Not all marriages are meant to last forever. These divorced folks spilled ALL the tea on the "last straw" that upended their awful relationships.
1. Laughter Is Not The Best Medicine
I had been suspicious of my wife for a while, so I picked up her cell phone and called the last number. It was her boyfriend, which I had suspected. I walked over to my wife and put the phone on speaker. I confronted them about the affair and they both just laughed. I said, “Let’s see if that guy comes to your rescue when you really need him or if you’re just a booty call”.
When I made my final exit out of the driveway it felt pretty liberating—and even better knowing that I was the one who brought in 100 percent of our income. And I even got the last laugh: When things eventually cooled off, I asked her how they were doing, and she said she hadn’t heard from him since that day.
2. The Cat Ate My (Therapy) Homework
This one time, I noticed our cat batting around a crumpled piece of paper on the floor. When I picked it up and uncrumpled it, I saw that it was a letter to me. When I read what it said, my stomach dropped. It was a therapy tool—that my wife had never intended to give me. In it, she had poured out all of our problems, including a few I didn’t even know about. It was very eye-opening.
The upside is that once we talked about everything, we realized that neither of us wanted to be married anymore. There was a massive sense of relief all around, and as far as divorces go, it was pretty amicable. We do have a daughter (me and the ex, not me and the cat), and every decision we made was with her well-being in mind.
In fact, four years after the divorce, we get along so well that we are cohabiting again as platonic roommates. It is nice that our daughter gets to have both parents in the same house again—and there are now three cats and a dog.
3. Ouch!
My husband was out of town on a business trip and I had surgery scheduled for the same time. It was supposed to be day surgery, pretty straightforward, and I should have been home that evening. Unfortunately, there were some complications and I ended up in the ICU for two days and then had to stay in the hospital for four more days after that to recover.
My friend called my husband and told him that he needed to come home because I almost didn't survive the surgery and was in the ICU. His response was devastating: “Well, she's alive, so I’ll be home when my business trip is over”. But that wasn't even the last straw. After he got home from the trip and I got home from the hospital, he was nice enough to leave his hotel invoice on our dresser—a room with two occupants.
4. Betrayal + Time = Comedy?
Late one Friday evening my dad was having a shower because he needed to go to his mother’s house to help her with something. The phone rang and my mother was resting in bed, so she answered it. A young female voice said, “‘Hey [my dad], come on down to the bar! I’m here waiting for you!! You owe me a drink, hottie”!
My mom said, “This isn’t [my dad]. This is his eight-month-pregnant wife”. The girl on the other end paused for a moment and then said, “So, is he coming or not”? When my dad finally got out of the shower, my mom told him that a girl called from the bar asking for him. According to my mom, his face went white as a sheet.
After that, there was a long dance of trying to throw him out. Thankfully, my mom can laugh about this story now.
5. A Soul-Crushing Epiphany
There were a few final straws for me: When I realized that both of my sons spoke to me in the same unpleasant, dismissive tone as my husband did. When my 10-year-old asked me why I told them every day that daddy was angry and to try to keep out of his way. When I saw how much better he treated one child than the other.
I hadn’t realized it, but all of those things had become my normal. Somehow I became accustomed to being undermined and belittled in front of others and not having access to our money. I had no idea how hard I had been working to keep the peace and placate him. When all of this finally dawned on me, I felt so guilty about my children.
I woke up and saw my life with my single and independent eyes. I was both aghast and ashamed—especially about the fact that my kids were absorbing his behavior and seeing it as normal. I never ever would have believed my life would become the mess it had. And the thing is, most other people didn’t see it.
He never socialized with anyone I knew and his friends think he is great. Even my mom thinks that I’m exaggerating and should just put up and shut up. I feel so isolated, but I refuse to put up with this any longer. My kids deserve an emotionally healthy example of relationships and love.
6. Timing Is Everything
When I was 43, I was diagnosed with very aggressive breast cancer. I had a good prognosis but needed a mastectomy, 13 rounds of chemo, and radiation. My husband had a very demanding job and we have four young children. Every time I went through a round of chemo, my mom would fly out to take care of me and help run the family. I thought things couldn't get any worse...
Shortly after my sixth round of chemo, my mom passed suddenly from undiagnosed heart problems. Ten days later, my husband of 20 years came home from work and confessed to an affair that he had had two years earlier. I was sick, bald, in the middle of chemo, scarred, and had just lost my mom. Why would he choose that moment to tell me he cheated on me?
I became severely depressed. He got tired of my depression, so he divorced me. That was eight years ago. I am now healthy, own my own home, and am very fortunate to not be in that broken marriage anymore. My kids are doing really well, too. I still miss my mom, but thankfully I inherited her strong will and perseverance.
7. How Did He Last That Long?
Things were kind of rough in our marriage right from the beginning. Before we got married, my wife always wanted to make love. Right after we got married that suddenly changed to her begrudgingly agreeing to it about once a week. That wasn’t so terrible—simply a negative change most people would just deal with. The rest, however, was like the frog that was slowly boiled…
Things started to go south when we tried to have a baby and I found out I was sterile. Her reaction absolutely destroyed me. To make a long story short, she would berate me constantly about my condition and would always threaten to leave me. Any time we were about to try some new treatment, she’d say, “If this doesn’t work, we’re getting divorced”.
As if my infertility was not something to happen to me, but was instead something that happened to her, if you follow me. The day I came home from the urologist with my diagnosis, I started to cry as I told her. When I went to hug her, she pushed me away and said that we should probably just get divorced. Nonetheless, I persisted, and we even tried marital therapy.
I also tried various treatments for my sterility, including something called a TESE, which means they cut your junk open and look for sperm with a microscope—they found nothing. Somehow, that only made her act even more deranged. The recovery was very painful. It felt like I was being hit in the balls for a week straight. When I told my wife this, she said, “I feel like hitting you in the balls right now".
Her family was just as heartless. Her brother refused to even look at me, let alone speak to me. Her mother told me that we should get an annulment. Her Bosnian parents are barely literate, but that is no excuse for being so mean-spirited. They were convinced that I “tricked” her by knowing that I was sterile and fooling her into thinking I had no prior knowledge of the problem.
After all, they reasoned, who would want to be with an infertile man? I sold her, and them, a lemon. At first, she called them crazy and told them to stop saying it, but after a while, she’d actually entertain the possibility that they might be right about me.
She also had this habit of pointing out oddball guys and saying, “I bet he’s got swimmers”. For instance, she’d point out homeless guys on the street, and say it, or we’d be watching the news and there’d be a report with a photo of some bad guy, and she’d say it then.
One day in the middle of one of our arguments, I decided that I couldn’t take it anymore. After she left for work, I gathered my clothes, went to the bank to split our savings, and headed off to restart my life. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed the sun shining on me that afternoon as I drove away. About three years later I met a wonderful woman who accepts my condition. We’re married and have an amazing baby daughter who was conceived through a donor.
Getting a divorce was the best decision I ever made. Also, since we talked about divorce all the time, she’d always say that she would take most of our savings since she deserved it because...you know. So that’s why when I packed up the car, my first stop was to our bank to take exactly half. My lawyer commended me on that move and said it was the second smartest thing I did that day.
I had to give her more than half of everything, but it was worth it. If only I could get back the three years I lost on her.
8. Epiphany In Aisle Seven
I finally came to the realization that I was going to get yelled at by my wife no matter what I did. I did the laundry but got yelled at for not folding the towels correctly. I let her do the laundry and I get yelled at for not doing the laundry. However, the final straw was when I was sent to the grocery store for French-cut green beans.
The store had French-style green beans and cut-style green beans. I spent more time than I care to admit scrutinizing the green bean selection and agonizing over making a call. Then it finally hit me: Green beans are 40 cents and I’m not getting chewed out over 40 cents. I bought both.
9. Narcissist-Free Zone
I was in a seriously neglectful marriage in which I was verbally and psychologically mistreated for the better part of 10 years. I tried everything I could to fix it, and even though I was the one with the complaints, I still went into marriage counseling for two years. I committed to doing anything I could to try and change to make the relationship better.
On the other hand, my wife would go to marriage counseling every single week and say the same thing, “I want him to accept me as I am". In other words, she didn’t want to change or compromise in any way. She wanted me to accept the neglectful and cruel person that she had become. I should also mention that she is a severe narcissist. But onto the final straw…
I had never even considered divorce or separation. It never even crossed my mind. For me, we were married for life and we just needed to figure out how to fix things between us. Then one day in marriage counseling, when I was talking about something that she had done that was hurtful, she blurted out: “I think we should just consider separating”.
I was completely floored by this. I never even imagined it as an option, but at that moment I realized that had always been me chasing her. For 10 years I’ve been chasing her. She’s always been running away, she never apologized for anything, she would get away with the most heinous behavior, and I would always crawl back to her and apologize—even when she was in the wrong.
A good marriage takes two people who genuinely want to be in a relationship and who are both willing to compromise and put in the work. This was not the case with us. After she suggested separating, I finally found the courage to walk away. Everyone deserves happiness and I finally realized that I didn’t want to live without it for the rest of my life.
10. DIY Private Eye
My wife was making several trips a week back home to see her “best friend and life coach". Finally, on a hunch, I decided to follow her in my friend’s car. She drove right through the town she said she was going to and 20 minutes later ended up at a motel. I parked across the street and watched as she waited for her lover.
As soon as he entered the room, I went over and knocked on the door. When she answered, she had a facial expression that I’ll never be able to fully describe. She knew I knew, but she said nothing. I closed the door and drove back home. When she finally returned, her stuff was out in the snow on the front lawn and her house keys were in the fire.
11. Hasta La Vista, Baby
I was emotionally and physically maltreated for six years. I’ve learned now, more than 12 years later, that he’s somewhere on the spectrum between narcissist and psychopath. I knew we had a bad relationship but as any survivor knows, it can be really hard to leave. I had tried to escape him before and was held prisoner in the basement for two days as punishment.
We had a daughter, and one day, shortly after she was born, she was sitting in her bouncy seat while he was making himself tacos. I was getting ready for an appointment, so I told him that she was probably going to get hungry in about 20 minutes or so. She started to cry for food before he was finished making his tacos. I was in the next room and what he did next was horrifying…
He screamed at her, a newborn baby, to shut up and stop being too fussy while he was trying to finish making his dinner. He refused to stop what he was doing and feed her. Now, I had tolerated his verbal, emotional, and sometimes physical mistreatment for years, but when I saw him do it to her, that was the moment I 100 percent knew it was over.
It took me another six months to shore up my finances and figure out a plan to get out safely this time, but I did it! My daughter is 14 now, and my ex is completely out of our lives—zero contact. I’ve been married to a wonderful and supportive man for eight years, and he loves her like his own. It turned out fine, but there have been some really dark days along the way.
12. On Your Mark, Get Set, GO!
I checked out of the relationship the moment I stood at the starting line of my first triathlon alone. My husband could not even be bothered to get out of bed to support me. Unfortunately, I didn’t work up enough guts to leave him until a year later when, during our first counseling session, I realized that I was always going to be alone in this relationship. He asked if we should book another session and I said no. The end.
13. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
While my parents were temporarily separated, my mom had to unexpectedly leave the city, so she left me and my brother with her elder sister who was a super sweet lady with a heart of gold. My mom had tried to contact my father to let him know but wasn’t able to get a hold of him. She left a message at his work and verbally told his parents.
When my dad found out, he absolutely lost it. He was so upset that we weren’t left in his care that he immediately filed for divorce. He wanted an agreement that would guarantee that he got the time with his kids that he felt he deserved. So, even though my parents were trying to work things out at the time, he inexplicably thought that a divorce would give him more time with his kids on his own terms.
The catch here is that the reason my mom left town that week was to take care of my dad’s sister and her kids. My dad’s sister was suffering from depression and her husband had to take a work trip, but he was worried about leaving her alone with the kids. My mom dropped everything and went there to help them out.
Yes, my dad knew all of this as my mom had communicated it to his parents before she left town. While my mom was there, my aunt attempted to end her life. Luckily my mom was able to intervene and save her. So, my mom was saving my dad’s sister’s life while my dad was filing for divorce. This story has been corroborated by both my parents.
14. The Games People Play
I was playing a Dungeons-and-Dragons-style board game with my husband and his character walked into a trap I’d set and took a massive amount of damage. He then tried to institute his own version of “take backsies”, but I refused—because we were adults and that was cheating. I did not expect him to react the way he did…
He knocked the game board over and yelled, “That’s it! I want a DIVORCE”! Sadly, we temporarily worked things out and continued on through a few more miserable years until I eventually called it quits due to his online dating and his controlling behavior. That game will always hold a special place in my heart, though. I wish I’d granted his request then.
15. Distance Means So Much When Someone Means So Little
I guess there were two straws for me. She was living in Mexico and I was in the US. We had been trying to make things work but that was as useless as trying to save a sinking ship with a thimble. One day she told me that she got a new dog and needed money to look after it. I agreed but told her that money was tight, to begin with.
I also told her that, going forward, it would really help me out if she could please discuss any new acquisitions that might end up resulting in a recurring cost. For the record, I never asked her to return the dog, but this statement caused her to snap and start arguing with me, so I just hung up. That was straw one.
Five months passed and our only form of communication was texts from her telling me that she needed money for school and rent. One day at work I ended up dislocating my shoulder during a house fire (I am a firefighter). After I was released from the hospital, I went to my mom’s house because I needed to shower and wasn’t able to wash myself.
So, there I was, standing there in my underwear with my arm in a sling as my mom bathed me. Everything finally clicked. I realized that my mom shouldn’t be bathing her 28-year-old son. She has already done her job of raising me. If I need help, who else should be there for me but my wife? I made my mind up then and there that I was done.
Before that second straw, I would have still gone back to her if she had contacted me and tried to convince me. Ironically—and thankfully—it was that dislocated shoulder that saved me from further suffering.
16. Talk Nerdy To Me
The final straw for me was something a little different. One weekend, I decided to go to my local computer center and browse the afternoon away. My wife wanted to go with me and sit in the car. As I was admiring all of the glory that is tech, I noticed this couple in the build-your-own-PC department looking at a motherboard.
The couple was in their 20s or so. They walked up to the CPU case and the guy started to lay down this nerd stream about the latest AMD processor. His girlfriend was listening intently and even let him finish his overview of thread counts. She then proceeded to jokingly chide him about it. It was all so sweet. So caring.
This couple was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. She didn’t understand any of what he was saying, but she listened to him and clearly loved him—and she loved what a giant dork he was. It was at that moment I realized that I would never have that with the person I was with, and even if I could find a way to get there with her I didn’t want it.
I had struggled for a few years with all the excuses for not getting out. Oddly enough that exchange between strangers was what finally did it for me.
17. The Honeymoon’s Over
My ex-husband went off his antidepressant meds within a week of us getting married and, of course, he desperately crashed. While I encouraged him to continue seeing his therapist, he said that he was too busy at work—he worked from home. I had continued seeing our mutual therapist who taught me that you don’t have to attend every dispute you’re invited to, which was easier said than done.
I was working part-time as a server, mostly days, and if I wasn’t home within 15 minutes of the end of my shift, I was accused of cheating. He also constantly berated me for pet hair around the house, but I was not allowed to vacuum if he was working. Well, he sat in front of his computer whether he was working or not so I never knew when he was working.
Whenever he would start yelling and throwing items, I would put the dogs in the basement and go to the movies. I was leaving the house for six or eight hours at a time to allow him time to calm down. He generally accepted that. I wanted to leave him but I couldn’t afford it because I was working part-time at his insistence.
I was in a very dark place mentally because I didn’t have anywhere to go that would let me bring two dogs, and I couldn’t afford to go anywhere. I certainly wasn’t going to give up my pets. My dogs were peeing in fear and I couldn’t sleep because I never knew when he was going to freak out. When I was sitting at a movie that I didn’t even want to see in the first place, I called one of my brothers and confessed my despair.
My brother invited me and my pets to come to live with him and his family nearly two hours away from where I currently was. I accepted his offer and started to store moving boxes at my place of work. They knew that I was trying to leave and kindly accepted my resignation with only two days' notice. My brother showed up with a moving truck early on a Saturday morning and told my husband to sit down and not move.
Thankfully, my husband did the right thing and we were gone in less than three hours. After a couple of months, he filed for an annulment and I’ve never laid eyes on him since. He has tried to stay in touch but I will never allow him to manipulate me again. I'll never doubt that he’s my true love, and I will always fondly remember his warm touch, but I’ll never forget his brutality.
18. Vows? What Vows?
After being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, my husband said, “You will have to go. I won’t watch you wither away and croak”. I guess “in sickness and in health” was actually optional.
19. Words Of Wisdom
There were a few final straws…First I found pics of him in the buff and even an explicit video of him talking dirty to another woman. After looking around a bit more, I found his Ashley Madison account which contained countless messages he had sent to random women asking them to meet up. I wish I could say that that was all…
Before this, I had forgiven him for taking $4,000 that I had put into our “joint” savings account, which he never contributed to. He had also been hiding a pretty serious Xanax addiction over the years. It made it worse when he would lie about wanting to be an equal partner and then always had some excuse as to why he couldn’t help out more. He would promise to change, but only if X, Y, or Z happened.
The goalpost was always moving, and he’d only help out for a week or two before going back to his old ways of sitting on the couch while I cooked, grocery shopped, and did dishes and laundry. When we separated, he finally admitted he believed in traditional gender roles and I should be grateful that he helped out more than his dad ever had.
I’m so unbelievably happy that I’m divorced! Life is so much easier now that I don’t have to worry about what stupid and selfish decision he will make next. Pay attention to those red flags, people! Don’t keep ignoring them because individually they might not seem like dealbreakers but they will likely lead to more, and probably bigger, red flags.
20. Definitely Not Smooth Sailing
I realized that I’d made a mistake when we spent our entire cruise arguing over the fact that I gave him the larger half of a cheeseburger we were sharing. He insisted that I was trying to make him fat and unhealthy because I hated him. I mean, I knew he was kinda crazy when I married him, I just didn’t realize HOW crazy.
This happened right before the holidays, so I waited until January, and then I took off like a rocket.
21. Mr. Not-So-Wonderful
I had been thinking about filing for divorce for a long time, but I was terrified. I had no job skills and he told me he’d get full custody of our kids because he’d show my journals to the judge to prove that I’m crazy. He made all of the income, so I was afraid that the courts would be on his side. I also didn’t have any family around who cared enough about me and my kids to even help me out with babysitting.
No one knew what a GREAT manipulator he was. He was such an expert at telling tall tales that would make everyone feel sorry for him. I’ve seen him con our kids, attorneys (even mine), and even his bosses. He’s a true master of deception. At first, my strategy was to fix MYSELF so that I could endure the marriage. When that didn’t work, I tried to fix the marriage too.
After a few visits to therapy with a non-religious therapist, he refused to go back. He would only consent to go to one specific therapist who had been endorsed by our (then) church. We went to this church-sanctioned therapist a couple of times, but I refused to go back because he was not concerned about any of the physical and emotional misconduct that I had to endure.
Everything came to a head one morning when I was very ill with the flu. I was like a weak kitten with diarrhea and had been up most of the night pooping and throwing up. I was supposed to drive the kids to school, but I was afraid I’d poop my pants in the process. I asked Mr. Wonderful if he could, just this ONCE, drive the kids to school…
In our 13 years together, he’d never taken the kids to school once. This was something he never had to do because I was a stay-at-home mom. After I made that request, he exploded as if I’d just asked him to drive them cross-country. He didn’t care that I was sick, he just laid into me. All I did was ask him that ONE TIME to help me out. As he left, he slammed the door—hard.
I didn’t even cry because I was so shocked by his reaction. I just went into grim determination mode and dragged my weak self off of the sofa, loaded the toddler in the car, and drove the kids to school. When I came back, I unpacked the toddler, grateful that I had managed not to soil myself. I was too sick to do anything other than lay there and watch TV.
Laying there that morning, I realized that I’d be better off alone. Because if I was alone, I’d still get sick, but at least I wouldn’t have some guy yelling at me. I thought to myself: If he’s not even going to help with the kids, then why am I staying? I had previously thought that two parents were better than one, as the church had taught me.
