Dating is hard. Sometimes, just when one thinks they found that special someone, the person turns out to be a complete nutcase. These Redditors share their stories of dates with people who turned out to be total psychos. From double lives to undeniable dramatics, there is no doubt that Norman Bates has got some stiff competition.
1. Careful What You Wish For
I had been dating this guy for a while and thought things were going pretty well. He took me to see Aladdin, and when we got back to my place, everything was normal. We were conversing, and suddenly he got this weird look in his eyes.
He said, “I can't see you anymore. I'm afraid I might hurt you”. I was thinking hurt me psychologically, like cheat on me. I laughed and told him not to worry; I was a grown-up, and whatever happened, we could try and work it out. His voice changed, he looked even worse.
He went on, “You don't understand. I've been having these dreams where I hurt you. I mean really hurt you”. Then, he jumped off the couch and ran out the front door. I never saw him again and never tried to call him because it shook me up. He seemed so normal up to that point.
2. He Was A Hippie Freak
I was dating a guy for a month who was a slightly eccentric hippie with a kind heart and a love for spontaneity and bike trips. Then, one day when in the shower, he dropped a bombshell on me.
He casually mentioned he had two kids, was 14 years older than me—not five—and his kids’ mom had a restraining order against him. He ended up pouring patchouli oil all over my door, leaving cursed voodoo eggs on my porch, and sabotaging my bike, so when I went down a steep hill, the brakes fell off, and the bike crumbled.
3. Her Fate Was Sealed With A Fish
I took my date and her four-year-old boy to a carnival, and the kid won a pair of goldfish. They were in a clear plastic bag like pet stores use. The boy was very excited. On the way to the car, without saying a word, she did the unthinkable.
She slammed the bag on the pavement, bursting it, and then stomped on the flopping fish. The boy was instantly distraught. When I asked her why she did it, she replied, “They probably would have died anyway”. Then, she called a few weeks later to ask why I had not called her.
4. Banging Her Head Against A Wall
One night after a fight, I was lying in bed, and my girlfriend fell out of the bed. Maybe she rolled out, but it seemed like a fall. She then stood up and started running into the walls. I just stared in horror. She bloodied herself up real good, and I couldn't get her to stop. The downstairs neighbor heard the commotion and called the authorities.
Officers showed up and saw her sitting on the couch, all bloody. As a result, they became very interested in me. I tried to explain to them she was running into the walls herself, but they didn’t believe me—who in their right mind would?
Fortunately for me, she stood up and ran across the room, right into a wall, practically knocking herself out. The officers ushered us to the hospital. After the hospital staff took her into the back by herself—to ask her if I was hurting her, I'm sure—they allowed me in the back room.
While waiting, she got out of bed, grabbed a bunch of gauze from the cabinet, and started wiping the floor with it. I asked her what she was doing...Her answer was wild. She told me that she was cleaning the floor so the fish could see out of it.
5. Irrational Man
After two extreme blowups—one where he destroyed half the house and the other where he took a hammer to my car—he sent me a text explaining that this was just the way he was and no form of therapy would likely help.
So, if I wanted to stay with him, I would just have to accept him and all his foibles and recognize that every so often, he would lose his temper. I realized he had completely rationalized away his psychotic behavior and he would eventually rationalize away harming me, so I left.
6. Just Go For It
When I was 20, I dated a girl for a month or so who told me up front that she really liked it when guys "just go for it". Being a clueless boy with no experience, I figured she was joking, and I didn't attempt anything after our next date. When I dropped her off at my house, she gave me grief for not heeding her advice. We made out, and she told me I should go for it next time.
On our next date, we were in my car, with the sunroof open, looking at the stars. I started trying to make out with her, and that's where it all went wrong. She pushed me away and said, "What are you doing? Do you really think I'm the type of girl you can force yourself on whenever you want"?
To this day, I have no idea if she was testing me. Maybe she actually had a kink and was hoping I'd continue to try to “go for it” while she "struggles". But if she did, she should've been very clear about it because there was no way I was going to try anything after being told no.
“No” means “no”, and that's final. The whole thing left me confused, and that date wound up being the last time I saw her.
7. I Was Running With A Devil
I worked with my ex, as we were both correctional officers. I thought that because of our line of work and the background checks necessary, he was a safe bet. I was so wrong.
I was with him for a few months before I moved in with him. After becoming pregnant about a year into our relationship, he started to become a different person.
One day, my oldest son from my prior marriage said, "Momma, I see the devil in his eyes". We had been noticing his personality change; he started saying things to us that made us fearful of his mental stability. The very first sign I saw was his ability to switch between personalities to suit his situation.
Then, as I was moving things to make room for the baby, I found a box of books about "verbal judo". I had never heard of such a thing in my life, but a lightbulb finally went off in my head. Once I began to figure things out, he began to threaten what he'd do if I ever left.
He told me about the slug he had with his name on it and would show it or leave it lying around so that we would see it. He hung up a noose on the back deck that just swung in the wind for weeks. I got my boys and myself out of there. Then came the nightmare. His buddies from the sheriff's office began to follow me everywhere whenever I left the house.
I had never been in trouble, never even had a speeding ticket until this. One time when I went to Walmart, he had a security friend who worked there accuse me of taking stuff. Eventually, the charges were dropped, but he still got me, and I had to fight for custody of my son.
8. Believe It, We’re Done
I was dating a guy who wanted me to text him my work schedule and then would call me on my work phone and wait in the parking lot for me to come out of work. But that wasn't the worst part. He also wanted to know how much was in each paycheck. One time, I texted him my work schedule, but he misread it and freaked out non-stop for six hours searching for me.
He called my whole family and was about to alert the authorities. It was his own fault he misread what I had texted him. I broke up with him in public because he would not believe it when I broke up with him in private. It was at the point where random people who were nearby were telling him, "you just got dumped".
9. Keyed Up Over Our Breakup
I didn’t really understand how unhealthy she was until after our breakup. She proceeded to key the side of my car about a week later because she assumed I had already started seeing other women. She tracked down every single person I knew on Facebook, including family members and the CEO of my company, to send them a fairly unflattering and risqué picture.
The picture also came with a page-long story of how I couldn’t be trusted, as I had beaten her, taken money from her, etc. I had to get a restraining order and take her to court over trying to sabotage my life and career. It was seriously messed up, and I genuinely hoped she got some help. Thankfully, I haven’t heard from her in almost four years, and I now live on the opposite side of the country.
10. He Was A Total Number Two
I had a terrible stomach ache and was on the toilet. I’m a gross person and wanted to do work, so I had my laptop with me, just chugging along while I let nature do its business. Suddenly, the bathroom door opened, and my boyfriend said, “You’re cheating on me”. He grabbed my laptop and ran out of the bathroom.
I finished what I was doing because I wasn’t cheating and had no reason to rush to deal with this latest episode. I got to his bedroom—and a horror show awaited me. He laughed and said he disassembled my laptop and hid each part in different areas of the room. I asked him to get my stuff for me, and he said no.
This went on for about 15 minutes, and I was not giving in. I told him if he didn’t give me my laptop back, I would call the authorities, and he handed me his phone as some sort of power move. The second I flipped it open, he got mad that I was possibly going to call law enforcement, so he scrambled around and got my laptop together.
Then, he opened his bedroom window and threw it three stories down onto the street. I snapped his phone in half, threw it against the wall, and walked out. The next day, he showed up at my house, saying I owed him $30 for the phone. I laughed, closed the door, and never looked back.
11. Payback Time
I dated my psycho for about eight months. She liked to role play and had a thing with being tied up. One night, she asked to reverse roles, which I was OK with. Except after she handcuffed me and tied my ankles to the posts, she gagged me with a bandana, got dressed, and left me there. But that was only the beginning of the nightmare.
She came back an hour later with two guys and got busy with them right in front of me several times. When she finally untied me and I was able to speak, I asked her, "What was that"? She said she knew I was cheating on her with a girl at work—I wasn’t—and that was her way of paying me back. I moved out the next day.
12. Trapped
I married a man who was maybe not a psychopath but certainly a sociopath. In order to walk from the bedroom to the kitchen, I had to walk through the living room. This involved me walking in front of the TV. I always did it very quickly, but I always got screamed at. Sometimes I would have to wait 20–30 minutes before I was allowed to walk past.
One day, while my husband (now ex) was out, I decided to rotate the entire living room. I put the TV on a different wall and moved the couch so it faced the TV. The living room was exactly the same, just rotated 90 degrees. The living room was a square, so it functionally made no difference, except now, when I walked from the bedroom to the kitchen, I didn’t have to walk between the couch and the TV.
When my husband got home, he saw the living room and said nothing about it. We ate dinner, and he watched TV as usual. Then, we went to bed. The following day he refused to get out of bed or talk to me. He refused to leave the house, go to class, watch TV—or anything. He didn’t say one word. I kept trying to get him to tell me what was wrong, and he wouldn’t.
For three solid days, he only got out of bed to grab food or use the restroom. He would not talk to me, would not make eye contact, or acknowledge my presence. I was panicking, thinking he was having some sort of episode. I had no clue what I had done wrong. After the third day, he said he felt like I had adequately been punished for re-arranging the living room without asking.
He even told me to keep it that way, that it made more sense, and that he liked it better. However, he still had to punish me for what I did. Although he was never diagnosed with anything, something was indeed wrong with him. When I caught him cheating on me for the seventh time, his response left me speechless.
He wouldn't let me leave the house because he was afraid I would revenge cheat or leave him. One day, we had no clean clothes, so I left to wash them at the laundromat. While I was gone, he called me and told me if I didn’t come home, he would leave the baby alone, so I rushed home.
The next day, I went to the laundromat and took the baby with me. He called and said if I didn’t come home, he would take his life. I told him to go for it and hung up. Then I dialed emergency services and had the authorities do a welfare check on him. He was taken into custody for warrants due to unpaid speeding tickets.
While he was in the pokey, I changed the locks and never let him back in. Then, he found another woman to mooch off of and mistreat.
13. One Night Led To Disaster
My friend found a psycho. He met her at a bar and ended up taking her home. She decided it should be more than just a one-night stand and suggested a date the following weekend. He obliged. Their first date was meeting her parents. It was a recipe for disaster.
