Catching cheating partners. Going through vicious break-ups. Dealing with deranged attempts at getting back together. Relationships don't always go smoothly, but man oh man, did these people deal with the craziest of the crop. Buckle up y'all. These dramatic relationships sound like they're straight out of a soap opera, but somehow happened in real life.
1. Daddy Issues
I came home from work one day and found out my wife was cheating on me with my dad. It spread all over Facebook and turned into a local drama storm, with people trying to organize a boycott of my dad and my wife. I know cheating happens, but with your partner’s father? Seriously...
2. I’m Your Number 1 Fan
I dated a girl for three weeks. Toward the end of that third week, she invited me back to her place, and I found out she’d made a little shrine for me.
There was a framed photo where she’d badly photoshopped herself into the picture, a few used napkins from our dates, and a bag of two-week-old popcorn I didn’t get to finish from our first date… so, yeah.
3. The Joke’s On Her
I backed out of a party my girlfriend’s friends were having because I got stuck working late. Then my boss cut me loose a few hours early since the restaurant was dead, so I figured I’d show up late and grab a few drinks. When I got to the bar, I asked my girlfriend’s cousin where she was. Her cousin said, “Oh, she’s out front in her car on the phone.”
As I started walking toward the car, her cousin suddenly freaked out and went, “NO! WAIT! She’s in the bathroom!” Knowing she was lying, I headed straight out to my girlfriend’s car. I looked through the window and saw my girlfriend in the back seat with two guys, in a situation that made it clear she’d been cheating.
That was ten years ago. Now she’s a mom of four kids with no dad in the picture, and I’m engaged to her ex–best friend, who’s truly amazing.
4. Lacking Some Empathy
When my best friend passed away, I stayed home for two days. After that, I finally decided to step outside and spend time with my girlfriend and another friend. Later, when it was just the two of us in the car, she turned around and said, “You shouldn’t be sad—you’re out with us right now.
You’re bringing the mood down.” That night, I decided to end things. Afterward, she acted like she was the one being wronged and pretended nothing had happened between us. Unbelievable.
5. Wash Your Hands of This Guy
Several years ago, my friend had been dating a guy for a few months, and everything seemed pretty normal. They’d just decided to move in together, but before she did, he said he needed to share something about his life.
He had his own apartment, and she was planning to move in with him. She also knew that in his small place, the second bedroom was always off limits. He was kind of a geek and really into video games, so she assumed it was a media room or maybe a comics room, and she never really questioned it.
One day he invited her over for lunch. He cooked for her and said, “Before you move in, you need to see my room.” He explained that he thought the room was totally normal, but a previous girlfriend had told him he should keep it private because people might not understand. As he led her there, her mind started running through possibilities: something creepy, something strange, or just something extremely nerdy.
Instead, what she saw was completely unimaginable.
She walked in and found—literally—thousands of jars filled with urine samples that he’d been stealing from the local hospital.
For years, he’d been experimenting with different food and drink combinations to see what color his urine would turn.
As impressed as she was by the organization and sheer effort, that was, unsurprisingly, the last conversation she ever had with him.
6. A Conversation Waiting to Be Discovered
I picked up his phone to change the channel on Chromecast. It was unlocked and opened to Messenger, where I saw he was making plans with my roommate to meet up while I was at work the next day.
7. Diagnosis: Lies
Beat this: My ex-girlfriend pretended she had cancer to try to win me back.
8. Throwing a Curveball
I worked with this woman in different departments at a huge company. We became friendly and hooked up a few times. Then one night we were out at a bar. I turned around and suddenly I was face-to-face with her. Without missing a beat, she introduced me to her husband.
I’m not sure how, but I managed to play it cool.
9. Frozen in Fear
My friend lived and went to school in Paris. We were out to dinner with a mutual friend, and they both started talking about this guy they knew from school—and both had dated. He’d been seeing this girl for a few months, but they ended things because she got a really unsettling feeling during their last few arguments. My friend said she felt the same way. They both started swapping stories, but this girl’s were a lot darker.
After the breakup, the guy kept showing up around her place for weeks, acting like it was just a “coincidence.” He’d say things that made it clear he was keeping tabs on her—asking how she knew about certain events, bringing up details he shouldn’t have known, that kind of thing.
Then one day she came home and realized all her kitchen knives were gone. She remembered she’d once given him a set of keys. A few days later, the knives turned up in the freezer. That was when she changed her locks, genuinely afraid something might happen.
Not long after that—maybe a week or two later—an elderly woman who lived downstairs was found murdered. The police didn’t have any solid leads, and the girl was so shaken that she moved out as soon as she could.
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10. How Dare You Know?
My worst boyfriend was really mad at me for knowing he’d cheated on me with several women, because it’s uncomfortable when people know the bad things you’ve done. He honestly acted like he was the one who needed comfort.
11. My Nightmare Wedding
My old roommate was the kind of girl whose bookshelf was packed with wedding magazines, plus a few telling titles like *Making Marriage Work* and *Working Through Difficult Relationships*. She’d go out with her girlfriends to try on wedding rings and wedding dresses.
All well and good—except she wasn’t getting married. She didn’t even have a boyfriend. She just sped through hook-ups at an impressive rate. I didn’t think much of it until she hooked up with a friend of mine. That’s when I realized how intense things could get.
They started hanging out as friends for about a week or so. No surprise, they ended up sleeping together—once. He told her plainly that it didn’t mean anything and that he didn’t think they should keep seeing each other. She came home crying, completely losing it, because she couldn’t understand why he would “end it so suddenly.”
A few days later, I found out she somehow got into his apartment, cleaned the whole place, and cooked him a meal. Then she waited there for hours until he got home and said—no joke—“Hey honey, how was your day? I hope you don’t mind, but I cleaned up the apartment and made us dinner before bed.”
I think he almost had a heart attack.
15. Distress Rehearsal
My ex pretended she’d overdosed when I tried to break up with her. After dropping hints that she might do something, she hung up and wouldn’t answer my calls. Two hours later, I kicked in her door because she wouldn’t answer that either, and I walked in to find her lying on the couch with a picture of us and pills scattered around.
When I shook her and started calling the police, she looked at me and said, “I knew you loved me.” That’s when I realized something was seriously wrong. Oh, young love… sigh.
16. Edible Incredible
I broke up with my girlfriend. Unfortunately, she wasn’t ready to end the relationship, so she kind of started stalking me. She’d call in the middle of the night and hang up, drive by my house all the time, and once I caught her parked half a block away, watching my place. But that wasn’t even the creepiest part. The creepiest part was that a few months later, I started dating someone else.
My ex would call and yell at me, saying she knew I was seeing another girl because she’d spotted me at this place and that place. A few dates in, the new girl and I are at my duplex. We start making out and one thing leads to another… and we end up on the living room floor, in the middle of hooking up.
Then, all of a sudden, this new girl stops mid-breath and freezes. I open my eyes and she’s staring at me with this terrified look. I look at her like, what’s wrong? She pulls my face close and whispers, “Someone is watching us through the mail slot.”
