While boarding a plane with her friend to Mexico, Spencer Barbosa said she couldn’t help but notice a man seated behind her constantly trying to make eye contact with them.
However, about halfway through the flight, he reached over the seat to tap her on the shoulder. “He was with this ‘baddie’ of a woman and a child,” she said. “So, halfway through the flight, when the woman got up to go to the bathroom… I obviously didn’t think anything of it.”
The woman shared the ‘weird’ message a dad seated behind her on a plane showed her when his girlfriend went to the bathroom.
The closeness and anxiety of airline travel make it almost impossible to ignore fellow passengers, especially when they are making a point of engaging with you.
Being relatively used to talking with fans or answering questions from strangers about her vlogging, Barbosa tried to give her fellow passenger the benefit of the doubt — until he waited for his girlfriend to leave to tap her shoulder.
“In between the seats, he showed me his phone with a text on it,” she recalled. “He’s giving me these weird eyes and then said something along the lines of, ‘Please, do not say anything out loud.’”
After she noticed him looking at her, he handed her his phone — ‘Don’t say anything, but I want to talk.’
When she looked at the text message on the phone, she couldn’t help but feel equally confused and uncomfortable — not only was he “hitting on her,” he was doing it beside his child and out of sight from his girlfriend.
“I think you’re really pretty, and I want to talk to you,” the message read. “I literally looked at it and then looked at him, like, ‘No.’ You’re here with a woman and a child?”
Unable to consider the possibility that she simply didn’t want to engage, the man continued to bother her until his girlfriend came back from the bathroom.
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Once she was sitting beside him again, it was as if Barbosa never existed. “If there’s one thing in this world that makes me [sick,] it’s being a weird…cheater,” she asserted.
After putting all the pieces together in her head, she ultimately decided that she needed to say something to the girl, assuming that the secrecy from this man was because they were, in fact, a couple.
After his girlfriend came back, she couldn’t help but tell her what he’d done — ‘I hope she’s thriving now.’
So, when the plane landed and everyone went to get their bags, she waited until the man walked away to approach the woman. However, before he walked away, she couldn’t help but notice he was extra “lovey-dovey” towards her — pretending like he was “the perfect partner,” equally helpful and intuitive to what she needed.
While every relationship is different, many experts suggest there are common “warning signs” of infidelity between partners, specifically the tendency for the cheater to overcompensate at home.
Whether they suddenly do all the chores, are kinder than normal, or give gifts, cheaters try to dismiss their inner guilt by showing up for their partner in disingenuous ways.
In simple terms, it’s a pattern change. If you’re shocked by your partner’s drastic habit changes or moods, there’s reason to be skeptical.
“If I was the girl in this situation, somebody better tell me,” Barbosa said, justifying her decision. “He was trying to act like he’s boyfriend of the year, being so attentive to her. But I know what he’s doing. So, I told her exactly what happened.”
Confirming that they were together, Barbosa said the woman took the news relatively well as if she’d already noticed his behavior was strange, even before they boarded the plane. “She said, ‘Do you want me to cuss him out before or after you leave?’ She obviously waited for me to leave, but I hope she’s thriving.”
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories
