38 Engaged Couples Who Never Made It To The Altar For Wild And Sometimes Heartbreaking Reasons
Recently, Reddit user mimi_nivi asked, "People who were engaged at one point but never got married, what happened?" and the stories ranged from super juicy to completely heartbreaking. Here are 38 stories from people who broke off their engagements.
NOTE: There are mentions of miscarriage and domestic violence.
1."She moved home to Germany to care for her dying mother. And by dying mother, she meant some oil sheik she met in Dubai."
"Her mom told me two weeks after she left, when I called. Also, Facebook."
2."Came home for lunch one day to surprise her. Surprise was on me as she was in the middle of fucking her coworker on my couch. I loved that couch."
3."He decided to recommit to his faith (he's a Jehovah's Witness) and tried to get me to convert. I refused. He then tried to tell me I couldn't go out with my friends. I went out, and he had a temper tantrum that would put my 3-year-old niece to shame. He trashed the house and drove to his parents' house two states away. I got all the deposits back that I could. He texted me on what would have been our wedding day to remind me what a mistake I made. I sent him a picture of me and several of my friends that I was told I was not allowed to see having a very fancy sushi dinner with the deposit money."
"My friends and I had a hell of a night. It was 10 years ago. I’m so glad I didn’t go through with it. I just married the best person I’ve ever met a month ago. We started dating about six months after I called off the wedding.
I still occasionally hear from my ex. I just send him photos of how awesome my life is without him. Can’t wait for the next time he reaches out and I can send him my wedding photo. My ex is still single. I’m a tad bit petty."
4."I had a friend who was engaged. One day, she had a fight with her fiancé and drove from his house mad. On her way home, she ended up in a bad car accident. She tried to call him several times. Wouldn’t pick up. Her family tried. Nothing. Her friends tried. Nothing. HIS friends tried. Nothing. His family tried. Nothing. Dude was quite serious about giving her the silent treatment. Needless to say, she didn’t think he handled that well and broke it off. ... I should add that after he found out what had happened, he just kind of went, 'Oh, okay' instead of apologizing or asking if she was alright. It wasn’t just that he went to bed or something at the wrong time."
5."I’m married to someone else now, but in 2016, I got engaged and pregnant, in that order. I had a miscarriage, and he broke up with me about five minutes after I fainted from the blood loss at a family garden party (my family, not his) that he told me to suck it up and go to during it. He started dating my cousin, who he met at the party, about six weeks later. They’re married now. She knew what happened between us."
6."We had, like, six miscarriages. At the end of the relationship, he said something to me like, 'It’s just so hard… I look at your face, and I feel like I SEE nothing but six dead babies.' Can’t really come back from that one. I mean, some people can. We couldn’t."
7."I got sober and recognized some things that helped me realize I didn’t want to marry that person. Still sober and happily married to the love of my life."
8."I found out he was still married. I knew he was previously married, but he said they divorced years before we met. It came to a head when we were making plans to get the marriage license. I met his family numerous times and even had his mother’s china."
9."His wife called me. He had no intentions of marrying me. He was treating me like his bit on the side but bought me a shiny ring as compensation. I was horrified when I found out."
"It's actually a really long story but dot points: We met at the pub, he said he was separated, we started dating, engaged after six months, he worked a lot, he didn't want to live together before marriage, I even met his entire family (mum/dad/siblings) when we all attended church together multiple times (they didn't bat an eyelid), he gave me a ring worth 25k, one day his wife called asking, 'Do you know A is married and we have three kids?' I was floored.
Gave her the ring to sell to help her pay for a lawyer to divorce him, she got everything in the divorce, he got to keep his car, she's remarried and happier than ever. He's still alone.
His poor nieces and nephews must have been so confused. They were only young. Probably thinking to themselves, who's this lady and where is Aunty?! Were they told not to say anything to me? Or did his family think A & K had split up? It's one of those mysteries I like to play out scenarios in my head but can't really be bothered trying to find out the truth.
I actually never confronted him. I just packed up my rental and left. I went on a holiday for 18 months and just rebuilt myself using money saved for our wedding. Grieved someone who never existed, helped his wife (she needed to know every detail as a part of her healing process).
I saw him in a cafe about three years ago now. He was eating breakfast alone and gave me that look that said, 'Please say hello to me.' I gave him the slight smile you give a stranger and walked out with my coffee.
I do keep in Facebook contact with his ex-wife and catch up for dinner at least once every couple months.
She told me after it all came out, he tried to weasel his way back to her but with no success. Then, he was apparently super depressed because he 'loved me so much.' Then he started clubbing and was lovin' single life, that went on for a few years until COVID hit, and he suddenly realized he was all alone, had nobody in his life, and had a really tough trot during all the lockdowns.
We did talk to their kids together about what happened (I was on video). She wanted to make sure they knew I wasn't a home-wrecker, and they had so many questions for me. The main one being did I know about them, or were they a secret as well. It was rough, their healing process wasn't the same as mine, but they were a family, and I felt like I owed it to them. And to be honest, it helped them as well because their Dad had told so many lies about me and their mother that simply by giving them facts (the youngest was 15 so not a young child), they were able to see he was a lying POS."
10."The Holy Spirit came to him in a dream and told him that he couldn’t marry me because I wasn’t a virgin."
11."We were less than two weeks away from our wedding, and she was going wild over the last couple of weeks for some reason. I had no idea why and thought she was just nervous. Until one morning she suddenly confessed that she slept with someone multiple times over a long period when we had a long distance relationship. We canceled the wedding, and I broke up with her. I know it is better like this, but I am freaking gutted. The future we had planned together died, and I feel hurt like I never have felt before."
12."He had a baby with my friend. ... Dumped both their asses and kept my ring."
"I was pretty clueless for the most part. There were times where something happened that I was a bit suspicious of them but nothing too major.
Then another friend's mother who works at the hospital saw the two of them at an appointment for a scan.
When I confronted him about it, he didn’t even try to defend himself or lie. We broke it off that night."
13."The night he proposed, he left my house and went straight to his ex’s for a ‘catch-up dinner’ but slipped and fell and accidentally fucked her."
"He has since gotten divorced, became an alcoholic, got fired for drinking on the job, lost custody of his kid, and had his truck break down on his cross-country getaway attempt.
I’m happily married with a good career, four kids, and a dream of a house. And not a slippery floor in sight!"
14."I was only 18 and about to head off to college. It dawned on me that he wanted a ring on my finger to ‘mark’ me as his. He was 24 years old. I gave him his ring back. I didn’t marry until I was 36 and am so glad."
15."It was toxic, and a month before we were supposed to get married, I broke my foot at an event I was helping; she was there, too, but just partying. When I told her I probably broke my foot, she said I shouldn't be a little baby and just walk home since the party was over. I couldn't stand on it. She helped me a couple meters forward, and then she just pushed me. That night, my mother took me to the hospital, and that night, I decided all the lies and mental abuse was enough, and ended it. Best decision of my life. Three months ago and I'm finally getting back to being me."
16."Turns out she liked vagina as much as I did. ... I've been with my wife for almost 12 years now. Last I heard, the ex was churning through girls like an 18-year-old."
17."He left me the day after I sent out my first grad school application, 'cause I wouldn't give up on my idea of going to grad school and having a career, and he wanted me to be a housewife. And he was possibly cheating on me with someone he hung out with that weekend before he dumped me, who he officially started dating two weeks later, after she simultaneously dumped her ex-fiancé. But never confirmed if he was cheating on me or just had a super fast rebound. We had been dating for four years, engaged for about six months, and had already planned the whole wedding and put down deposits, and my parents lost a lot of money they had put down."
"This happened almost exactly 20 years ago. They got married a year later, and she was a housewife with no kids last I heard several years back (they are childfree as far as I know). I got married to someone else, like, six years later and now have two kids with my awesome stay-at-home husband. Also, I got into an ivy league PhD program, got a PhD, and now am a tenured full professor. I am currently flying to a meeting for a national academic organization I am the head of, while my husband stays home and takes care of the kids."
18."I finally left him after he hit the dog. Years of hitting me both physically and emotionally were ignored, but the moment I heard my dog yipe, I smartened up."
19."We had been together six years, no major red flags, but a few months after our engagement, he decided to put his hands on me and shake me when I suggested he leave the dinner dishes to me to visit his father in the living room. He is 6'5". I am 5'0" — it was incredibly scary and over nothing. Was the straw that broke the camel's back because he'd been angry for a while and was completely incapable of communicating. He was saying weird lies and humiliated me in front of his friends, in addition to a dozen other strange behaviors. Anyways, he threatened to kill himself if I didn't go back, which I didn't, and he also didn't kill himself. Haven't seen or spoken to him in eight years."