My door has one of those mail slots with a metal flap outside and a little hood on the inside. It’s dark in my house and I can’t see well, but as I slowly look over, I can definitely tell there’s movement, and I can see a thin line of light from the street lamps. I immediately start pulling my pants on. The flap snaps shut, and I see the shadow of the screen door closing.
Then I hear multiple footsteps running down my walkway, followed by a car door opening and slamming shut. In a rush, I finish buttoning up and head for the door—right as I hear something crash against it. I fling it open and see my ex’s car speeding down the street, with two of her friends in the car.
There’s some kind of mushy mess all over my front door, and glass everywhere. I turn on the lights and realize a baby food jar is smashed across my porch, with green strained peas smeared all over my door.
Seriously? Neither she nor her friends even had a kid at that point, so she had to go to the store and buy it… specifically for this? Was she trying to send me some kind of warning message or something?
17. Road Trip of Regret
My ex-wife cheated on me, set my house on fire, took my daughter to Puerto Rico without telling me, abandoned our daughter, ran off to Barcelona and moved in with some guy, then came back and expected me to forgive her… and that’s just the beginning.
18. The Real Ex-Files
My ex-boyfriend once tried to convince me that, on a camping trip with his cousin, they found a dead “Bigfoot.” He said they poked it with a stick, and then people in hazmat-style suits from the CIA showed up and told them to leave because it was top-secret, blah blah blah. After that, he claimed the CIA started following him and even recruited him to do hitman-type missions for them. And no, he wasn’t a teenager when he was telling me this—he was 25.
No, he’s not schizophrenic. He is, however, a sociopath and a conspiracy theorist. When I broke up with him, he stalked me and nearly got me fired. He would call my department nonstop and hang up if anyone but me answered.
He’d drive around my work parking lot and blow up both my work phone and my cell. He even sent creepy letters to a guy I was seeing. He’d also show up at a local bar I went to, even though he lived 45 miles away and didn’t have any friends in my town.
19. Stake Out for an Unfaithful Nurse
I had a feeling my wife was seeing someone else. For about a week, something seemed off. We’d be sitting on the couch and she’d get texts she said were from a female friend, but she always turned her phone face down. A few nights later, she told me she was going to cover a shift for a nurse coworker who’d just had a miscarriage, and that she’d be working late.
That night I woke up from a deep sleep with my heart pounding, just feeling like something wasn’t right. I quietly went to her side of the bed, took her phone, and went into the living room to look through her messages. That’s when I found out the truth. She had made detailed plans to meet a guy at a hotel.
I took pictures of the texts with my phone in case I needed proof later. Then I put her phone back, went to bed, and just lay there trying to figure out what to do next.
I knew they were planning to meet that afternoon, so when I got to work I told my boss I needed a half day, and maybe a few days off after that. About an hour before they were supposed to meet up, I drove to my brother-in-law’s house. I told him what was going on and asked if I could borrow his truck so I could see them show up for myself. He made me promise I wouldn’t confront them.
I went to the hotel parking lot, and about 30 minutes later, they both pulled in—using his truck. She was wearing her work outfit. After they went inside, I walked over to his truck and let the air out of all four tires.
She’d clearly tried to plan everything to avoid getting caught. She dropped our two kids off at the babysitter wearing scrubs so it looked like she was heading to work. Then she drove her car to a parking garage so he could pick her up there, figuring I might drive by her workplace to see if her car was in the lot.
I left the hotel, went home, and put every photo we’d ever taken together—along with pictures of the kids—on the kitchen table. Then I packed a bag for myself and the girls and drove back to my hometown to stay with friends.
On the way, I called the hotel and asked to be connected to the room under her name. She answered. I don’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something like, “I know where you are, and I know what you’re doing.” She didn’t react much until she heard our girls in the backseat laughing and singing.
Then she broke down and begged me to come back. I told her we needed a few days away, that the kids deserved better than this, and I hung up. She kept calling, and for the next few days I let everything go straight to voicemail.
20. Hardly a Wholesome Breakfast
I broke up with my girlfriend. Then, two years and one move later, on my birthday, I look up from my bowl of cereal and see her standing outside the screen door, staring at me and crying.
21. Freaky Friday
June 1, 2018. Just a normal Friday. My husband kissed me goodbye and left for work. I was cleaning the house because friends were coming to stay for the weekend.
Then the doorbell rang. A man was standing there who introduced himself as the husband of a woman my husband worked with. He told me my husband and his wife were having an affair.
He said he’d found out about it about six months earlier and told his wife she had to end it. He believed she did—but only for about three months—then it started up again.
When he realized it was happening again, he called my husband and told him to stay away from his wife or he’d come to me and tell me everything. Apparently, my husband thought he was bluffing. He had no idea what was about to happen.
I was truly the last to know. My husband never came home after that. He got a rental place and a lawyer. The divorce was final on December 21, 2018. We’d been together 24 years. It still hurts.
22. Two Writes Make Mr. Wrong
He wasn’t even a boyfriend or an ex. He just convinced himself we were in love and then started stalking me. He’d drive past my house all the time and follow me around at school. Even back in middle school, he would always sit near me on the bus—except it wasn’t even his bus. This went on for years, and eventually it escalated into something really disturbing.
He was two years older and one of those kids who acted like he was in a gang, and he brought knives to school a few times. More than once, he threatened to hurt himself if I didn’t give him a chance.
The last time I saw him, he cut himself in front of me seven times and said it was “for the seven letters of your name.” Not long after that, he ended up in juvie, and years later he came back with my name tattooed on his chest.
23. A Picture Says About Five Hundred Dollars...
My boyfriend asked me to look something up on his computer. While I was on it, a message popped up in the corner from a woman saying how much she missed him. I got curious about what she meant, and then she sent a picture. Strange.
I clicked it—and I’ve regretted it ever since. I was shocked to learn that on Facebook, he’s been talking to more than 100 women.
A lot of these women were either sending him photos of their bodies or thanking him for sending money. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. We’ve been together for 15 years. We have a child. I’m on disability because I have cancer, and he doesn’t work. He’s sent over $500 in exchange for pictures from women. That’s more than half of my monthly check.
24. That Wasn’t On His Shopping List
When we were 17, my best friend met this really unpleasant girl at Walmart. If anyone was a hypocrite, it was her—super “holier than thou” and judgmental, but at the same time trying to get pregnant at 16 by pretty much anyone she could hit on, including his friends (and my brother).
She was also controlling and jealous—you know the type. We begged him over and over to stay far, far away from her. Nobody wants their friend to become a teen dad and be tied to a mess like that forever.
The best we got was him promising he wouldn’t get her pregnant. Yeah… that didn’t last. She was pregnant within a year, and they got married. They had two more kids, but they finally split up a few years ago. We’re 28 now, and here’s the wild part: he still won’t actually divorce her.
