There is no doubt that breaking up is never easy. Whether a couple’s romance slowly fizzles out or someone was terribly wronged, there is always that one defining moment when a person realizes “it’s over”. With brutal honesty, these Redditors tell their stories of when they knew they were—once and for all—over and done!
1. Done After One Session
We went to counseling to try and fix what was wrong with our relationship. Our first session was productive, and we were given "homework". In the second session, the counselor asked how we did. When it was discovered she didn't do her "homework", the counselor called her out on it. We left the counselor’s office, and she said, "I don't want to do counseling anymore". That was when I knew we were done.
2. Cashed Out Of This Coupling
I deployed to Iraq, and my first paycheck with extra pay hit our account about two weeks later. I couldn’t believe what he did with my money. He turned around and spent $250 on cigars. He was unemployed on purpose, and we had no children, but because of him, we were unbelievably broke. I canceled his card, took over the account, paid all the bills, and filed for divorce after I got back.
3. No More Love Left
The cold, brutal words she said still resonate in my head. "Either you move out, or I'm moving out; I haven't loved you for the past year". My first thought was, “Wait, that was all fake”, as I thought about all we had done together over the past year. I moved out, and she filed and finalized a divorce. Three months after the divorce was final, she was at my door crying and saying she wanted to get back together.
Apparently, the guy she had been having an affair with wasn't that great after all. I declined. She had ripped all the scabs off my slowly healing wounds. Those were dark days as we had been together for nine years total and married for seven.
4. She Was A Real Piece Of Work
The doctor told me, “I think you have stomach cancer. I want to scope your stomach at 5:00 AM”. I was terrified. I just went home and sat stunned on the couch with the dogs for hours until she got home from work. When she got home, I asked her to sit down, and I told her what the doctor said. I told her that I would need her to take off work the next day because I wouldn’t be able to drive afterward, and I needed her to drive me. Her reaction was unbelievably cold.
She then said to me, “But I don’t want to miss work”. That was the exact moment I knew our marriage was over.
5. Recovering From A Bad Investment
She kept telling me how useless and pointless I was and that I had just made a bad investment by falling in love with her. This was after she had squandered the money I lent her, trying to save her business. When someone admits that they were using you and your feelings for them to their own advantage, it hurts. The betrayal of trust just makes it impossible to think positively about future relationships.
6. Super Bowl Split
I won an all-expense paid trip for two to the Super Bowl courtesy of Budweiser. I had a bunch of extras given to me, including VIP tickets to concerts happening the days leading to the Super Bowl, a Super Bowl experience trip, golfing, VIP tickets to the pre-show, and game tickets in a section with unlimited free booze. It should’ve been the best time of our lives—but it was a total nightmare.
My husband was a total jerk the entire time. He refused to do any of the included activities. He only wanted to find craft drink bars to hang out in. At one point, he got trashed and wandered around the hotel in a bathrobe, yelling at random people while the head of the Budweiser distributor from my town was sitting down trying to recruit me for a job. The morning of the Super Bowl, he decided he didn’t want to go and wanted to sell the tickets instead.
So, I sold the tickets and handed him $14K from the sale. Three days later, he was telling me what a terrible person I was. It was at that moment that I understood this person was miserable, that there was nothing in the world that could ever make them happy, and I needed to get out.
7. A Threat Turned Into Reality
Looking back over the years, there were many, many things that I took on the chin and kept trying. But once I lost count of how many times she used the phrase, "I WANT A DIVORCE/SEPARATION" as a comeback in a conflict, I said, “Next time is the last time I hear that from you”. She said it two more times and, that night, told me to get out. It was nine years down the drain. What a waste.
8. Three-Wheeling Woman
Our social activities only involved her friends, and she would make excuses why she shouldn’t, or couldn’t, come to the group activities that my friends and I were going to do. She wouldn’t come to meet a very good friend of mine from the service who was in town for brunch—but wanted me to bring food home to her. The weirdest part? She would also invite her ex-boyfriends to holiday meals.