However, that morning I realized my kids didn’t have two parents, not really. In my mind, a parent steps up to cover for the other when that person is sick. I also realized that if everything Mr. Wonderful threatened me with came true and I had to go on welfare, at least on welfare I might find that the system had some help for me.
On top of that, I realized that I might be about to petition the court to take the kids to the Midwest and live near my mother. When someone mistreats you while you’re sick and refuses a reasonable request to help out with their own children, that’s mistreatment. I guess I finally realized that my suffering was never going to end with him. Nothing inside of him allowed him to see any of his part in it, either.
22. The Nightmare At Christmas
We are lesbians so our marriage wasn’t recognized by the state, but we did have a ceremony and everything. There were a few incidents that led up to our divorce. My wife got completely inebriated at Christmas and let my uncle grope her. While my cousin cried about this, my wife tried to pull my aunt outside to explain why it was OK.
When I finally got my wife back to my parents’ house, she demanded that my brother make her coffee. He said no so she called him a felon, which isn’t true, but he did smoke cannabis (she was American and we’re Canadian, so there was a bit of a difference in what was allowed at the time). She then threw a fit and went to the guest room, nearly trampling our puppy in the process.
She then went into the bathroom and we heard the sound of shattering glass. My stepdad had to take the screws off the door to get in there because she was not responding. There was blood everywhere. I was upstairs crying because I had no idea how I was going to make this right with my family. I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to clean up her mess yet again.
Instead, I took the puppy to my grandma’s house and bought my wife a one-way plane ticket. I lost all my stuff because she wouldn’t send it to me, but I did get to keep the puppy. I haven’t seen my wife since—thank God.
23. Playing Doctor
There were a hundred straws before the final one, but the clincher was when I discovered that he and a doctor friend had been having an emotional affair that was headed toward becoming physical. It was heartbreaking to find out that he had even been planning on sleeping with this woman in our bed while I was away.
To make matters worse, all of the things that he told her while flirting and texting were things that he had told me throughout our relationship—things that I thought were special to us. Seeing them written for another woman just to get her into bed filled me with such disgust and raw hatred toward him. Combine that with his slow decline into absolute viciousness that started just two weeks after our wedding day and I was finally done.
24. Life Is Better With Books
When my wife and I got married, we both followed the same religion. After I decided to leave the religion, my wife started to become increasingly religiously strict. One day I was reading Ringworld, and when she saw that there was a—mild—love scene, she said that reading books with that type of content in them was cheating on her.
I told her that I had agreed to maintain the standards that I had when I married her (before I left the religion), but I had been reading books like this since junior high and I wasn’t willing to censor myself for her religion. She said that if I didn’t, she’d divorce me. I decided that that was a good final straw—and now I’m happily single.
25. Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
When my parents got an inheritance from my mom’s parents, they decided that the best way to honor my grandparents would be to get all of my family together and treat everyone to a cruise. So both of my parents, my brother, my sister, and her husband, and my husband and I set sail. I had no idea what I was in for...
Over the entire cruise, my husband hardly spent any time with us and, to make matters worse, he never even thanked my parents for paying our way. He was essentially MIA for the entire trip, except when he tried to demand that I sleep with him each evening. He didn’t even care if I was terribly seasick, he would still demand that we do it.
Toward the end of the trip, we were all sitting down for lunch and he got up to refill his drink without asking if I wanted a refill. After a while, I got up to refill my own coffee, and by that time he was due for a refill as well. He slammed his cup on the table and asked me to get him some coffee. It may seem like a silly thing to end a marriage over, but after years of problems, that lack of consideration was the last straw.
26. A Scary Situation
My husband was bipolar and refused to take meds for it. He believed that medication and therapy were for sissies. One morning, when I was eight months pregnant, I woke up to discover that in a manic episode he’d taken my car, cleared out my bank accounts, and left me heavily pregnant and alone with a five-year-old. That was it for me.
I had already filed for divorce by the time my son was born. When I was still in the hospital, my husband came in and screamed at the nurse because I had named my son the name I wanted instead of the one he had forced me into. In the 11 years since then, he’s hardly seen both the kids—and when he does come by, he does more harm than good.
When my son was six, my husband called him worthless because he needs meds for ADHD and should handle it like a man instead. He also lied to Medicaid and claimed the kids so that he could get insurance, which is now my responsibility to pay back. He’s incredibly exhausting. Life is so much easier when he disappears for years at a time.
27. Game Over
I knew it was over after I took off my clothes and stood in front of the TV begging him to sleep with me and spend some time with me. He just yelled that he was in the middle of playing a video game and said, “If you want to spend time with me, you can go down on me”. And it’s not like I let myself go, either. I was 5'2" and 48 kilograms (105 pounds) at that point in time.
It had become crystal clear that he preferred his games to me, so I got my stuff in order and told him I wanted a divorce. I deserved better than being ignored. I’m fine with games, I’ll play them myself on the PC from time to time, but I will not tolerate being degraded and ignored for months at a time.
28. Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot…
At 2:00 am on the morning of New Year’s Eve, my husband posted a video on Facebook of him attempting to end his life. During the video, he was blaming me and called me derogatory names. This was happening while I was at work. It was absolutely terrifying. I called emergency services and raced home. They ended up taking him to the hospital downtown.