She lives with another guy and even had that guy’s baby, but my friend still won’t file the paperwork. On top of that, there’s a ridiculous law that can require him to support a baby that isn’t his, just because they’re still married—even if a DNA test says otherwise.
It’s sad and frustrating.
25. Plot Twist
We were all on vacation (about seven friends), and everyone was drinking. We were the only two who weren’t. He managed to grab his girlfriend’s phone while she was passed out and pulled me aside.
He said, “She’s cheating on me—some guy named Joey has been texting her and meeting her after work every day.” We ended up searching names and mutual friends on Facebook. Turns out Joey was a girl.
26. Lies, Lies, and More Lies
My girlfriend told me she needed a few weeks to herself to “sort things out.” What she was really doing was planning her wedding to a guy she met at work.
27. A Reason to Be Steaming Mad
My best friend was in a long-distance relationship for a few years. She and her boyfriend played a lot of Steam games together. At one point, she gave him her credit card info so he could buy himself a game for Christmas, on the condition that he’d delete the card details afterward.
He didn’t, and later his computer got hacked. She saw a few big charges, reported them to her bank, and then noticed smaller Steam charges here and there over the previous few months. Her boyfriend insisted it wasn’t him, so she reported those too.
Then, out of nowhere, he got a VAC ban on Steam for fraudulent charges. He started claiming she’d given him her card info again for another purchase and that she must have forgotten. He really wanted the VAC ban removed because he played a lot of Dota and couldn’t play multiplayer with the ban.
And then things got worse. A few days later, her grandfather got very sick very quickly. They were close, so she was completely devastated.
She went to see him in the hospital, and in the middle of their conversation he had a massive stroke. She and her family were basically rushed out so the doctors could work.
A doctor told them he might be brain dead, but they had to wait and see. My friend was overwhelmed and called her boyfriend while she was waiting, and explained what had happened. He said, “That’s awful. Also, can you make sure to call your bank so we can get that VAC ban lifted?”
She hung up on him and didn’t speak to him again for a year.
28. Truly Insensitive
I knew my relationship was over when my ex started making jokes that I was “faking” my depression. My dad has severe depression (he gets help and takes medication for it), and his brother struggled with it too until he died by suicide.
29. Running Late
My boyfriend didn’t show up to my brother’s deathbed like he said he would. His exact words were, “I’ll take a shower and be there soon.” Then he ignored my calls for hours and never came. He also didn’t go to the wake or the funeral, which was the least he could have done.
After eight years together, even the worst day of my family’s life has been stained in my mind by his selfish, inconsiderate behavior.
30. Can’t Get Much Worse
I knew I had to leave my boyfriend when he mocked me for a suicide attempt and said hurtful things about it to the woman he had a child with—during our marriage—after 10 years of being manipulated and mistreated. There’s more, but I don’t want to go through it all again. I recently remarried my best friend.
31. What a Story
My first boyfriend, back in high school. About seven months into our relationship, he calls me and starts with, “There’s something I need to tell you.” Then he tells me this story: about a year earlier, when he was supposedly trying drugs for the first time, his dealer friend picked him up and took him back to his apartment.
On the way there, for some reason, they decided to pick up a homeless person from the side of the road.
He said that once they got to the apartment, they got extremely messed up, and his friend—out of nowhere—pulled out a gun and shot the homeless guy in the head. My boyfriend claimed he was so out of it that his friend somehow talked him into eating part of the man, and that he’d never told anyone about it except me.
Three months later, I found out the whole thing was a complete lie. He made it up to mess with my head because he thought I was getting distant and wanted me to care about him again. And on top of that, he’d never even done drugs—he was just a manipulative, compulsive liar. So yeah, we’re definitely not together anymore.
32. Indecent Proposal
My ex-wife actually asked for my “blessing” to have an affair with another married man. She seemed shocked when I told her I didn’t support it. She then completely lost it (she was dealing with serious mental health issues), went ahead and did it anyway, and eventually ended up in a psychiatric ward.
Two marriages fell apart, and now the two people who cheated are engaged. I was pretty devastated at first, but in the end it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
33. Getting Your Priorities in Order
I was dating a guy who had a kid who lived in another state. He only saw his son a few times a year, and I assumed it was because of the distance. Nope—I was way off. One year on 4/20, he chose to stay for our city’s 4/20 festival instead of going home for his kid’s birthday.
He literally said, “Little Man will understand. It’s 2 Chainz.” I didn’t stay with him much longer after that.
34. Wrong Place, Wrong Time
I was at a party with a group of friends. I was standing behind my best friend, talking with everyone, when he suddenly got a text. I glanced at his phone and saw it was from my girlfriend—her full name—and she was asking when he was going to come over. She was supposed to be out of town at her mom’s house.
35. Stairway to Hell
I dated this girl for about six months, and she could never give me any space. She always needed to know what I was doing. Right before I broke up with her, I caught her peeking through my window to see what I was up to. It might not have seemed so strange, except I lived on the second floor.
She actually brought a ladder to my house just to look into my upstairs room and check on me.
36. All Take, No Give
My best friend ended up with a really terrible guy. He cheated on her over and over. He was emotionally and physically abusive, and little by little he made her insecure and feel like she was “crazy.” One time she even slapped me at a club because he said something to me and, since it was so loud, I leaned in close to respond—and she thought I kissed him (seriously?).
She moved to another country for him, let him live with her rent-free while doing nothing, and worked two jobs to support them.
When they fought, he’d break things around the house. He even brought other girls back to her place and slept with them in her bed, then sent her photos while she was at work.
They got pregnant and she had an abortion, but he didn’t go with her or support her—emotionally or financially. Afterward, whenever they argued, he’d call her a murderer and say she killed his baby.
And somehow, they’re still together ten years later.
37. Why Self-Esteem Matters
My sister-in-law (my wife’s sister) has always struggled with her weight, partly because her parents called her “little fatty” when she was growing up. When she was 21, she ended up with the first guy who showed her attention. Within nine months of meeting him they were married, and within a year she had his baby.
This guy is the whole package—in the worst way. He’s openly rude to her and to her family in public, even in front of her parents. He has about a fifth-grade education and no interest in improving himself. He has a child with another woman that he never sees, and he doesn’t even try. He also has drinking and gambling problems.
On top of that, he insists on a “his money/her money” setup. He spends his money on his parents (who are already better off) and his nieces, or on alcohol and gambling, so my sister-in-law—who doesn’t make much—ends up covering most of their expenses.
He also insists on living in the worst, most dangerous part of town, even though they’ve had several break-ins, and they could live closer to her parents for less money if they wanted to. And speaking of her parents, they’re basically raising the baby because she works while he stays out as much as possible.
I honestly thought they wouldn’t last a year, but now I’m worried she’ll never leave him—and that the kid is going to end up really messed up.
