Woman says she thought her best friend was leaning too hard on her husband — then the friend confessed the affair and said they were planning to take her daughter too

A woman on Reddit said what first looked like an emotionally messy friendship problem inside her marriage turned out to be far worse. In a story later collected by r/BestofRedditorUpdates, she wrote that her husband and her best friend, Karla, had started talking constantly, with Karla calling him three to eight times a day and keeping him on the phone for over an hour at a time while he brushed it off as her being lonely. The woman said it got to the point where she felt like a third wheel in her own marriage and finally pushed for a direct conversation.

That conversation blew the whole thing open. In the update preserved in the BORU thread, she wrote that Karla admitted she and the husband had been having an affair for about three months and that it had turned physical about a month earlier. She also said the two had been planning to leave together after he served divorce papers. What made the confession much darker, though, was the second bombshell Karla allegedly dropped: the husband planned to pressure the woman into terminating her parental rights so Karla could adopt their daughter instead. The woman wrote that Karla handed her paperwork tied to that plan before leaving.

The post makes clear the betrayal landed on top of an already brutal medical reality. She wrote that after giving birth she suffered a near-fatal labor complication, needed two blood transfusions, and later had another procedure because retained placenta caused more problems. She also said doctors told her another pregnancy could kill her, which ended any possibility of the larger family her husband wanted. In her telling, while she was still recovering and medically restricted for months, he grew resentful over the lack of sex and eventually started the affair with her best friend.

From there, the situation turned openly coercive. In another update, she wrote that she found a lawyer willing to work with her at a reduced rate while her in-laws helped cover the cost because she was a stay-at-home mom and college student. She said she filed for a protection order after receiving threatening texts from both Karla and her husband, including messages she believed effectively confirmed the blackmail over signing away her rights. She also said her husband refused to provide anything for the baby unless she voluntarily terminated her rights, while his own mother and stepfather were covering the child’s needs.

The court update gave her the outcome she had been fighting for. She wrote that she received full custody of her daughter, while her ex was limited to supervised visitation. According to her account, the judge was furious after seeing proof of the threats and the attempt to pressure her into giving up her child. She also said the protection order was granted, that child support was ordered, and that her mother-in-law volunteered to supervise visits until the divorce was final. Then came another painful twist: she wrote that after court, her ex said if he could not get primary custody, he wanted to petition to terminate his own parental rights so he would no longer be tied to her.

The thread did not even end there. In a later update, she said Karla called crying to report that the husband had attempted suicide by overdosing on prescription medication and had been hospitalized. In a comment quoted in the BORU post, the woman said he was bipolar and appeared to be in a severe manic episode when everything collapsed. Even after all the harm he had caused, she wrote that she was not pressing charges over Karla breaking the protection order in that moment because it had been a genuine emergency.

What makes the story hit so hard is how completely it changes shape. It starts with a wife feeling uneasy about how much access her best friend has to her husband, then turns into an affair reveal, then a custody and blackmail fight, and finally a courtroom battle over whether she will keep her own child. By the end, the emotional center of the story is not really the affair anymore. It is the sheer scale of the plan she says was unfolding behind her back: not just replacing her in the marriage, but trying to erase her from motherhood too.

Here’s the original Reddit post.