I had to spend a few hours in the emergency room waiting area, which was chaotic and so full of homeless people that there was nowhere to sit. My managers from work joined me while we waited. All the while, my husband kept texting me over and over saying that I ruined his New Year’s plans and that I needed to get him out of there.
At about 5:00 am he broke out of the hospital and ran into the street demanding that I drive him home. Security took off after him and an officer ended up apprehending him. I went home to try and sleep before I had to bartend a huge NYE party for 13 hours straight. As soon as he got out of the hospital, he got his brother to drive him to our house.
When he got home, I couldn’t believe that he was acting like nothing had happened. He even said that he would come to visit me at the NYE party later that day. It was 100 percent the worst night of my life.
29. It’s All Downhill From Here
The final straw should have been when he said, “See? I told you that if you lost weight, I’d ask you to marry me”. Alas, I accepted his proposal and, unfortunately, that moment ended up being somewhere in the middle. I clearly recall the incident when, all of a sudden, the word “divorce” didn’t turn my stomach quite as much as it used to…
He went into a full-blown temper tantrum directed at me because Pizza Hut had been too heavy-handed with the olives—because I was somehow supposed to monitor that? Since our twins were still very young, I realized that if I didn’t get out of the marriage soon I’d either be stuck for another 15 years or I would end up in a stress-induced coma.
Some marriage highlights…When he said, “I left my trash on the counter because the bag was full” but never bothered to take the full bag of trash out; his constant insistence that he had to play video games at full volume while refusing to use headphones; intentionally embarrassing me in restaurants just to watch me get mad; and refusing to give me any sort of break from the kids while he had several hours a week to himself.
I should also mention that I had been faking it during every moment of intimacy for the last five years. Things started looking up when I received a five-figure inheritance check from my grandfather’s estate. I suddenly had an escape route! I promptly secured an apartment and some furniture. When I told him I was leaving, his response shocked me.
Instead of standing up for himself and starting the argument I was prepared for, he fell to the floor in a puddle of sobbing goo and said that he had no idea I was unhappy. I’d already lost all respect for him as a spouse, but that made me lose respect for him as a human being. I’m now happily married to a far, far better man. He has an awesome kiddo and we live in a gorgeous house. Oh, and intimacy is FANTASTIC now.
30. Married To Mrs. Hulk
This was not quite the last straw, but it is the one that is burned into my memory—because it was so horrifying. I was about 15 minutes late getting from work and hadn’t been able to let her know cause my battery ran out. She flipped out and said that she had wanted me to stop and get cash so she could make the car payment for her mother.
When I told her my phone battery ran out, she ripped our home phone off the wall (Did I mention it was a pay phone that I had set up to work as a regular phone?), hoisted it over her head, and threw it at me screaming, “There! Now you have a frigging phone to use”! A little while after that I finally packed what I could into one of my stepkid’s backpacks, loaded my dog into my car, and took off.
31. A Fairy Tale In Reverse
My first wife and I met when I was at an exciting time in my life. I was playing ice hockey and also was a member of a somewhat successful rock band. We dated for a year and then married. This woman could spend money like nobody I’ve ever known, and usually on stuff that was wholly unnecessary. It didn’t help that, as she drained my savings and dropped us into serious debt, she struggled to keep a job for any period of time.
I was forced to work longer hours to give us a better life, which meant that I had to quit the band and hockey. And since we were struggling for money, we didn’t go out nearly as much as we used to. I couldn’t believe it when she had the nerve to tell me that our life was boring. I then found out she was arranging to meet guys behind my back.
I felt like I had been used and thrown away like an old Kleenex. Before her, my life had been fulfilling and exciting. However, when the excitement—and the money—went away and we settled into married life, she had to go find her thrills elsewhere. To make matters worse, she left me with thousands of dollars of debt, too.
32. At Least He’s Self-Aware?
My spouse was a stay-at-home wife who didn’t keep up the house because she was obsessed with playing World of Warcraft. Her dog would take dumps on the floor and she couldn’t even be bothered to take him for a walk or clean up his poo before I got home from my two jobs. I told her that if I came home again and there was dog poo on the floor, I was going to drop a load on the floor, too.
I stuck to my word and halfway through said dump, it suddenly hit me: I was acting crazy and needed to get away from this person who was making me so angry that I went insane. I finished my business and left for good. It was definitely not my finest moment.
33. Heartbreak Diet
I left my husband when a coworker’s casual comment opened my eyes to the kind of life I could have had. Over the years, despite all of my efforts, my spouse and I slowly started to drift apart. We first started dating when I was only 17. Back then I was super thin, as teenagers are, but as I grew into a woman, I gained a little weight, nothing huge, though.
By the time I hit my mid-twenties, I had gained about 9 kilograms (20 pounds). Granted, I still had a flat tummy and was proportioned well, but my spouse was giving me less and less affection. He never seemed satisfied with my appearance. He was constantly asking me to wear makeup, style my hair, and wear nicer clothes. I had terrible self-esteem because of it.