20."She came home one day and said I no longer love you. This was 15 days before my birthday. She moves out, and come to find out, she is developing feelings for her coworker. We meet up for lunch one or two days after my birthday, and she tells me all these wild sex experiences she’s having with this coworker of hers. I enter a depressed state for two months…but it’s all better now! I’m better now than I ever could have imagined, and I’m so thankful to be out of the toxic relationship and free from the heartbreak! Living life and traveling the world and happy all on my own!"
21."The longer we lived together leading up to the wedding, the more he showed his true colors. One day while I was cooking dinner for us, he started screaming at me, like an inch from my face and called me a (see you next Tuesday). Something about it snapped some sense into me. I walked out and never went back."
22."She started hanging out with an old group of high school friends and just changed. She became extremely nasty over wedding plans, telling me we had to have the exact same number of guests on both sides. If I had one more guest than she did, she made me remove someone from my side. I knew if I moved forward, it would have ended in divorce, so I just ended it before it got to that."
23."He left me for a coworker he claimed for over a year was 'like a sister' to him. They have a kid now. I have a better boyfriend."
24."A month after he proposed, I got pretty sick (maybe Lyme disease, maybe some random virus, will probably never know) and remained pretty sick for almost a year. He didn’t cope with it well from the get-go, and six months into that, basically started acting out in ways to make me end things because he didn’t have the courage to."
25."He refused to get a job after five years together, and I realized I would be paying for everything on my measly teacher salary. Was able to buy my own condo a month after breaking it off."
26."She had been fighting depression and went to stay with her family a little bit before marriage. But she started having horrible fights with her family and had a mental breakdown two months before the wedding and said she wasn't able to handle being a wife or in a relationship and ran. To be single and disappear."
27."We were engaged with a small child, just lost a child, and had an awful relationship. I realized I was better off being a single mother than staying in that toxic as shit environment and having my kid grow up thinking those kinds of behaviors were normal."
28."Got sick and then disabled after two brain surgeries. I couldn’t work and wasn’t getting much money from disability. I quickly became a burden according to her. I moved out and then back home with my folks. I had to leave all my friends behind, as well, as I moved out of state. It was good timing, though, for me to help my parents as they were old and sick. I became my folks full-time caretaker and have no clue what my ex is doing."
"I have no ill will toward my ex and understand why we had to part ways."
29."Didn't realize it at first because of love goggles, but she was incredibly manipulative and put me down all the time. Wouldn't let me meet my first niece, gaslit me into thinking everything was my fault. I went from a very sociable person to extremely introverted and almost suicidal. One night we got in a small argument (I broke through a planned interview role play to tell her I was going to be late). Apparently, it was unforgivable, and she threw the ring back at me and said I needed to do an amazing proposal to make it up to her. Once I had that $1.5k ring back in my hand, everything just made sense, and I told her, yeah, of course, to get out of there, then that night told her I needed a break. She loved drama, though, so she was excited about it, until she realized I had zero plans on getting back together."
30."Married once, divorced, and engaged three other times. I ended the engagements specifically at the points where we sat down to discuss finances. Always split 50/50 as per his request, which I agreed to. The problem is that the men's jaws would hit the ground when I took out the list of household and child-rearing chores to also split 50/50. They could not understand that if you want modern-day values of 50/50 on finances, it will not be combined with 1950s gender roles for the home (with me carrying 100% of the home and child care on top of working full time)."
31."We were together for nine years, engaged for 10 months. It started with a gradual lack of connection. First, it fizzled out physically. Then, we grew apart in what our interests were."
"By the time we got engaged, we hadn’t been physical in, like…four years? I didn’t really like his friends. He didn’t like mine. Still, we got engaged, and I thought that would fix things, maybe at least the sex? Nope. On our engagement night, we didn’t even get intimate. ... Just turned over and went to sleep thinking the rest of my life was going to be like that.
Then one of my parents got terminally ill. It progressed rapidly, and my parent ended up on life support. Other parent calls from the hospital saying 'this is it. Only hours left to say goodbye. Get here now.' I get dressed to go get in the car, but my ex says, 'I have to take a shower and get ready. It’ll be, like, 45 minutes to an hour. Also, I’ll take my own car so I can go to work afterward.'
After what? After my parent is wheeled into the morgue? I clarified with him that the timing was important since the docs were saying death will happen imminently.
He didn’t care. We ended up taking separate cars. Parent died. I had to drive myself home from the hospital. I was crying so hard at one point, I had to pull over and just sob by myself. I was so alone and unsupported. Again, I just thought this is how life will be.