Our time together was beginning to be less and less, as she would invite a third-wheel friend to planned dates, claiming that so and so had a bad day.
9. Cold Comfort Girl
My dad died. He was my father, and I had known him for 21 years; she'd known him for three months. We came back for the memorial, and I had spent all day being a shoulder for my mom and my siblings. I went to the room we were staying in, tired of being a rock and needing to break down. She then expected me to comfort her about my dad's passing.
When I pointed out how drained I was, she said, "I comforted you when you found out. From now on, it's your job to comfort me". When our daughter was crying at the service, I had to take her out because she said that it wasn't right to have her walk away from my dad's service. Again, it was my dad, not hers. I realized I wanted a divorce.
10. A Stone Cold Response
I had a terrifying cancer scare with painful complications. When I woke up three days post-surgery, I whispered to my husband, “Could you get me some ice chips”? I had not been out of bed, eating or drinking, much less awake. His reply was so cruel. He said, stone-faced, “Get them yourself”. Not at that moment, but when I processed it later, I knew I could not grow old and be vulnerable with him. Years later, his excuse was that he had just been on the phone with his mother.
11. Get Your Priorities Straight!
My ex never prioritized me in our relationship. It caused a ton of arguments, and there was a lot of other stuff that happened, but I still tried really hard. One thing that really bothered me was that we never spent holidays or anything like that together. I was really unhappy about it, but in my mind, I justified it by thinking that it was a busy day for her and her family and that it wasn't really important anyways.
The final straw for me was when it was my birthday. This day was purely my special day. There was nothing else that overlapped, and no valid excuse not to have this one day where I was the priority. I asked my ex to come over after work so we could spend my birthday together. Instead, at work, on my birthday, she picked up an extra shift.
Everything hit me all at once. She couldn't prioritize me even just one day a year. I drank a bunch of scotch and went to bed. I woke up at 7 AM the next morning, called her, and dumped her.
12. The Signs Were All There
I honestly ignored the signs for too long. He avoided me for over a month after horribly messing up our one-year anniversary. All I wanted was to spend it with him, nothing else. I didn’t even ask him to take it off or plan anything. That night, he let me come all the way to the bar where he worked to tell me he didn’t feel up to hanging out. I fled, hurt and in tears.
He ended up coming over to apologize, and I spent the night comforting and taking care of him, only for him to avoid me for nearly a month after. We were supposed to be planning a camping trip together that I had asked him about months prior. I couldn’t get him to commit. Then, he said he would come, then changed his mind a week later.
We ended up breaking up the day before I left on the trip, so I went solo and it was amazing. We broke up in August but he was probably done with me around May, but didn’t have the courage or emotional maturity to end it sooner. I had a feeling he was going to break up with me when he asked to talk at my place after a month of canceling plans. When I opened the front door to let him in, I was certain beyond a doubt.
Looking back, there were signs he was losing interest in me. He used to initiate time together, but towards the end, I was the only one making an effort. He didn’t introduce me to his friends or family, and he didn’t engage much with mine when I invited him to meet them. I just wish he hadn’t squandered so much of my time, or perhaps I just wish I didn’t let him waste so much of it.
He broke my trust badly about three months in, and in hindsight, I should have ended it myself right then and there. I’ve taken a break from dating, and hopefully, I won’t find myself in such a lousy situation with someone so undeserving again. The breakup was long and emotional, but I am proud of myself for being honest but not deliberately petty or spiteful.
13. Time To Close The Door On This Relationship
She called me at work 30 minutes before I closed—and what she told me made my blood run cold. She said she’d slept with her classmate and then blamed me because I had hung out with an old high school classmate at the mall two weeks before. She then apologized and went on to try and “rekindle our relationship”. She and I dated for three years. I spent that night crying on my assistant manager’s shoulder.
14. Yours, Mine, Or Ours?
When she referred to our kids as her kids. That had crushed my world, and in an instant, I completely fell out of love with her. I'm no Georgia peach by any means, and I share the blame for the argument, so I'm not throwing the blame on just her; that wouldn't be fair. But at that point, I knew she didn't love me that much anymore.
It was just the last thing that needed to be said to know the relationship was slowly unraveling. It's scary to me because I'm usually a softy and couldn’t stand feeling like we were in trouble, but we were, and there wasn’t a feeling in me to change it. I just flat-out didn’t really care anymore.
15. Packed And Ready To Go
After three and a half years, she told me I needed to come home right away, and she already had a bag packed. She said that after all that time, we were fundamentally different, she wasn’t happy, and her friends didn’t think she was happy either. She came back and moved all her stuff out when I was gone, then I never heard from her again.
It is kind of cold how you go from sleeping with someone every single night for that long. Then in a flip of a switch, there is zero communication.
16. Driven To Distraction
I had tried for weeks to plan more dates and organize more time together because I really didn't think my needs were being met. Once, I mentioned to my girlfriend the idea of planning a fun evening with friends, flatmates, and her. She hadn't met most of my friends even after eight months of dating, and I hadn't seen some of my friends in a while.
Instead, I'd been trying to prioritize time with her. She wasn't super enthusiastic about the idea, but she did encourage me to meet up with those friends more often and reconnect. She also suggested I find a new hobby. It seemed innocent—but there was a dark side to it.
Upon reflection, I realized at that point, she was directing me toward other things in life and ways to spend my time, as she was anticipating ending the relationship. It ended about two weeks later.
17. Tossed Out For Her Trash Talk
I was on the way to my then-girlfriend’s house when my sister-in-law and my brother called me to tell me that my then-girlfriend was talking trash about me to them. If you're willing to talk trash about me to my own family, I can hardly even imagine what she was saying to her family and friends. I ended the relationship that very night over it.
18. Call Of Duty Called
I had the classic "COD before girlfriend" experience. I didn't get to talk to him for over a month, closer to two, despite the fact that we went to the same church and were, therefore, in the same building every week. I got tired of my relationship amounting to a passing "hi", as he rushed off somewhere else or left to go play video games. He wasn't willing to change his behavior. But I got the last laugh.
Funny enough, he tried to propose over the phone not long after I broke up with him.
19. Made For Something Better
He did nothing around the house because he “worked so hard on the third shift”, yet he seemed to forget I also worked nine-hour days, but he expected me to come home to cook and clean up after him. Then, one day in October, I went to my sister’s for my niece’s birthday. When I got home, he had moved out without a word. At first, I was like, “Great. Seven years down the drain”. However, now, I’m like, “Good riddance”!
20. It Was Over, Period!
He'd been back home from an out-of-town job for barely half an hour. We'd been apart for maybe two weeks. I was on my period and bleeding heavily, which I had already told him, but he demanded I sleep with him. Then he came up with a twisted ultimatum. He told me that if I wasn’t going to get busy with him, then I should get one of my friends to do it. It turned out I had a uterine tumor, but I didn't know that at the time.
I only knew my periods were harsh, and so did he. He was there when I bled through two overnight pads onto our friends' white wool sofa in front of an entire Super Bowl party. He was there when my pain was so bad I cried uncontrollably, panted, and threw up for an hour. All he did was go back to bed. He knew something was genuinely wrong, but he didn't care beyond how it interfered with him getting his.
My pain and suffering were irrelevant to him, and "get one of your friends to" was the moment I was finally so shocked I let myself acknowledge it. It was the moment I saw with complete clarity that his selfishness was both total and insurmountable. It was the moment I realized he didn't, and indeed probably couldn't, love me. So, I said, "That's it. I'm done. This is over". I picked up my bag and walked out the door with only the clothes on my back, and I never went back.
21. Guilt-Gifting Goober
When he made a special trip up to my house a few miles away on a weeknight to bring me a guilt gift. It was a coffee mug from a local coffee shop—Cherry Street Cafe—and he lied to me about who he was with at the cafe. He said it was a potential client, and when I asked for details, he said, “Oh, just a client”. I asked who, but he wouldn’t reply.
