Kaitlin Palmieri says Eric’s betrayal felt worse because he knew she’d been through another loss before they’d met. Her boyfriend before Eric, named Mike, died on her 30th birthday.
Kaitlin Palmieri from New York, is putting her life back together after learning her fiancé wasn’t who she thought he was. In 2018, she met a charismatic man named Eric on Bumble, and they clicked right away.
“He made everyone feel super comfortable,” Kaitlin tells Inside Edition Digital. “He had this very loud, funny laugh. I was super attracted to that confidence and sense of humor.”
Eric proposed in December 2019, and they set their wedding date for Aug. 22, 2020. Kaitlin says their rehearsal dinner was a happy occasion, and they were surrounded by loved ones.
“It was just such a great night. Everyone was in a really great state of mind,” she recalls. “I was very grateful to have that memory.”
The morning of their wedding, Kaitlin was woken up by her mother calling.
“I just remember her saying, ‘You have to come down to the lobby.’ Something was up, did not sound right,” Kaitlin said.
“I was like, ‘Absolutely not. Not until you tell me what's going on.’ I just knew something was wrong. And she said, 'Eric died in the middle of the night.'"
Grief and sadness instantly hit Kaitlin’s body, she remembers.
“I just broke down. Everything just kind of shut off. I gave up. I was like, ‘There’s no point to anything. I'm done. I'm just done,'" she says.
Eric had suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 33 years old.
Leading up to the wedding, there were several instances where Eric dealt with heartburn, said he was in pain and was sometimes uncomfortable. But besides those symptoms, he was healthy and had no medical history that concerned them.
“It took all of the wind out of me. I could barely be on my feet for very long," she says. "I had no control over my physical being. I was sick. So sick to my stomach. If I wasn't crying, I was sleeping, or I was in some kind of shock. But it was like a shell of myself. I was deflated. I was so, so deflated.”
Family helped Kaitlin navigate her new reality, which at times, she says, felt dark.
“It's not like I was sitting there being like, ‘OK, I want to kill myself.’ But I couldn't think past that. I didn't see a way past it. And so I didn't know how else to describe it, but it felt impossible," she says. "It was like I was a raw nerve. I realized, I have to tell somebody what's going on inside my head."
She leaned on her family and friends, but also social media, where she connected with others who were grieving.
“It’s such an incredible community of people who go through horrific things and survive them and are honest about it,” Kaitlin says. “It was a relief. I needed that. That's how I started getting through, really, diving into it."
It was through social media that she also learned something else that shook her to her core. In November 2023, she opened Instagram to post something about Eric’s birthday and saw that another woman had dedicated a post to him.
“This is happening really quickly in my brain,” she says. “And the dedication is about spending his last birthday together and how it was this great night. I'm just so confused. I'm like, ‘Is that a coincidence?’"
“I reach out to her and I'm like, ‘I'm just confused. Did you know Eric? What was your relationship with him? And then she told me," she says.
Her fiancé was having an affair that he carried on throughout their entire relationship, Kaitlin says she learned. Eric traveled for work, and so it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, but to be certain, Kaitlin asked the woman to send evidence that she and Eric knew each other. Proof of the pair's correspondence, which at times contained adult material, was all Kaitlin needed to believe the woman.
“My body definitely went numb. My everything was on fire,” she says. “Right away, I just knew it was true. I met an angry side of me that I had never met before. I'm not totally proud of all the ways that I responded. I'm sure there are much stronger people out there that would've handled this with much more grace, but I am not one of those people. I am broken. I'm broken. I'm done.”
Kaitlin says the rage replaced any sadness she had toward her fiancé.
“There was a voice inside me who was like, ‘Eff that. I'm not wasting one more minute on this man in this way,'” she says.
She has also learned that the woman she first discovered Eric cheated with was not the only person he was seeing.
“It feels like he hated me. I'll never know," she says. "I loved him more than anything in this universe. And so to now think that it was for somebody I didn't know. He made that choice. After this, I officially, officially, officially owe him nothing.”
Kaitlin says Eric’s betrayal felt worse because he knew she’d been through another loss before they’d met. Her boyfriend before Eric, named Mike, died on her 30th birthday.
“It was just a weird freak accident,” she says. “He was found just facedown in the middle of the pool, and we had thought something medical had happened to him, but there was nothing.”
After doctors did scans, they discovered Mike had broken his C1 and C2 in his neck. After being on life support for five days, he died at the hospital.
“That was, at that point, unfathomable,” Kaitlin says. “There was no way for me to process that event. Everyone loved him. He was just this simple dude. Smart, loved his friends, loved his family, and was ready for that next phase. I'm just hoping in the next life he gets to have it.”
Now that Kaitlin knows about Eric’s secret life, she says it’s hard to remember how in love she was with him.
"It's really hard to access those feelings for him now," she says. "I have zero feelings for him. I see him for what he was, and that is who he was. It's just cruel.”
She is also thankful to know the full truth, she says. "It felt like everything else in my life brightened. He went dark. And so it gave light to everything else," she says. "So I immediately felt so grateful for the love I have in my life.”
Kaitlin’s goal now is focusing on the good things in her life. Although she battles some mental health issues, she’s determined to have some normalcy. She’s even open to dating and finding love again. She says she will also focus on sharing her story because it helps her meet others in grief and it helps her healing journey.
“I got through this so much because of strangers on the internet," she says. "Widows I met through media outlets, along with my support group. People who were honest about their experience. It saved me.”
For anyone in a dark place, Kaitlin says it may not seem like it now, but there is hope.
“If I can see through this, so can you. Go to the dark places, go there, talk about them,” she says. “You can heal from them. Don't avoid them.
"You got to feel it. It sounds cliche," she continues. "Go there. You are going to be OK. You have yourself. You can save yourself. You have that inside you. You do. Just have faith in yourself, if you don't need anybody else to have faith in you, you can do it.”
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