To his horror, she told them how they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, where they were going to buy a house, the names of their two children, etc. He dated her for about a month, and after they broke up, she started stalking his friends. Not him—his friends. She would somehow find out where we would be and threaten us with lawsuits for “ruining her life”.
14. This Guy Was A Dumpster Fire
I dated this guy who told me he was a NY firefighter. After a few months, I realized he'd lied to me.
He was NOT a firefighter and was actually a psycho. When I tried to break up with him, he told me I couldn't because he was in the mafia and said if I left him, his guys would get rid of my family and me. He said he had a whole file on my father and his business and knew everything about him.
I realized he was truly deranged when he got in my car bleeding, told me he'd been jumped, and asked me to take him to the hospital. We got to the hospital, and the doctor pulled me aside and told me he suspected that he had punctured himself. I realized he made it all up to manipulate me into feeling bad for him and to take him to the hospital.
After that night, he held me captive in the relationship for a few months. He held a piece on me once and didn't let me go to work because "Tony was coming over, and he wanted to meet me". Obviously, “Tony” never showed. He left me voicemails threatening my life.
I called the authorities, but they said there was nothing they could do with that information. I went to get a restraining order on him and found out he had NINE OTHERS, mostly from his parents. I got out of it when I moved to a different state.
15. I Needed To Steer Away From This Guy
My first boyfriend in college was nuts. We had only been exclusive for one week before the psychosis started. First, I noticed food was going missing in my house. We didn’t live together, yet he was throwing out my food that he didn’t want me to eat. Next, a boy from my class who didn’t know I was dating called to ask me out.
My boyfriend answered and accused him of being a homewrecker. Finally, we were walking, and I was almost hit by a car, but he pushed me out of the way. Later, I found out the dark truth.
His friend had been driving the vehicle, and he had orchestrated the stunt so I would feel I owed my life to him.
16. Out Of My League And Out Of Her Mind
It wasn't one incident; it was multiple in a very short span of time. Everything seemed to be going perfectly between us. In fact, I was feeling pretty good about myself. She was out of my league, and I was playing it really smooth. We had been hanging out all day, and finally, I made a move. I kissed her, and it was great. We sat around all night and just talked. Everything seemed normal.
The next day, it took a dark turn. she told me her ex forced himself on her, that he was stalking her and following her everywhere. I was just a teenager, so I didn't really know what to do or say or if I even believed her. I went along with it. She started saying she had seen him in the bushes when we were walking around when nobody was there.
She had a male friend who really liked her, and he was socially awkward. He seemed like a sweet dude, so I did my best to be respectful because I knew he had a crush on her, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. All three of us were hanging out, and for no reason at all, when the dude and I were talking, she straddled me and started making out with me while he was sitting right next to me.
I stopped her and asked her what she was doing because she knew very well he liked her. I felt terrible because I could see the pain in the guy's face, so I forced her off of me. Then, as we were walking, she fell behind, so it was just the guy who had a crush on her and me hanging out.
After a few minutes, we saw she wasn’t anywhere near us, so we went looking for her. We found her, and she told us her ex harmed her and punched her in the ribs. At that point, I knew something was definitely up. I didn't like being in the situation I was in at all, so I broke it off.
A few hours after breaking up with her, I got a chilling voicemail. A few of her female friends and a few of her male friends were calling me gay while also screaming other incomprehensible insults into the phone.
Years later, her newborn baby passed, and she was under investigation for the child's demise. I thank my lucky stars that I left her when I did. I could be a grieving father at the age of 20. It's absolutely horrifying to think about.
17. He Was Off His Noodle
He had a very particular way he liked his noodles cooked—al dente, but just a hair soft. He was obsessed with it and always told me I needed to make the noodles because I tended to hit closer to his desired texture than he himself could. One time, I had gotten off from work, and he had been home all day. I had worked 12 hours and commuted almost an hour to get home.
The first thing out of his mouth was, “I'm hungry. Make some noodles”. He had thrown temper tantrums in the past, and I was too tired to deal with it, so I just quietly went about making his noodles. I don't know if it was my exhaustion or something else, but I didn't get the noodles out quick enough, and they were softer than what he normally liked.
I plated some, seasoned them, put them down in front of him, and went to the bedroom to take a shower and go to bed. I had no clue that I was in danger. I was halfway through undressing when a plate full of noodles suddenly exploded against the wall next to me.
Then, I felt something on the back of my head, and the next thing I remember was seeing the bathroom tiles staining red and the world turning gray. He had his hands wrapped around my neck. I remember him saying, "I will end you if you ever make me soggy noodles again".
When I regained consciousness, he was sitting in the living room again, watching TV as if nothing had happened. I tried to go to the hospital, but he caught me before I got out the door. He blocked the door and said with the most frightening smile that still haunts me, "You're not going anywhere until I get my noodles".
I snuck out later that night and went to the hospital. I had a concussion and a cracked rib. The authorities were called, and I got a restraining order. I had some friends at work get my stuff from the apartment—at least what little was left, as he threw out and destroyed most of my possessions. But that was the moment I knew that this man was psychotic and he would end me.
