- “On the wedding day…. She spent a fortune on unnecessary things, and I knew I’d be the one fitting the bill on the credit card she ran up. So I told her no more, she said she wanted an ice cream vendor there (we already had two dessert bars) told her it was not needed. She fought me on it but finally agreed. Wedding day comes, I’m standing with my groomsmen, in comes the ice cream truck. Knew right then, sadly.”
- “It was actually almost immediately after getting married. Our relationship had taken a nose dive as soon as we moved in together. But after we got married, while we were in Greece on our honeymoon, he absolutely lost his mind on me in public. I had wanted to go see a beach on the island that is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world, so we tried to catch the bus, but it never came. He screamed at me, telling me he hated traveling with me and how could I ruin his vacation like this. Then we walked to the beach nearby and he went swimming with his two friends who he insisted come with us on the trip. I was too stunned and humiliated to do anything except sit on a beach chair and cry.”
- “One day I realized I had become a smaller version of myself.”
- “A woman I was dating told me she divorced her husband because after his father died in his arms he was very depressed and she didn’t want to be around depressed people. Imagine your father died and a few months later your wife leaves you because you have not recovered from that.”
- “When she sat me down and with a straight face said “I’ve thought about this and you’re not going to exercise anymore.” I was jogging a few miles a day and would usually bring kids with in running stroller. She said you’re a father and it’s too time consuming. That’s when I realized I made a terrible mistake lol. Catching her with another man in my car didn’t help the case to stay married”
- “Engaged not quite married yet. When I had been on mandatory bedrest and caring for our infant son, after having emergency surgery for nearly bleeding to death after a miscarriage, and he came home from work and looked me dead in the face and said “why aren’t the fucking dishes done?” Called my mom the next morning and told her I was leaving. Hightailed it out of there 2 weeks later.”
- “I figured it out after the 5th guy she fucked over 7 years of marriage. At least 5 I knew about anyway. Every time I thought it was me. I could be a better husband, more caring, more supportive, more anything she needed. If I could just be a better spouse she would love me and then everything would be right and we would be fine. Then it hit me, she doesn’t love me. I was just never going to be someone she loved no matter how good of a husband I was. So I told her I wanted a divorce and why. She didn’t even cry. I moved out that week, filed for divorce, got an apartment and moved on.”
- “We were in the bathroom getting showered and dressed for a friend’s wedding. I was in the best shape of my life at the time, feeling good about myself, and I thought I looked good in that suit. She was finishing her makeup and I remarked at how beautiful she looked. I waited for her to say something nice in reply but she didn’t. And it just hit me. I couldn’t remember a single time that she complimented me on my appearance. So I said that to her. I said “You know, I always tell you how beautiful you are, and how attracted to you I am, but I never recall you ever saying that I look good or that I look handsome.” She stopped applying her mascara long enough to dismissively roll her eyes at me. So I made the mistake of asking her, “Do you even find me attractive?” And she flatly said “No.” I asked, “Why did you marry me then?” And she said “I didn’t think it was important at the time.” I never felt so ugly and unloved. And it hurt even more when I had been feeling so good about myself for once in my life 30 seconds earlier.”
- “I had no idea how he felt about me. Almost 9 years together. He didn’t propose, I did. He didn’t tell his family when we married, they found out online. He never shared his energy or emotions with me. I ultimately had a realization that I didn’t even know what he thought of me, other than that I was pretty. I didn’t know if he thought I was cool or funny or interesting or smart. I would share myself with him. My thoughts, interests, humor. I’d get nothing in return. I realized it had always been this way. I felt unseen, unheard. I felt like I was boring and uninteresting. I didn’t feel special. I just wanted to feel some sort of connection. I wanted our souls to meet. He seemed incapable.”
- “When I ‘booked’ a business meeting to discuss how our future would change as our teens transitioned to university, assured him it was all positive, just wanted space to talk. It’s always been very difficult to find time to talk to him so I figured I’d be all business like since work has always been priority number one… that didn’t go well I had barely opened my mouth and he shat all over me about my ever changing hobbies. Those ‘ever changing’ hobbies have been guitar and oil painting for the last 8 years… I mentally checked out that day.”