I knew he was lying, but it took another several months for me to realize the depth of his lying and shady behavior with multiple women. He’d been lying since our third date and had withheld information about his previous relationship while we were on a dating site, in order to get me to meet him. In the end, he had the audacity and entitlement to say it was my fault.
He told me that he’d lied because I “made it emotionally unsafe” for him, and that in spite of his multiple lies and gaslighting I “should just trust” him. This was a 41-year-old man who was the CTO of a startup. Then he had the nerve to tell me I was slandering him when I shared what he’d done to me. I had to remind him that in order to be slanderous, what I shared had to be false, and all of it was objective fact. I smashed the mug, he was a jerk.
22. Hanging On For Too Long
I hit it off really well with someone I met at an event. We exchanged numbers, flirted, texted a lot, and called each other on lunch breaks. He lived a three-hour drive from me, which was not ideal, but doable. The following weekend, I drove down to visit him for the weekend and we had a great time. He took me to his favorite local park and showed me his Polaroid collection.
At night we cuddled, and while he was at work, I got to visit some friends who were in the area. Then everything changed. The day after I drove home, suddenly trying to talk to him was like pulling teeth. From then on, he would respond to maybe one out of every five of my texts, wouldn’t take my phone calls, and all the while was posting to his Snapchat story when he was out with friends.
The one time we did talk on the phone, he insisted he was still interested in me and was just having a rough time at work and with life, but wouldn't open up to me with any details. A few weeks into this, I was starting to feel crazy. The memory of one good week is hardly a foundation for a relationship, and while he never said it outright, I always felt like I was bothering him any time I reached out.
Finally, I asked if there was any kind of compromise we could work out, and suggested we could pick just one day of the week when we'd try to set aside time for a phone call. It turned out, I had bad timing. I had texted him the same day that he got some bad news, and he told me he "needed space". At that point, I was feeling really hurt and confused.
However, I also felt like I was being selfish for feeling that way when he was dealing with so much stress in his life. I finally reached my limit after another couple of weeks. I sent him a text explaining that I couldn't keep this up and that if he still wanted a relationship, something needed to change, or else I was going to end it and try to move on.
He took three days to respond with a very noncommittal paragraph that essentially boiled down to "I don't know". I told him it was over, unfollowed him on everything, and tried to move past it. It feels embarrassing in retrospect; this guy was really terrible to me and I held on for months. I think the lack of closure was what really got to me.
To this day, I still don't know how he felt about me that whole time, whether he was secretly annoyed/turned off by me or if he genuinely did want a relationship and was just overwhelmed by other things in his life.
23. Pushing The Boundaries
We were at a rave, and earlier that day, she asked me if I was comfortable with her dancing with other people. I was like, "Yeah, of course”. Later that night, a guy then initiated a dance with her and started grabbing her behind. She would remove his hands from time to time, but she kept dancing with him for a solid few minutes as he continued to touch her.
I am not sure why I did not have the courage to do anything at that moment as I stood there watching this all happen. Dancing with other people is fine, but I would assume there are boundaries. For the next couple of months, I tried convincing myself everything was okay, but I never felt better about it. She eventually broke up with me.
24. Soul Crushing Soulmate
We dated for several years. I was at a dinner party that I happened not to bring him to, and a family friend greeted me with, "Hey! Where's your soulmate"? That’s when I knew something was off. My first thought was, “He's not my soulmate”. A couple of months after that, we misunderstood each other in a conversation for maybe the third time in a few weeks. It was civil but tense, and even if we dropped it, I'd still feel hurt afterward.
It wasn't even about anything significant. On paper, we usually agreed on a lot of major points or subconsciously knew not to talk about things we didn't agree on, like politics. However, I realized that if this kept happening at the same rate for the rest of my life, I'd go insane. There was no way of knowing at the beginning of any given conversation with him whether it would randomly go sideways or not, and this didn't happen to me with any other person.
The final sign was after I broke up with him and went no-contact. I knew I had made the right decision because despite having put in my normal level of effort during the last few months of the relationship, I'd done a lot of my mourning before the actual breakup. Every time I cried about him, it eventually led to me making the right decision. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my mind.