18. Social Media Psycho
I was with some guy for about two to three months. He kept trying to pressure me into telling him I loved him. He would cry because when we discussed children, I was always an adamant "No" on the subject, and he would cry about how we could compromise. It was not something I was willing to compromise on.
I eventually got a nice incentive to end it because I wasn't that invested, and he clearly was. The psycho in him didn't come out until after I ended it. He kept texting me that he was going to "Fight for me", whatever that meant. He also said he wasn't going to give up because he had “basically become [her] dad”—referring to my cat—after three months.
He would switch between begging me to come back and threatening me. I blocked it, and when I didn't respond to his texts, he would message me on Skype. So, I blocked him there, too, then on Facebook, Instagram, and so on. Eventually, he started getting nastier and nastier.
He began calling me fat, ugly, and promiscuous and claimed that there was someone else. I changed all the combinations and passwords in my house because I didn’t know if he had watched me type my pin over my shoulder. He then started to harass mutual people we knew.
He would message my best friend and talk about how he was going to put a restraining order on me and that I should expect something in the mail. He spoke of suing another girl I knew for slander and lashed out at a bunch of people in the same circle. Everyone ended up blocking him as well.
Apparently, his behavior wasn't that abnormal because a few other girls came out of the woodwork stating they had a similar experience with him. It all quieted down after a few months, until not too long ago when he tried to add me on Instagram. I immediately blocked him, and he found my super old Flickr account.
He messaged me on that, saying how he was sorry about the way he acted and if I didn't want him on Instagram, I didn't have to delete my account, yadda, yadda. I never responded; I just deleted.
19. Plenty O’ Fish In The Sea
I came over before he got home from work as usual. I opened his computer—which I did all the time as I had the password—and he had left Plenty O’ Fish and Cougar Life open and was logged in. I was like, “Dude, what"? I looked at the messages, and he'd been trying to meet up with women near us for a while. I called him, and he freaked out.
He told me he set up the account for a friend. Of course, I knew it was baloney, but I wanted closure and stuck around until he got home from work. This was a bad move. I broke up with him; he took my phone and keys, slammed the door in my face, shoved and restrained me, and did everything he could to keep me inside the house with him.
It was the most terrifying thing because he was way bigger than me, and I had never been so powerless in my life. He was screaming at me at the top of his lungs with the veins in his neck standing out, holding my arms as tightly as he could. I eventually ended up curled up in a ball on the couch, dissociating. I hadn't realized until then how bad he was.
I finally talked him down, and he let me go. I didn't go to the authorities because I was in shock, but I had bruises on my arms and was shaky for days. I found out way later that he'd been charged before and had confined another woman. I wish I had gone to the authorities when it happened to me. If I had, I have no doubt that he'd be behind bars now after his second offense.
The worst part was that I GOT BACK TOGETHER WITH HIM and stayed with this guy for a few more months until things escalated even further. We finally broke up for the last time, and he tried to contact me for YEARS. I still have panic attacks when I hear a man yelling at a woman, and I'm still wary of unknown numbers.
I check his name in the court records every once in a while, hoping he's deceased or locked up.
20. News Flash—I’m Gone!
On 9/11, my ex and I heard about the planes hitting the towers on the radio while on our way to a coffee shop where I was going to work on my thesis. After the second report, I said, "That wasn't an accident". He proceeded to call me "stupid" and rambled on and on about how dumb I was to say that and that, of course, it was an accident as nobody would do that on purpose.
We got to the coffee shop, where they had wheeled out a TV on a cart in the middle of the restaurant so patrons could watch what was going on. We sat and watched. As we were watching the live footage, we saw one of the towers come down. I immediately burst into tears, as I knew I had just witnessed innocent people lose their lives.
I was wondering, “Oh my God, how many people were still in that building”?! Plus, my brother was on a flight when it happened—he was fine—and one of my friends worked in the financial district in NYC. I was distraught. Anyone with any sense of humanity would have been so.
He leaned over and put his arm around me, thinking he was trying to comfort me. Then he said something that made my blood run cold. He hissed in my ear, "You're embarrassing me and making a scene. Stop crying or go sit in the car". That was the moment I knew I was done.
We lived together, so I was biding my time and planning to leave. A few weeks later, I wanted to go out with my friends, and he didn't want me to go because he would get irate when I had any fun. We had an argument, and he pinned me against the wall and said, "I wish I could punch you in the face right now", and then laughed.
The next day I packed my stuff while he was at work. He was broken; the part of him with empathy just wasn't there.
21. Festival Of Lies
My friend’s girlfriend had been taking trips to a specific city for months because her mother had been diagnosed with lupus and apparently needed a lot of care. One day, before leaving for another trip to go see her, she broke up with my friend because she felt she “was being a bad girlfriend and couldn’t devote enough time for him”.
My friend took it like a champ and wished her the best. She even left the door open for a possible continuance of their relationship once her mother got better. She spent that weekend texting him about how hard it was to take care of her mother and how she had gotten no sleep because she had spent the night at the hospital.
