My then-husband and I were in the process of refinancing our mortgage. The last thing I needed to send to the lender was a copy of their credit card statement, the only one I didn’t have access to. He was strangely evasive about sending it to me, but he finally delivered it a week later. Once I had a three-page statement in my hands, I scanned it and emailed it to the lender.

Little did I know that those three little pieces of paper would later end up on a divorce lawyer’s desk.

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We all know what is infidelity. It’s the late night text messages, the hotel room visits, the lipstick on the white collar or that strange scent of perfume on a blazer. Most of these metaphors are specific to men cheating, but it’s also women.

These could be Facebook messages or DMs. Infidelity can be anything that we wouldn’t want or feel comfortable with our partner knowing what we do or say with another person we are attracted to. However, financial infidelity is less well known. When I said, “My ex-husband committed financial infidelity,” many people looked at me blankly.

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“Financial infidelity” may not seem like such a big deal, but contextit can be a big deal that ends the marriage. It was for me. According to statistics42% of Americans have admitted to lying to their partner about their finances. If your spouse bought things without your knowledge, it break your trustbut you both could do it. You would have a conversation and, if your partner was willing, you would plan together how to do things differently, so that trust would not be broken in the future.

But for some types of financial infidelitya couple just can’t get over it.

When I first saw the credit card statement, I had just noticed that there was a $0 balance and I didn’t look much further, but when I scanned it further detail, a fee of $1,363.12 jumped out at me.

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He spent $1,363.12 on something? WHAT?!? I thought. I picked up the statement and started going through it line by line. I took out a calculator. What I discovered was more than disturbing.

Within two months, my then-husband and father of my children had spent nearly $20,000 on Paypal, eBay and other online websites purchasing what I would later discover were vintage signs to decorate his “man cave”.

That’s a lot of money to spend without your partner knowing. Some couples may be able to get over this, but let me add this very important context: our twins had just turned one a few months before.

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I had taken 4 months off work for maternity leave, and 10 of those weeks had not been paid. Once we returned to work, we paid $1,600 a month for child care. After not receiving 5 paychecks and paying an extra $1,600 a month, we were struggling financially.

The $20,000 my then-husband spent on his “man cave” decor didn’t go toward diapers, clothes, food, or daycare for our kids. He hadn’t even served a nice dinner out for the two of us – he had served him and him alone.

As a father and husband, he had chosen to spend $20,000 in less than two months on things for se while his wife and two babies struggled. This credit card statement indicated to me, with undeniable evidence, that although I thought I had married someone who would be a good husband and fatherI hadn’t done it.

All this secret shopping was about more than broken trust. They showed that we were operating with two different worldviews. Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship, 2023 research confirms thisand many marriages cannot survive without it.

For example: I breastfed and pumped two babies for over a year because formula was too expensive. I chose to do this to help my family save money and to do what I thought was best for my children. I sacrificed endless hours at work and at home, hooked up to a pump, so we didn’t have to spend more than $400-$800 a month. per child on the formula.

RELATED: 7 Little Ways You’re Unfaithful to Your Partner Every Day, According to Psychology

While I had been doing this for over a year, my then-husband wasted all the money I had potentially saved. two months. I could have understood a few purchases.

We all like nice things from time to time, but A value of $20,000? And without thinking about what his wife or children might need?

I couldn’t reconcile the difference between our worldviews: how I had sacrificed myself because it was best for our family and how he had selfishly spent all his money on himself. It was the beginning of the end, because how can two people stay married and raise children together as a “family” with such fundamentally different beliefs? There was much more that I was to discover later.

None of this is good. It was while going through his credit card statement line by line that I noticed strange credits and debits between him and his workplace, like when he charged himself $1.19 and then credited with $1,190.

Later when I confronted him about all the purchases And with the strange credits and debits, he admitted that he had embezzled his work. This, he admitted, was how he kept me from knowing how much money he was spending on his credit card because he was “paying him back” by stealing his work. I immediately called a divorce lawyer, and later that afternoon I dropped this three-page credit card statement on his desk and started filing the paperwork.

I could have maybe I overcame an adventure, a brief and exhilarating meeting which had made him temporarily forget his vows. But it was too much and I didn’t think I would ever get over it.

It had changed the way I saw him permanently. He was no longer a good father or a good husband.

This $20,000 secret showed me who he really was: a selfish, self-centered liar.

RELATED: I divorced because I was tired of being a single mom, married

Tara Blair Ball is a certified relationship coach, podcast co-host, and author of three books.