"You Know I Don’t Love You" And 28 Other Things People Did Or Said That Made Their Partners Divorce Them
If you're lucky, your marriage goes the distance. But unfortunately...a LOT of marriages fall apart. Recently, Reddit user whiteowl76 asked, "Divorced people of reddit, when did you know it was over?" and the answers range from shocking to absolutely devastating. Read on to see people's breaking points.
1."When her grandma died — it was her dad's mom and a wonderful lady. [She] died peacefully. Her dad called me sobbing, saying he was a mess and needed someone to talk to. I told him I would come straight over and then called my wife. Her response? He was being overdramatic and she was with her mom (his wife) and they were ignoring his texts and calls. WTF?!?! His mom just died. He is sad and alone. Went over there and hung out for a while and realized that if I stayed married, I was looking at my future self."
"FIL is a good guy and treated like a stray dog. They have separate bedrooms. She hates him [and] has made their kids hate him."
2."My ex looked at me and said, 'I have no idea why I’m with you. You know I don’t love you. ... I can't work out if it’s because I care about you or if it’s because you do everything and pay for everything.' It felt like time stopped still for a second, and I realized you could legitimately fall out of love with someone in a split second."
3."My son said the dog barked in the middle of the night: I was trying to get a business off the ground with my dad who had just been diagnosed with cancer, again, so I was doing it all. I had just gotten home from a convention and my son (not ex’s son) said to me 'the dog barks a lot in the middle of the night' which was weird, she rarely barks unless a stranger comes in the house. I checked ex’s email/phone and found tons of Craigslist ads, emails, responses, and our address. For my next business trip, I bought my son a one way ticket to grandpas and changed my return to join him after, telling my ex I was going to help my dad through his first few treatments. I went back for my car a few weeks later and filed papers while I was there. Never spoke to him again. ... I got the dog too."
4."When I was in labor and he slept for the entire 18 hours and almost didn’t wake up for the emergency C-section. Then when I got released from the hospital and he said his ankle hurt way too much to carry the baby up to the third floor of the apartment we were in. (And he couldn’t carry the groceries that he made me walk around the entire store to get after being released from the hospital). So I was two days postpartum from a C-section and had to carry a baby, in a car seat, and groceries up three flights of stairs. I knew he was a selfish prick and didn’t give a fuck about me at that point."
5."When she told me how inconvenient my dad's cancer diagnosis was a year after my mom died from cancer."
6."He treated me like shit for years, but what did it for me was he called our newborn daughter a bitch because she woke him up. Not going to do her like you do me. Best decision ever."
7."My ex-husband rolled over in bed and told me he hated me. We'd been fighting earlier that day and he'd hit me, but asked my forgiveness and I granted it, telling him it was his last chance. We'd made up and moved on, or so I thought. Apparently, he felt the need to tell me he hated me as I was trying to fall asleep that night."
"Once he told me he hated me, I realized there was no sense in trying anymore. After I got home from work the next afternoon, I threw him out of the house and contacted a lawyer. He told me he'd never sign any divorce documents and would force me to stay married to him forever, but that's not how divorce works, thankfully."
8."When I found myself comforting his crying girlfriend, telling her that she didn't do anything wrong when she (we?) found out she was his side piece."
9."Riding in the car, asking him to slow down because it was icy and I felt unsafe…only for him to speed up, go into a screaming rage about how I always try to control him, and threatening to crash the vehicle. This type of anger scenario would happen time and time again in different forms. After 10 years I finally just had enough of the verbal abuse and it almost began to not phase me anymore. He said you really are going to divorce me for how I drive? I said YUP. I have a hard time standing up for myself but I didn’t back down. Happier than ever now. It was the best decision and I have much more self confidence."
10."When he forced me to leave a family reunion that was supposed to last for three days, with family I hadn't seen in years and missed deeply, after about 12 hours....Because he was bored."
"Side note: he had the option to not attend, we discussed that he wouldn't attend to take care of the dogs and the day before [he] decided that I was not allowed to go without him. Given, this was the final straw in a pile of shit so high that I honestly still don't know how I didn't see it. But that four hour drive home, I cried the entire drive and called a divorce attorney the next day."
11."After 16 years and many hurdles, I asked him to list three things about me that he liked. For some time, when I listened to who he thought I was, I didn't even like the person he described. I was crying even asking. I told him it could be anything, hair, whatever. He either couldn't or wouldn't."
