14 Shocking Stories About Why People Divorced Their Spouse After Less Than A Year Of Being Married
We recently asked people of the BuzzFeed Community why they got divorced after being married less than a year. The stories they had to share were quite unexpected. Here's what they had to say.
1."My first marriage, I rushed into it. I had gotten pregnant with a 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
2."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
3."He was cheating on me pretty much the whole time. One of his mistresses, which was his ex, got pregnant. I didn't even find out until after I left. I just knew something wasn't right and left."
—Anonymous
4."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 that they 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 that he checked enough of her boxes to at least try. She's a truly despicable human being."
—Anonymous
5."My 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 our whole six-year relationship. Our marriage didn’t even make it eight months.”
—Anonymous
6."It seems like a small thing, but I caught COVID back in August 2021. At this time in the UK, anyone testing positive, plus those that they lived with, had to self-isolate for 10 days. I was isolating, working from home, trying to run the house and keep the dog entertained whilst 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 bin, 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
7."He was gay. He used me, my son, and my family name as a cover while he surfed gay 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."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 war in Iraq 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'd 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
9."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
10."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 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 may have had in the future. I filed for divorce six months after getting married."
—Anonymous
11."We dated for two years, and we had established similar views of 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 married a narcissist. Once I started to see 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 ceremonies, so I did some investigating because I had to follow my gut feeling 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. I called off everything we were planning immediately in March 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
12."We had a love-at-first-sight connection which 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 where he accused me of cheating on him even though he could see my location at work and would do 'surprise' visits, which went from being romantic before marriage to causing pure embarrassment once married. On the other hand, he was comfortable with his career but had a bad past with the law where one night we went for a drive to get some late-night ice cream and ended up getting pulled over by highway patrol where 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 to see 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. Confused at 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 would regret my actions of leaving him, so I quietly cut ties with my family and friends and left the state."
—Anonymous
13."He really went from being the perfect, attentive boyfriend to the world's laziest husband. It was as if saying our vows to each other 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
14.And lastly, "We had a beautiful wedding and had spent seven years getting to know each other exclusively. However, come to find out a few months after our wedding, 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 could."
—Anonymous
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
