People Are Revealing The Unforgivable Things Their Ex-Spouse Did That Led Them To Divorce After Less Than A Year Of Marriage
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We asked people of the BuzzFeed Community why they got divorced after being married for less than a year. The stories they shared were quite surprising (and their splits were understandable). Here's what they had to say:
1."For two months, my husband lied to me about everything. We got married three months after dating (dumb mistake). We were on a love high. We got married, only for me to find out he had a whole other life. I was looking through his phone and found his secret Instagram account where he is married with two kids, and we divorced."
—Anonymous
2."Long story short: After nine months of 'wedded bliss,' he said, 'You're my wife and you'll do as I say!' My now-husband says, 'You're my wife and I'll do as you say!"
—Anonymous
3."We divorced in less than a year. There was a day he told me he would always love his ex-wife."
—Anonymous
4."We had dated for two years before he proposed. Everything was fine and easy until right after we got married and he got a job at a fancy country club. Suddenly he thought he was 'one of them' and started sleeping with one of the women he worked for. I suspected something was up, but I let it go. Less than four months after we got married, he just stopped coming home. He wouldn't answer my phone calls, ignored my texts, and stopped speaking to me. We were divorced less than a year after we got married."
—Anonymous
5."Shortly after we were married, my husband decided he finally had the freedom and financial security (thanks to me) to 'find himself.' He quit his 10-year teaching and coaching career without telling me to try to strike out brewing beer professionally, which had only been a garage hobby until then. Turned out, he met the right people at the wrong time and ended up as the head brewer for one of our state's biggest breweries when they were just starting. However, because they were just starting, he was paid very irregularly, if at all. He kept telling me to hang in there, but it was impossible in our brand-new home with one income. We were putting mortgage payments onto my credit cards. Just as the brewery started to succeed, he got laid off because they wanted someone with more experience. Shortly after that, he told me he wasn't sure marriage was even still a part of his plan, but children definitely weren't."
"That was the last straw for me. Only after our divorce did I find out that he had cashed out his two retirement plans and didn't set aside enough for penalties, which went on our joint returns. By 'joint,' I mean I was stuck with all of it in the divorce, including the credit card debt, because he still didn't have an income. He ended up dating his roommate he'd met on Craigslist and got her knocked up within the first couple of months after our separation. They now have three children, and she's a stay-at-home mom because he found a job as a tech recruiter making at least $200,000. I found out about her pregnancy AND the massive income change through a text message he 'accidentally' sent me that was meant for her. I went through wave after wave of depression, brief bouts of homelessness, and an eventual bankruptcy."
—Anonymous
6."Three months before we got married, I discovered he had a child. The child was conceived before we got together, so I went forward with the wedding. I married him the week I graduated from medical school (with student loan debt but no credit card debt). We moved to Michigan for my residency and he refused to get a job, and wasn’t even paying child support. I was working 80 hours a week, and he expected me to clean the house and cook dinner while he watched TV all day. I made quilts on the side to sell for extra money."
"Then I found out he was $30,000 in credit card debt. After 11 months of his laziness, I called it quits. He then sued me for alimony and moving money to go back to LA. He tried to tell the court he supported me in medical school. I was easily able to disprove this, as he was still living with his parents and I lived out of my car (I would just sleep in empty hospital rooms). He tried to pin his credit card debt on me. That was 20 years ago. Took me longer fighting in court than I was married to him. He figured he had married a doctor and didn’t have to work anymore."
—Anonymous
7."He was gay. He used me, my son, and my family name as a cover while he surfed hookup websites and met men. Turned out, before we were married, he had had a two-year physical relationship with a man in college. Once we were married, he made a profile on Scruff (a gay dating app) to try to find someone. He was emotionally and verbally abusive to me because he was so frustrated that he couldn’t be out, and it finally culminated in him coming out to me VIA TEXT. He wanted to stay married but live apart and date others."
—Anonymous
8."We had a blissful wedding in Florida, supposedly the first for both of us. Five months later, a letter arrived from the state of Oregon demanding overdue child support payments for his two kids from his second wife. They found him through our marriage records. Yeah. We divorced seven months to the day."
—Anonymous
9."He was cheating on me pretty much the whole time. One of his girlfriends, who was his ex, got pregnant. I didn't even find out until after I left. I just knew something wasn't right and I left."
—Anonymous
10."My now-ex-wife didn’t come home one night. Our son had called me, crying, because she wasn’t there when he woke up for school, and she wasn’t answering her phone. I finally reached her, and that’s when she came clean. She admitted that she’d been cheating for our whole six-year relationship. Our marriage didn’t even make it eight months.”
—Anonymous
11."It seems like a small thing, but I caught COVID-19 back in August 2021. At this time in the UK, anyone testing positive, plus those they lived with, had to self-isolate for 10 days. I was isolating, working from home, and trying to run the household and keep the dog entertained while feeling shitty from COVID. Since the nature of my husband's job meant that he couldn’t work from home, he just sat on the sofa for 10 days straight with the TV and PlayStation, not lifting a finger to help around the house or help with the dog. After a year of marriage where I had to fight him on everything, even emptying the garbage, this was the last straw. I’m not proud to say that the relationship ended on the day of our first wedding anniversary, but I couldn’t settle for that life any longer."
—Anonymous
12."We dated for two years, and we had established similar views about our future (get a house, have kids, and stick with our careers) before having a quick court marriage in November. After we got legally married, we started to plan the religious ceremony to satisfy our extended Indian families that was to happen seven months from our wedding date, in June. As we advanced toward that day of celebration, his true colors started to show, and I realized the signs a little too late that I'd married a narcissist. Once I started to see that his personality wasn't the same, our lives unraveled into mass chaos."
"He kept trying to get me pregnant in January, which I found strange, since he knew we had to wait until after our religious ceremony, so I did some investigating because I had to follow my gut feeling that something was off, and found out he was talking to other women inappropriately and spending our savings on OnlyFans. When I confronted him, he collapsed to the floor crying and begging me to forgive him. However, when I said I couldn't forgive him unless he got professional help, he stood up and smirked while telling me he never even wanted to have kids and then proceeded to walk out. In March I immediately called off everything we were planning and dropped his stuff off at his parents' place, and he avoided me until I hunted him down on his birthday in April to get him to sign our divorce papers, which he thought I wouldn't do, as it is shunned in our culture. To this day, I still get chills thinking about how I was fooled into almost starting a life with someone who was just playing a cultural role with a modern twist."
—Anonymous
13."I rushed into my first marriage. I had gotten pregnant with another guy's baby, but he wasn't at all interested in being a parent. He left, but a mutual friend of ours stepped in. I thought he was my knight in shining armor. He volunteered to be there for me and my baby. We got married shortly after my son was born, but it quickly became apparent that he didn't understand all the life changes that come about from kids and marriage. We split up after three months."
—Anonymous
14."She waited until we were married to steal my identity and max out a bunch of credit cards that were mailed to our shared address."
—Anonymous
15."In my early 20s, I married a guy I grew up with. Our relationship was very selfish on both ends, and very fast. He had issues from just coming home from the Iraq War pretty soon after 9/11, and I had absolutely no handle on my bipolar disorder. I was on birth control but conceived on the honeymoon anyway. He’d been cheating constantly when we were dating, which I knew about, but I was naive and needy enough to think I could change him if I kept loving him. I later found out he'd only wanted to get married because he would get more money from the military. The surprise pregnancy flipped a switch, and all I cared about was protecting my baby. I knew neither of us, alone or together, could truly give a child what they needed and deserved. We separated after three months of marriage and placed our baby for adoption because we knew the best chance for him wasn't with us."
"It took me a good eight months after the adoption to sign the divorce papers. My mom sat me down and told me he'd married again less than a year later. He now has a few kids, and I have no idea if he's happy or not. I have a husband and no kids and am quite content. Our baby we placed is now 12 years old, has three sisters, and seems very, very happy. We keep in touch, and it's been a very loving relationship with his entire family. He's where he should be. I have no regrets."
—Anonymous
16."My friend got married 14–15 months after meeting the guy. They waited to live together until after the wedding, and it just amplified all of their issues. Their honeymoon was the first time they ever traveled together, and they realized that they had different vacation preferences and weren't compatible. Less than a year in, she had an affair; he stuck around, and she later revealed in therapy that she only married him because she knew he would financially support her. After her student loans were paid off (and another affair), she filed for divorce, took the house, and told him she was never attracted to him but he checked enough of her boxes to at least try. She's a truly despicable human being."
—Anonymous
17."He really went from being the perfect, attentive boyfriend to the world's laziest husband. It was as if saying our vows completely destroyed the former life partner I had agreed to marry. He was not the same person, and it seemed as if he lost motivation to work on our relationship with fun date nights and quality time as soon as he signed the dotted line, as he thought marriage meant we just settle for what we have. I tried to keep us going, but once I saw I wasn't getting the same effort back, I initiated our divorce, and his attitude changed, but it was too late."
—Anonymous
18."My friend had been dating this guy for a few years when she found out he was cheating on her with a 'friend.' He begged her not to break up, and promised he'd never see the 'friend' again. They got married a couple of years later. Six months after the wedding, she discovered he'd never broken it off and was still sleeping with the 'friend.' This time, he told her he had no intentions of ending it, so if she wanted to stay married, she'd just have to deal with it. The divorce was finalized a week before what would've been their first wedding anniversary."
—Anonymous
19."We were together for five years before getting married. I never realized how much I did for him and us and how little he contributed. Four months after we married, I needed emergency bowel surgery. I was in the hospital for two weeks. He didn’t visit me once. He complained about needing to pick me up from the hospital when I was discharged. While I was recovering, he still expected me to clean and cook for him (even though I was on strict weight restrictions and a liquid diet). I couldn’t imagine having to take care of a man-child on top of any children we might have had in the future. I filed for divorce six months after getting married."
—Anonymous
20."We had a love-at-first-sight connection that led us to be ignorant of each other's realities until after we tied the knot. I was still trying to establish my career, which led to long work hours. He accused me of cheating on him even though he could see my location at work and would do 'surprise' visits that went from being romantic before marriage to causing pure embarrassment once we were married. On the other hand, he was comfortable with his career but had a bad past with the law. One night, we went for a drive to get some ice cream and ended up getting pulled over by highway patrol. They cuffed him for driving with a suspended license and having a warrant, none of which I even knew existed."
"One officer drove him straight to jail, and the other officer stayed back and ran my ID, saw a clean record, and said, 'Young lady, I know you are married to him and all, but if you want to have a good life, divorce him while you still can before he gets you killed or kills you himself.' I was shocked by the advice and rushed home looking for a reason to validate what had just happened. I went through his truck and found drugs, a firearm with the numbers scratched off, and multiple burner phones. I was so confused about who I even married, you best believe I had divorce papers drafted and served to him as soon as he stepped out of jail as a free man. He signed the papers but told me he would make sure I'd regret leaving him, so I quietly cut ties with my family and friends and left the state."
—Anonymous
21.And last: "We had a beautiful wedding and had spent seven years getting to know each other exclusively. However, I came to find out a few months after our wedding that he had been paying child support to another woman for the past five years. That would have been a nice conversation he could have had before he married me, but he admitted he thought he could hide it forever by having all his 'business trips,' so I divorced him as soon as I could."
—Anonymous
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