25. Scream Queen
After one of our arguments, she did one of her "scream at me to keep me awake" for hours. It was many hours. She was screaming at me, telling me all the ways I sucked, didn't measure up, and was pathetic. I couldn't go to work the next day due to a lack of sleep. When she was calm the next day, I told her that what she did was used by people in the service against their enemies.
She replied, "I know. That's why I did it". I knew then I was done with all of her nonsense. This wasn't even the first time she had done something similar. It was just the last straw for me, among other things. Her methods knew no bounds.
26. My Best Friend’s Girl
I wanted to have a date with my now-ex after work, but she said she was doing overtime, so she could afford “a special gift”. That same day, I got an invitation from some friends to go to a bar. I had a free evening, so why not. I was going to tell my girlfriend that I was going out, but she had her phone off. I went to the bar, and my friends looked very serious.
When I came in, they took me to the back, and I made a sickening discovery. My best friend was there making out with my girlfriend. We broke up, and I stopped talking to said best friend. That experience really showed me that the homies got my back.
27. A Bad Situation-ship
I was in a situationship with this guy, and we had this place we would always go to. It became our thing to go to this place a few times a week to get food. One day out of nowhere, he texted me, saying he needed to focus on himself. I figured he was going through something and would eventually circle back, so I didn’t worry about it too much.
It wasn’t until about a month and a half or two months later when I was at the same food spot with friends, and he walked in holding hands with another girl, that I realized it was actually over. What made things worse was I was the one who introduced him to that spot. I know it was only a situationship, but it still stung.
28. A Vision Of My Future
It was my first serious relationship, about four years long. We both still lived with our parents, so we would often visit each other’s houses. One day, I was at his place and his mom was making fries. She put salt and ketchup on the fries and gave them to her husband who was lying on the couch. He saw the plate and said, “Woman! Why did you put ketchup on the fries!? Take it back and make me a new plate”!
She laughed it off and went back to make a new batch of fries, made him a new plate, and handed it over to him. That’s when I made a disturbing realization. That is the moment when I realized that will be me one day if I decide to stay. There were many other issues as well, but that specific moment just opened my eyes, and I am so glad it did. I found out that he married a girl half his age, had a kid with her, and she ended up dumping him.
29. A Matter Of Trust
I knew my marriage was over when there was no more trust to repair. Looking back there were many problems in the relationship, but I probably would have looked past them for a long time. He had been an addict and recovered, multiple years clean. Then, he got injured and had severe back pain, and resorted to using, instead of telling his doctor or me what kind of pain he was in.
I caught him in his lies, and he agreed to stop and talk to the doctor about proper pain relief. He got prescription pills but didn’t stop doing dope. I found his stash two months later, and he denied it was his, as if I would believe that. I went to work the next day and checked my bank account. He had gotten up after I left for work that morning and taken money out of an ATM.
I stayed at a friend’s house for two nights, talked to my boss and my mom, and was out of the state that weekend. As a bonus, a year into our separation, he begged me to give him another chance because “it’s been a year, I’ve changed”. Had he been upfront with me about the pain and substance use, I probably would have stayed. It was his lies that made me leave.
30. He Was A Weak Excuse For A Man
He told me I was a “weak woman” and “couldn’t handle pain like I used to” about a day after I had a procedure done on my brain. I ended up telling him it was over, and I was moving home. He asked me what I was going to do now. I told him I was going to work on my health, art, and finish school. He told me, “Well, I just thought you wanted to move home because you wanted your parents to pamper you. I want to be with you if you do all that”!
If I wasn’t sure before, at that point it became crystal clear. I had so much love for him over the five years we were together that I excused bad behavior, narcissistic issues he refused to get help for, belittling me in public and at home, and finding all my weakest points only to push those buttons. I feel like my early 20s went down the drain with this man.
31. She Was Fixing To Leave
I remember we were slowly and progressively fixing our relationship. It was very successful because we became clingy to each other again. Then, she was slowly making lame excuses just to bail on me until I noticed that she was always doing it. I was going to surprise her on her birthday, but she bailed on me again. So, I begged her to talk to me somewhere so that I could give her her gift.
