felt them all.”
When Mike died, Kaitlin struggled to let other people help her in her grief.
“This time I had therapy and joined support groups,” she says.
“I read and wrote about grief and even shared my story online.”
The response was amazing, with people reaching out to offer her support.
“Some even shared their own experiences, including one woman who told me about her own loss. We followed each other on Instagram,” she says.
Three years later, in 2023, Kaitin was still grieving.
She says: “My wedding dress still hung on my wardrobe, and I still thought about the future Eric and I should have had together, the life that was so cruelly snatched away from me.
“I’d kept the engagement ring and put in on for special occasions, times when I wanted to feel closer to him and honour what we had.”
Then, on what would have been Eric’s birthday in November 2023, Kaitlin was scrolling through Instagram when a post caught her attention.
“It included Eric’s last name and birthday, which was such a weird coincidence,” she says.
“Without hesitating, I clicked on it.”
Katlin read the post, which was about a man who’d died and how grateful this woman had been to have spent his last birthday together.
“For a second I thought, surely this couldn’t be my Eric? Then I saw his full name, and Snapchat handle,” she recalls.
“Looking properly at the account I realised in horror that this was a woman who’d reached out after I’d written about losing Eric.”
With a pounding heart Kaitlin sent her a message, asking what was going on. Two anxious hours later she had a reply that blew her world apart.
“This woman admitted that she’d met Eric in 2019, on the same dating app he’d met me,” Kaitlin says.
Four red flags your partner is cheating
Private Investigator Aaron Bond from BondRees revealed four warning signs your partner might be cheating.
They start to take their phone everywhere with them
In close relationships, it’s normal to know each other’s passwords and use each other’s phones, if their phone habits change then they may be hiding something.
Aaron says: “If your partner starts changing their passwords, starts taking their phone everywhere with them, even around the house or they become defensive when you ask to use their phone it could be a sign of them not being faithful.”
“You should also look at how they place their phone down when not in use. If they face the phone with the screen facing down, then they could be hiding something.”
They start telling you less about their day
When partners cheat they can start to avoid you, this could be down to them feeling guilty or because it makes it easier for them to lie to you.
“If you feel like your partner has suddenly begun to avoid you and they don’t want to do things with you any more or they stop telling you about their day then this is another red flag.”
“Partners often avoid their spouses or tell them less about their day because cheating can be tough, remembering all of your lies is impossible and it’s an easy way to get caught out,” says Aaron.
Their libido changes
Your partner’s libido can change for a range of reasons so it may not be a sure sign of cheating but it can be a red flag according to Aaron.
Aaron says: “Cheaters often have less sex at home because they are cheating, but on occasions, they may also have more sex at home, this is because they feel guilty and use this increase in sex to hide their cheating. You may also find that your partner will start to introduce new things into your sex life that weren’t there before.”
They become negative towards you
Cheaters know that cheating is wrong and to them, it will feel good, this can cause tension and anxiety within themselves which they will need to justify.
“To get rid of the tension they feel inside they will try to convince themselves that you are the problem and they will become critical of you out of nowhere. Maybe you haven’t walked the dog that day, put the dishes away or read a book to your children before bedtime. A small problem like this can now feel like a big deal and if you experience this your partner could be cheating,” warns Aaron.
“She lived in another state and saw Eric when he told me he was travelling with work.
“Denying that she’d known anything about me she claimed to have only discovered my existence after Eric’s death.
“Reading that they’d still been in contact fifteen days before our wedding, that he’d sent her messages while I sat beside him planning the next chapter of our lives together, I felt sick.”
Kaitlin looked at the screenshots the woman had attached and felt like she was trapped in a nightmare.
“I veered from furious to sick and dizzy, unable to catch my breath,” she explains.
“I didn’t care that this woman said that she was sorry, that she said she hadn’t wanted me to find out. This had exploded my whole world.
“As for Eric, how could this possibly be the same man I’d loved, the man I’d grieved over for three painful years?”
Kaitlin was desperate for others to share her outage but discovered that many people simply didn’t want to know.
She explains: “My friends and family were amazing. But so many others simply said, ‘He loved you,’ as if that explaining anything.
“How could he possibly have loved me if he did this to me? That wasn’t love.
“I realised that when someone dies, people don’t want to hear about bad things they’d done. They’d rather cling to the memories of them as a perfect person.”
It left Kaitlin struggling with the knowledge that she’d never really known Eric at all.
“Where could I put all my anger and betrayal?” she says.
“I couldn’t confront Eric or hear whatever explanation he had to offer. I’d been robbed of the chance to walk away.
“It was also hard to face up to the years I’d lost, mourning a man it turned out I didn’t know and a loving relationship I’d never really had.
“I was left totally powerless with all this fury that had nowhere to go.”
I just want people to know that however dark today feels, you really can find hope again
Kaitlin Palmieri
But thanks to therapy, and the support of friends and family, Kaitlin worked towards finding peace.
“It helped me to decide that I wasn’t going to be ashamed,” she says.
“I was determined to speak about what had happened to me.”
Kaitlin says now that learning the truth about Eric freed her.
“I could stop mourning a man who never deserved me,” she says.
“I could date without his shadow, and without the vision of our perfect life together that I’d clung to for so long.”
Which is how, in January 2024 Kaitlin reconnected with an old school friend.
“After just a few months of dating we both knew we had something special,” she says.
“In December we got engaged and our wedding is set for April.
“I’m so happy, looking forward to a future with an amazing man. I just want people to know that however dark today feels, you really can find hope again.”
5
