Look, it’s never nice when a relationship comes to an end—but all you can do is pray it goes better than these. Meddling families, constant cheating, twisted secrets: This is what happens when relationships go WRONG.
1. Kids Text The Darndest Things
When my six-year-old daughter was using her mom’s phone to text me emojis and she accidentally pasted in my wife’s last text to her lover. It read: “It’s a holiday weekend so work will be slow tomorrow. I can get out around 1:00. Do you want to do something other than bang? Something outside?” Marriage over, just like that.
2. She Made Her Bed, Now She Has To Lie In It
She took all my shower stuff while I was at work. Curtain, rod, all that stuff...and the toilet bowl scrubber. She took it all, so when I came home and I said, “Okay, not letting her take more of my stuff that's actually important”! So, I changed the locks. While at work that night, she calls and says she needs in the apartment to get her things.
I tell her nah, not without me there, I don't want you taking my stuff. She says she'll call the authorities, and I tell her to go ahead. A couple of officers show up at my work and ask what's going on. I show them my lease with her name not on it, and they say okay, we'll have her when she comes back tomorrow, call us when she shows up.
She comes the next day, and tells me she's taking my bed, worth $700. I tell her no, she didn't pay for it, and I have my credit statement printed ready to show the officers. She tries to argue that she's taking the bed. The officer says “Look, you're not taking it, if you think you deserve it, take him to court”. She then tries arguing with the guy.
The officer says “Did you not hear me right? Take him to court”! Well, I didn't hear back from her about it.
3. Interior Decoration As Revenge
There was a couple who lived across the street from my family when I was younger. She was friends with my mom, and he helped my dad install our pool. Turns out they were having some issues, and while she was out of town for work, he gutted their entire kitchen. I mean, walls, appliances, ceiling...everything. So she comes back, finds it, they argue and she moves out and moves in with her mom.
Through court dealings, she ends up back in the house, but he's going to get the house eventually. I was only 13 or so, so I don't remember specifics. Just days before he's supposed to move back in, my parents help her move all of the furniture that she bought before they got married, which was literally everything besides the mattress and one recliner.
That's all he was left with when he moved back in. But it didn’t end there. After he moved back in and the divorce was final, he went through a phase where he had another woman living with him, but also had a boyfriend who would frequently visit. One of the last times we saw any of them was around midnight one night. The neighbor, the boyfriend, and an apparent third party had some sort of loud, drunken lovers' quarrel.
I don't know what happened inside the house after we called 9-1-1, but all three left in a patrol car after being tased.
4. The Cosmos Crushed My Dreams
My partner was sick and developed brain damage after a sudden illness. It was random and out of the blue. Most days, he is his old self, but some days he is a stranger to me. He's angry, confused, and doesn't know me. He gets into a rage, and I have to calm him. I have to remind him of the 13 years we've shared together and break his heart, reminding him that his dad is gone.
He seems totally fine to people on the outside, just a bit quieter than usual. They don't see him when he's confused or wondering who I am. It's hard. I'm burning out between work, studying, caring for him, volunteering, and moving because of his mobility issues. I adore him and won’t leave him, but it's made me realize that the life we had planned is not going to happen. But the devastation doesn't end there.
We were planning to have a baby, but I've had to accept that it likely won't happen. I also can’t bring myself to tell him that I don't think it'll happen. I'm angry, heartbroken, and sad. I've never felt such hatred for whatever cosmic force there may be out there that did this, but I wake up from what little sleep I get, begging whatever is out there to leave us alone.
I want my old life back, my old partner, and our future back. I get so mad because people keep telling me I should be grateful he isn't worse, but I should be allowed my feelings.
5. Sneaky Girlfriend
I was dating a girl for three years (we’ve since broken up). It was coming to the end of the relationship. We were arguing constantly. At one point, I eventually just started to agree with her to get her to shut up, so one morning we're awake in bed and she said, "We should have a kid". I said yes knowing if I don't, it'll just lead to another argument.
She teared up and gave me a hug, I hugged her and I said, “Well, it's gonna take some time because you gotta get off your birth control". Her response was horrifying. With the straightest face in the world, she said, "I stopped a month ago". We had been sleeping together three to four times a week. At that moment right there, I decided I was gonna end the relationship.
You absolutely do not make a life-changing decision for your partner without consulting with them first.
6. Ouch!
My husband was out of town on a business trip and I had surgery scheduled for the same time. It was supposed to be day surgery, pretty straightforward, and I should have been home that evening. Unfortunately, there were some complications and I ended up in the ICU for two days and then had to stay in the hospital for four more days after that to recover.
My friend called my husband and told him that he needed to come home because I almost didn't survive the surgery and was in the ICU. His response was devastating: “Well, she's alive, so I’ll be home when my business trip is over”. But that wasn't even the last straw. After he got home from the trip and I got home from the hospital, he was nice enough to leave his hotel invoice on our dresser—a room with two occupants.
7. 5 AM Drives
I was in a five-year year relationship with a woman and we had a house and a kid together. She left at 3:00 AM after we had some drinks and was with some guy driving around until 5:00 AM. I panicked when I woke up and she wasn’t there. I called her, but she was rude to me, and hung up. Then, she wouldn’t answer at all. I got scared since this never happened before.
We shared location on our phones and she was out on a dirt road miles away from where we usually go off-roading. When I saw where she was, my heart broke.
She was hanging with some guy because apparently, she needed someone to talk to and it wasn’t me. This really destroyed my trust in her, and after that, things just declined and I became more distanced. It broke my heart.
8. Betrayal + Time = Comedy?
Late one Friday evening my dad was having a shower because he needed to go to his mother’s house to help her with something. The phone rang and my mother was resting in bed, so she answered it. A young female voice said, “‘Hey [my dad], come on down to the bar! I’m here waiting for you!! You owe me a drink, hottie”!
My mom said, “This isn’t [my dad]. This is his eight-month-pregnant wife”. The girl on the other end paused for a moment and then said, “So, is he coming or not”? When my dad finally got out of the shower, my mom told him that a girl called from the bar asking for him. According to my mom, his face went white as a sheet.
After that, there was a long dance of trying to throw him out. Thankfully, my mom can laugh about this story now.
9. Points For Creativity
My marriage problems started when my ex decided to sneak onto my laptop and look at my browsing history and Facebook messages. After I confronted her about spying on me, she put a password on her laptop, which I thought was an enormous red flag. Once I managed to get around the password, I couldn’t believe what I found in there…
I saw messages where she would tell her friends about what a terrible person I was and how I was “ruining the relationship”, and then, in almost the same sentence, she would brag about how many different guys she had slept with that weekend. I had a very hard time staying calm and not doing anything crazy after reading that.
The next day, when she was at work, I changed her laptop wallpaper to a collage of all of her Facebook messages about cheating on me, and then I calmly packed up and left. I don’t think I will ever trust anyone again after that one.
10. Life Is Like A Box Of Crayons
We were in college and dated for almost two years. We had broken up a few times (I found out much later that he kept picking arguments so he could break up with me before spring break or summer break because he was getting back together with his ex-girlfriend when she came home for the break). I was getting pretty fed up with his antics.
He came over to try and convince me to get back together and brought me a gift of a package of glitter crayons. He never bought me any gifts at all. His conciliatory gift was a package of crayons, which had no significance whatsoever. I was confused, but thanked him. Apparently, I wasn’t enthusiastic enough, so he retaliated in a deranged way.
He grabbed the box of crayons back and crushed them up. That was it. Last straw.
After that, he started parking behind the building across from my work and following me home at night. He also had the spare key to my car, but said he lost it when we broke up. He moved my car while I was in class one day. My dad called his parents and threatened to call the authorities. Luckily, he stopped after that.
11. A Soul-Crushing Epiphany
There were a few final straws for me: When I realized that both of my sons spoke to me in the same unpleasant, dismissive tone as my husband did. When my 10-year-old asked me why I told them every day that daddy was angry and to try to keep out of his way. When I saw how much better he treated one child than the other.
I hadn’t realized it, but all of those things had become my normal. Somehow I became accustomed to being undermined and belittled in front of others and not having access to our money. I had no idea how hard I had been working to keep the peace and placate him. When all of this finally dawned on me, I felt so guilty about my children.
I woke up and saw my life with my single and independent eyes. I was both aghast and ashamed—especially about the fact that my kids were absorbing his behavior and seeing it as normal. I never ever would have believed my life would become the mess it had. And the thing is, most other people didn’t see it.
He never socialized with anyone I knew and his friends think he is great. Even my mom thinks that I’m exaggerating and should just put up and shut up. I feel so isolated, but I refuse to put up with this any longer. My kids deserve an emotionally healthy example of relationships and love.
12. Paint Away
We moved into a house together and things were a little on the rocks, but I figured I could work a little harder and she would, too. I had my doubts, as she was a control freak and really only took what I said about things at face value. We had a huge fight about the stupidest thing—the living room paint color. She said it was just awful and couldn't put up with it.
She described it as a cream color, but like adding too much creamer to coffee. "Disgusted" was her word for it. We went around and around about it for a week or so, until I finally just decided I could concede on this one, but that I got to choose the bedroom color. Anyway, I was standing in the paint aisle on my day off and utterly exhausted from a week of work and remodeling.
I was tired and she was combing through the paint swatches. She found the color she wanted and we got it mixed. We ended up in an argument in the car, as she wanted to paint and I wanted to sleep. I told her it is better to do it during the day, so we can open the windows and let it air out better. It was currently raining and I didn't want water marks.
It escalated and grew until she finally just got so mad that she left. I decided to be nice and start painting the opposing window wall to at least show her I heard her thoughts. I got it all mixed up and dipped the roller. I rolled over the wall once and it all hit me at the exact same time.
I was sick of her and her controlling attitude. I was done feeling like the bad guy for things I didn't do wrong. I was tired of living her dream life. You know why it hit me? That paint she chose was the exact same color as the wall.
13. Timing Is Everything
When I was 43, I was diagnosed with very aggressive chest cancer. I had a good prognosis but needed a mastectomy, 13 rounds of chemo, and radiation. My husband had a very demanding job and we have four young children. Every time I went through a round of chemo, my mom would fly out to take care of me and help run the family. I thought things couldn't get any worse...
Shortly after my sixth round of chemo, my mom passed suddenly from undiagnosed heart problems. Ten days later, my husband of 20 years came home from work and confessed to an affair that he had had two years earlier. I was sick, bald, in the middle of chemo, scarred, and had just lost my mom. Why would he choose that moment to tell me he cheated on me?
I became severely depressed. He got tired of my depression, so he divorced me. That was eight years ago. I am now healthy, own my own home, and am very fortunate to not be in that broken marriage anymore. My kids are doing really well, too. I still miss my mom, but thankfully I inherited her strong will and perseverance.
14. Double Date
I dated a guy long enough to become close with his family, and one day we were having dinner at his house. His mom asked me (at the table with the family) how I liked this new restaurant in the area, as if I’d been there. When I said I hadn’t been there yet, she said, “Oh, I thought that’s where you two went last weekend"? My stomach dropped.
We had not gone out that weekend, and that’s how I found out he was dating other girls and telling his mother he was going out with me. The thing that really ended it was that he could lie so easily to his mom and that she believed him. If a guy treats his mom like that, he’s not going to respect his wife, either.
15. Suspicious Soup
One time, I came home from work and my girlfriend was in the kitchen happily making us dinner. I went to the bathroom and was in the middle of washing my hands when I thought of something I had to tell her. As I went around the corner, I just barely saw her drop something into my bowl. Her hand was cupped over the bowl and she slipped something in it.
It just looked sketchy. She didn’t see me see her, so I just walked back into the bathroom and finished washing my hands. I thanked her for making me dinner but told her I just wasn’t hungry. Then, I spent most of the night awake thinking what did I just see her trying to do? Around 3:00 AM, I convinced myself that I imagined it.
I decided to get some sleep, but first, I got up to use the washroom. And then my very next thought was, “Man, it really itches down there". I went up to the clinic the very next day, and got tested for STDs just to confirm what I already suspected. Positive for chlamydia. That's when it dawned on me. It was the antibiotic. That’s what she put into the soup she made for me.
I called my sister and told her I needed to stay with her for a few weeks. I went home and packed up one backpack full of the absolute essentials and a trash bag for all my clothes. I threw both in the car. Then, I went back in and said, “I know you cheated on me and there is no sense in denying it. When we started getting serious, I told you that I could compromise on just about everything".
I continued, “But, cheating was something I could never, under any circumstances, get past. I told you that if you cheated on me, there would be no discussion, no explanations, no working it out. I wouldn’t leave angry, but I’d just leave. Because the relationship is now over. So goodbye, tell your kids whatever you want to". She had two kids from a previous marriage.
I blocked all her communications on my way to my sister’s house. I told my sister what happened when I got there and we stayed up all night crying and laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. She cheated on me, infected me, then tried to cure me so I’d never know! And it probably would have worked, if I hadn’t just happened to see her do it.
It was something that never should have happened because what kind of lunatic just leaves the bathroom in the middle of washing their hands to tell someone something? I was weeks from proposing to this woman. Sometimes, people talk about moments that define their lives. Or days that they will never forget. How about seconds?
One second. That’s about how long of a window I had to watch her put the antibiotic into my food and slink backward into the bathroom without her seeing me. On either side of that one-second window, my life would possibly be very different. It’s just so crazy to think about.
16. How Did He Last That Long?
Things were kind of rough in our marriage right from the beginning. Before we got married, my wife always wanted to make love. Right after we got married that suddenly changed to her begrudgingly agreeing to it about once a week. That wasn’t so terrible—simply a negative change most people would just deal with. The rest, however, was like the frog that was slowly boiled…
Things started to go south when we tried to have a baby and I found out I was sterile. Her reaction absolutely destroyed me. To make a long story short, she would berate me constantly about my condition and would always threaten to leave me. Any time we were about to try some new treatment, she’d say, “If this doesn’t work, we’re getting divorced”.
As if my infertility was not something to happen to me, but was instead something that happened to her, if you follow me. The day I came home from the urologist with my diagnosis, I started to cry as I told her. When I went to hug her, she pushed me away and said that we should probably just get divorced. Nonetheless, I persisted, and we even tried marital therapy.
I also tried various treatments for my sterility, including something called a TESE, which means they cut your testicles open and look for sperm with a microscope—they found nothing. Somehow, that only made her act even more deranged. The recovery was very painful. It felt like I was being hit in the balls for a week straight. When I told my wife this, she said, “I feel like hitting you in the balls right now".
Her family was just as heartless. Her brother refused to even look at me, let alone speak to me. Her mother told me that we should get an annulment. Her Bosnian parents are barely literate, but that is no excuse for being so mean-spirited. They were convinced that I “tricked” her by knowing that I was sterile and fooling her into thinking I had no prior knowledge of the problem.
After all, they reasoned, who would want to be with an infertile man? I sold her, and them, a lemon. At first, she called them crazy and told them to stop saying it, but after a while, she’d actually entertain the possibility that they might be right about me.
She also had this habit of pointing out oddball guys and saying, “I bet he’s got sperm”. For instance, she’d point out homeless guys on the street, and say it, or we’d be watching the news and there’d be a report with a photo of some weirdo, and she’d say it then.
One day in the middle of one of our arguments, I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. After she left for work, I gathered my clothes, went to the bank to split our savings, and headed off to restart my life. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the sun shining on me that afternoon as I drove away. About three years later I met a wonderful woman who accepts my condition. We’re married and have an amazing baby daughter who was conceived by donor sperm.
Getting a divorce was the best decision I ever made. Also, since we talked about divorce all the time, she’d always say that she would take most of our savings since she deserved it because...you know. So that’s why when I packed up the car, my first stop was to our bank to take exactly half. My lawyer commended me on that move and said it was the second smartest thing I did that day.
I had to give her more than half of everything, but it was worth it. If only I could get back the three years I lost on her.
17. No Gratitude
I dated a high-drama goth chick for five years. When her dad lost his life, he left her a bunch of money, so she decided to use it to throw a huge family reunion. She reserved 10 hotel rooms at the Marriott in San Diego, including two upstairs/downstairs suites, one of which was for her and I. Then, she flew out all her family.
She had a big party as a family reunion/memorial for her dad. She didn't drive and had only gotten a bank account due to her inheritance, so I pretty much had to arrange everything. I dealt with all the craziness and a dozen shopping trips for food and decorations. For months, I helped her do everything, even after she broke down.
But, we got it all set up. All we had to do was drive to San Diego and set everything up on Friday, but I had to work. She was very angry about this, but I had no choice and she knew it. I told her I'd get off early and drive immediately after work since she was heading down with her friend "R" and they were making a quick stop at Costco.
So, we had the party, everyone showed up and we had a great time. Around 1:30 AM, she called everyone together for a big toast, about 40-50 people in our hotel suite and on the patio. She proceeded to thank everyone, starting with her friend "R", then about 15 other people. I stood in front of her waiting to hear my name, but it wasn’t coming.
As she turned left and right to face the various crowd members, she closed her eyes as if in a prolonged blink as they passed towards me. Come the end of the speech, my name never came up. She thanked the whole crowd for coming and went back to mingling. I pulled her aside and asked what that was all about. She plays stupid.
She asked what I mean, so I ask straight up why she didn't thank me when I was there from the beginning, even while her dad was sick. Her answer was (verbatim): "Oh, I'm sorry babe, I just forgot. There was so much to remember". I was standing right in front of her, three feet away and she deliberately avoided looking at me.
I mentioned this and she apologized but something in me broke. I stewed in it until about 3:00 AM, then got in my truck unannounced and started the drive back home to OC. The fog was like driving through a ball of cotton candy. I could only drive about 25mph on the freeway driving home, but I didn't care. My now ex-girlfriend called my cell and asked where I was.
I told her she crossed a line by "dissing" me in front of basically every one of her close friends and family members so that was it. I told her on the phone she was to move out by Feb 1st. And I stuck to my guns. Well, her bad behavior eventually caught up to her.
Thirteen months later, she had spent all $270,000.00 her dad had left her and she was now living with "R" and unemployed. I almost wish her dad had passed a couple of years earlier and saved me two or three years I'll never get back.
18. Epiphany In Aisle Seven
I finally came to the realization that I was going to get yelled at by my wife no matter what I did. I did the laundry but got yelled at for not folding the towels correctly. I let her do the laundry and I get yelled at for not doing the laundry. However, the final straw was when I was sent to the grocery store for French-cut green beans.
The store had French-style green beans and cut-style green beans. I spent more time than I care to admit scrutinizing the green bean selection and agonizing over making a call. Then it finally hit me: Green beans are 40 cents and I’m not getting chewed out over 40 cents. I bought both.