38. Why Not Try Beanie Babies Next Time?
After sleeping with a girl I met at a bar, I got out of bed. She asked where I was going, and I told her I was going to throw the condom away. She told me not to toss it and to hand it to her instead. Turns out she was keeping a collection of condoms guys had used with her. Needless to say, I left as quickly as I could.
39. A Real Shaggy Dog Story
My ex tried to win me back by handing me a bag of dog hair...
40. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
He loved bragging about what a jerk he was. He treated her terribly and never seemed that interested—until he found out how rich she was. One of her dad’s companies got sold and it made the news, so her dad couldn’t keep his name off the Forbes list. Then this guy suddenly started publicly claiming they were together, after three years of messing with her.
At every family event, he treated it like one big networking opportunity. He never seemed to have a real job, but always said he was “in finance.” He even claimed he was “working remotely” while basically crashing at her parents’ house for six weeks—and he acted like the household staff worked for him.
We all tried to warn her, and even though we’re basically like sisters, she told me, “It’s okay if you don’t like him, you don’t have to.”
Her dad reminded her that their family rules say any potential spouse has to be thoroughly vetted by private investigators. He gave her the courtesy of telling her he was going to do it, as long as she agreed not to warn him while the investigation was happening. She agreed, totally confident he’d come back clean.
He didn’t. He was cheating on her.
She was a wreck for a long time, but thankfully she’s doing great now—and she’s married to an amazing guy.
41. Way to Break the Relationship
At the time, my girlfriend and I were on a “break.” I got a text from a girl I had mutual friends with, and we knew each other pretty well. We started having flirty, suggestive conversations—talking about hooking up and all that.
Turns out my girlfriend had bought a burner phone with a different number, and she was the one texting me the whole time. She wasn’t happy.
42. Well That Escalated Quickly...
I found out the truth about my ex while we were both in the exam room for what he called his “UTI treatment.” The doctor came in and said it was gonorrhea. Looking back, I’m guessing he’d been lying for about 2–3 months.
He even lied about how he got it, trying to convince me it happened because he somehow brushed his genitals against mystery fluids in a gas station bathroom (seriously?). When he realized I wasn’t buying it, he tried grabbing random bottles off the doctor’s shelf.
Then he completely fell apart. He started hitting himself, dropped to his knees crying, and tried to grab my hands while begging me not to leave. That night he threatened to hurt both of us, and when I tried to pack and go, he kept attacking me for nearly nine hours.
He choked me in the driveway. I spoke at his sentencing this Thursday. He’s a convicted felon now. I hope he’s learned something from all of this.
43. Did He Get an A+?
I found out the truth about my boyfriend of two years. He’d asked me to proofread his paper on his Mac, and a message popped up on the right side. He was sitting in bed next to me, texting some girl, “Goodnight, I love you.” I deleted his whole paper, typed, “Who’s Marissa?”, saved it, told him it looked great, and walked out.
Turns out she was his girlfriend of eight years, living near his parents two hours away.
44. Beware the Blog
This isn’t a story about one of my own exes, but about one of my younger brother’s that I ended up dealing with. Years ago, I got a small following on Tumblr because I posted fan music I made. My younger brother (I think he was 13 or 14) thought the site looked fun and made an account too.
I didn’t even know about that until things had gone way too far, but one of my “fans,” who was my age (so around 16 or 17), decided to start flirting with—and then dating—my brother, who was still in middle school.
I was furious when I found out. At the same time, I knew he was going to meet and date girls throughout his life, and nothing would destroy his “cool factor” faster than his “Tumblr famous” big sister barging into his relationship.
So I tried to stay out of it… but I couldn’t ignore that he was swinging in and out of some really intense moods, and I had a feeling it was connected to her. So I looked up her blog. What I found was just…wild.
This girl seemed completely unstable—or maybe she was putting on some kind of “mentally ill Tumblr persona.” She posted nonstop about hearing voices, wanting to end her life, but not being able to leave “him” (meaning my middle-school brother) behind. She also wrote about things “he” supposedly did or said that made her want to hurt herself, and similar stuff.
So I did what any protective older sister would do: I ran one of her selfies through a reverse Google image search to see if I could match it to a Facebook profile. I ended up finding her full name, searched it, and found an online newspaper article about her making the Honor Roll.
I called the school, got transferred to her guidance counselor, and explained what was going on. I also emailed the counselor screenshots from her blog. The counselor said it seemed very out of character for her (which backed up my suspicion that the blog might have been exaggerated or made up), and that they’d address it right away.
Based on what she told my brother in her last messages, she got called into the guidance office and her parents were there. She found out someone had reported her blog, and they went through it with her, post by post, making her explain everything. The blog was gone the next day, and she never tried to contact my little brother again.
Tablet Under Budget
45. The Nuttiest Idea
An ex-girlfriend, knowing I have a potentially fatal nut allergy, returned my clothes, console games, and other things by stuffing the bag with peanuts and leaving it on my doorstep while I was at work. Looking back, I’m honestly kind of amazed.
46. Goodbye Earl
My friend is about a month away from her one-year wedding anniversary, and she’s around five months pregnant. I’ll call her husband Tim. Tim is a total mess. He’s abusive, drinks way too much, is controlling, extremely jealous, and has serious anger issues. He needs help—badly.
One night, during yet another fight, he threw her down the stairs while she was pregnant. After that, she left him for about a week, had an abortion, and then about a week later he proposed. You’d think she said no, right? Nope.
After that, it was like nothing ever happened. And somehow we were all expected to be happy and excited for her…how? Honestly, it’s exhausting being friends in a situation like this. I’ve told her more than once that if I ever see him lay a hand on her again, I won’t just stand there and watch.
Our friend group has even made bets on how long the marriage will last, which is awful—but that’s where things are. I’ve tried and tried to help her get out of this, but I’m tapped out.
47. Hero or Zero?
Luckily, my friend finally realized she was in a really unhealthy relationship, but for a few years she was with this terrible guy. She already had a baby before they got together, and then not long after, she got pregnant with his child too. There’s a lot to this story.
To start with, her daughter from before the relationship was diagnosed with cancer just a few months after they started dating. For the most part, he did step up—so much so that she ended up calling him “dad.” But while they were going through that awful situation, he was talking to other girls online behind my friend’s back.
When she found out, it made her anxious and suspicious, and honestly she already had more than enough to deal with. This went on and off for a while, and at different points they both ended up cheating. The relationship was completely toxic.
Fast forward to 2013: her daughter sadly passed away at just four years old. Things between them were still bad, and then came the final straw—seriously. While her daughter was still alive, a lot of people donated money to help. It was kept in a piggy bank, and because of everything going on, there was a decent amount in there.
She later found out her now-ex had been stealing her late daughter’s donated money to support his drug use. He’d also taken money from his son’s savings too—leaving my friend with nothing to use for her son’s birthday.
48. Surely, There Are Better Lies?
My ex told me both of his parents were killed by a drunk driver, then spent the next ten days on vacation with another woman while I thought he was making funeral plans and handling their estate.