One day at work I told my male coworker that I was going to start losing weight and he was stunned. He said, “But you’re gorgeous!” Before that moment, I had NEVER been called gorgeous. I was super flattered but just left it at that. As I continued on my weight loss journey, slowly my husband started giving me affection again. I came to a sudden, disturbing realization…
The difference between us having a good and bad relationship was 7 to 9 kilograms (15 to 20 pounds). How could my coworker think I was gorgeous while my spouse wouldn’t even touch me until I lost a bit of weight? I thought about my future and my mind started to spin out of control…
What would happen when I got pregnant? Or when I hit menopause? I saw a life filled with the constant pressure to maintain a super-fit body in order to have a normal relationship. Forget that. I wanted someone who loved me for me. I packed up my stuff and left.
34. Rock-Bottom Realization
It all ended when I suddenly realized that I had become a prisoner in our marriage. For the last six months, I had been living in the unfinished basement of our house. Realizing that I actually preferred living with cement floors, spiders galore, no walls, and no running water or heat in the middle of Utah winters to living upstairs with him was a real eye-opener. That’s when I knew I had to escape.
35. Yikes!
She was three months pregnant and I was five months out to sea. Easy math.
36. Fasten Your Seatbelt…
I have a couple of degrees in tech and worked in tech, so I was the informal system administrator for our household. I made it so that all of our Macs and iPhones would back up to the iCloud with photos synchronizing across all devices. My wife, who is not very tech-savvy, went on a “vacation” to visit “family” in NYC.
I stayed in California with our kids and, all of a sudden, photos of her New York City trip started popping up on the family computer...only to reveal that she was having an affair with an ex-friend of mine. I decided to search the family computer for more info and soon discovered her Ashley Madison profile. I logged in to read the conversations.
I decided to call and ask her where she was. She claimed to be at her mother’s while I was looking at her actual location online via iCloud. Eventually, after listening to her many lies, I told her where she actually was and how I knew. She panicked, hung up, and eventually figured out how to disable the GPS tracking.
She called me back the next day and fed me more lies about how she was spending the evening at her family’s place. I used Yesware to email her the photos that she had taken the prior evening with her iPhone, which had synchronized with iCloud and the family computer. This just caused her to lie about the photos, so I emailed her the Metadata which contradicted her statements.
She literally got rid of her iPhone and bought another iPhone, with a new number and everything. Unfortunately, the Verizon reps used her original Apple ID to set up the new phone. This meant that, unbeknownst to her, EVERYTHING—photos, calendar, address book, locations—from her brand-new phone continued to synchronize with the family computer.
She called me and swore that she was at her family’s place. So, in an email, I showed her how I used the Yesware data to determine her approximate location and it was not her family’s home, but her boyfriend’s place. This time I didn’t tell her that her new phone was synchronizing with the family computer. That evening, more pictures come across…
This time the photos included her married friend who was also having an affair with some guy I was able to easily locate on Facebook because I have the whole address book and the names and numbers of everyone in the photo. I recognized a few other people who were also married, but not with their spouses. It must have been some sort of cheater’s night out.
I sent all of them a group text, which immediately ended the evening. My wife called me screaming but I just hung up and blocked her.
37. What Took Her So Long?
My first husband sucked. He wasn’t a great boyfriend, but he became even more selfish and emotionally lazy after we married. I basically learned to live without affection. One time I even counted how many days went by before he gave me any sort of affection (i.e., holding my hand, kissing me, hugging me, caressing my back as he walked by).
We went 32 days without touching each other. This wasn’t great, but it wasn’t the last straw. I was 95 percent sure that he was having an affair with his boss while I watched their children (her kid and my stepdaughter) for sleepovers while he was “working late”. I know it may be hard to believe, but this was still not the last straw.
I had been spending time with a married friend and one night I was awestruck by how they interacted. He adored her. Their relationship wasn’t the one-sided dysfunctional mess I was in. They were playful and affectionate, and they doted on each other. I realized it was finally time to talk to my husband.
I came home and found him sitting at the patio table. I sat with him, told him what I witnessed, and said, “My friend Dawn never has to wonder how James feels about her. They cherish each other. I need you to really hear what I’m saying. As your wife, I NEED this from you. I need affection. I need to know that I’m valued and loved". His response? “Laaaaaaaaammme”.
I said, “OK, then,” and walked into the house. We separated less than a week later. Seven years later, I’m in a fulfilling marriage with someone who treats me as an equal instead of a live-in nanny and housekeeper that he sometimes sleeps with. Marriage doesn't have to suck, y’all. It can be pretty darn great with the right person.
38. World’s Worst Roommate
My wife stopped wanting intercourse or any sort of intimacy at all. By the end of the relationship, I felt more like a roommate than a husband. She had become very involved in the breastfeeding organization La Leche League, which believed in weaning until the age of seven and following the philosophy of attachment parenting.
She and the kids slept in the master bedroom together and I slept in the guest room. Things eventually got to the point where I didn’t even feel like I was part of the family. We were a single-income family until I unexpectedly lost my six-figure job due to budget cuts. Our savings were being cut into to keep the nice house and cars afloat.
I thought things were looking up when I landed a job interview in Atlanta. I was wrong. When I got home, the house was empty. She had moved herself and the kids into her parents’ home in Chicago while I was away and filed for divorce. We both knew the relationship had long been over, but to have it end that way hurt—15 years down the drain.
Things are OK now, though. I have a new girlfriend and my ex also has a new suitor—God help him.