19. Acting Cool After An Outburst
There were a lot of negative things, but this was the final straw. I locked the door before going to bed one night when he was out late with friends. He had lost his house key and never bothered to mention it, which was somehow my fault. He woke me up by banging on the window and when I let him in, he began screaming and throwing things at me.
He told me to pack up my stuff and leave. He even went so far as to lock me out of our bedroom. I slept on the couch that night. The next morning, he acted completely normal, like nothing had happened. I was gone that day because I no longer felt safe.
20. Narcissist-Free Zone
I was in a seriously neglectful marriage in which I was verbally and psychologically mistreated for the better part of 10 years. I tried everything I could to fix it, and even though I was the one with the complaints, I still went into marriage counseling for two years. I committed to doing anything I could to try and change to make the relationship better.
On the other hand, my wife would go to marriage counseling every single week and say the same thing, “I want him to accept me as I am". In other words, she didn’t want to change or compromise in any way. She wanted me to accept the neglectful and cruel person that she had become. I should also mention that she is a severe narcissist. But onto the final straw…
I had never even considered divorce or separation. It never even crossed my mind. For me, we were married for life and we just needed to figure out how to fix things between us. Then one day in marriage counseling, when I was talking about something that she had done that was hurtful, she blurted out: “I think we should just consider separating”.
I was completely floored by this. I never even imagined it as an option, but at that moment I realized that had always been me chasing her. For 10 years I’ve been chasing her. She’s always been running away, she never apologized for anything, she would get away with the most heinous behavior, and I would always crawl back to her and apologize—even when she was in the wrong.
A good marriage takes two people who genuinely want to be in a relationship and who are both willing to compromise and put in the work. This was not the case with us. After she suggested separating, I finally found the courage to walk away. Everyone deserves happiness and I finally realized that I didn’t want to live without it for the rest of my life.
21. Don’t Owe An Explanation
In 1999, my third girlfriend and I had standing plans to hang out on weekends. Well, one weekend, I went over to her place to find that no one was home. I tried calling the following day and there was no answer. So, I tried later in the day, and there was no answer again. It was the same thing each day for a week. At first, I was concerned something had happened to her.
But, by a week later with no response, I was pretty sure she'd ghosted me. So, I gave up. Well, two days later, I got a call from her. It turned out that she and her family had gone on a trip to Chicago and she didn't think it might be a good idea to let me know. I asked her why she didn't let me know.
Her response was something to the effect of she didn't owe it to me to inform me. My basic response was that if she cared about me, she would have let me know, so I wouldn't worry about her just disappearing for over a week. I dumped her and refused to take her back.
22. DIY Private Eye
My wife was making several trips a week back home to see her “best friend and life coach". Finally, on a hunch, I decided to follow her in my friend’s car. She drove right through the town she said she was going to and 20 minutes later ended up at a motel. I parked across the street and watched as she waited for her lover.
As soon as he entered the room, I went over and knocked on the door. When she answered, she had a facial expression that I’ll never be able to fully describe. She knew I knew, but she said nothing. I closed the door and drove back home. When she finally returned, her stuff was out in the snow on the front lawn and her house keys were in the fire.
23. No Soap
He refused to use soap. Yes, this includes hand soap. He believed that water and scrubbing was enough to keep yourself clean and it was important not to strip your body of its natural oils. I must admit, he did have really nice hair and skin, but he always smelled bad and I could not get over the fact that he didn’t even use soap after using the bathroom.
I have no clue what he does if his hands get sticky or really dirty, I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. Thankfully, we never got physical or made it official, but we “talked” and went on dates for a month and I still get a gross feeling when I think about him.
24. Pregnant Disaster
I was pregnant with my oldest daughter and had extreme pain one day, so I came home early from work. When I get home I see two purses that I knew weren't mine sitting on the stand. I head to my room to see if my then-boyfriend could explain the purses; I'm hearing noises coming from our room. I opened the door to peek in and he is having a threesome. I close the door and just go back into the living room. I was shocked.
I was supposed to be on bedrest, but I was the only one who had a job, so I was going to school and working while he got to stay home all day. I was livid, but what was scary is that I was so furious that I remained calm. I went into the living room, sat on the couch and waited for them to come out; when they finally did I asked them if they had fun? I told them they needed to get out of my apartment.
He tried to talk to me, but I told him he needed to get out. I calmly packed off of his stuff up, had a friend come over because I couldn't do heavy lifting being 7 months pregnant and dropped his stuff off at his parents' house that night. It's still shocking to me that I remained so calm being that angry.
25. Long Hand Of The Law
In high school, I was dating this guy, and everything was going great. I was infatuated with him. A few months into our relationship, we slept together. It was both our first time. He was holding me and kissed my forehead. Then he said something that made my skin crawl. He told me that he wanted to cut my skin off in the shapes of stars and put them in the sky.
That was so he could always see a part of me. He said this as he cried and bear-hugged me. I didn't know what to say, and when I went home that night, I called him and ended things. For the next four months, he waited outside my classes and got his friends to come to talk to me. And he just turned really angry and petty.
He posted fliers around school calling me names. I came home crying, and my dad was absolutely livid. All he told me was that he would take care of it. My dad was an officer and my ex's dad's boss. He had me tell him where my ex and his friends hung out after school, and he and his partner drove their patrol car over.
One of the boys ran, but my dad's partner caught up and dragged him to the car. My dad then made all four boys cry. Later, I got a call from each kid apologizing. My ex avoided me the rest of high school like the plague.
26. The Cost Of Cheating
We dated for four years and had what I thought was a great relationship. We were both well-established professionals who both owned homes in the same neighborhood and both had daughters in the home. Her daughter was 11, and mine was 16 when we met. We had actually planned to get married, build a house, and raise the two together.
We planned the house build because she had recently been diagnosed with a neurological illness that would eventually put her in a wheelchair, and needed something disability-friendly. During the planning stages, I began doing landscape and construction projects on her home to increase the resale value. All in, I invested roughly $30K into the home, running everything through my side construction business for tax, permitting, and resale purposes.
We had a contract that "payment" would be made upon the sale of the home. I produced invoices for each and every project, but never pushed for payment because of the prior agreement. Fast forward six months, we're looking at property to develop and finalizing drawings on the home when I began feeling ill. I couldn't eat, constantly vomiting and passing blood.
I began noticing that my abdomen looked swollen, which was odd because we were both very clean eaters and were in the gym every day. So I went to the doctor and began having tests done. During this time, she began having small cognitive issues, and the stress of her current position was exacerbating her condition, so she took a $20K per anum cut in pay along with a lesser position inside the company.
After a month or so of different tests, and a biopsy, it came back that I had a golf ball-sized cancerous tumor in my stomach, and would need to begin chemotherapy. So I began chemo and radiation treatments, which made me, expectedly so, extremely ill. She was spending time helping around my place on the weekends and staying over more, to the point that both her and her daughter were at my home more than theirs.
At this point, I suggested that we go ahead and put one of our houses on the market, and move in together until the new house was built. I have great supplemental insurance as well as a long-term health plan, so using that coupled with the sale of one of our houses would push us through comfortably, and help ease the financial stress on her. This backfired on me horribly.
Shortly after this discussion, she became extremely distant. Her daughter wasn't coming down and hanging out with mine anymore, and she had excuses for not getting together. She quit driving me to treatments and stopped staying over. She then dropped the truth. A sentence that will forever be burned into my psyche: "I love you, but I can't see myself taking care of someone this sick in the long-term, and I don't think we should see each other any longer".
A. TEXT. It broke me. I won't lie. This was the first woman I had ever opened up to and planned a life with since my wife passed when my children were 1 and 3. However, I tried to be mature about it. I forced myself to understand her position and to accept what I could not change. I calmly, the next day, gathered all of her things, packed them neatly, loaded them in my truck, and took them to her house to leave on the back porch while she was at work, in order to avoid any awkward exchanges.
Walking around the back and under the porch cover, I sat down on a box, and saw her in her back living room. I wish I could unsee what came next. She was there getting it on with a man that she had introduced to me as a life-long friend. I had once had dinner and drinks with this man and his girlfriend. We had gone on vacation with them as well.
I never spoke of the incident with her, and simply sent her a text later, explaining that I would leave her things on my side porch to pick up at her convenience. I discovered eight or nine months later from his now ex-girlfriend that they had broken up due to him confessing that he had been sleeping with my partner, dating back to about the time we were finishing drawings on the new home.
Now I’m angry. Revenge time. At this point, I had finished chemo and radiation for the time being and was feeling healthier. I was going through some much-neglected paperwork when I ran across the file that contained $32,680.00 in unpaid, long overdue invoices, which were promptly sent to my attorney to begin lien proceedings on the home.
It turns out that I couldn't have done this a moment too soon because she was set to put her house on the market. Coupled with interest over the course of, what was then, 19 months overdue, the invoices were hefty. That, along with the agreement of settling them when the house was sold and attorney fees, left her with roughly $10K after the sale of the home and settling her current mortgage.
She promptly had to back out of the purchase of another home and moved in with her oldest daughter and two grandchildren. She also had to leave her job and begin receiving disability. I ran into her a little over a year ago, and she looked as if she had aged 20 years, and was in the wheelchair we had talked about. We chatted cordially but briefly and I excused myself and went on with my day.