49. Over the Hill
My ex-wife and I went up to Big Bear to go snowboarding and spend some time together. We were having issues, and I thought it would be good to get away and do something fun as a couple. Let’s just say it didn’t go well. She said she grew up snowboarding, but she never even made it down a hill and had a miserable time.
So we went back to the cabin, and she pretty much just stayed on her phone, not talking to me. When we got back, she said she needed to shower and be alone for a bit. She went off, and I just hung out in the den.
She left her phone in her purse and it kept buzzing, so I checked it because I thought maybe someone was trying to reach us or there was an emergency. I opened it and saw a full conversation between her and another guy. It was bad. I read how the texts started that day—really early in the morning. “Hope you’re doing ok up there.”
Her reply hit hard: “We’ll see, doubt it. He’s trying too hard. He should just know it really doesn’t matter. Wish I was up here with you instead.”
It was awful. And that was before I even woke up. I was crushed and honestly didn’t know what to do. I knew I didn’t want to fight, because I realized she wasn’t someone I wanted to keep fighting for. I grabbed my bag and drove back to San Diego.
I took her phone with me so I could text him and say, “We’re coming home early—let’s meet.” I invited him to a coffee shop and waited for him to show up. When he walked in, he saw me right away and kind of froze. I waved him over and, since I was close to the door, I told him we needed to talk. He came over and immediately launched into the “It’s not what you think” speech.
I told him if he wanted her, he could drive up to Big Bear and go get her—because I was done, and we were over. I told him I’d see her when we signed the papers. Then I left. It was the second worst day of my life, but I’m still glad it happened. I met my partner three years later, and we’ve been together four years now—engaged.
50. More of Me to Love (and Dump You)
My ex apparently preferred bigger girls. I was underweight when we started dating. Within about a month, I’d gained around 20 pounds, and eventually I gained 65 pounds (about five months in). I was really scared and couldn’t figure out why I was putting on so much weight.
I barely ate anything. It turned out he’d been putting steroids and other stuff in my food and drinks to make me gain weight because I wasn’t “big enough.”
Needless to say, I broke up with him, and I’m proud to say I’ve lost the weight and feel like myself again. Oh, and my breasts stayed big. I guess I should thank him for that?
51. Birds of a Feather
Two of my friends are dating the same really difficult person. They all know about each other. My friends aren’t comfortable with it, but they’re both too invested in this person to walk away.
The person in the middle tells everyone else that my friends are fine with the arrangement, but that’s not true. This has been happening on and off for more than a decade.
It’s awkward for everyone…
52. Netflix and Not So Chill
My ex thinks I found out about her affair when I checked her phone, but I actually knew about two months earlier. She sent me a photo of herself watching Netflix in bed, and I don’t think she noticed that the guy’s face was clearly visible in the laptop’s reflection. After that, it was more about me being in denial and trying to fix things.
53. Comic-Con Con Artist
It was the classic love-at-first-sight story. We said “I love you” after two weeks. We moved in together after two months. Engaged after six months.
We were together for more than four years. I gave up my rent-controlled bachelor pad and got a bigger apartment so she could have an art studio. We did everything together and split the bills 50/50.
She went to Comic-Con in NYC (she was an exhibitor) and I helped her pack. I dropped her off at the airport. Everything felt normal. No warning signs. She was supposed to be back in four days, but she never came home. She just vanished—ghosted.
The day she should’ve returned, I panicked, thinking something terrible had happened, only to realize I’d been blocked everywhere: email, phone, social media, everything.
What I learned came from the unpaid bills she left behind, the credit card we shared (she’d stopped paying two months earlier), and her cell phone bill.
On that bill, I kept seeing the same NYC area code in her call history, over and over, and it finally clicked. She met a guy at San Diego Comic-Con a few months earlier and slowly, deliberately put together a plan to leave me, take as much as she could to NYC, and never look back.
Then came the real shock: she maxed out our credit card and the Amazon card furnishing their new place in NYC. By the time the grief wore off and I switched into problem-solving mode, it was too late to stop it all. I had to log in and watch the purchases roll in—household items bought with my money for a home I’ll never live in. I couldn’t stay in our apartment or keep up our lifestyle on a single income.
The next six months were rough—self-destructive choices and a lot of self-hate. And honestly, it wasn’t even the romance ending that hurt the most. It was the betrayal and the financial damage. It took me more than a year of living paycheck to paycheck to get every balance back to zero.
54. Taking Things to the Next Level
When my mom called and told me I needed to come to the house (about 30 minutes away) because she wasn’t sure how much longer my grandfather had, I panicked.
She insisted my girlfriend at the time drive, because she didn’t want me behind the wheel while I was upset—I was really close to my pawpaw. My girlfriend agreed. I threw on some shoes and was ready to go.
Then my girlfriend got in the shower. Then she blow-dried and straightened her hair. Then she did her makeup.
My mom called again when we were about 15 minutes away and told me he had passed. If we’d left when we were supposed to, I would’ve gotten to say goodbye.
Just… wow.
55. Last Choice Haircutters
I woke up to the sound of scissors snapping shut. I looked up and saw her holding a tuft of my hair. She glanced down and said, “I’m going to keep this, so I’ll have a little piece of you with me all the time.”
56. Playing Favorites
Two of my friends started dating. They each have a daughter from a previous relationship. The woman’s daughter lives with them and gets pretty much everything she wants. The man’s daughter, though, is treated like an outsider when she comes to visit.
Both girls are four, and they were both supposed to get a tablet for Christmas, so I bought each of them a tablet case as my gift. Big mistake. I didn’t realize until Christmas morning that the girlfriend’s daughter was the only one who actually got the tablet.
A lot of the time, when a visit with his daughter is coming up, the girlfriend starts an argument and he ends up not getting to see his child. If there isn’t a scheduled visit, she’ll pick fights on Thursdays or Fridays, they’ll “break up” for the weekend, and then she comes back Sunday night like nothing happened.
It usually happens right after he’s paid all their bills. Now they have a baby together, and she convinced him to quit his well-paying job with benefits to stay home with the baby so she could waitress.
He tried going to school part-time with an hour-long commute, but she refused to watch their baby on her days off, so he had to drop out. I also recently found out that even though she gets $1100 a month in family allowance, plus her wages and tips, plus his parental leave, they still never seem to have money for baby expenses. I’ve learned the reason is that she has a drug problem.
He’s my brother, and when I try to talk to him and tell him he needs to leave, he turns it on me. He argues with me, calls me crazy, and says I’m the reason he’s so stressed.
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57. ‘Til Death
In high school, my girlfriend made me promise that if she ever died, I’d have sex with her body. We haven’t been together in years, and I’m not sure whether that promise still applies.
58. Meow and Swipe Right
My wild ex sent me her new kitten’s umbilical cord for Valentine’s Day.
That’s completely true.
59. How About No?
My ex could be pretty controlling, and she once told me she wished I had a disability so no one else would want to spend time with me, and she could keep me all to herself.
