Fiancée was told plus ones were canceled for his Cancun work trip. She checked his flight booking — and found a second ticket under 'Ashley'

Sometimes reality feels stranger than fiction. A woman named Gabriella experienced just that when her fiancé, Anthony, refused to take her on his company trip to Cancun. He told her that his boss had cancelled all plus-ones on the trip. Suspicious, Gabriella logged into his work email, only to find a second ticket booked under "Ashley," — a name Anthony has tattooed on himself. In a 5-part series, starting on October 18, 2026, host Daniella Szetela narrated her story on The Call Me Back podcast (@thecmbpodcast). The videos have collectively received over 100,000 views.

The Cancun cover-up

The couple had been together for five years when the shocking incident happened. Anthony, a leading sales professional in his company, won a trip to Cancun, and Gabriella assumed that she would be his plus-one. Despite nagging him for several months, Anthony still hadn’t booked her ticket, which led to a fight between them a day before the trip. The fact that he had booked his ticket months ago further escalated the tension. When Gabriella asked him about it, he said his boss had cancelled plus-ones for all the employees. "Something felt a little off, so I messaged one of his co-workers' girlfriends, who I knew was going, and she responded saying that she had no idea what I was talking about," she recounted.

Ashley was no stranger

Driven by suspicion, Gabriella logged into Anthony's gaming computer and tracked down the confirmation email of his Delta flight. She noticed that a second ticket was booked under a woman’s name — Ashley, the same name that her fiancée had tattooed on his arm. Every time she asked him about the tattoo, he refused to say anything. A little research suggested Ashley was his high school girlfriend whom Anthony dated a few years after high school. That’s when Gabriella realized why Anthony had started acting weird ever since he went to his high school reunion a few months ago. “So when I saw the name Ashley on the flight conversation, my heart sank,” Gabriella had written.

A desperate chase

Gabriella now had three options: confront Anthony, ask his co-worker’s girlfriend to spy on him during the trip, or buy herself a ticket for the same trip and catch him there. In part 3 of the episode, the host revealed she went with the third option. Gabriella landed in Cancun a few hours earlier than her fiancé. Seeing Anthony walk off the flight with another woman freaked her out. She wanted to confront him, but all she could do was dwell in grief. Next, Gabriella hired an Uber, paid $200, and pulled out Google Translate. She asked the driver to follow Anthony’s car. He felt like an "angel from heaven" because the driver followed Anthony all the way to the resort.

An awkward introduction

Gabriella froze when she saw Anthony jump out of the car and walk into the hotel with the other woman. “I went into a full panic mode. I’m like, am I in a movie? I feel like I’m almost getting a pass out. All I want at this point is to hug my mom,” she described. Gabriella messaged Michelle, the girlfriend of Anthony’s co-worker. She met her and told her everything. “She’s absolutely floored. She was almost just as angry as I was,” she described. In the evening, Michelle and his boyfriend came across Anthony. To their utter shock, he introduced the other girl as a friend because his fiancée couldn’t get off work, a blatant lie.

The confrontation

Michelle and her boyfriend allowed Gabriella to stay in their room and set up a scene to catch Anthony. The co-worker asked Anthony to meet him at the beach the next day. But instead of him, he met Gabriella at the beach. Anthony looked at her like he had seen “a mountain lion on a solo hike.” She made him call his mom, whom she was close to, and confess what he had done. Gabriella then ripped the engagement ring and threw it in the ocean behind her. She even asked the hotel staff to send an anniversary gift to Anthony’s room, to expose him to Ashley.

Infidelity in long-term relationships

Anthony and Gabriella had been together for half a decade, and unfortunately, cheating in long-term relationships is not a rare occurrence. In fact, research (Brogaard, 2015, ch. 8) mentioned that 60% of all married individuals in the United States will cheat on their spouse at some point during their marriage. Surprisingly, the report also shared that the spouse of the cheating partner remains aloof about the infidelity in 70% of the cases. Meanwhile, 80% of those who catch their cheating partners eventually forgive them, unlike Gabriella. But why do people in long-term relationships cheat? Well, Psychology Today says that in such cases, infidelity indicates that one of the partners is looking for more excitement or there is something wrong in the relationship.

'Sounds like a movie plot'

Meanwhile, viewers were baffled to learn about a man like Anthony. They asked Gabriella why she didn’t notice the red flags, like the name on his tattoo. @voishebnajazjizn commented, “Sounds like some bad AI c-drama.” @leonoor2607 said, “However this turns out, ‘Who wants to marry a man who refuses to tell you the meaning of a woman's name tattooed on his body and who lies about a work trip being only for coworkers?’”

You can follow The Call Me Back podcast (@thecmbpodcast) on Instagram for more interesting dating and romance stories.

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