Woman, 35, whose fiancé died on their wedding day, opens up about discovering he cheated on her

21 May 2024, 06:10

A 35-year-old woman has opened up after discovering her late husband-to-be, who died on the morning of their wedding, had been cheating on her. 

Kaitlin Palmieri, from New York, was devastated when her fiancé Eric, 33, tragically died from a heart attack on the morning that they were meant to get married in August 2020.

The pair had been together for more than two years after she met him on a dating app.

However, in a traumatic plot twist, Ms Palmieri later found out he had been cheating on her on what would have been her late partners 37th birthday.

Kaitlin discovered the truth after coming across an Instagram tribute dedicated to a man who had died with the same name and birthday as Eric, she told the New York Post.

It turned out this woman had also been dating Eric at the same time as Kaitlin, having met on a dating app back in 2019.

She said: "It felt like I'd been emotionally trapped and I couldn't run anywhere. I had so much frustration and nowhere to put it. He was gone.

"I was desperate for someone to tell me it wasn't true but in my heart I knew that it was and I wanted to burst."

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Not wanting to believe it was her late partner, Ms Palmieri reached out to the woman.

The other woman shared screenshots of her conversations with Eric, dating back to seven months before he asked Kaitlin to marry him.

Kaitlin said the messages the two shared were lewd in nature, with the prospective groom sending his last sexual message to the other woman only seven days before the wedding.

She was stunned realising that Eric, was not the man she thought she knew.

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In a tragic twist, Kaitlin revealed that this was not the first time she'd survived a lover, with her previous boyfriend Mike dying in a freak accident in 2015.

She said Mike fell unconscious after he slipped into water while they were out celebrating her 30th birthday.

He died six days later. Kaitlin said Eric had been 'wonderful' in helping her come to terms with Mike's death.

After years of grieving the loss of Eric, Kaitlin's grief slowly turned into anger, which is shared by her parents, who are both in their seventies.

She relocated to her native Long Island for support, ditching the apartment she'd shared with Eric in the Astoria neighbourhood of Queens, NYC. 

She now struggles with PTSD, anxiety and depression as a result of her fiancé's betrayal and along with parental support, she is seeking therapy.

She hopes opening up will help other women facing similarly difficult situations and said that even if someone has passed away, you don't have to "automatically" forgive them for hurting you.