It came about a week after an episode when we had sex and tears were streaming down my face. I couldn't stop them! He never even asked why I had tears running down my face, not at the moment, and not after. Of all the things that had transpired, and there were many, I was done. There was no turning back once I allowed myself the thought of actually ending it.
Thing is, he came back to talk two months after he moved out. I went in the other room to get him an iced tea and when I came back he had dropped his pants and was buck naked on my Grandma's Victorian velvet chair. He wanted a blow job. I honestly think he thought that would fix everything because in his mind it always did. I told him that wasn't going to happen and then he said, 'You asked me to name three things,I have ten things, maybe more, I can think of'...I felt sorry for him. It was pathetic. He fought me for three years getting the divorce."
12."My ex-wife and I had a litany of issues that needed to be resolved. I asked her once to take a couple days to compile a list of what she would like me to change and how she would like to see our relationship go and I said I would do the same. I spent a lot of time and effort into compiling a list of things that I would like to see change in our relationship in order for us to grow. My list was very respectful and I didn’t blame her for anything. On the night we were supposed to share our lists, when I asked her, she opened a magazine article that said something along the lines of 'what makes a perfect man' from one of those trashy magazines. She pointed and said 'this.' That’s when I knew that it was over. No thought or effort in the list at all."
13."When he refused to come to the funeral of someone close to us because 'my blood sugar has been unstable' while stuffing junk food in his face. I realized that he didn't care about anyone, including himself, and that I would always feel alone with him."
14."When she filed for divorce, but didn't actually want a divorce. That's when I realized I couldn't put up with any more of her shit. If she was willing to file for divorce (and thought I was going to pay for it all), I knew it had gone way too far. I spent the next two years trying to finalize that divorce with her trying to stay married."
"She was convinced that I would just cave in and beg her to keep me. This became obvious when I was served with papers (she was there). When I didn't react poorly, she flipped out and said, 'You don't love me! You never loved me! Why won't you be a man? Why won't you fight for our love?'
Through every step of the divorce, her family and friends were constantly 'advising' me on how I would 'win her back,' but I didn't want any more of that BS. She would even call me up and ask me what I would be willing to do/change to get her back. No thanks!"
15."Found a note from my ex mother-in-law (mother outlaw?) that I wasn't supposed to see. My ex was cheating on me, and she'd moved out. She asked me what it would take to save the marriage, and I said she had to stop seeing him. She agreed...or so I thought. Her mother had been on my side the entire time, telling me that I was the better man, and that she hoped we'd work it out. Or so I thought. I went over to the apartment where she was staying, and she wasn't there, but there was a note on the door from the mother outlaw. It read something like 'Sorry I missed you guys, but I can't wait to meet Steve. He seems great and I just know you two will be great together.' Fuck. Not only had the future ex-wife lied about 'working things out,' but her mother had also been lying to me."
16."When I recognized that he was truly trying to gas light me...but was too stupid to realize that I could still read the emails in my sent file. He replied to an email I had sent, editing my original message to make me sound like a raging b. At that point I knew there was no hope and started my escape plan."
17."I knew it was over when he took a check from the middle of my checkbook and bounced it to buy lottery tickets. We were living on ramen noodles and air with two little children and he bounced a check to buy lottery tickets and lied about it. Oh...and this was chance number two because he had already bounced $800 worth of checks and had his grandmother bail him out. I took over the checkbook and he went into my dresser to steal one. Done."
18."When he started talking about planning a sailing trip to St. Maarten and I thought, 'If this man gets me alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean, he will absolutely kill me and find out a way to make it look it was like my fault.' Really no going back from that. I started packing two days later when he went out of town."
19."When I would have intrusive thoughts hoping he’d get in a car wreck and die on his way home from work. I didn’t WANT him to die, to be clear — I just wanted out, and that seemed so much easier than the mess of divorce. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it was a complicated emotion."
20."My ex thought I was working out of town. She had been having an affair for about three months and totally thought I didn’t know and she had me buffaloed. This was way back before cell phones, but she had been call forwarding our phone to her new boyfriend's number so when I called her I would think I was reaching her at our apartment. I came home about 10:00 p.m. one evening and she wasn’t home, I called her boyfriend's number and she answered the phone."