39. Watch Your Step!
I was helping my wife get ready for a girls’ trip when I slipped and fell down the stairs while taking her suitcase to the car. Even though I fractured my leg, she still left for her vacation. I was forced to make my own way to urgent care and hobble in to get an X-ray and crutches. I completely stopped caring after that.
40. Hope He Played “Surrender”
We had been arguing for some time, so when I was sent to Los Angeles on an assignment for the summer, it seemed like a good time for a break. While there, I rented a convertible one weekend and drove the Pacific Coast Highway from LA to Monterey. I blasted some Cheap Trick and just cruised. By the time I got back to LA, I knew that it was over.
I strongly recommend this drive to anyone who needs to put everything back into perspective.
41. Plot Twist
The last straw was when our six-year-old daughter told me that she saw mommy and “Brett” in bed together without any clothes on. After that, I ended up unraveling the entire affair. My wife ended up choosing “Brett” over me, but apparently the feelings weren’t mutual. He stayed with his wife, leaving my soon-to-be-ex out in the cold.
42. I Cast You Out!
One day when I came home from work, my daughter was in the fireplace eating soot while my wife was laying on the floor with a blanket over her face, speaking in tongues. When I asked what the heck she was doing, she replied, “I was under the veil and the Lord was speaking to me”.
I told her that the Lord needs to tell her when my daughter is in the fireplace instead of worrying about his own selfish needs. I left shortly thereafter.
43. Miracle Cure
I got really sick. My doctor thought I had a brain tumor, but it turned out to be psychosomatic. For years I had been putting on a happy face to keep the family together despite all the stress he’d been putting me through, and my body couldn’t take it anymore. The day I asked for a divorce, I instantly got better. The doctor shook my hand and told me to come back if I had any real problems.
44. Very Foul Play
The last straw was when I found my husband’s mistress’s nasty used tampon in the trash can next to my bedside table. He tried to come up with a lame excuse for it, but there is no excuse. We’ve been divorced for a year now.
45. Signed, Sealed, Delivered
My ex was in the Navy at the time and about to retire. Her last duty station was in Michigan. We had been in the Washington DC area for about 12 years before her last transfer came. This meant that I would stay in our DC house, which was almost paid off, and after three years she would come back and we would settle here for good.
We had been together for about 10 years before we got married. About three months before her retirement, I received the papers from the State of Michigan: In 30 days you will be divorced. I was absolutely blindsided. Apparently, she had talked to an officer about her retirement and he suggested that she divorce me so she wouldn’t have to split her retirement check with me.
I paid all the bills at the DC house and most of the bills at the Michigan house. I didn’t want to feud, though, so we divorced. I did get to keep my house, car, and motorcycle, and she didn’t ask for any of the companies I own. About four months later, I got a call from her. She said, “Um, I don’t seem to have enough money to pay my bills".
I told her it was not my problem—and it felt really good. We’ve been divorced for four years now and every now and then I get a call from her telling me that she misses me, she loves me, and she can’t pay her bills. I love it when she asks me for money. It feels so good to say “no”.
46. Wait, What?
My wife refused to go back to marriage counseling because “the therapist makes me feel bad because I won’t stop seeing [her lover]". After that, there’s pretty much nothing left to say.
47. Kids Text The Darndest Things
When my six-year-old daughter was using her mom’s phone to text me emojis and she accidentally pasted in my wife’s last text to her lover. It read: “It’s a holiday weekend so work will be slow tomorrow. I can get out around 1:00. Do you want to do something other than bang? Something outside?” Marriage over, just like that.
48. Hiding In Plain Sight
When the neighbor in the apartment next door said, “How are you OK with all of that?” To which I replied, “OK with what”? He said, “Oh, with being in an open marriage”. I was completely flabbergasted. He continued, “Yeah, she told us you guys were in an open marriage when we saw her bringing guys home to your house while you were working”.
I said, “I’m sorry, what now? Come again”? But there was just a huge AWKWARD SILENCE!!! Welp. I thanked him for letting me know, otherwise, I’d still be in the dark about this “whole open marriage thing”.
49. Points For Creativity
My marriage problems started when my ex decided to sneak onto my laptop and look at my browsing history and Facebook messages. After I confronted her about spying on me, she put a password on her laptop, which I thought was an enormous red flag. Once I managed to get around the password, I couldn’t believe what I found in there…
I saw messages where she would tell her friends about what a terrible person I was and how I was “ruining the relationship”, and then, in almost the same sentence, she would brag about how many different guys she had slept with that weekend. I had a very hard time staying calm and not doing anything crazy after reading that.
The next day, when she was at work, I changed her laptop wallpaper to a collage of all of her Facebook messages about cheating on me, and then I calmly packed up and left. I don’t think I will ever trust anyone again after that one.
50. You Never Forget Your First
My wife was an awful person, but I put up with her…at least until she crashed my car. It was my very first car, a 1979 VW bus, and I had held onto it since I was 17. One day my wife got loaded, found the keys, and managed to roll it into a ditch. Even though she was hurt pretty badly, I didn’t visit her in the hospital once.
I packed my stuff and moved into a small apartment downtown. I still miss that bus. It was like losing a child.
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