Woman Finds Out What Her Dad Is Actually Doing During His So-Called ‘Business Trips’

Many children grow up holding idealized images of their parents — often shaped by innocence and the assumptions of youth.

For one 26-year-old woman, that comforting illusion shattered after a discovery that forced her to see her father in an entirely new light.

What she once believed were years of devoted business travel turned out to be something far more personal.

“I grew up thinking my dad was this super dedicated businessman, always flying out ‘for clients,’” she wrote in a Reddit post.

He would return from his supposed trips with souvenirs like “little hotel soaps” and stories about crowded airports and early-morning meetings.

But everything changed when her mother stumbled upon a grocery receipt from a small town just two hours away — the same town where her father’s ex-girlfriend lived.

That single clue unraveled the story he had built. “[My mother] called me crying, and I didn’t want to believe it,” the woman recalled.

Searching for answers, she turned to his Facebook check-ins — “yes, he still uses those,” she added — and found they lined up perfectly with the same weekends and the same town over several years.

When she confronted him, his explanation only deepened her disappointment. He insisted it “wasn’t cheating” because “we mostly just talked,” claiming he “needed space to feel like himself.”

Her response was cutting: “My mom calls it betrayal, he calls it self-care. I call it the most pathetic midlife crisis I’ve ever seen.”

Commenters online didn’t hold back. One wrote, “He 100% cheated.”

“Even if he didn’t physically cheat, it was an emotional affair,” another said. “And not just a random fling — it was with someone he was once deeply involved with.”

Others noticed the irony in his long-running deception. “Dude had a whole box of hotel soaps to help sell the lie,” one user joked.

Amid the sympathy and outrage, one sentiment echoed through the thread: heartbreak for the daughter and her mother, and disbelief that anyone could call such betrayal “self-care.”

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