A few days later, her younger daughter called me and spoke of my running into her mom, and could we hang out sometime. I gave a vague answer, thanked her for calling and again, went on with my day. The ex then called me a week or so later, and began apologizing for leaving me as she did. Again, cordial but short, I thanked her for calling and hung up.
She began texting, and this went on for several weeks until once she asked if I could ever see us rekindling what we had, to which I replied: "I can't see myself taking care of someone so sick in the long-term. Remember the box on your back porch? Did you think that (life-long friend) brought that over to you from my house? Good luck to you. Goodbye".
27. Post-Mortem Anguish
I caught my wife after she passed from cancer. It was the worst feeling ever. I was caught between unending love, mourning, and absolute anger. I found out through her phone that she was overly protective of during treatment. A week before she passed she took the passwords off her phone so that I could respond to her texts and take care of her business. Maybe a week or two after she passed I explored her phone and found numerous texts, emails, and cheating messages.
28. Caught Red-Handed
My then-boyfriend had let me use his iPad to watch a movie on Netflix. He had his messenger account linked to both his tablet and his phone, and messages kept popping up on it while I was watching without him realizing I could see. I got to watch in real time as he got his best friend's wife to agree to sleep with him over the coming holiday weekend; with the promise that he'd get rid of me for that weekend so they could get intimate in our bed.
29. His Heart Belongs To Another
I was married for 11 years and for the last couple of them, I had suspected he was cheating. On Valentine's Day of 2011, he called and said he had to work late, so we wouldn't be able to go to dinner as planned. I was crushed, but accepted it and stayed in with our two small sons. We spent the night watching The Lion King.
The next morning, we were getting ready for work and he asked me to go into his car to retrieve his iPod so that he could charge it a little before leaving for the day. I went into his car and didn't immediately see it anywhere. So, I searched and when I reached into the pocket on the back of the passenger seat, I found a Valentine's day card from a woman.
I walked back in and just held it up and he went totally pale. He didn't even argue, he just walked out the door. I moved out to my sister's house that day and filed for divorce the following week.
30. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
While my parents were temporarily separated, my mom had to unexpectedly leave the city, so she left me and my brother with her elder sister who was a super sweet lady with a heart of gold. My mom had tried to contact my father to let him know but wasn’t able to get a hold of him. She left a message at his work and verbally told his parents.
When my dad found out, he absolutely lost it. He was so upset that we weren’t left in his care that he immediately filed for divorce. He wanted an agreement that would guarantee that he got the time with his kids that he felt he deserved. So, even though my parents were trying to work things out at the time, he inexplicably thought that a divorce would give him more time with his kids on his own terms.
The catch here is that the reason my mom left town that week was to take care of my dad’s sister and her kids. My dad’s sister was suffering from depression and her husband had to take a work trip, but he was worried about leaving her alone with the kids. My mom dropped everything and went there to help them out.
Yes, my dad knew all of this as my mom had communicated it to his parents before she left town. While my mom was there, my aunt attempted to end her life. Luckily my mom was able to intervene and save her. So, my mom was saving my dad’s sister’s life while my dad was filing for divorce. This story has been corroborated by both my parents.
31. The Games People Play
I was playing a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style board game with my husband and his character walked into a trap I’d set and took a massive amount of damage. He then tried to institute his own version of “take backsies”, but I refused—because we were adults and that was cheating. I did not expect him to react the way he did…
He knocked the game board over and yelled, “That’s it! I want a DIVORCE”! Sadly, we temporarily worked things out and continued on through a few more miserable years until I eventually called it quits due to his online dating and his controlling behavior. That game will always hold a special place in my heart, though. I wish I’d granted his request then.
32. Secretive Girlfriend
I had a girlfriend that was long-distance, but we took turns paying for her to come to see me. It just made sense since I lived on a tropical island and she didn’t. We didn't announce the relationship on Facebook because she said she doesn’t like putting actual details in the "About" part on Facebook, which is fair enough.
We had some mutual friends, like 15 or so. One day, I updated my profile picture to a nice one of the two of us, and she just went insane. She called me, basically instantly after I updated it, which was very rare, as we did video calls all the time. And she lost it like I've never heard her lose it before. She shouted, "Take that down right now"!
I was trying to calm her down and ask what was wrong, but she wouldn't listen to a word I said until I removed it and told her it was removed. Then, she hung up and started messaging instead. She wouldn't say what the problem was beyond "I just don't want people knowing my business" and basically just gaslighted me when I asked her about it.
She had been a little secretive and sometimes she would lock her phone and basically slam it screen down on the table if I walked behind her. I never asked about that, but always thought it was a little sketchy. My phone didn’t even have a password at the time. But, there was something really big she wasn't only not telling me about but was just blatantly lying to me about.
I'd assured her if there was any danger, I'd fly her our and she can just not go back and stay with me for as long as she needs, but she said that wasn’t it. I kind of decided I don't really know the woman.
33. Not Getting Rid Of The Cat
Our relationship was already heading towards a breakup. But, what got me was what happened one day when he invited his friend to my house (without telling me). When I came home, they started talking about my cat. They thought she should be put down because she was 'feral' and given the chance, they would do so.
They claimed she was feral because she spent the first weeks of her life outside, before she had her leg amputated and found her way to me. My now ex-boyfriend didn't like her because I'd gotten her when I was with a previous ex, and because she was mean to him. She didn't like the way he handled her and never listened to her warnings to leave her alone.
34. Distance Means So Much When Someone Means So Little
I guess there were two straws for me. She was living in Mexico and I was in the US. We had been trying to make things work but that was as useless as trying to save a sinking ship with a thimble. One day she told me that she got a new dog and needed money to look after it. I agreed but told her that money was tight, to begin with.
I also told her that, going forward, it would really help me out if she could please discuss any new acquisitions that might end up resulting in a recurring cost. For the record, I never asked her to return the dog, but this statement caused her to snap and start arguing with me, so I just hung up. That was straw one.
Five months passed and our only form of communication was texts from her telling me that she needed money for school and rent. One day at work I ended up dislocating my shoulder during a house fire (I am a firefighter). After I was released from the hospital, I went to my mom’s house because I needed to shower and wasn’t able to wash myself.
So, there I was, standing there in my underwear with my arm in a sling as my mom bathed me. Everything finally clicked. I realized that my mom shouldn’t be bathing her 28-year-old son. She has already done her job of raising me. If I need help, who else should be there for me but my wife? I made my mind up then and there that I was done.
Before that second straw, I would have still gone back to her if she had contacted me and tried to convince me. Ironically—and thankfully—it was that dislocated shoulder that saved me from further suffering.
35. Talk Nerdy To Me
The final straw for me was something a little different. One weekend, I decided to go to my local computer center and browse the afternoon away. My wife wanted to go with me and sit in the car. As I was admiring all of the glory that is tech, I noticed this couple in the build-your-own-PC department looking at a motherboard.
The couple was in their 20s or so. They walked up to the CPU case and the guy started to lay down this nerd stream about the latest AMD processor. His girlfriend was listening intently and even let him finish his overview of thread counts. She then proceeded to jokingly chide him about it. It was all so sweet. So caring.
This couple was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. She didn’t understand any of what he was saying, but she listened to him and clearly loved him—and she loved what a giant dork he was. It was at that moment I realized that I would never have that with the person I was with, and even if I could find a way to get there with her I didn’t want it.
I had struggled for a few years with all the excuses for not getting out. Oddly enough that exchange between strangers was what finally did it for me.
36. Vacation Over Pets
I had just found out my dog had a tumor and he needed surgery to remove it. About two to three hours after finding out the news and telling my ex, she thought it was a great time to try and pressure me into making vacation plans. They were for her spring break a few months out, because we were running out of time to make them.
I had no clue how much the surgery was going to cost or if there would be other treatments besides surgery at that point. Since she was in grad school, the expectation was I’d pay for the majority of said vacation due to the difference in our income. There was a very big moment where I lost it and let her know I didn’t care about her spring break.
I told her that the only thing that mattered was my dog’s health and safety. She’s now gone, my dog's healthy, and I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time!
37. All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go
A few years ago, in the beginning of one of the worst winters I’ve seen, my girlfriend wasn’t feeling well. So, I got some flowers and soup and walked them to her place as a surprise...But it was me who got the surprise.
Right when I got there, I saw her walking out, dressed extra nice. She said she had to get her stepdad milk and didn’t have enough time to give me a ride home (it was like three blocks away) and her stepdad was lactose intolerant.
Flickr, Marco Verch Professional Photographer
38. The Honeymoon’s Over
My ex-husband went off his antidepressant meds within a week of us getting married and, of course, he desperately crashed. While I encouraged him to continue seeing his therapist, he said that he was too busy at work—he worked from home. I had continued seeing our mutual therapist who taught me that you don’t have to attend every dispute you’re invited to, which was easier said than done.
I was working part-time as a server, mostly days, and if I wasn’t home within 15 minutes of the end of my shift, I was accused of cheating. He also constantly berated me for pet hair around the house, but I was not allowed to vacuum if he was working. Well, he sat in front of his computer whether he was working or not so I never knew when he was working.
Whenever he would start yelling and throwing items, I would put the dogs in the basement and go to the movies. I was leaving the house for six or eight hours at a time to allow him time to calm down. He generally accepted that. I wanted to leave him but I couldn’t afford it because I was working part-time at his insistence.