"I asked her what she was doing and she told me she just climbed into bed for the night. I asked her whose bed she climbed into. There was a long pause. I told her I knew what she was doing and where she was. The last thing I said to her was that I was leaving my wedding ring on the night stand on her side of the bed. That was over 40 years ago. Been married to a wonderful woman for a very long time now, all is good."
21."When we traveled out of state for a four-day stay with one of my best friends, 'T', who’d only met my husband twice (once at the wedding). My husband was acting like a spoiled child and after a couple days I was an embarrassed, exhausted emotional wreck. He screamed at me about something and went to our room, shouting the whole way, and I started to apologize to T, but he quietly stopped me and said, 'Does he always talk to you that way? Does he always treat you like he has this week?' I said, 'I mean, sometimes better sometimes worse, he’s got a short temper and—' 'That’s… not ok. At all. If this is normal, this is abuse…and you’re saying it gets worse? You aren’t the same person you used to be. You don’t see how he’s changed you?' and I was dumbstruck. I just thought it was normal."
"He had me convinced it was my fault, I deserved it, etc. and I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. T and I had a very long, life-changing talk that night."
22."When he told me he married me to punish me for getting pregnant and he was going to spend the rest of his life making my life a living hell because I stole his childhood. Friends, he was 24."
23."When I told him I was pregnant with our third child and he was angry. Like, genuinely angry because he wanted to get a motorcycle, and now he felt like he couldn't because of the baby."
"He treated me horribly the whole pregnancy, still got the bike, and blamed any money issues on me. He wasn't always like that. He used to be amazing, but he got the idea that he wanted to be a biker, and that was all that mattered to him from then on."
24."I found nude pictures of our so-called friends on his computer. The worst part? It was all in a folder along side the pictures I had sent him. He literally had a collection going. It made me sick. He had just proposed to me three months earlier and we had a son that was two years old."
25."Driving home from work, coming around the corner, and feeling disappointment to see her car in the driveway."
"The one that got me was her coming back from a week-long trip out of province and I felt disappointed when she returned. It was nice having the house to myself; [I] spent the week cleaning and organizing. I didn’t have an ounce of happiness to see her again, just annoyance that she dropped her luggage all over my clean floor. Knew we were at a crossroads at that moment."
"I used to run a list of his positive attributes through my head on the drive home. Now I am just happy to know I am driving home to my own space."
"Left work to drive home. Hour commute. Passed an apartment complex with a vacancy sign. Started thinking seriously about why I was driving home."
26."He and I went on holiday with my parents. It had been years since we’d been around them that much, and it was obvious that my dad was still head over heels in love with my stepmom, and she with him. (Still the same today, too!). They’re a very cute old couple who look young for their age — possibly because they’re so happy and take good care of each other. It was a stark contrast to the way my ex treated me."
"He and I were a bad match from the beginning of our 11 year relationship, but I didn’t fully understand how bad until I compared us to my parents. I broke up with him the morning we got back from the trip. Didn’t want to waste another day with the wrong person."
27."We went to counseling. She talked about the things she needed and wasn't getting. Counselor asked me if I could work on those. I said yes. This took the whole first session. Second session happens a week later. I talked about the things that I needed and wasn't getting. Counselor asked her if she could work on those. She kept avoiding and redirecting. On the drive home she said she wanted to find a new counselor [because] this one wasn't the right one."
"Went to a new counselor a few weeks later. First session was a repeat. So was the second. She said we should find a better counselor. I asked, 'one that agrees with you?' And she said yes. Then I was done."
28."It was weird. I was sitting on the couch, and she was in the recliner. I looked at her, and it was like I didn't even know her. I thought...I don't like you and I wouldn't even date you now. We just grew apart. I said, 'Do you want to break up?' She replied, 'I thought you'd never ask...yep. It's been over for awhile.' It was amicable, and we went our separate ways... no hard feelings it was just done."
29.And finally..."We stopped sleeping together in the same bed, we both knew it was over but kept things on cruise control for a couple years because of our child. We were like 'two ships passing in the night' as they say. We both knew it but ignored it for a while. Then one day we sat and talked and agreed we should get a divorce. It was 100% amicable. Now she and my son live about two miles from me, I see him every single day, and she and I get along better than we ever did as a married couple. We laugh, eat dinner together as a family, play games in the backyard, etc. Co-parenting for us is much more successful than staying married, there is no bad blood or arguments anymore."
When did you know your relationship was over? Let us know in the comments.
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