The whole time my friend was being incredibly supportive and texting her studies on lupus and all this other stuff. A few days later, my friend was randomly checking his Facebook and saw one of those 360-degree panoramic pictures posted by someone he knew who also had a fling with this girl. The picture was taken at a popular music festival that happened to be around the city where his ex’s mom lived.
My friend panned around, and there was his ex, partying it up. Instead of visiting her sick mom, she had gone to this music festival and hooked back up with this guy. He found pictures of her there all weekend which means she was at the festival the whole time. All that texting about being at the hospital was complete nonsense.
He wasn’t even sure if her mom ever had lupus, or if she was just hooking up with this guy for months instead. He immediately confronted her, and her response was just to ghost him. She could have just broken up with him instead of launching a massive campaign of lies so that she could eat her cake and have it too.
22. He Was A Different Brand Of Crazy
One evening, my boyfriend invited a bunch of people over to hang out by his fire pit so I could meet his friends. I hit it off with a few of his guy friends as we had the same taste in movies, etc. There was no flirting whatsoever. As the last person was leaving, he and I were standing in the backyard by the gate. He grabbed me by the belt loop and pulled me towards him.
I thought he wanted a hug—he didn't. He was unhappy that I hit it off with his friends because now they might “steal me from him," and this was all my fault. I was confused. He had a large stick he had pulled from the fire in his hand. He wasn't pulling me close.
He was trying to "brand" me with the still red-hot stick in a place no one would see. I still have the scar, but I don't have him.
23. Nothing Was Real
I dated a psycho for nine months. He was lying about his career, past life, and even that his parents weren’t really biologically his. He would flip out and cause a scene for the slightest issues.
If I were three minutes late to his in the car, he would start shouting. If we were at a nice dinner with his family and chatting more than he felt I should have with his sister, he would make a scene at the table that was so loud the neighbors would complain.
I had money in my room, and shortly after he moved in, I found it missing, along with some jewelry. I discovered he had pawned them when I found the receipts behind some furniture. He claimed to have cancer in order for me to not go away on business for two weeks.
Meanwhile, I was the sole breadwinner and wasn’t doing anything to give him any doubts, and we needed the money. I found out later that the clinic he was being dropped off at didn’t offer any treatments for anything he claimed to have. After he moved out, I found yellowish makeup, which he applied to look ill.
I put up with it all for longer than I should have and cracked seven months in. I had a fair number of therapy sessions to process everything and had trust issues with future dates and partners.
23. Scrambling To Survive
My boyfriend had called the authorities and reported me for things he had actually done to me. It was a very interesting and unpleasant situation for the detective and me to work out. The monster popped the ignition in my car and caused it to catch fire while driving down the interstate.
He knocked me unconscious, then accused my 90-pound, extremely sickly self of hurting him, a 300-pound wannabe linebacker. He stalked me on campus, had his friends call my phone constantly, and generally made my life a nightmare until I could switch schools. But he had the audacity to try to say I had done all of this.
25. Two-Faced Terror
My first long-term boyfriend had some weird little quirks. Once he got into doing something, he would ignore me, even if he had asked me to be around. Then, when I had plans, he'd guilt me into canceling them and doing something with him. He would try to isolate me to the point that I was almost always with him, and he would monitor what I was doing. He would also look through my phone.
Once, my friend kissed me on the cheek in front of him. He laughed at the time, only to shout at me later. He had different faces for different people. It was a slow build-up; he went from attentive boyfriend to my sole keeper. Luckily for me, one day, he just seemed to lose interest. It was like a switch had been flipped.
It hurt at the time to be suddenly dumped without reason, but I'm glad in retrospect. He was later diagnosed as schizophrenic.
26. Baby, You Crazy
He sent me to pick up a present he got for his friend's baby shower. I went to the store and asked for it, but they said they didn't have an order. I called him and gave my phone to the cashier. After a moment, she gave the phone back to me, saying, "I will not be talked to like that". I was so confused.
She said he was very rude to her and refused to help me, so I left. When I came home, he denied being rude to her and got mad at me for taking her side. Later, he told me I had ruined everything, we wouldn't be going to the baby shower, and that his friend was very upset. I was confused and felt awful, so I called his friend to apologize.
She had no idea what I was talking about. He had lied about the whole thing to make me feel like a bad person, and it made me realize he was gaslighting me during our entire three-year relationship to make me feel crazy.
27. Rewind The Tape, He Did What?
I was married for 23 and a half years. He was as nice as could be, and an every-day-a-wonderful-day-kind of guy until he got taken into custody for pleasuring himself in an AMC movie theater parking lot—at matinee hour—with children present. What really came as a shock was that he used his company's mailing address on the official report.
With a little digging, I discovered that not only had he been taken into custody before and during our marriage—and never brought it up—but he had been detained by immigration twice, with officers inquiring where his son was. We had no children. I filed for divorce the very next day as soon as the office opened. He ghosted me after that, forever.
28. Gut Instinct
For a while, I saw a girl I thought I had hit it off with. We were into the same stuff, but something in my gut was telling me she was off, so I broke it off and tried to remain friendly with her. I found out later that she was playing a long con with me and was only pretending to be into everything I liked in an attempt to domesticate me.