I was in a very dark place mentally because I didn’t have anywhere to go that would let me bring two dogs, and I couldn’t afford to go anywhere. I certainly wasn’t going to give up my pets. My dogs were peeing in fear and I couldn’t sleep because I never knew when he was going to freak out. When I was sitting at a movie that I didn’t even want to see in the first place, I called one of my brothers and confessed my despair.
My brother invited me and my pets to come to live with him and his family nearly two hours away from where I currently was. I accepted his offer and started to store moving boxes at my place of work. They knew that I was trying to leave and kindly accepted my resignation with only two days' notice. My brother showed up with a moving truck early on a Saturday morning and told my husband to sit down and not move.
Thankfully, my husband did the right thing and we were gone in less than three hours. After a couple of months, he filed for an annulment and I’ve never laid eyes on him since. He has tried to stay in touch but I will never allow him to manipulate me again. I'll never doubt that he’s my true love, and I will always fondly remember his warm touch, but I’ll never forget his brutality.
39. Vows? What Vows?
After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, my husband said, “You will have to go. I won’t watch you wither away and croak”. I guess “in sickness and in health” was actually optional.
40. Dinosaurs Were Real, Right?
She was very religious. I'm not. We were having a discussion that got a bit heated pertaining to dinosaurs. She showed me that she didn't believe in them and I told her I cannot be with someone who denies reality. We broke up that night after a year or so of being together. Everything else about the relationship was great, but I couldn't deal with that.
41. Man-Baby
I was in a relationship with a man-baby. He was crashing at my place every day and I was doing literally everything for him. He did not pay one penny for groceries, even though all of his meals were eaten at my place. Note that we were both students, so you can imagine my money was limited. His father was a CEO or something.
He would use my laptop to game all the time, etc. One glorious day, he asked me for food in the morning. I got quite upset, was fed up and told him a bit aggressively to make his own food because I’m not his maid. And he replied with a “cute” baby voice, “Oooh, are you on your period? You should be nicer to me ‘cause otherwise, I might leave you". I lost it.
I started laughing after a few seconds and asked, “You? Leaving me"? Thirty minutes later, we were broken up and he was packing his bags. I instantly felt free and happy again. The relationship lasted a bit under a year.
42. Words Of Wisdom
There were a few final straws…First I found pics of him in the buff and even an explicit video of him talking dirty to another woman. After looking around a bit more, I found his Ashley Madison account which contained countless messages he had sent to random women asking them to meet up. I wish I could say that that was all…
Before this, I had forgiven him for taking $4,000 that I had put into our “joint” savings account, which he never contributed to. He had also been hiding a pretty serious Xanax addiction over the years. It made it worse when he would lie about wanting to be an equal partner and then always had some excuse as to why he couldn’t help out more. He would promise to change, but only if X, Y, or Z happened.
The goalpost was always moving, and he’d only help out for a week or two before going back to his old ways of sitting on the couch while I cooked, grocery shopped, and did dishes and laundry. When we separated, he finally admitted he believed in traditional gender roles and I should be grateful that he helped out more than his dad ever had.
I’m so unbelievably happy that I’m divorced! Life is so much easier now that I don’t have to worry about what stupid and selfish decision he will make next. Pay attention to those red flags, people! Don’t keep ignoring them because individually they might not seem like dealbreakers but they will likely lead to more, and probably bigger, red flags.
43. Definitely Not Smooth Sailing
I realized that I’d made a mistake when we spent our entire cruise arguing over the fact that I gave him the larger half of a cheeseburger we were sharing. He insisted that I was trying to make him fat and unhealthy because I hated him. I mean, I knew he was kinda crazy when I married him, I just didn’t realize HOW crazy.
This happened right before the holidays, so I waited until January, and then I took off like a rocket.
44. Sleep On The Floor
The tipping point for me (or a moment in that timeframe that sticks out to me) was when she made me sleep on the cold floor of my own bedroom as a punishment for hanging out with my friends. It was November and she refused to give me a pillow or blanket, so I had to use piles of my own clothes to keep warm. When she realized how cold I was, she turned a fan on.
Unfortunately for me, I didn’t leave right away, so the thing that ultimately split us apart (she broke up with me) was that I couldn’t afford to take her on a trip to Iceland because I’d spent all my money on other stuff she wanted to do. Am I ever pleased that chapter of my life is over.
45. Cookie Cravings
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I grabbed an Oreo out of the package and he asked, “Do you really think you need that?”
46. Mr. Not-So-Wonderful
I had been thinking about filing for divorce for a long time, but I was terrified. I had no job skills and he told me he’d get full custody of our kids because he’d show my journals to the judge to prove that I’m crazy. He made all of the income, so I was afraid that the courts would be on his side. I also didn’t have any family around who cared enough about me and my kids to even help me out with babysitting.
No one knew what a GREAT manipulator he was. He was such an expert at telling tall tales that would make everyone feel sorry for him. I’ve seen him con our kids, attorneys (even mine), and even his bosses. He’s a true master of deception. At first, my strategy was to fix MYSELF so that I could endure the marriage. When that didn’t work, I tried to fix the marriage too.
After a few visits to therapy with a non-religious therapist, he refused to go back. He would only consent to go to one specific therapist who had been endorsed by our (then) church. We went to this church-sanctioned therapist a couple of times, but I refused to go back because he was not concerned about any of the physical and emotional misconduct that I had to endure.
Everything came to a head one morning when I was very ill with the flu. I was like a weak kitten with diarrhea and had been up most of the night pooping and throwing up. I was supposed to drive the kids to school, but I was afraid I’d poop my pants in the process. I asked Mr. Wonderful if he could, just this ONCE, drive the kids to school…
In our 13 years together, he’d never taken the kids to school once. This was something he never had to do because I was a stay-at-home mom. After I made that request, he exploded as if I’d just asked him to drive them cross-country. He didn’t care that I was sick, he just laid into me. All I did was ask him that ONE TIME to help me out. As he left, he slammed the door—hard.
I didn’t even cry because I was so shocked by his reaction. I just went into grim determination mode and dragged my weak self off of the sofa, loaded the toddler in the car, and drove the kids to school. When I came back, I unpacked the toddler, grateful that I had managed not to soil myself. I was too sick to do anything other than lay there and watch TV.
Laying there that morning, I realized that I’d be better off alone. Because if I was alone, I’d still get sick, but at least I wouldn’t have some jerk yelling at me. I thought to myself: If he’s not even going to help with the kids, then why am I staying? I had previously thought that two parents were better than one, as the church had taught me.
However, that morning I realized my kids didn’t have two parents, not really. In my mind, a parent steps up to cover for the other when that person is sick. I also realized that if everything Mr. Wonderful threatened me with came true and I had to go on welfare, at least on welfare I might find that the system had some help for me.
On top of that, I realized that I might be about to petition the court to take the kids to the Midwest and live near my mother. When someone mistreats you while you’re sick and refuses a reasonable request to help out with their own children, that’s mistreatment. I guess I finally realized that my suffering was never going to end with him. Nothing inside of him allowed him to see any of his part in it, either.
47. The Nightmare At Christmas
We are lesbians so our marriage wasn’t recognized by the state, but we did have a ceremony and everything. There were a few incidents that led up to our divorce. My wife got completely inebriated at Christmas and let my uncle grope her. While my cousin cried about this, my wife tried to pull my aunt outside to explain why it was OK.
When I finally got my wife back to my parents’ house, she demanded that my brother make her coffee. He said no so she called him a felon, which isn’t true, but he did smoke cannabis (she was American and we’re Canadian, so there was a bit of a difference in what was allowed at the time). She then threw a fit and went to the guest room, nearly trampling our puppy in the process.
She then went into the bathroom and we heard the sound of shattering glass. My stepdad had to take the screws off the door to get in there because she was not responding. There was blood everywhere. I was upstairs crying because I had no idea how I was going to make this right with my family. I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to clean up her mess yet again.
Instead, I took the puppy to my grandma’s house and bought my wife a one-way plane ticket. I lost all my stuff because she wouldn’t send it to me, but I did get to keep the puppy. I haven’t seen my wife since—thank God.
48. Backseat Rider
This girl would only ride in the backseat of my car when we went places together. I thought it was funny and cute the first couple times, but one morning we were gonna go to breakfast and I asked her to ride in the front. Parking is right in front of the restaurant, so I didn't want it to look weird, as though I was her Uber driver coming in to eat with her.
She refused, so I said I was gonna walk. I left and went to the restaurant and sat down. Then, I got a text asking if I was serious. I replied with a picture of my pancakes. I told her it just wasn't working out and that was that.
49. Cleaning Lady
While we were arguing (over me not wanting to wear a long-sleeved shirt in the middle of summer), he knocked over my water cup and with a smirk said, “Now clean it".
50. Playing Doctor
There were a hundred straws before the final one, but the clincher was when I discovered that he and a doctor friend had been having an emotional affair that was headed toward becoming physical. It was heartbreaking to find out that he had even been planning on sleeping with this woman in our bed while I was away.
To make matters worse, all of the things that he told her while flirting and texting were things that he had told me throughout our relationship—things that I thought were special to us. Seeing them written for another woman just to get her into bed filled me with such disgust and raw hatred toward him. Combine that with his slow decline into absolute viciousness that started just two weeks after our wedding day and I was finally done.
51. Life Is Better With Books
When my wife and I got married, we both followed the same religion. After I decided to leave the religion, my wife started to become increasingly religiously strict. One day I was reading Ringworld, and when she saw that there was a—mild—love scene, she said that reading books with that type of content in them was cheating on her.
