Married at First Sight's Simone Lee Brennan has opened up about discovering her partner was cheating. Photo / Channel 9
Married at First Sight's Simone Lee Brennan has opened up about discovering her partner was cheating. Photo / Channel 9
Married At First Sight bride Simone Lee Brennan has opened up about her heartbreak at discovering her long-term partner was cheating on her.
The 30-year-old, who appeared on the second season of the dating reality show, confessed on her blog that she found out her boyfriend of four years, Kurt,* was in contact with multiple women after secretly going through his phone back in 2012.
She wrote: "Wednesday morning, 2:30AM. I punched in the pin code and I was in. Complete access to texts, Facebook, emails. Scroll. Quick. Apps, what apps? Facebook. Facebook chat. Texts. Scroll. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Gemma. Sarah. Jessica. Alana. Emma. Lisa. Tegan. Monica.
Send me some photos.
"I sat on the lounge room floor, in pitch black, hands trembling in fear he would wake and catch me in the act. I scrolled fast. I clicked so quick, I read quick.
"I didn't read everything. I felt I didn't have time to read everything. But I read enough."
Brennan went on to detail the heartwrenching moment she confronted him about the cheating.
"I left for work, much earlier than usual," she wrote.
"I opened up my car and made it 100 metres up the road to a car park. I stared out to the ocean, took a deep breath and then I cried. And I cried. And I cried. I couldn't breathe any more.
"An hour or so later, I drove back home, put the key in my front door and walked down the hallway to the bedroom, where he lay awake, on his phone.
"The first words that came out of my mouth? 'Give me your phone'. His response? 'No'."
It was Kurt's next actions that seemingly confirmed his guilt.
"He purposely locked his phone by punching in the incorrect pin five times too many. Then he turned it off. And put it back in his pocket. I did try to get it from him and he pushed me back.
"He had excuses for everything. He said I was overreacting. He said I misunderstood conversations I had read. He even said the whole situation was 'kinda funny' if I really thought about it. And then he said he had to go to work.
"'Will you be home when I get back?' he asked. 'Yes,' I said.
"As soon as he shut the front door behind him, I grabbed the suitcase from the top shelf of our closet, and I packed as much as I could, as fast as I could, into this one bag. I threw my suitcase in the back of my car, and I drove away. I drove out of Newcastle, down the freeway, crying, almost unable to breathe, all the way home to Sydney."
Brennan also revealed she felt "ruined" for "a very long time".
"After four years, with Kurt being my main focus, it was all I knew. He was all I knew. He was it. He was The One," she said.
Fortunately, Brennan eventually managed to get her life back on track after arriving back to her hometown of Sydney "completely and utterly broken".
"I had forgotten how big the world actually was for a minute there. Some days were tougher than others; I definitely had my moments of sadness, over the top breakdowns.
Simone was paired with Xavier on Married At First Sight, but sadly that relationship didn't work out. Photo / Channel 9
"I particularly remember this one day, I got off the bus at Wynyard Station and I was walking down Hunter St to work and I just thought, I could just stop right now, and maybe I could just sit here, and cry, and I wonder, would anybody really notice, because I don't think I can do this.
"But, I didn't. I kept walking, heels high, head high, into the office, smile on my dial. And I did that every day until it no longer felt like a chore."
These days, Brennan is working as a fulltime makeup artist in Melbourne.