60. Obsessive Thoughts
I didn’t end up with an STD, thankfully, but my ex had Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and he went through a phase where he became fixated on the idea that he was going to die of HIV. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from, so I tried to help him break out of that obsessive spiral and calm the tic it was triggering. Turns out he’d been sleeping with sex workers for a year.
61. Feeling Blue
We were engaged, with about four months to go until the wedding. It was her birthday, and it fell on a Friday. We’d both wanted to see Blue Man Group for a while, so I ordered tickets for us. Since it was a Friday, I took a half day off work to surprise her.
When I got home, there was an unfamiliar car in the driveway, and the garage door was open—which was really unusual. What made it even stranger was that it seemed to be out of view of the security camera we had pointed at the front door.
I walked in through the garage and heard unmistakable sounds coming from our bedroom. I ended the relationship right then and there, even though her family later said that it “broke” her.
The last time I checked a couple years ago, she had two kids with two different men and had spent some time in prison. It was a small town, so it didn’t exactly surprise me.
Even after everything, her family still acted like I was the bad guy because I didn’t forgive her. And honestly, the worst part is that I never even got to see Blue Man Group live.
62. Second Life
I had a girlfriend who made a Facebook account for me without telling me. I didn’t realize she kept it going even two years after we broke up. The worst part was that she had been updating it with new pictures of me right up until the day I confronted her.
She also seemed to know what I was doing and where I’d been on specific dates. She’s a pretty bold ex, too—because not long ago, she asked me out while I was with my current girlfriend.
63. Money is No Object
One of my exes was so strict about money that it started to feel petty. Every time we went out to eat—even after two years together—he’d wave down the server and say, “We need the check split evenly. Half and half.” If we spent five bucks at the grocery store on spaghetti and sauce, he’d still ask me to pay my half.
Anyway, my 17-year-old cat was dying, and I was completely heartbroken. The day I had to say goodbye, my ex—who was my boyfriend at the time—took me out for ice cream. We shared a $5 sundae at Dairy Queen. He paid, and I was genuinely so grateful.
That tiny gesture meant a lot on one of the hardest days of my life. But then, in the car afterward, he asked if we should “settle up now or… because, I mean… the sundae was $4.95 and I don’t think you gave me any money for it,” and I just broke down. I threw a $20 at him and cried.
I’m not saying I expect a guy to pay for everything, and I do believe in being fair. But buying your long-term girlfriend a $5 sundae when she’s clearly falling apart isn’t asking too much. This was eight years ago, and I’m engaged now to a wonderful, generous man.
We share money really well, and honestly, I think I appreciate him even more because of what I went through with that ex.
64. A Stepmom’s Fury
My stepmom once did this to a woman she caught sleeping with my dad. She just wrapped the woman’s long hair around her fist a couple of times and dragged her down the stairs and out of the house with no clothes on. As a teenager, I stayed out of my stepmom’s way after that—but that was nothing compared to what she did to the babysitter.
The babysitter didn’t know my stepmom knew about her and my dad, and they went shopping together one day. My stepmom shoved her in front of a slow-moving car, and she broke her leg.
Dad got kind of mad about it because the babysitter also danced and lived with us, so she couldn’t work and her income dropped. Both the babysitter and my stepmom were dancers. Being a teen in that house was wild.
65. Sleepover
He had a longtime friend (who was a woman) staying over for the night. She was sleeping in the basement bedroom, and we were upstairs. In the middle of the night, he slipped out of bed and ended up waking me. When he realized I was awake, he said he had to use the bathroom.
But I already had my suspicions, so I lay there and listened as he walked down the hall—past the bathroom—and then down the stairs. So I followed.
And I caught him downstairs in the basement, getting ready to hook up with her.
Yeah. I was furious. I was foolish and tried to save our engagement, but apparently I “wasn’t fun anymore,” and he left.
66. Sign on the Dotted Line
My best friend is in the military. He was dating a slightly older woman—mid-30s—while we were in our mid-20s. She had four kids with three different dads, but the first few times I met her she actually seemed pretty cool. And yeah, my buddy has had some rough luck dating, so I kind of understood it, even though I honestly thought he could do better.
But we were in our 20s. If he wanted to date a more experienced woman for a while, I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.
Then one day he shows up to work and tells a mutual friend of ours that he’s engaged. This is April 1st, so I immediately think he’s messing with us. No way he’s engaged to her. They’d been together less than a year—more like six months.
And I’m his best friend, and this is the first I’m hearing about it? I tell our mutual friend, right in front of him, that he’s lying. I’m like, this has to be an April Fools joke.
Except the joke was on me, because they really were engaged—and they got married not long after. At the wedding, people were literally telling him to walk away and not do it.
The groomsmen kept pulling him aside—first one at a time, then as a group—basically begging him to leave. His dad was there too and just kind of looked away like, “I’m not getting involved.” But he went through with it and married her.
A few months after they got married, she convinced him to adopt her oldest kid since the biological dad was nowhere around. So he did. And then, almost as soon as the adoption was finalized, she completely changed.
She was constantly blowing up at him, putting him down, and just being mean all the time. The whole marriage lasted maybe 14 months total. Just a few months after the adoption became official, he filed for divorce. He ended up paying child support for over ten years. The kid was mostly raised by the grandparents and he paid the money to them, but still—painful.
67. Charity Case
My best friend (a real goody-two-shoes) decided it was a great idea to date a guy she met while volunteering with her mom at a local food pantry. The thing is, he wasn’t actually volunteering—he was there doing court-ordered community service hours. I warned her (since I come from a very different background than she does) that it probably wasn’t in her best interest and that she didn’t really know what she was getting into.
Side note: I’m not judging anyone who’s ever been in a situation like that—there’s a lot more to the story, I just don’t want to get too detailed.
After six stressful months of her narrowly avoiding one mess after another with this guy, it somehow took her ending up in the middle of a major drug deal with him (and not even her first one at that point) to finally snap out of it and realize what she was doing. He told her to put everything in her purse while he drove home as fast as he could, and that was finally her breaking point.
She broke up with him a few hours later, and I was honestly so relieved.
Until a few weeks later, when she told me she was pregnant…
68. Regrets? I Have a Few
She ended our two-year relationship for this guy. Then I started getting messages from him, and I was really upset. I guess I take love pretty seriously. The messages kept coming on Facebook, so I checked out his profile. The account had only two friends, no photos, and it was just four days old.
It turns out he left her almost immediately after she left me for him. But she still wanted me to come crawling back? So she made a fake account to try to make me jealous.
I laughed so hard I honestly couldn’t catch my breath.
69. Hunting for Problems
My brother started to think his wife was cheating on him since a lot of sketchy stuff was going on. So, we made a plan: We told her we were going on a hunting trip—but really, we were laying an ingenious trap. We never actually left town and holed up at my house.
We drove to his place after dark and caught her red-handed. My brother was mad with rage and wanted to go in there and beat the guy to a pulp—but I convinced him there was a better option that would really nail them.
