Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty
Ari Paez, 29, had been dating her boyfriend Jake* (not his real name) for about six months but had increasingly grown suspicious of his interactions with his ex-girlfriend.
“I would see her name pop up on his phone quite often,” she says. “At first I was a little sketched out so I snooped on his phone but it all seemed very friendly, the messages weren’t really flirtatious, so I tried to be the cool girl and be like ‘some people are friends with their ex’ it doesn’t mean anything.”
But the uneasy feeling in her stomach that something was awry only continued to grow when Jake and his ex would go on trips together.