My partner had a secret flat for five years. When I found out, he dumped me.

Kate*, 37, had always had a tricky relationship with her partner, but she never imagined that he'd secretly bought another home to escape to. Here, she reveals how it felt to discover he was leading a double life...

When I first met Simon* online I was 29 and the last one to be still single out of all of my friends. With hindsight, I suppose that meant I rushed into things and settled for second best.

Simon was five years older than me and, to be honest, a few things weren't quite right – he wasn’t what I’d call handsome, we didn’t share any of the same interests and the fact he’d never had a serious girlfriend meant that he was set in his ways. But, there was a chemistry between us and the sex was good.

Within a few weeks, I was barely spending any time in the flat I shared with my two friends, instead, I was staying at Simon's bachelor pad all the time.

When I became pregnant after just six months it was a huge shock, but my excitement about being a mother quashed any reservations I had about our relationship.

The pregnancy changed things though. Instead of being relaxed, carefree lovers, we suddenly had to plan for the responsibility of becoming parents. Simon had a good job in the city so he sold his flat and we bought a house together.

Becoming parents to twins

When our twin daughters arrived early, life was a hamster-wheel of night feeds, hospital visits and health visitor appointments.

I gave up my job as a teacher to be a stay-at-home mum and constantly felt tired and snappy. Sex was the last thing on either of our minds and we rowed constantly.

'I’m going to stay at my parents' house tonight,' Simon messaged me, after storming out one morning because I had a go at him about his alarm had woken me up at 6am – as well as jolting our twin girls awake.

By the time the twins were a year old, whenever we had an argument – which was most days – he'd spend the night at his parents' house about half an hour away. I’d met his family a couple of times, but their preference for their dogs over their granddaughters meant we weren’t close.

I didn’t like how volatile our relationship was but without a job or income, I didn’t feel like I had many options.

Then one day, a few months ago, I popped into his office to look for some paper to print out the girls’ homework. In one of his drawers, I spotted a solicitor’s letter about a property purchase in his name, dated five years earlier.

Leading a secret life

Confused, I left the letter out waiting for him when he got home from work that night.

"Why have you bought a flat and not told me?" I asked, trying to stay calm.

His face went bright red as he grabbed the letter, unable to look me in the eye.

"Where did you get this?" he demanded. "Why were you going through my things?"

Suddenly, I felt overcome with rage.

"Your things!" I spat. "We’ve got children together, a home together. Surely it’s our things?"

It didn’t take long for me to put two and two together.

"All those times you said you were staying at your parents, you were here!" I laughed, hysterically.

He stormed upstairs and started throwing his clothes into a suitcase, as I tried to digest the fact that he had secretly spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on a flat without even telling me and had been secretly splitting his time between there and our family home.

"I haven’t done anything wrong," he insisted. "I was at my parents at first but it was happening so often I needed somewhere of my own to go. I used my money."

The fact that he didn’t think there was anything wrong about it made me even more furious.

Deserting his twin girls

As he stormed out, without even saying goodbye to our girls, I didn’t have to ask where he was going because I had the address on the solicitor’s paperwork.

I drove past the next evening and saw his car on the drive. When I called him and messaged him on WhatsApp to ask what the hell was going on, he completely ignored me.

At first, I was distraught about him leaving, about all the lies and about our daughters being in a broken home. But now nearly three months have passed and he's blocked me on WhatsApp, so it’s definitely over.

Our relationship was always rocky, but after nearly 10 years together, to be dumped in such a heartless way has made me realise I never really knew him. I'm so ashamed of what happened that I haven’t even told my friends yet but my parents, who've never liked him, are outraged on my behalf.

I know he’ll have to 'unblock' me at some point so that we can liaise about the girls and the house, but I’m trying to take one day at a time for their sake. The break-up is still raw and I feel so cheated by the years of lies and the horrible way he ended things. Life goes on though, so I have to look to the future and focus on the girls.

*Names have been changed to protect identities.

Read more: All of Yahoo UK's How I was dumped stories.