One weekend, we went on a hunting trip, except the twist was that we never left the city. We stayed at my house till it got dark, then drove back to his place in my neighbor’s car. His wife sent him a picture of her at home saying she was going to go to bed early. Shortly after, we saw a guy walk to the house and let himself in.
We snuck up to the house and, using the night vision camera, got video of them bumping uglies in the living room. My brother wanted to confront this guy at this point so... I did something messed up and called the authorities. I said I heard a lot of yelling from the house and asked if they could go check. It kept my brother from messing with the dude (a coworker of hers).
Cops show up, take statements. We leave and the next day he pulls her iMessages off the email account and talks to a lawyer.
We give the lawyer the messages and when we show up five days later from our "hunting trip," he calls her and says he got something wild and wants her to come out and see it. When she comes out he gives her divorce papers and kicks her out of the house.
She had the police do a civil stand by while she got her stuff a few days later. House was his before they got married so all she got to keep was some stuff they bought together and her car. No kids and the prenup nullified the alimony she could have gotten as he made way more money than her.
The guy she was sleeping with had a record. We saw her a few months later, she tried talking to my wife and said she missed my brother and she was sorry, the guy and her broke up shortly after the divorce.
70. Parrots Are Just Spies With Wings
This happened a while ago, but it’s still a memorable one. I found out my (now ex) girlfriend was cheating after I heard one of my parrots start saying, “Oh, God, yes, Jim!” in this rough, suggestive voice.
Turns out they’d been sleeping together in the room where I kept him while I was at work. I broke up with her the next time I saw her and told her why.
71. Was That Really Appropriate?
I was living on the West Coast, and her birthday was coming up the next weekend. On Wednesday, I got a call that Grandma was in the hospital and, at best, had 24 to 72 hours left. I immediately called work and told them I’d be out Thursday and Friday, and possibly a few days the next week too. I bought a one-way plane ticket and called my girlfriend, who seemed understanding.
I flew back to the Midwest and made it to the hospital in time to see my grandma. She passed away that night. Then my family asked me to write the eulogy. I checked in with my girlfriend, and she asked if our plans for her birthday were still happening.
Um, yes—but the funeral isn’t until Monday. I’ll be back Tuesday. She hung up on me. When I flew home, she picked me up from the airport and didn’t even get out of the car to hug me. The drive back felt cold and heavy. I was so in love that I kept ignoring all the red flags.
Two weeks later, it was my birthday. I could tell things were falling apart and was getting ready to end it, but she invited me out for a birthday dinner. I showed up at our favorite place and waited 45 minutes at the bar for her to arrive. Then she texted me a picture of her with her friends at a concert and asked how I liked being ditched on my birthday.
With tears running down my face on the drive home, I calmly packed up her things. I used my key, went to her place, left her stuff on the floor with the key on top, locked the door behind me, and walked out. I blocked her number and blocked her on social media.
The next day, I changed the locks at my place. The following weekend, I was watching TV late at night when I heard someone trying the door—her key scraping at the lock. She was outside sobbing. I poured a strong bourbon and turned the TV up until she finally left.
What a waste of a year. Looking back, I can’t believe how long I put up with that kind of selfish behavior. Life’s too short to spend it with someone like that.
72. Pre-Partum Depression
My high school girlfriend kept her pregnancy secret from everyone in her family. She ended up giving birth in the back seat of her car and cut the umbilical cord with a box cutter she had from work. Then she walked into her parents’ house covered in blood, barely dressed, and holding a newborn.
Her mom completely panicked. After that, she had me take care of the baby for two months, until a DNA test showed the baby wasn’t mine.
73. Second in Command
My phone dinged, so I checked it. (We had the same phones—no cases—both charging right next to each other.) The text said, “I miss you too,” and it was from a woman my husband dated when we were briefly separated. A few months later he deployed.
By then I knew something was going on, so I checked his email. I found messages, so I reached out to her.
She was very honest with me. She said they’d been together before he even met me. That meant he dated me, asked me to marry him, married me, and we had a child—all while he was still seeing her. Then we separated for a year, he dated her exclusively, we got back together, and he kept a relationship with her. And I had no idea.
I found all of this out when I was one month away from having our second child, and he was getting shot at in Afghanistan.
We tried to work through it, but I couldn’t get past the fact that he cheated for four years, hid it so easily, and only told the truth because I discovered it—he clearly wasn’t planning to come clean. When he got home, he admitted there were other times with other people too (thank God I never got an STD).
After three more years of him refusing to go to counseling so we could actually deal with it, he told me he wanted a divorce—one month before we were supposed to PCS to Alaska. I moved back home with the kids, filed for divorce, and honestly, life is so much better now. I’m done with him (even though I do appreciate that he loves our kids).
74. Full of Himself
I have a friend like this. She’s always dated the wrong guys, and now she’s married to one of them. He always has to one-up everyone he meets and brag about how he’s better than everyone at everything (the best dancer, the best writer, the best at recovery, the most people who visited him at the hospital, etc.).
The guy has four cardboard cutouts of himself in his house. He made his own CD about how to be a businessman and hands out signed copies to people who never asked for them. Meanwhile, he doesn’t even have a job.
He constantly compares her to his ex-girlfriends in front of her friends and family and keeps putting her down. None of us in the friend group really want to hang out with her anymore because he controls the whole situation and ends up insulting us.
75. Breaking the Golden Rule
I found out my girlfriend was cheating on me when I stopped by her house on my way to work. What made it even worse was that I’d come to leave flowers on her doorstep as a surprise.
That’s when I saw my “friend’s” car parked out front. It was 5 in the morning. And it gets worse: that “friend” was married, and his wife was pregnant at the time.
76. Don’t Trust Charlie
He lied about his last name, his age, his degree, being in the military, and about being a registered sex offender. I only discovered the lie about the degree at first, and I ended things. After that, he started stalking me, and that’s when I found out everything else.
I don’t know if he realizes that I know the rest now. We live in a relatively small town, and when I heard a girl was about to meet up with him, I warned her.
He’s still lying about his age. You’re not 29, Charlie—you’re 42, and I’m done with your lies.
77. Hard to Bring an Abusive Ex up in Conversation
My ex had a pretty big scar on her back, and she was really self-conscious about it. The first time we slept together, she wouldn’t even take her shirt off. When I asked what happened, she told me she’d fallen off her horse when she was younger.
A while later, I was out shopping for her birthday and asked one of her friends to help me pick something. I chose a cute, sexy singlet, and her friend just stared at me like I’d completely missed something.
That’s when she told me the scar wasn’t from a fall—it was from a past boyfriend who had hurt her, pushing her against a motorbike’s exhaust and burning her.
We ended things on good terms, and I never told her I knew the real story. I truly hope she’s doing well.
78. Status: It’s Not That Complicated
Literally five hours after we broke up, he changed his Facebook relationship status to “engaged” to a girl I honestly thought he was just friends with.