I also learned that once I broke things off, she got so angry she smashed a glass against her door, and when her roommate went to sweep it up, she said, “No, leave it. Those are the shattered pieces of my heart”. Safe to say, I have no regrets and have never doubted my gut instinct since.
29. Prove Your Love
Not sure if this is psychopathic or sociopathic, but towards the end of my two-year relationship, my boyfriend threatened to throw himself out of the window. We were 11 flights up, and he opened the sliding glass door, with the railing waist-high. I spent what felt like an eternity physically restraining him from going over the edge, or so I thought.
Both of us were screaming and crying. I was finally able to pull him away, and we both fell back, with me crashing into the TV and him falling on top of me. After that, he just stood up, brushed himself off, and said he was never going to take his life; he just needed me to prove how much I loved him. That’s when I realized he was a psycho and was finally able to break things off.
30. Slow, Subtle Sicko
It started out with little things like comparing me to his exes, but it was always favorable at first. He seemed overly enthusiastic about wanting to join me in activities and hobbies I did without him. He would force his way in, then pout or make fun the whole time, but it was subtle. He would make legit jokes about my hobbies that I’d laugh off, but it kept getting worse and more frequent.
He’d then put me down, giving me back-handed compliments, and if I caught on and got upset, he’d say, “Joking” with this smile that never met his eyes. One night we were lying on the couch, drinking, watching a game, and just relaxing. We were having a good time when out of nowhere, he said he no longer wanted to live. I took him seriously and started asking more questions.
He shook his head back and forth in a daze and claimed he didn’t say that. Things got much worse after that. They finally came to an end when he choked me in a rage. He said he was sorry, called me, and sent me flowers. Luckily, my sister helped me out. I hadn’t mentioned too much of what was going on to my family because he had slowly been isolating me, but also because I felt crazy.
I thought I was reading too much into his comments, suggestions, etc. When he choked me, I ran straight to my sister. I left him and everything I had at his house and moved on. It took years and dating some more grounded people to get over it.
31. Sweet Jesus, She Was Crazy
I had a girlfriend who was nuts. I got reamed out for two hours because we missed a bus by five minutes and had to get a different one ten minutes later. I was taking a really hard college course and wouldn’t use my phone much during the term or near exam time. She would get upset when I didn’t respond to her texts fast enough.
She wanted to meet five times a week and call me every night for two hours. Once, I was with her at my parents' house, and she wanted and demanded sweets. We didn’t keep sweets in the house, and the closest shop was a 15-minute drive away. She claimed I cheated on her four times because that’s probably how many days I didn’t call her.
When I broke up with her, it got even worse. She threatened to take her life and got my friends to text me to call her back. She made fake accounts to contact me, and I blocked them all. Then, she got new SIM cards to call and text me. I would get prank texts during the middle of the night, and I blocked them all. And then there was the cherry on top...
She slept with my friend in an attempt to get back at me and tried to get with another friend of mine who, luckily, turned her down many times.
32. Stuck Between A Rock And A Hard Place
I dated a girl in college for two years. It took me WAY longer than it should have to realize she was nuts. While we were dating some of the signs were subtle, although she was very controlling. The craziest stuff happened after I smartened up and broke up with her.
A group of friends and I worked for my college in the summers and were provided free housing on campus as part of the compensation. She had a similar situation in the summer but for a different department. By that point, we had broken up. There was a large rock outside of the building I stayed in. Any time I found myself walking by it, she would be there, sitting on it, crying.
If I walked by with friends, I would get stares from her. There would be times I would walk by with a friend of mine, who is female. Two minutes later, I got a text asking if I was now getting busy with that girl. The building we were living in for the summer was configured in a C shape with a courtyard in the middle.
My room was on one side of the building, and directly across the courtyard was my friend's room. One night, I was hanging out in my room, and I got a call from my friend across the courtyard. They had seen my crazy ex, dressed in all black, hiding in the bushes under my window, trying to spy on me.
I immediately called her and asked what on earth she was doing. She claimed she was at Walmart. Then, more than six months after I had broken up with her, I was at the big spring concert at my college, seeing one of my favorite bands with my new girlfriend, who later became my wife.
Of course, my ex was there too. She came right up to us, checked out my (now) wife, looked at me, and just said, "This is fine. I don't care. This is totally fine," and then just walked away. I don't know what I was thinking for the TWO YEARS I was with her.
33. Bad Romance
I was driving my ex somewhere, and the Lady Gaga song "Bad Romance" came on the radio. I turned it up a little and started singing along. He lost his mind. He started screaming and crying in the car, saying I was sending him a secret message about our relationship. I tried to calm him down and told him it was just a song I liked!
He was convinced that I really thought we were in a "Bad Romance" and that this was a telltale sign of some impending breakup. He was still inconsolable 15 minutes later when we got back to his house, and his parents had to intervene and talk some sense into him.
34. Time To Get Out
It was a typical Sunday evening, and my ex-husband had been without a job for a few years. He was well aware of the fact that I had to approve several dozen employee time cards before Monday so I could submit payroll. I did this every Sunday evening for three years, and the process took about an hour and a half. He also drank a lot and had a very bad temper.