- “The first wife, I had inklings that I might not have married the right person when I was working full time (making very good pay) and she decided to quit her job and just sat at home on her ass. We had a maid come every week to clean the house top to bottom, do the laundry and all the dishes – and the house was still a hellhole 6 days a week. If dinner was made at all when I got home from work it was hamburger helper or a microwaved hot dog wiener and blue box macaroni and cheese. It really became clear when I caught her cheating. Her exact words to a friend: “My husband’s an angel, but I’m bored.””
- “Together 15 years, married 13. She said one day, to hurt me, “I don’t find you physically, mentally or sexually attractive”. I recoiled. This was about 4 months ago, we’re still together but I just can’t get over it”
- “We had just moved out from my parent’s place with our daughter. We had been living there for about 6 months because of financial difficulties (I was the only one working, he was not because of a bad back which ended up being a fake injury). We were not getting along at all while living there and for some reason I thought things would get better now that we had our own place. The opposite happened; the yelling and swearing got worse. His controlling behaviour just got worse and worse to the point where if I had a shower without permission he would bang on the door while screaming at me. I don’t know the exact moment but it was sometime during that month that it all finally clicked in that it was never getting better. I knew he worked with some attractive women and I started hoping that he would have an affair with one of them and either leave me for her or it would give me the guts to leave. I still felt sorry for him because of his (fake) back injury. I stayed with him for another year and a half and in that time he forced me and our daughter to move far away from my parents because they were beginning to figure out that he was faking his injury. He ended our marriage 2 months after the move because I ran out of money for the first time in our relationship but we still lived together for around 6 months until he finally moved out because I suspect he wanted to get with another woman.”
- “Not married, but in a LTR at the time. She heard a doorbell and asked me to get it. I never heard it and no one was there when I answered . She said “I’m sorry, it was the tv”. After more than two years I realized that was the first time she ever apologized about anything. That answered all my questions about why the relationship was struggling. I broke up soon after.”
- “He threw a surprise birthday for me, and towards the end I was inside near the food table and everyone had already gone outside. I affectionately called him over as he was passing by to have a moment, he rolled his eyes and walked on saying he was hanging out with so and so. Anyone, even a stranger on the road, was always more important, he just did not give a fuck about me. He only did things for how he would appear to others.”
- “Thankfully not married but living together. When he called me incompetent for taking literally less than 15 seconds to turn off subtitles in Netflix. In that moment I realized that I had been living in fear and pain for so many years but that the things he was willing to put me down and call me names over were becoming smaller and smaller and i was already walking on eggshells, I couldn’t take any more”
- “I came home from a long day of work to find burn marks all over the carpet and linoleum. My then husband had spent the entire day playing games on his PC. While doing so, he had been ignoring our puppy who had managed to somehow get ahold of a phone battery, bite through it, and cause a small fire. Thankfully, the dog wasn’t injured. This event, on top of finding out shortly before he had been lying about going to community college for almost a year was the turning point where my feelings died.”
- “When he didn’t mention me in his speech at our wedding. He thanked everyone else, commented on the bridesmaids, talked about our daughters. I may as well not have even been there. First night of our honeymoon I got horrendously sick, and he left me alone in our room to go watch something on the big screen on the beach. So much for sickness and health!”
- “Got married. Went on a honeymoon in China. We were both PhD students at the time. I was working class. Her family was middle class. Her father gave her 10,000 $ for the honeymoon. So we go to China to celebrate AND she wants to do some light pre dissertation research while there for a month or two. Fine. It turns out, I spent the entire two months alone in tiny hostels, while she did research. I only spoke a few words of Mandarin and I was a broke graduate student, so I couldn’t really afford to/didn’t have the means to easily get to an airport to fly back home (also had 0 family support back home, even if I did manage to make it home). I felt trapped. I talked to her about how the trip felt like a research trip and not at all like a honeymoon, how I was alone almost everyday. We were sharing a laptop while in the trip (I was too poor to own a laptop, despite being in grad school). I open the laptop one morning before she leaves to go survey a field site without me. Her email is open. She left a message open on the laptop. It’s to her father, stating she wishes I wasn’t there on the trip – our honeymoon. Again, I was told this would be a honeymoon w/ maybe a slight detour for research. It turned out to be a research trip where I was a burden. She apologized. We stayed together for a few more years after she got sick and I became a caretaker. I wish, in hindsight, I had left China after reading that email.”
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