At that point, I asked her, "I know in myself that I still wanna be with you, but what do you want"? She just told me, "I'm okay with whatever. I won't be surprised if we stay together, but if we broke off, I'll be okay". That's when I realized that she really didn't want to fix the relationship. She just didn't want to be lonely while she was looking for another guy—but that wasn’t the most painful part.
Not even a week after that, she confessed her love to some guy, and her friends were even pushing her toward that guy while we were working on our relationship. So, in reality, our relationship was over right from the very moment we decided to fix things.
32. Used And Abused
I ended a call in which she literally fell asleep while I was being vulnerable about my health. She's done it many times before. I also made a joke about how she'll always think Asian men will be more attractive than me. She ran with it and wouldn't stop talking about how true that was. She also poked fun at my hairline and how much work my hair needs. She was clearly distracted whenever I spoke and was never present. She just wanted me to be her personal backscratcher and to go away when she had gotten what she wanted.
33. Hopping Around The Boyfriend Trail
I found this amazing woman right before I left the Army. We went on a few dates, talked about everything, and really clicked. Leaving the Army meant I was moving back home to a different state, but we were committed to doing the long-distance thing. This was in the early 2000s, so we had email and AIM to keep in touch. A month after I got home, I wanted her to come to visit, so I bought her a plane ticket.
She insisted that since she was coming here, she needed to dovetail the trip to go visit another friend a few more states away. So, halfway through her visit, she left me to go hang out with another guy. She flew back to see me again, then the night before she was to go home, she broke up with me. I guess, in hindsight, I should have seen it coming, but 22-year-old me was pretty naive.
34. Mama Knew Best
She would belittle me, was always passive-aggressive—or just plain aggressive—with her words, would hit me, constantly trash talk my cooking simply because it wasn't her cooking, treated my family like garbage, and pressured me into sleeping with her multiple times. However, that wasn’t the final nail in the coffin. That happened when she came after me in front of my mom.
My mom had a conversation with me about how I was being mistreated and forced me to break up with her. The only reason I ignored all the blaring sirens was that I was not the most attractive guy, and it was my first relationship. For the first few months, she was super kind and loving, but when I got attached, she changed. I couldn't seem to let go, regardless of how she treated me and regardless of everyone around me telling me that I needed to break up with her.
35. Free To Be Me
After nearly two years of off-again, on-again torment, I met someone who made being me so easy. Just hearing her laugh was the best. Talking to her was so natural and easy. I never had to adjust my behavior to impress her or accommodate her. I reflected on the relationship I was in and realized it really wasn't going anywhere. My girlfriend didn’t live in my state, so I called her and told her I couldn't keep doing it.
I wished her the best, and I still do. She and I haven't spoken since 2009. If I were to get in touch with her again, what I'd want to hear most was that she had found happiness. The girl who opened my eyes went on to be my wife. We've been married for six years and have a beautiful one-year-old baby boy.
36. The Situation Had Changed
When I realized it went from being a relationship to a situationship, and we went from having great conversations to simple small talk, I knew it was doomed. We went from having day trips every weekend to just getting fast food and doing it. I lost six months of my life being with her. She had no job and no life goals, and I realized we were too different.
We didn't have anything in common and were on two different levels of life, and ultimately, she didn't truly have what I was looking for. She blamed me and said I never cared, even though I paid for everything without issue while working minimum wage at the time.
37. Caught In A Web Of Lies
I caught him lying—again. I wished for years he’d never come into my life—but he was holding a dark threat over my head. He kept saying he’d take his life without me, so I felt this morbid sense of obligation. But through a good bit of therapy, I realized that I couldn’t stay in a relationship that constantly hurts me to keep him alive.
And so, when I caught him in yet another stupid lie, I told him we were done. To no surprise, he’s still alive, and despite his threats, he didn’t take his life.