I told her that I had agreed to maintain the standards that I had when I married her (before I left the religion), but I had been reading books like this since junior high and I wasn’t willing to censor myself for her religion. She said that if I didn’t, she’d divorce me. I decided that that was a good final straw—and now I’m happily single.
52. No Empathy
I was in a car accident with a friend. I called my significant other to tell him that we had been in an accident, the car was totaled, and that I had just been released from the emergency room. He laughed because my friend’s car wasn’t even paid off yet and said, “It sucks to be him".
Nah. Just nah.
53. A Whole New World
I'm not sure it qualifies as a relationship, but this happened on a first date with a guy. He came to pick me up at my house and while I was getting my coat and purse, he started telling me how much he has to teach me and he can be my "guide" in life because he's so much more worldly than I am. Instead, I showed him the world, meaning my door and what was outside of it.
54. Gold Digger
She was after my money. Every time we hung out, she'd ask for some—not a lot, but a couple of bucks here, a couple of bucks there. It added up. It was just a constant drain on my wallet. I was making decent money, so at first, I barely registered what was happening. I got so conditioned to it that I'd just ask her how much she needed whenever I saw her.
Then one time, it was like the wool snapped back from my eyes. I went to meet her as usual, and, as usual, asked her how much she needed. "About tree fiddy," she says. Well, at that point I realized that my girlfriend was about eight stories tall and a crustacean from the Paleolithic era. "Get out of here, Loch Ness Monster," I said. "You ain't getting my tree fiddy".
55. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
When my parents got an inheritance from my mom’s parents, they decided that the best way to honor my grandparents would be to get all of my family together and treat everyone to a cruise. So both of my parents, my brother, my sister, and her husband, and my husband and I set sail. I had no idea what I was in for...
Over the entire cruise, my husband hardly spent any time with us and, to make matters worse, he never even thanked my parents for paying our way. He was essentially MIA for the entire trip, except when he tried to demand that I sleep with him each evening. He didn’t even care if I was terribly seasick, he would still demand that we do it.
Toward the end of the trip, we were all sitting down for lunch and he got up to refill his drink without asking if I wanted a refill. After a while, I got up to refill my own coffee, and by that time he was due for a refill as well. He slammed his cup on the table and asked me to get him some coffee. It may seem like a silly thing to end a marriage over, but after years of problems, that lack of consideration was the last straw.
56. A Scary Situation
My husband was bipolar and refused to take meds for it. He believed that medication and therapy were for sissies. One morning, when I was eight months pregnant, I woke up to discover that in a manic episode he’d taken my car, cleared out my bank accounts, and left me heavily pregnant and alone with a five-year-old. That was it for me.
I had already filed for divorce by the time my son was born. When I was still in the hospital, my husband came in and screamed at the nurse because I had named my son the name I wanted instead of the one he had forced me into. In the 11 years since then, he’s hardly seen both the kids—and when he does come by, he does more harm than good.
When my son was six, my husband called him worthless because he needs meds for ADHD and should handle it like a man instead. He also lied to Medicaid and claimed the kids so that he could get insurance, which is now my responsibility to pay back. He’s incredibly exhausting. Life is so much easier when he disappears for years at a time.
57. Five Dollars Short
One time, I was at a food festival, standing in line for about 10 minutes for some French toast dish. He ordered first and got his food, but when it was my turn, I realized it was cash only. I only had my debit card, though. He turned to me and basically yelled, "Wow, what are you going to do"?
After being together for 10 months, cohabitating, and splitting everything, he wasn't willing to cover me for French toast. He also had to call attention to it loudly in front of the whole line. Then, we walked away from the vendor with him chomping down on his French toast and me empty-handed.
It seems trivial, but if I had just stood in line with someone I love or even a good friend, I would have just covered them. It gave me the impression that he would never really have my back. I could never see him the same after that, and we broke up the next month.
58. Restaurant Rules
We went out to eat at an Italian restaurant. I moved a plate I was finished with to the right, so the busser could reach it easier. But, she grabbed me and said, “Don’t ever do that again,” as if it was below us to help the busser. I’m a server, mind you. Our relationship actually lasted a few more months, but that red flag has been permanently imprinted in my brain as to when I knew this chick wasn’t for me.
59. Game Over
I knew it was over after I took off my clothes and stood in front of the TV begging him to sleep with me and spend some time with me. He just yelled that he was in the middle of playing a video game and said, “If you want to spend time with me, you can go down on me”. And it’s not like I let myself go, either. I was 5'2" and 48 kilograms (105 pounds) at that point in time.
It had become crystal clear that he preferred his games to me, so I got my stuff in order and told him I wanted a divorce. I deserved better than being ignored. I’m fine with games, I’ll play them myself on the PC from time to time, but I will not tolerate being degraded and ignored for months at a time.
60. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot…
At 2:00 am on the morning of New Year’s Eve, my husband posted a video on Facebook of him attempting to end his life. During the video, he was blaming me and called me derogatory names. This was happening while I was at work. It was absolutely terrifying. I called emergency services and raced home. They ended up taking him to the hospital downtown.
I had to spend a few hours in the emergency room waiting area, which was chaotic and so full of homeless people that there was nowhere to sit. My managers from work joined me while we waited. All the while, my husband kept texting me over and over saying that I ruined his New Year’s plans and that I needed to get him out of there.
At about 5:00 am he broke out of the hospital and ran into the street demanding that I drive him home. Security took off after him and an officer ended up apprehending him. I went home to try and sleep before I had to bartend a huge NYE party for 13 hours straight. As soon as he got out of the hospital, he got his brother to drive him to our house.
When he got home, I couldn’t believe that he was acting like nothing had happened. He even said that he would come to visit me at the NYE party later that day. It was 100 percent the worst night of my life.
61. Adventures Abroad
He was going to go off, study abroad and have adventures traveling while I stayed home with however many kids he wanted me to have. That was his idea of a perfect life—leaving his wife and kids for months at a time and occasionally showing up again to make another kid. No. Just no.
62. Socks
The straw that broke the camel's back? Socks. He had a temper. I feel like it chipped away at me whenever he would yell about something I thought was stupid.
One day, I was putting away laundry and he told me to pour the socks on the bed, bunch them in the pairs, then put them away. I poured them all directly into the drawer and started putting them in their pairs to save myself one step. He started screaming that I never listen to him.
I asked, "What is the difference if the outcome is the same"? So, while he was yelling, I was just thinking to myself that I couldn't have kids with this person. He is going to be screaming at our child for something stupid one day and I couldn't let that happen. I am an adult; I can handle this. A child is a child and couldn't. I couldn't subject a child to his anger.
I knew then the relationship couldn't go on.
63. It’s All Downhill From Here
The final straw should have been when he said, “See? I told you that if you lost weight, I’d ask you to marry me”. Alas, I accepted his proposal and, unfortunately, that moment ended up being somewhere in the middle. I clearly recall the incident when, all of a sudden, the word “divorce” didn’t turn my stomach quite as much as it used to…
He went into a full-blown temper tantrum directed at me because Pizza Hut had been too heavy-handed with the olives—because I was somehow supposed to monitor that? Since our twins were still very young, I realized that if I didn’t get out of the marriage soon I’d either be stuck for another 15 years or I would end up in a stress-induced coma.
Some marriage highlights…When he said, “I left my trash on the counter because the bag was full” but never bothered to take the full bag of trash out; his constant insistence that he had to play video games at full volume while refusing to use headphones; intentionally embarrassing me in restaurants just to watch me get mad; and refusing to give me any sort of break from the kids while he had several hours a week to himself.
I should also mention that I had been faking every orgasm for the last five years. Things started looking up when I received a five-figure inheritance check from my grandfather’s estate. I suddenly had an escape route! I promptly secured an apartment and some furniture. When I told him I was leaving, his response shocked me.
Instead of standing up for himself and starting the argument I was prepared for, he fell to the floor in a puddle of sobbing goo and said that he had no idea I was unhappy. I’d already lost all respect for him as a spouse, but that made me lose respect for him as a human being. I’m now happily married to a far, far better man. He has an awesome kiddo and we live in a gorgeous house. Oh, and the orgasms are FANTASTIC.
64. Married To Mrs. Hulk
This was not quite the last straw, but it is the one that is burned into my memory—because it was so horrifying. I was about 15 minutes late getting from work and hadn’t been able to let her know cause my battery ran out. She flipped out and said that she had wanted me to stop and get cash so she could make the car payment for her mother.
When I told her my phone battery ran out, she ripped our home phone off the wall (Did I mention it was a pay phone that I had set up to work as a regular phone?), hoisted it over her head, and threw it at me screaming, “There! Now you have a frigging phone to use”! A little while after that I finally packed what I could into one of my stepkid’s backpacks, loaded my dog into my car, and took off.
65. Door Puncher
My ex-boyfriend was angry that his mom woke him up at 10:00 in the morning via phone call. So, after the call, he punched a hole in his door, threw his phone at the window, woke me up forcefully, and yelled at me to buy a new door so that his parents wouldn’t kick him out.
66. No Anniversary Celebration
She prioritized going to a festival (explicitly telling me not to come with her) with her friend over celebrating our second anniversary. This specific friend had carried a torch for her for 10 years and had cut ties with her when she started dating me.