She even posted a photo showing off the ring with the caption, “He finally asked, and I said yes!”
79. It Was a Happy Divorce
Before my ex-wife and I first split up, I found out she’d been keeping a storage unit with basically an entire apartment packed inside it—just in case the breakup went badly. She worked the graveyard shift, and I was on her laptop watching *The Walking Dead* and using the story sync. Since she’s all Apple, her iMessages were connected to her MacBook.
I don’t usually read her messages, but there were so many notifications going off that I could tell she was in the middle of a long conversation.
I clicked on it and started reading, and I saw she’d sent a photo of a completely packed storage unit to her best friend in South Carolina.
It had furniture, appliances—pretty much everything she’d need to set up her own place. I kept that to myself for a few months before finally bringing it up out of the blue.
One night we were sitting on the couch, and I just turned to her and said, “So, I know about your storage unit.” It was the last thing she expected, because she thought she’d been really discreet.
But the conversation actually went pretty well, and we ended up deciding to file for divorce. That divorce was finalized March 3rd of this year.
80. It Was Game Over After Star Trek Was Mentioned
Yeah, my dad was a “dancer” when he was younger, and he thinks my mom doesn’t know. But she actually went to one of his shows before they even met. If it helps, my mom later saw his dating ad in the paper the next week. She was going to follow up on someone else’s ad until a mutual friend talked her into it.
A dating ad is basically how, back in the old days, guys would put a photo and some info about themselves in the local newspaper.
Once my dad mentioned that he liked Star Trek, everything started clicking.
81. That’s Some Family Drama Right There
This is a little different from the original question, but I don’t think I’ll find a better place to share it, so here goes.
My grandmother remarried in the late ’70s, after divorcing my biological grandfather. My dad was in middle school at the time. For a while, my step‑grandpa (SG) seemed like a “cool dad,” at least until my dad and his older brother got to college. After that, SG started going off the emotional deep end—angry, and sometimes bordering on abusive.
For years, both SG and my grandma worked in the (redacted for privacy) business. My dad and uncle became attorneys and ended up working at what had become the family company.
Fast forward many years: my dad and uncle are no longer working with SG and my grandma, and my mother handles most of the company. One day, a business associate quietly pulls my mom aside and says they saw SG out in public with a much younger man.
She tells my dad, who looks into it and uncovers something unbelievable. They discover SG had been using company money to buy cars, apartments, and other things for multiple men in their twenties (SG was in his early seventies). Everyone is understandably stunned, and they go to my grandma’s house while SG isn’t there to tell her what they found.
Her response? “Oh yeah, I’ve known that for years.”
She had suspected he was gay even before they got married, but no one talked about that kind of thing back then, especially not in her family. She knew about the affairs, and at one point a public health worker even came to her front door to tell her he had HIV and to offer her a test, too. She chose not to tell anyone any of this for nearly fifteen years.
Eventually, they convinced her to divorce him, but it took a long, long time. That’s probably the biggest secret that’s ever been kept in my family.
82. The Key to Your Heart
When I was in college, a guy became interested in me, and later that week he gave me a “gift”: a working key to my front door. Apparently he was a locksmith and had somehow memorized the pattern on my house key when I left it on my desk. I ended up having to change the locks on my house.
83. Only One of Us Here Matters, Clearly
When I told my boyfriend I’d just found out my mom was leaving my dad for someone else, he started talking about how rough his day at work had been.
84. Casper the Ghost
I dated a guy I worked with at a restaurant. He was a bartender and I was a server. After a few months of heavy flirting, we hooked up. It felt super casual to me, and it only lasted a few weeks.
Then, for reasons I never really understood (and were probably pretty ordinary), he decided to end it—but the way he did it was by “ghosting” me: he stopped replying and basically acted like I didn’t exist.
That kind of thing is annoying but manageable when you mostly communicate by phone or text to make plans. But we worked together—same shift.
So his “ghosting” turned into these weird moments where he’d be on service bar, I’d ring in drinks for my tables, and he’d just stand there and act like I wasn’t standing right in front of him asking for the drinks I’d entered. He wouldn’t make them, because that would ruin his whole act that I didn’t exist.
This strange behavior went on for weeks. I’m guessing someone finally asked him what his problem was, because after several weeks he eventually sat me down and gave me this long, overly dramatic apology about how he hoped I wasn’t totally crushed, but he just didn’t see us working out.
I told him I wasn’t heartbroken—because it was never that serious to me. He honestly seemed disappointed that I wasn’t devastated over our “lost love.”
Anyway, literally a week after that talk, I met and started dating the man who would become my husband. Later, the woman that bartender actually liked dated him briefly, then ghosted him (and quit, too—so that was real ghosting, not the awkward work version).
After that, he tried to restart our flirty routine, and I wasn’t interested. We were all in our late 20s, full-grown adults, and the whole thing was just so bizarre.
85. Close the Door Next Time
My girlfriend’s roommate was kind enough to give me a heads-up and tell me to break up with her as soon as possible. Apparently, she was planning to wait to end things until after her birthday so she could still get a gift. That feels really manipulative.
86. Let’s See Other Patients
She was unfaithful with five different women over 10 days while I was in the hospital having brain surgery. Then, two days after I was discharged, she broke up with me at her parents’ house on Christmas Day.
87. A Match Made in Malpractice
I was in the hospital, and he came to visit. At first it felt like a really kind gesture—but it quickly turned into a complete mess. First, he yelled at my doctor because he said my exam was “too intimate.” He couldn’t handle that my doctor was a man, but then he also mocked the idea of having a female doctor. Then he told the doctor I didn’t need pain meds, even though I was in serious pain.
And when I finally asked for them, he yelled at me for being weak and said I was putting “poisons” in my body. He stormed out and left me there with no ride. Honestly, I’m glad he’s gone. I hope that beat-up motorcycle he planned to use to take me home never even started.
88. Put a Ring On It
I called her at work, and the receptionist asked, “Is this her boyfriend, Dave?”
“No… I’m her fiancé.”
I’d had a few doubts for months, but that was what finally confirmed it.
89. Cheaters Never Prosper
I knew my ex-wife was cheating, but I didn’t tell her I knew. I took her out to dinner and casually asked who she’d been spending time with while I was at sea. She barely worked, so I figured she had to be doing something with her time. She never mentioned the guy who’d been staying at my house for almost two months.
This was the same guy she’d had to call the police on just to get him to leave because I was coming home in two days… so I calmly slid her a copy of the police report from that incident and watched her fall apart when she realized she’d been caught, and I didn’t have to say a word.
90. So Much for the Language of Love
My friend seemed like he had everything. But there was one issue: no matter what he said, his beautiful French wife wouldn’t speak English when her family came over. Instead, they’d talk in French the whole time while he sat there, not understanding a word.
He started to feel uneasy, so he recorded their conversation and had it translated—and what he heard was heartbreaking. The whole family had been making insulting comments about him every time they visited. It was really painful.