38. She Was On The Wrong Team
It started when I realized that I was “Team Us” and she was “Team Herself”. I did things to make OUR lives better, but she only did things for herself. However, the bottom of the rabbit hole was when I realized that she only cared whether I was alive or not to the degree that someone was paying the bills. Aside from that, she had zero investment in me. When you realize that you mean pretty much nothing to the woman you love and would do anything for, it's hard not to take that personally.
39. In Search Of Something Better
There were hundreds of signs that I missed. I was in a terrible relationship that was extremely painful with a narcissist I just couldn’t get away from. But then came my absolute breaking point. It was when he told me he had a date arranged with “someone better” and that he wouldn’t cancel it until I showed photo evidence of doing something he asked. I blocked every contact point, moved in with my aunt, got a new phone number, and haven’t had any contact since.
That was three and a half years ago. My lawyer handled the divorce. The authorities have enough evidence that if he ever tried to contact my kid or me, there would be an automatic peace bond. It was just a rush after years of not wanting a marriage to end in disaster and hoping that someone would change.
I finally realized that I was wasting my time and keeping myself miserable; then everything suddenly changed. Our child has never received a Christmas or birthday card, zero child support, and I don’t even want to acknowledge my ex enough to try. He’s out of our lives, and we are much better off because of it.
40. Enough! He Needs To Go!
My relationship isn’t over yet, but it really should be. He’s cheated on me three times with men, and I’m not sure if he’s actually straight or what at this point. He doesn’t say he loves me unless I say it first. He makes jokes about me dying, and says he never wanted a relationship in the first place. He blames me for the cheating, even though we get busy every time he wants.
He tells me he can’t stand my personality, that I’m too mean to people, and that I’m overthinking stuff when I’m actually right. He then complains when I don’t spend my day off cleaning the whole apartment. He yells at me when he’s stressed at work, but doesn’t communicate that he’s stressed, and shuts me out a couple of times a month. There’s too much to even go on.
41. No Grow Is A No Go
I was 21 at the time, and he was my first boyfriend of four and a half years. We had the following conversation, where I realized that despite his kindness, he had a side that I just couldn’t put up with. I basically realized there would be no more growth in the relationship. He stated, matter-of-factly, “I’m exactly the same person I was when I was 13 years old. Everything about me is the same”. When I asked, “Everything”? He said, “Yep”.
So I said, “But isn’t there anything that’s changed or you’ve improved or worked on? Aren’t you a better person now in some way than you were at 13? I mean, you know more”. He told me, “Nope. I know more, but I’m basically the same person. My personality is the same. And I’m proud of that”. It was the turning point for the end.
42. From Three To Me
We moved in together after about three years of dating. It was her "friend" splitting the rent three ways and us. She became super possessive of me and my time. She would complain because once a week, I'd go hang out with my friends for a few hours. She would cancel our planned dates last minute if anything else came up like a chance to work, study, or see other friends.
She refused to let me use her car while mine was in the shop, despite me having been the only one with a car for two years of our relationship. But worst of all was the petty arguments she'd start with me because her friend didn't clean up after herself. She wouldn't wash her dishes, and she'd hoard them in her room, causing us to completely run out of dishes.
Somehow, this was my fault. Her "friend" was a strange woman who she barely knew. She had asked to move in because her other friend bailed on us. Meanwhile, I had my two best friends, both willing to be the third person on the lease, but I told her she could pick because my friends could just live together.
I didn't realize how unhappy I was until my friend asked what our future plans were. I basically said I don’t think we have a future anymore. It really had me messed up for a while. I didn't get into another real relationship until two years later.
43. No Saving Grace
I had made a desperate Hail Mary attempt at saving the relationship and poured my guts out to her. I told her every feeling that I had for her, where I saw our future going, and pleaded with her to tell me who she needed me to become. Her reaction was chilling. She went to leave and mumbled "pathetic" under her breath before just walking off shaking her head.
44. In The Heat Of The Moment
She called me a child and lazy over being on disability leave due to chronic conditions she knew I had when we met. I have type 1 diabetes, endometriosis, I can't sweat, etc. I'm a mess, which is not the point. When the temperature was in the 120s this past summer, I had to be on leave due to my inability to sweat and cool off properly, because I worked in a kitchen. She knew my leaving was because of that.