67. A Fairy Tale In Reverse
My first wife and I met when I was at an exciting time in my life. I was playing ice hockey and also was a member of a somewhat successful rock band. We dated for a year and then married. This woman could spend money like nobody I’ve ever known, and usually on stuff that was wholly unnecessary. It didn’t help that, as she drained my savings and dropped us into serious debt, she struggled to keep a job for any period of time.
I was forced to work longer hours to give us a better life, which meant that I had to quit the band and hockey. And since we were struggling for money, we didn’t go out nearly as much as we used to. I couldn’t believe it when she had the nerve to tell me that our life was boring. I then found out she was arranging to meet guys behind my back.
I felt like I had been used and thrown away like an old Kleenex. Before her, my life had been fulfilling and exciting. However, when the excitement—and the money—went away and we settled into married life, she had to go find her thrills elsewhere. To make matters worse, she left me with thousands of dollars of debt, too.
68. At Least He’s Self-Aware?
My spouse was a stay-at-home wife who didn’t keep up the house because she was obsessed with playing World of Warcraft. Her dog would take dumps on the floor and she couldn’t even be bothered to take him for a walk or clean up his poo before I got home from my two jobs. I told her that if I came home again and there was dog poo on the floor, I was going to drop a load on the floor, too.
I stuck to my word and halfway through said dump, it suddenly hit me: I was acting crazy and needed to get away from this person who was making me so angry that I went insane. I finished my business and left for good. It was definitely not my finest moment.
69. Bro
He left me because I was telling a story and accidentally called him "bro" once. He said I didn’t love him. I actually did it by accident. I was so focused on the story and excited to share it.
To be honest, it was a good thing that this happened, because he has a really bad addiction and that was already starting to be a problem. I couldn’t watch what he was doing to himself and he didn’t want help.
70. Nap Time
A guy I was dating liked to take naps for five or more hours. One day, we had dinner plans at 7:00 PM and he chose to continue napping until 9:00 PM. When he woke up, he was convinced that places were still open. Obviously, nothing was open and I got very frustrated. He broke his facade when we had an argument about how he burn my time.
Then, he asked, "Why can't you be like my friend who listens to her crummy boyfriend"?! He basically alluded he was a bad boyfriend. Big yikes after that.
71. Heartbreak Diet
I left my husband when a coworker’s casual comment opened my eyes to the kind of life I could have had. Over the years, despite all of my efforts, my spouse and I slowly started to drift apart. We first started dating when I was only 17. Back then I was super thin, as teenagers are, but as I grew into a woman, I gained a little weight, nothing huge, though.
By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I had gained about 9 kilograms (20 pounds). Granted, I still had a flat tummy and was proportioned well, but my spouse was giving me less and less affection. He never seemed satisfied with my appearance. He was constantly asking me to wear makeup, style my hair, and wear nicer clothes. I had terrible self-esteem because of it.
One day at work I told my male coworker that I was going to start losing weight and he was stunned. He said, “But you’re gorgeous!” Before that moment, I had NEVER been called gorgeous. I was super flattered but just left it at that. As I continued on my weight loss journey, slowly my husband started giving me affection again. I came to a sudden, disturbing realization…
The difference between us having a good and bad relationship was 7 to 9 kilograms (15 to 20 pounds). How could my coworker think I was gorgeous while my spouse wouldn’t even touch me until I lost a bit of weight? I thought about my future and my mind started to spin out of control…
What would happen when I got pregnant? Or when I hit menopause? I saw a life filled with the constant pressure to maintain a super-fit body in order to have a normal relationship. Forget that. I wanted someone who loved me for me. I packed up my stuff and left.
72. Rock-Bottom Realization
It all ended when I suddenly realized that I had become a prisoner in our marriage. For the last six months, I had been living in the unfinished basement of our house. Realizing that I actually preferred living with cement floors, spiders galore, no walls, and no running water or heat in the middle of Utah winters to living upstairs with him was a real eye-opener. That’s when I knew I had to escape.
73. Poor Me, Indeed
My ex-wife started an argument with me one morning when I was headed to the funeral of a childhood friend. I asked if she could not do this right now. Her response was, “Ohhhh, poor you”. That was the beginning of the end.
74. Ashamed To Be Seen
He never introduced me to his friends. He would actively avoid being seen with me by people he knew. I pretty quickly asked him what was his problem. His answer was that I needed to change my appearance because he didn't want people seeing him date a weird goth chick. I dumped him right then.
75. Yikes!
She was three months pregnant and I was five months out to sea. Easy math.
76. Fasten Your Seatbelt…
I have a couple of degrees in tech and worked in tech, so I was the informal system administrator for our household. I made it so that all of our Macs and iPhones would back up to the iCloud with photos synchronizing across all devices. My wife, who is not very tech-savvy, went on a “vacation” to visit “family” in NYC.
I stayed in California with our kids and, all of a sudden, photos of her New York City trip started popping up on the family computer...only to reveal that she was having an affair with an ex-friend of mine. I decided to search the family computer for more info and soon discovered her Ashley Madison profile. I logged in to read the conversations.
I decided to call and ask her where she was. She claimed to be at her mother’s while I was looking at her actual location online via iCloud. Eventually, after listening to her many lies, I told her where she actually was and how I knew. She panicked, hung up, and eventually figured out how to disable the GPS tracking.
She called me back the next day and fed me more lies about how she was spending the evening at her family’s place. I used Yesware to email her the photos that she had taken the prior evening with her iPhone, which had synchronized with iCloud and the family computer. This just caused her to lie about the photos, so I emailed her the Metadata which contradicted her statements.
She literally got rid of her iPhone and bought another iPhone, with a new number and everything. Unfortunately, the Verizon reps used her original Apple ID to set up the new phone. This meant that, unbeknownst to her, EVERYTHING—photos, calendar, address book, locations—from her brand-new phone continued to synchronize with the family computer.
She called me and swore that she was at her family’s place. So, in an email, I showed her how I used the Yesware data to determine her approximate location and it was not her family’s home, but her boyfriend’s place. This time I didn’t tell her that her new phone was synchronizing with the family computer. That evening, more pictures come across…
This time the photos included her married friend who was also having an affair with some guy I was able to easily locate on Facebook because I have the whole address book and the names and numbers of everyone in the photo. I recognized a few other people who were also married, but not with their spouses. It must have been some sort of cheater’s night out.
I sent all of them a group text, which immediately ended the evening. My wife called me screaming but I just hung up and blocked her.
77. Arguments About God
She was atheist, I'm religious. I thought it could work, but it just couldn't. Funny enough, it was mainly her that would constantly make judgemental remarks about my beliefs. The final straw was when I was going through a difficult time and rather than support me, she used it as an opportunity to 'prove' that God doesn't exist by telling me God wouldn't allow bad things to happen to people.
It wasn't the simplicity of her argument that got to me, it was just the fact that she was so insistent on enforcing her belief on me that she couldn't pick her moments.
78. Vacation From You
He lied about going on vacation with another girl. He said he was at home in bed sick. I was at his house trying to bring him homemade soup, literally standing in his bedroom (I spent a lot of time there and had my own key). This was after lie after lie that I forgave him for. But, this one was so ridiculously stupid that I wasn’t even upset.
I just finally let go and am a thousand times better for it.
79. What Took Her So Long?
My first husband sucked. He wasn’t a great boyfriend, but he became even more selfish and emotionally lazy after we married. I basically learned to live without affection. One time I even counted how many days went by before he gave me any sort of affection (i.e., holding my hand, kissing me, hugging me, caressing my back as he walked by).
We went 32 days without touching each other. This wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the last straw. I was 95 percent sure that he was having an affair with his boss while I watched their children (her kid and my stepdaughter) for sleepovers while he was “working late”. I know it may be hard to believe, but this was still not the last straw.
I had been spending time with a married friend and one night I was awestruck by how they interacted. He adored her. Their relationship wasn’t the one-sided dysfunctional mess I was in. They were playful and affectionate, and they doted on each other. I realized it was finally time to talk to my husband.
I came home and found him sitting at the patio table. I sat with him, told him what I witnessed, and said, “My friend Dawn never has to wonder how James feels about her. They cherish each other. I need you to really hear what I’m saying. As your wife, I NEED this from you. I need affection. I need to know that I’m valued and loved". His response? “Laaaaaaaaammme”.
I said, “OK, then,” and walked into the house. We separated less than a week later. Seven years later, I’m in a fulfilling marriage with someone who treats me as an equal instead of a live-in nanny and housekeeper that he sometimes sleeps with. Marriage doesn't have to suck, y’all. It can be pretty darn great with the right person.
80. World’s Worst Roommate
My wife stopped wanting intercourse or any sort of intimacy at all. By the end of the relationship, I felt more like a roommate than a husband. She had become very involved in the breastfeeding organization La Leche League, which believed in weaning until the age of seven and following the philosophy of attachment parenting.
She and the kids slept in the master bedroom together and I slept in the guest room. Things eventually got to the point where I didn’t even feel like I was part of the family. We were a single-income family until I unexpectedly lost my six-figure job due to budget cuts. Our savings were being cut into to keep the nice house and cars afloat.
I thought things were looking up when I landed a job interview in Atlanta. I was wrong. When I got home, the house was empty. She had moved herself and the kids into her parents’ home in Chicago while I was away and filed for divorce. We both knew the relationship had long been over, but to have it end that way hurt—15 years down the drain.
