My husband’s hideous betrayal hurt so much that I demanded my new boyfriend take a lie detector test… his reaction shocked me

Jessica Stricklin thought she was perfectly happy with her life.

At 22, she married her boyfriend of three years only a week after her college graduation, and couldn’t wait to start a family with ‘the love of her life’.

But, just days after celebrating their first wedding anniversary in 2021, her white-picket-fence dreams came crashing down. 

Jessica’s husband came home from work early and coldly informed her he had cheated before their wedding.

The only reason he was confessing now, he claimed, was because the woman he had conducted an affair with was blackmailing him. 

She had already got $1,000 out of him and was now demanding more.

To make matters worse, Jessica knew the woman in question, as they had grown up in the same small Tennessee hometown and even attended Girl Scouts together.

‘He knew he couldn’t get away with it, so he was forced to tell me,’ Jessice, now 26, told the Daily Mail. ‘I was just in shock. I was like, there’s no way that this is my life. I would have never stood up and said “I do” had I known what he had been doing.’

Jessica Stricklin’s husband was cheating before they even got married

Jess and her new partner Tyler (pictured) met six months after she ended her first marriage

After growing up in a very religious home, however, divorce was never an option she’d allowed herself to consider.

But, following a family vacation to New York City for Jessica’s 24th birthday – around a year after she learned of her husband’s betrayal – she finally knew what she had to do.

She had asked the universe for a ‘sign’ to leave her cheating husband, and he had promptly forgotten her birthday.

‘He didn’t text me or anything until I brought it up,’ she said. ‘I was like, “Okay, maybe this is my sign”.’

Returning home from the trip, she logged into her husband’s Snapchat account and discovered messages from other women – including some he had made plans to meet up with.

It was the last straw and Jessica filed for divorce.

In that moment, she vowed never to get remarried unless she knew every skeleton in her partner’s closet – even if it meant going to extreme measures.

As she slowly regained her confidence, Jessica decided to join a group therapy class called ‘Dating After Divorce’.

During one session, she was instructed to create a list of non-negotiables for a future partner. One of the top requirements she listed was a polygraph test.

Also known as lie detectors, polygraphs involve being hooked up to a machine that tracks physiological responses – such as heart rate or blood pressure – to detect if someone is telling the truth.

They are most commonly used by police or forensic scientists seeking to solve crimes – not to help soothe scorned ex-wives – and their reliability has been hotly contested.

But when her class was supportive of the idea, Jessica felt emboldened to share her demand with future partners.

‘I knew that if I [was] going to get married again, that’s a huge commitment for me. I need them to make a huge commitment in turn, and that’s what I thought it would take,’ she said.

Jessica (pictured with Tyler) decided she would only be able to trust a new partner if they took a polygraph test

‘I knew that if I [was] going to get married again, that’s a huge commitment for me. I need them to make a huge commitment in turn, and that’s what I thought it would take,’ she said. 

A polygraph, or lie detector test, measures physiological responses, such as heart rate or blood pressure, to detect if someone is telling the truth

Jessica, who now works as a betrayal and breakup coach, ended up meeting her new partner, Tyler, just six months after her marriage ended.

He had already shown her in a short time that he was trustworthy and dependable, and so she dared to raise the prospect of a polygraph test.

‘It sort of came up organically with the discussion about my past and how that shaped my beliefs, my expectations and what I want in my future relationship,’ Jessica explained.

‘It was never like “you have to do this”. It was just, these are the things that I want in my relationship and we either want the same things or we don’t.’

To her surprise, Tyler took the request in his stride, with Jess describing his response as so nonchalant that it was as if she had asked him to take out the trash.

He said he completely understood and would do it if it made her more secure.

Yet while a lie detector test may have temporarily helped Jessica feel more confident in her choice for a partner, Susan Winter, a relationship expert and author of Breakup Triage: The Cure for Heartache, warned that insisting upon a polygraph is ‘a little extreme’.

‘It’s understandable to want to prevent further trauma by carefully filtering any prospective partners. However, much of the responsibility for inner healing lies with us,’ she told the Mail.

‘The best we can do is to carefully filter for character traits that are consistent within the individual, such as integrity, loyalty, and honesty.’

Ultimately, this was something Jessica worked out for herself.

‘I got really into life coaching, personal development, and how much control we actually have over our lives, which was refreshing coming out of a situation where I didn’t have very much control,’ she said.

And, ultimately, she realized it was her ‘anxious attachment and codependent tendencies’ that she really had to kick before investing in someone new.

To do this she attended trauma-healing intensive therapy sessions, hired a ‘betrayal trauma’ coach and worked to develop her own self-trust.

In the end, her hard work paid off. Jessica and Tyler decided not to go through with the polygraph test and married earlier this month.

In the end, the couple decided not to go through with the polygraph test and married earlier this month

‘I’m definitely more comfortable with uncertainty. Now, I know that you may never feel 100 percent certain in anything, but you have to make a move anyway or you’re going to spend the entire rest of your life frozen,’ Jessica said.

Though that’s not to say she’s entirely gone off the polygraph idea, likening a lie detector to a prenuptial agreement – but one that, instead of protecting your assets, guards your heart.

‘When you’ve been with someone who would do anything to hide the truth, it’s very different to be with someone who would do anything to prove the truth,’ Jess said.

‘If someone has major trust issues due to something that was out of their control, and someone else comes along who wants to help rectify that even though they didn’t do the damage, who cares?’