That evening, he had some severe issues with me completing the employee time card approvals after I had spent an hour cooking dinner for him and my son. I was sitting on the floor of my living room because I couldn't afford a couch. As I was eating dinner and working, all I heard was him yelling at me to put down work and pay attention to him.
Before I could say, "I'm almost done, just a few more moments", he came up to me with a full plate of food, took a huge bite of tilapia, chewed it up nice and good, then unloaded it all over my face, keyboard, and all. I was in complete and total shock.
I couldn't believe the man that I was married to would spew food in my face and all over my work. I just sat there in awe and got him out of my life.
35. She Ain’t Got No Alibi
One day, law enforcement called me and asked if I had gone out on a date with the woman I was seeing and named every dinner and movie we saw together because she kept all the receipts. She was trying to use me as some kind of romantic alibi.
Then, they asked me to check the front page of the paper, and I discovered she had been accused of throwing a four-year-old child out of an apartment building. She claimed dating me proved she couldn’t have done it because she no longer had feelings for the child’s father. It was about then I realized she was a psycho.
36. Time To Hit The Road
I had a girlfriend and her mom discussing methods for disciplining a boyfriend when he would misbehave and how to use it as a good training tool. I was in the room and couldn't believe what I was hearing. She told her mom about something I did that she didn't like. Her mom said she would show her how to do it and demanded I come over and let her injure me.
I'm 6'3" and, generally speaking, a large person. No one was going to lay a hand on me without a fight, so I told her to get bent, walked out, and drove home. I was living with this girlfriend at the time, and I was her ride home. It was an hour and 20 minutes back to our house. I got about halfway home when the call came begging me to come back to get her.
When I got there, she asked me to come inside, and her mom demanded I let her pummel me for the original thing and for driving away. I got back in the car and went home. My girlfriend made it a few hours later after getting someone else to drive her. We never spoke of it again.
I dumped her in my head the moment they started talking about flogging men in front of me and I did it for real about a month or two later after making other living arrangements.
37. Gaslighting Goober
The guy I was seeing would get out his guns and—with the safety on—point them at me and go "Bang"! When I would jump, he would laugh and say, "That'd be funny if the safety was off. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it"?
Then, the next day he'd gaslight me and tell me he didn't do anything of the sort the night before. He was the king of gaslighting. It got to the point where I seriously doubted my own sanity because he would deny everything.
38. Going Nowhere Fast
This chick was crazy hot. She had told me jokingly she had been stalking me on Instagram for a month before hitting me up to make sure I was what she wanted. I just shrugged it off, but then it hit me. We had matched on Match.com two months prior, but she never admitted to it for some reason. I fell for the bait and we slept together on the first date.
Then, she wanted to come over the next day. I thought, "score"! I must have been great in bed. But it was different. She withheld affection and intimacy altogether. I thought, “OK, this might be something real for once. I'm an adult. I can roll with it”.
Then, she came over the following day and the next. Suddenly, two weeks had passed, and she was leaving half her stuff at my house, taking up all my time, without any show of affection. She told me I needed to be careful not to break her heart because her ex-boyfriend forced himself on her in her sleep for two years, and she would take her life because she was so fragile.
I told her we needed to either be intimate with each other or if not, slow things “waaaay” down. We could go on dates on the weekends until she felt comfortable, but she couldn’t move into my place. She never talked to me after that. Not once. I shipped all her stuff in a box to her mom’s house where she lived, and she never once texted me or replied to anything.
39. She Cashed In And I Cashed Out
I had been talking to a girl online, and we agreed to go out on a date. I showed up to pick her up, and she walked to my car while on the phone. She got into the passenger seat, and I started to drive to the movies where we were going. She was in the middle of a tearful conversation with her estranged father and put her finger to her lips to let me know to be quiet while she had her conversation.
We were 15 minutes away from town, and she stayed on the phone the entire time. She was working him for money to bail her out of a situation. She was making amends with a father she had cut out of her life seven years ago so he could wire her some cash. She put him on mute for a moment to ask me if I could stop at the Dollar General in town so she could get some kind of Green Dot card or something.
Having never officially even talked to this girl in person before, I agreed. I parked at the Dollar General, and she ran in to get the card, came out still talking to her father, gave him all the information while on the verge of tears, and even squeezed a few out for effect. She told him she was glad to have him back in her life once the card was filled with money.
She told him she loved him and hung up the phone. As soon as she hung up, she started to call him names, and as she did, she told me, "I can't stand him". She proceeded to put the phone away and cheerfully apologized for the awkwardness, and went on as if nothing had ever happened.
40. Quaking In Fear
I had a seizure, and when I came out of it, he was standing above me, yelling and cursing at me, saying, “This is embarrassing". Then he dragged me up to my feet, slammed me against the wall, and bellowed at me to never do that again. That was the first indication he ever gave me that he was capable of something like that, and I noped right out of there.
41. False Positive
When I tried to break up with my girlfriend, she decided she was pregnant. There were lots of red flags beforehand, but that was really the icing on the cake. She would send me pictures of positive pregnancy tests but refused to take any tests while I was there. We made a doctor’s appointment to confirm, and she canceled it behind my back.