Things are OK now, though. I have a new girlfriend and my ex also has a new suitor—God help him.
81. Silent Treatment
The girl wouldn't talk about anything. I tried to not make everything about me, but she didn't actually do anything interesting. Whenever I tried to talk, she didn't contribute to the conversation. So, of course, it always ended up being about me and my day, which made her mad. I was tired of it, so I got right out of that relationship.
82. Control Freak
He was very controlling and didn’t want me to work. One time, I told him I had a job interview and that I was going to it. He completely freaked out and said some very nasty national slurs to me and went on a rampage throwing things around the house. That's when I realized I needed to leave.
83. Watch Your Step!
I was helping my wife get ready for a girls’ trip when I slipped and fell down the stairs while taking her suitcase to the car. Even though I fractured my leg, she still left for her vacation. I was forced to make my own way to urgent care and hobble in to get an X-ray and crutches. I completely stopped caring after that.
84. Hope He Played “Surrender”
We had been arguing for some time, so when I was sent to Los Angeles on an assignment for the summer, it seemed like a good time for a break. While there, I rented a convertible one weekend and drove the Pacific Coast Highway from LA to Monterey. I blasted some Cheap Trick and just cruised. By the time I got back to LA, I knew that it was over.
I strongly recommend this drive to anyone who needs to put everything back into perspective.
85. Condiment Cover Up
He put ketchup all over a dish I spent more than four hours making. He didn't even taste it first. We had a lot of problems and this moment just seemed to sum up the gist of them in one dismissive, ketchup-coated smack in the face. Forget him and forget that disgusting condiment.
86. Luck Of The Draw
Let me start by saying something: I am a very ambitious person, and he was simply not.
He kept on saying that all of my success in life was thanks to luck, and that he simply wasn’t as lucky as me. I work very hard for my successes and for my failures, and hearing him say that it was luck made me lose it. He knew how important being ambitious was for me, and he knew how much work I put into things.
He, on the other hand, was fine with anything that happened, which is okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I am not, and saying that to me hurt. That was the last straw that broke us up. But that relationship was flawed from the start, so no surprise there.
87. Plot Twist
The last straw was when our six-year-old daughter told me that she saw mommy and “Brett” in bed together without any clothes on. After that, I ended up unraveling the entire affair. My wife ended up choosing “Brett” over me, but apparently the feelings weren’t mutual. He stayed with his wife, leaving my soon-to-be-ex out in the cold.
88. I Cast You Out!
One day when I came home from work, my daughter was in the fireplace eating soot while my wife was laying on the floor with a blanket over her face, speaking in tongues. When I asked what the heck she was doing, she replied, “I was under the veil and the Lord was speaking to me”.
I told her that the Lord needs to tell her when my daughter is in the fireplace instead of worrying about his own selfish needs. I left shortly thereafter.
89. You Used To Call Me On My Cellphone
She called me 72 times in one day. On an average day, it was about 15-20 calls, and a lot of messages. She wanted me to answer immediately, even if I was at work or with my friends. When I could not answer, she asked me by text message why I was not answering, what I was doing, where I was, who I was with. And she would get really mad if I did not answer.
On top of that, she was very jealous (I could not speak to other girls, even to my long-time best friend, or co-workers), and when something was wrong, she was always playing the victim card. I tried to change this behavior, but it did not work. I tried to get used to it, it did not work either. She was a very pretty girl, but her behavior diminished all the feelings I had toward her.
90. Miracle Cure
I got really sick. My doctor thought I had a brain tumor, but it turned out to be psychosomatic. For years I had been putting on a happy face to keep the family together despite all the stress he’d been putting me through, and my body couldn’t take it anymore. The day I asked for a divorce, I instantly got better. The doctor shook my hand and told me to come back if I had any real problems.
91. Very Foul Play
The last straw was when I found my husband’s mistress’s nasty used tampon in the trash can next to my bedside table. He tried to come up with a lame excuse for it, but there is no excuse. We’ve been divorced for a year now.
92. Signed, Sealed, Delivered
My ex was in the Navy at the time and about to retire. Her last duty station was in Michigan. We had been in the Washington DC area for about 12 years before her last transfer came. This meant that I would stay in our DC house, which was almost paid off, and after three years she would come back and we would settle here for good.
We had been together for about 10 years before we got married. About three months before her retirement, I received the papers from the State of Michigan: In 30 days you will be divorced. I was absolutely blindsided. Apparently, she had talked to an officer about her retirement and he suggested that she divorce me so she wouldn’t have to split her retirement check with me.
I paid all the bills at the DC house and most of the bills at the Michigan house. I didn’t want to feud, though, so we divorced. I did get to keep my house, car, and motorcycle, and she didn’t ask for any of the companies I own. About four months later, I got a call from her. She said, “Um, I don’t seem to have enough money to pay my bills".
I told her it was not my problem—and it felt really good. We’ve been divorced for four years now and every now and then I get a call from her telling me that she misses me, she loves me, and she can’t pay her bills. I love it when she asks me for money. It feels so good to say “no”.
93. Hiding In Plain Sight
When the neighbor in the apartment next door said, “How are you OK with all of that?” To which I replied, “OK with what”? He said, “Oh, with being in an open marriage”. I was completely flabbergasted. He continued, “Yeah, she told us you guys were in an open marriage when we saw her bringing guys home to your house while you were working”.
I said, “I’m sorry, what now? Come again”? But there was just a huge AWKWARD SILENCE!!! Welp. I thanked him for letting me know, otherwise, I’d still be in the dark about this “whole open marriage thing”.
94. Wait, What?
My wife refused to go back to marriage counseling because “the therapist makes me feel bad because I won’t stop seeing [her lover]". After that, there’s pretty much nothing left to say.
95. Clear Cut Revenge
This happened to my neighbors. They were a couple who went through a divorce and she got the house in the settlement. However, it was only the house and the immediate house lot. Not the surrounding land, as that went to the husband. That’s how he got his revenge on her. The first thing he did was sell all the lumber off the rest of the land.
She went from living in a nice forest to living on clearcut land. But he wasn't done yet! Once the trees were gone he sold off the topsoil, then the gravel under that. By the time he was done her house was on a hill overlooking a barren landscape reminiscent of the lunar surface. This was years ago, and the place is still hideous.
96. Mood Swings
My wife is pregnant with our daughter. Initially, we were really happy and excited about it. But then, it all goes wrong. She starts acting like a nut job. She gets angry and irritated at small things, insults me when she doesn't like the food I make, starts acting insecure, and accuses me of losing my attraction for her. For example, she wanted to eat chicken sandwiches for dinner last week.
Well, I made chicken sandwiches. So she eats all the sandwiches, leaves me nothing, and told me that they tasted like garbage. If she didn't like them, why did she have to eat everything? When I asked her this, she told me that she was hungry. Ok fine. She does this every time. Eats everything I make and calls it garbage. I don't argue with her because I work for more than 80 hours a week and I really want to have some peace when I'm home.
So, yesterday, a random girl starts flirting with me after the gym and asked me if I wanted to meet up with her for some drinks. I rejected her and told her that I was married. And when I got home, my wife started to hug me and apologize. That’s when I learned the dark truth. When I asked her what happened, she told me that her best friend suggested a test for my loyalty.
So they asked a mutual friend to flirt with me and ask me out. And I passed. Yay?!!? I'm really angry. I'm done with her antics.
97. Wedding Transference
I work in the industry and my friend is the wedding planner. He is a good-looking, straight male who has an amazing eye for design and detail. He can do everything from wedding dress design and execution to flowers, you name it. And his services are not cheap. He once had a bride who called him up a few days before her wedding.
She told him she couldn't go through with the wedding because she was in love with someone else. The conversation went something like this: Bride: "I can't marry him, I just don't love him anymore, I think I'm in love with someone else!" Him: "What do you mean you're in love with someone else!? Your wedding is in five days!"
Bride: "Well...I'm in love with you. You just GET me! I've never met anyone else like you!" Him: "...Do you know how much your parents are paying me to get you?!" She ended up getting married five days later as planned, and it was never mentioned again.
98. Better Now Than Later
I dated a woman for over two years before I finally decided to pop the question. The first time she said, “I don’t know". A couple months later, I asked her again, and she said “maybe". I was pretty bent out of shape, but then I found out the horrible reason why she turned me down. She was sleeping with several of my friends, so I guess I dodged a big danger there.
99. Sleepover
He has a longtime friend of his (who happened to be female) who was staying the night. She was sleeping in the basement bedroom and we were upstairs. Well, he slipped out of bed in the middle of the night and woke me up. When he noticed, he told me he had to go to the bathroom. I guess I already had my suspicions, because I lay there and listened to him walk down the hall, then past the bathroom, and down the stairs. So, I followed. And caught him in the basement getting ready to have intercourse with her. Oh. I was not a happy puppy. Was stupid and tried to salvage our engagement, but I wasn't "fun anymore" and he left.
100. Parental Guidance
Listening from the next room to my parents arguing about my father's internet history having dirty websites in it, followed by a full-on argument about their declining adult life, was pretty rough on me when I was 12 years old.
101. So Much For The Language Of Love
Friend of mine divorced his then-wife because she would only speak French when her family would come over. She was Spanish, as was her family. To add, her family spoke English, French, and Spanish; he could only speak Spanish and English. She got bored of being married to him, her family basically talked smack about him while he was there, was only when he recorded a conversation while they were there and got it translated he found out what was going on.