She never went out, only wanted to stay home and sit on her phone, and constantly canceled plans outside of her house. After nearly a year of this, I told her off and told her this wasn’t a relationship, and I felt like I was the only one trying. She had a tantrum, blew up and berated me over my work situation, and told me that I couldn't make decisions because I WASN'T working at that time. Needless to say, it ended right then and there.
45. Obsessed
I spent years battling depression even before my relationship. However, I eventually realized that the relationship I was in made it worse than it had to be. I was manipulative, and she was extremely jealous and obsessive. I couldn't even hang out with friends alone because I was taking "us" time away from her. Meanwhile, I couldn't bring her with me because any attention she wasn't getting was me "ignoring" her.
She was jealous of any girl I talked to, friend or not. She even felt threatened by a younger friend that I loved like a daughter. In the beginning, my girlfriend helped me out a lot, got me on my feet, and kept me there until I could finally start steady work to support us. But, by that time, I felt trapped and unhappy. Any mention of "I love you", to her was met with, "Yeah, right", or "sure you do", and other similar responses.
I wasn't the best boyfriend, but towards the end, I had changed a lot for our sake and was still making great efforts to keep improving myself and build her trust. In the end, it wasn’t enough. It drove me insane, and the stress was too much for me. I couldn't do anything without her, or it would upset her, and the only time I would have to myself worry-free was sleeping after work.
She was a total mess toward the end. There was so much fear and anger from her that I just decided we were both better off without each other, and I broke it off in the middle of an argument. I don't regret the decision, but it hurt, and sometimes it still does.
46. Under No Obligation To Stay
I no longer enjoyed being in a relationship with her. I realized she had no intentions of improving herself, and some of her habits were pretty gross. I began to feel trapped in the relationship because I was scared she was going to do something dumb, which she did. After we broke up, she tried to start binge drinking and chain-smoking all to spite me because I didn't like that stuff.
She ended up making herself sick, so she stopped. She was a grenade, and once I realized I was no longer in the relationship by choice but more out of obligation, I knew that was it.
47. At A Loss For Words
After eight years together—five years of dating and three years married—my first husband and I went on a date night for the first time after our second son was born. That’s when it hit me. We didn't have a SINGLE thing to talk about. We just sat awkwardly, eating our dinner and having a few drinks. We were not playing on our phones or talking, just trying to find different things to stare at, so we weren't just creepily staring at each other.
About a month after that, he told me that he didn't want me to say "I love you" so much anymore. He told me I said it too much and I needed to "tone it down". Three months later, I found out he was having an emotional affair with a coworker. My current husband is a much better match for me.
48. Let’s Get Physical
I knew I had to end it when I saw how immaturely she was handling everything and how just plain awful she was. That’s not even counting the bad friends she hung out with and how much she worshiped her phone. Eventually, the only thing I liked about the relationship was the physical element of it—but then the final straw happened.
That was when we had to go to Walmart, and she dragged me to the wedding rings. She basically tried to pressure me into proposing in the near future. We weren’t ready. I was 23, and she had just turned 21. I had to end it. It really hurt because I was crazy about the person deep inside her that I knew was there but I only ever saw when we were intimate.
49. My Man Got Teed Off
My husband was in the hospital after getting a massive brain tumor removed at the age of 21. His girlfriend at the time was supposed to be visiting him while he was still in the ICU. She would show up between 4–5 AM. The reason why was devastating.
It was because she was hooking up with other dudes while he was recovering. He found out and threw his urinal at her. I owe her a thanks; because of her, I met the love of my life a few months after that. We’ve been together 14 years and counting.
50. Disarmed And Done
She refused to leave my house after an argument she created and got in my face demanding that I hit her. She then ran upstairs and went into my room. When I entered my room, I made a disturbing discovery. She was in my closet, where she had popped my safe open and was pulling my handgun out. I was able to disarm her, get her outside, and lock the door. She stayed on my front porch area for about five hours.
Sources: Reddit,