She was also pulling the whole “taking her life” schtick while this was going on. I should have known better, but I was young and stupid. It turned out she pulled all of this on her next boyfriend when he tried to break up with her. He got her Baker Act-ed.
42. I Wheeled Her Out Of My Life
My ex-girlfriend would have rapid cycles of hating me and delusions of things that didn’t happen and loving me unconditionally. The straw that broke the camel’s back wasn’t even that bad, but it was stupid. One day, she called me at 6:45 am and told me how she was parked halfway in a handicapped parking space, and someone had come up and knocked on her window to tell her that.
All I said was, “You can get a $200 fine if you obstruct an accessible parking space”. Her response was, “YOU ALWAYS TAKE THE OTHER PERSON’S SIDE. You hate me. You’re the president of the I hate [her name] fan club. I can’t talk to you about work, ever”.
All this was over my letting her know what can happen if she obstructs a handicapped parking space. Safe to say, we discontinued our relationship about three minutes later, as it wasn’t the first crazy thing.
43. Power Hungry
Once, we were talking about kids and how he wanted to have some at some point, and I definitely did not. He said that the reason why he wanted to have kids was because of the way kids revere their parents, and he just wanted to have that kind of omnipotence. He also said kids are great when they are young because they're so gullible.
He said you could make them believe in anything, and he couldn't wait to tell his future kids all kinds of lies and have them believe them. He just loved the idea of having that kind of power and control over other people. It was sick and seriously disturbing that the only reason he wanted children was to warp their minds. We broke up; he's now married with two kids.
44. Post To Post
I was really young and innocent at the time. My boyfriend started posting all of my information online. He put my full name, address, and a bunch of other information out there for people to find. That was already pretty bad. Then, he started sending me pictures and videos of him self-harming and swallowing entire bottles of pills.
That’s when I knew I needed to get away from him.
45. Long Distance Looney
I was in a long-distance relationship, and my girlfriend banned me from watching lewd videos. At one point, she got so serious about it that she forced me to install remote access software so she could randomly remote into my computer and make sure I wasn't watching anything behind her back.
This extended into my social media, where she would randomly log in to my Facebook and scour my messaging history to ensure I wasn't cheating on her. I'm so glad I got out.
46. I Made A Quick Departure
I was traveling, and when I landed in Boston, I was immediately hit with a barrage of texts that grew increasingly agitated. They started with "Hey" and ended with, "WHERE ARE YOU! DO NOT IGNORE ME"!
I texted back, "I was on an airplane. Remember when you drove me to O'Hare THREE HOURS AGO"? We had only dated for a few weeks, and there were signs, but that was the red flag I needed to call it off.
47. Scene And Heard
I needed to catch a bus. The entrance of the university to the bus stop was a mile away. I was breaking up with my girlfriend in public to make sure she would not make a scene, but it totally backfired. She made a huge scene and begged me to stay with her, but I refused. She stalked and followed me, begging, crying, and yelling in front of around 30 strangers.
Once I got to the bus stop, she tried to push me in front of a running bus. I yelled at her, "Are you trying to kill me"? She responded, "I want to if you are not with me". Then, she proceeded to break into my house. She filled it with photos of us.
Later, she called me several times, screaming that she was going to take her life. Then, she tried hitting on my friends and managed to make out with my ex-best friend.
48. Eat And Run
I went out to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings one night with a few friends, and I told my girlfriend about this. I saw a couple of her friends come in and sit at a table near us, but they never ordered anything. They just drank water and sat there, occasionally glancing at us.
After my friends and I were done eating, we walked outside, and sure enough, I saw my girlfriend’s car in the parking lot. Her driver’s seat was reclined all the way back, and I could just barely see that she was in the driver's seat, trying to hide. I was already kind of weirded out at that point, so my friends and I were going to leave.
As soon as we backed out, her car started and backed out as well. She began to follow us through the parking lot. I began texting her, asking her what was going on, but she kept saying she was with her mom hanging out. I ended things shortly after that.
49. I Relieved Him Of His Duty
I was married to a psycho. He said he was going to the woods to take his own life. So, I called the authorities and told them I thought he was having a PTSD episode from being in the service. They stopped him, took his piece, and informed me he was NEVER IN THE ARMED FORCES.
This was four years into my marriage. I took photos of all the holes in my walls and got myself a restraining order and a divorce. The courts don't appreciate stolen valor being your excuse for brutality and emotional manipulation. He did the same to his second wife, who also divorced him.
50. Hung Up On Her Ex
We were riding the train home from a date. I looked over, and couldn't believe my eyes.
She was logging in to her ex-boyfriend’s Facebook account. I asked her what she was doing, and she straight-up told me that she was logging in to her ex-boyfriend’s Facebook account. When I asked why, she said, “I’m just checking up on him; I want to make sure he’s OK. He never changed his password”.
Her checking up on him became reading through his statuses and his private messages. I asked why she couldn’t just look at his profile normally, and she said he blocked me. When I asked why she couldn’t just text him if it was that big of a deal, she said he blocked her number too.
I had so many more questions, but she started getting mad and defensive, and I still had a long train ride home, so I let it be.
Sources: Reddit
