From Strip Club Brawls to Divorce: An Exhaustive Timeline of Cardi B and Offset's Chaotic Marriage

By the next January, allegations surfaced that Offset had made a sex tape with another woman. In a deleted tweet from January 8, Cardi B wrote that it’s “not right” for Offset to cheat, asking fans: “What do you want me to do?” Her line of thinking, it seemed, was that should she find another man, he’d cheat on her again. “This shit happens to everyone.” To make matters worse, TMZ reported in February 2018 that Cardi B was pregnant, to which she iconically responded: “No bitch I’m just getting fat.”

She was, however, pregnant, and announced it on SNL while performing “Be Careful.” She told Cosmopolitan that she wasn’t staying with Offset because she had “low self-esteem,” adding: “I know I’m rich, I know I’m talented. I know I could get any man I want—any basketball player, football player.” The reason, then, was that she’s “no angel,” and wanted to “work out my shit with my man, and I don’t got to explain why.” Mysteriously, she also claimed that fans didn’t know “what I did.”

After daughter Kulture was born that July, rumors once again surfaced concerning Offset’s extramarital habits. This time, however, Cardi B was at the center of the gossip firestorm. TMZ reported that she was accused of ordering a hit on two women at a strip club where the Migos had performed. According to the women, they believed Cardi had sent people to attack them because one had supposedly slept with Offset. In October, Cardi B turned herself in to authorities and was charged with assault. In an interview with W, clearly conducted before her arrest, Cardi B lamented how the cheating allegations drive her “crazy because I start to believe them”

To no one’s surprise, Cardi B said she had split with Offset in December 2018, telling fans on Instagram that “things just haven’t been working out between us for a long time.” Then came Offset’s now-infamous tweet about their split:

Most surprisingly, he issued an apology via Instagram, in a video in which he called himself a “messed up husband,” begging his wife to forgive him. Things would then get much worse, and weirder when Offset crashed her performance at the Rolling Loud festival a few days later.

Over the Christmas holidays, the two reunited in Puerto Rico for a breakup sex-cation. Cardi told People of the sabbatical: “I just had to get fucked, that’s all…Bitch feels baptized.” A month later, in January 2019, the couple reunited once again. This reconciliation seemed more permanent: “it’s a marriage and there’s a child involved and family involved.”

While the cheating rumors temporarily subsided, things were not over for Cardi B, who would be indicted in court on June 21, 2019, over the strip club fight the prior year. The Times reported that she faced two felony assault charges, as well as charges for harassment, criminal solicitation, and conspiracy. In December, she also revealed that the couple had brought in a priest to talk through their infidelity.

Cardi B once said that she stuck around because she had a kid and family to think about, or because she worried that if she left, the same thing would happen again. What changed? Well, it’s one thing to get cheated on, break up, and reconcile with a spouse. It’s a whole different beast to do so in a pandemic, while the world is falling apart. As she already said on Instagram: Her heart told her to stop wasting her time.

Godspeed to Cardi B.