He also had explosive anger issues that would manifest in things like punching walls and yelling. When I accidentally injured myself with a curling iron, he berated me. When I made a mistake while cooking that hurt me (jalapeño pepper juice in the eye), he mocked me and took a long time to help me rinse it out. Stuff like that ramped up toward the end.
It still took me another six months to end it. The final straw was a few male coworkers who were kind to me in a lot of different small ways. Never got a crush vibe or anything sexual. They were just kind, considerate, and supportive of me in ways my fiancé was not. After a long work trip with my male colleague where I was treated with respect and kindness, I came home and was yelled at because I was allergic to the food at the restaurant my fiancé wanted to eat at. I had enough and ended it. He acted all shocked. I was like, 'Please see the following list of shit you’ve done.'
A year later, I met one of the hottest dudes I’ve ever seen in my life on a dating app. ... Runner with a fashion sense and a killer sense of humor. We had so much in common and hit it off right away. We got married two years after that, and it’s been happily ever after ever since. I dodged SUCH a bullet. I spend every day laughing and growing and getting old with my best friend. I am having the best sex of my life. I feel loved and supported and fulfilled every day. My coworkers were all so happy for me, too. They encouraged me to leave him and demand better for myself. It worked out!
A bit of simple advice, if you’re engaged and don’t want to marry that person, break it off. Rip it off like a Band-Aid. Life’s too short!"
32."I said yes under duress. He proposed onstage; it was very hard to say no. I broke up with him later. He was engaged two more times. He always asked in a similar, very public way. Then, he was single for a very, very long time. He finally got married. I don’t know how he proposed."
33."The day we were moving in together, he was pissed at me for a little thing (I’d stayed up late with friends, and he thought I’d be tired, I wasn’t). He wasn’t speaking to me, and I realized I couldn’t do that dynamic for the rest of my life. He was very controlling and emotionally manipulative. He got mad at me for wanting to order dessert on my birthday because I 'needed to work on my weight.' He threw a chair across the room when he thought I was flirting with his roommate. It took him awhile to accept we were done, but about a month after we broke up, he took a job in Antarctica. I live in Canada, so it’s pretty much the farthest he could go to get away from me."
34."Got engaged to a Marine who got kicked out of a country for coke. Got NJPd (non-judicial punishment) with honorable discharge (lost a rank/pay); I was with him during legal proceedings. He never told his family and made me promise. He's a fraud in more ways than one. Type of person who gets away with everything. Was nice to me in public, but at home, he was the devil. Needless to say, I left in December 2020 and went to therapy, quit cigarettes and booze. Now, I make decent money and have a home and my own things again. Left with a suitcase. He still checks on me, but I'm good. Learning my rights has been important in healing. Dodged a bullet. My soul hurt being 10 ft. from him. Never again."
35."We got engaged, then he heard his ex had a pregnancy scare with her guy, and he lost his shit. I encouraged him to go talk to her because he obviously still had feelings. Last I heard, they got married and had lots of babies."
And finally, we'll end on a few that have a happier ending:
36."He wasn't participating in the wedding planning at all, and I realized he didn't actually want to get married. There was a lot of pressure from his family, and admittedly, me as well. I just wanted a family and to be married and hadn't really paid attention to his reluctance up until that point."
"It was three months before the wedding, and I sat down and reviewed our relationship. We were incompatible in several crucial points, even though we loved each other a lot. So I called off the wedding and ended it, and while we were both sad, we were also relieved.
This was more than a decade ago, and whenever we run into each other, we catch up, and there are no hard feelings at all. He's married and a father now, and I couldn't be happier for him."
37."He wanted children, but I didn’t. ... We were very young and hadn’t quite discussed this in advance, thinking that these things will naturally fall into place with time. Once his nephew was born, he couldn’t wait to become a dad, but I wasn’t ready and didn’t want him to miss out or have to wait. He didn’t pressure me, but I knew it would constantly be on my mind so it was better for both of us to call things off."
38.And finally... "We’re still technically engaged, but we never wanted a wedding. We met way late in life (I’m 50, she’s in her mid-40s), no kids, and if we get legally married, the government fucks with her disability assistance, so she is my spouse, my partner, and my soulmate. But we don’t feel the need to get married. But I do have a living will just in case. We will be celebrating our 10-year anniversary early next year."
Have you ever broken off an engagement? Let us know in the comments below.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
