Divorced People Reveal When They Knew Their Marriage Was Doomed

We previously covered this Reddit thread from u/tippytoes1216, which asked community members, “When did you realize you married the wrong person?” The thread has since received hundreds, if not thousands, more replies from people, so we decided to make a part two. Here’s what people shared:

1. “It was actually almost immediately after getting married. Our relationship had taken a nose dive as soon as we moved in together. But after we got married, while we were in Greece on our honeymoon, he absolutely lost his mind on me in public. I wanted to go see a beach on the island that was supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world, so we tried to catch the bus, but it never came. He screamed at me, telling me he hated traveling with me, and I ruined his vacation. Then we walked to the beach nearby, and he went swimming with his two friends, who he insisted come with us on the trip. I was too stunned and humiliated to do anything except sit on a beach chair and cry.”

2. “I knew on the wedding day. She spent a fortune on unnecessary things, and I knew I’d be the one footing the bill on the credit card she ran up. So I told her no more. She said she wanted an ice cream vendor there (we already had two dessert bars), but I told her it was unnecessary. She fought me on it but finally agreed. Wedding day comes, I’m standing with my groomsmen, and in comes the ice cream truck. I knew right then, sadly.”

3. “After 18 hours of labor and nearly dying while giving birth, he went out to the strip club with his brothers to celebrate becoming a father. I still stayed, and then other things piled up, so I filed for divorce.”

4. “I think the first time I actually thought to myself, ‘This isn’t going to last,’ was when I brought him the positive pregnancy test for the baby we had been trying to conceive, and he paused his video game to say, ‘Good, now you can stay off my dick.’ After that, it was a series of small paper cuts that bled out our marriage, with the finishing blow being him telling me during an argument (that started by me wanting to discuss the state of our marriage) that he loved going to work more than being home with the kids and me because when he was at work, ‘People treat me with respect. Like a superhero!’ I married the boy I started dating at 16, and I divorced the insecure police officer he’d become at 30.”

5. “It was a Wednesday night after a terrible day at work. I cooked supper and did the dishes while he sat on his phone. I was trying to bathe two kids, and AGAIN, he had shaved in the tub and left all the whiskers stuck to the sides. I was in tears, rinsing them out, and exasperatedly asked him if he could clean up after himself. He said to me, ‘If you don’t like it, you can go somewhere else.’”

6. “At the wedding reception, when he decided to bring out all the food before my family and I got there, and everyone already at the reception ate all of the food. My dad had to go get us burgers. I still gaslit myself into staying for the next 10 years anyway.”

7. “When he left me with a bad fever to play cards with his friends. When he accused me of cheating on him while I was pulling all-nighters to finish my degree. When he said our kid wasn’t HIS. When he never complimented me because he said it would get to my head. When he took anyone’s word over mine (and I mean anyone). When his way of flirting with me was putting me down. When I had to keep the most ridiculous secrets just to keep peace in the house. When the counselor I confided in told me he was jealous of my accomplishments instead of being proud of me. Good riddance!”

8. “When he ran off to play golf after we came home from the hospital with our son. A few days later, he went again while I had to drive myself to the hospital with the baby. It turned out I had severe mastitis and a 103-degree fever, and he just took off.”

9. “We were in the bathroom getting showered and dressed for a friend’s wedding. I was in the best shape of my life then, feeling good about myself, and I thought I looked good in my suit. She was finishing her makeup, and I remarked on how beautiful she looked. I waited for her to say something nice in return, but she didn’t. And it just hit me. I couldn’t remember a single time when she complimented me on my appearance. So I said to her, ‘You ‘now, I always tell you how beautiful you are and how attracted to you I am, but I never recall you saying that I look good or that I look handsome.’”

“She stopped applying her mascara long enough to roll her eyes at me dismissively. So I mistakenly asked her, ‘Do you even find me attractive?’ She flatly said, ‘No.’ I asked, ‘Why did you marry me then?’ and she said, ‘I didn’t think it was important at the time.’ I’ve never felt so ugly and unloved. And it hurt even more when I felt so good about myself for once in my life 30 seconds earlier.”

10. “I realized I married the wrong person when he yelled at me that I only cared about money during an argument. This was after he quit a job on the spot with no backup plans and without consulting me yet again. This upset me because I only wanted a partner willing to share the load and work with me towards our future. I should have known better. I planned and paid for the wedding myself, and I kept us financially stable for nearly a decade as he was fired from, and quit, job after job, all while I worked at the same company, in a job I hated, for the stability. I tried so many times to talk to him about finding a job he could stick with or build on and cutting unnecessary costs so we could save to buy a house and start a family.”

“After those talks, he’d say he was on board and ready to put forth the effort, but ultimately, after that argument (and so many years of nothing changing), I realized he was never going to grow up, and I’d be caring for a man-child for the rest of our marriage. I’m happily divorced from him now.”

11. “When he didn’t mention me in his speech at our wedding. He thanked everyone else, commented on the bridesmaids, and talked about our daughters. I may as well not have even been there. On the first night of our honeymoon, I got horrendously sick, and he left me alone in our room to go watch something on the big screen on the beach. So much for in sickness and in health!”

12. “Right after saying, ‘I do,’ we were taking photos with all our friends. I heard him tell his best man how beautiful one of our guests was. It may have been a small thing, but I felt it in my gut that we would not last. I tried my best for five years amid his violent alcoholism and gaslighting. We had a baby, and he never once got up to help.”

13. “I was eight months pregnant. He’d lost his job a few months prior and had spent all his time gaming since. I said in frustrated despair, ‘Why can’t you get a job?’ and he said, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’ I had to leave work early because of pregnancy complications.”

14. “I come from a low-income family. She doesn’t. Her family gave us $10k for our wedding, and she spent it on a motorcycle. I was struggling to pay my bills each month. She then bought a house closer to a job I was actively trying to leave despite my months of pleading for her not to. She did it anyway. After six months of living in the house I didn’t want, I told her I was done. She told all my friends and family it was because I was cheating on her. I lost many friends, but I’ve never been happier. She can keep them.”

15. “I was exhausted from taking care of our newborn by myself and told him I couldn’t do it alone anymore. Instead of offering to pitch in and help, he suggested we put the baby up for adoption.”

16. “When I almost died because he refused to take me to the hospital despite my begging. I had become so isolated at that point, and I also knew better than to call an ambulance. But it didn’t hit until I was in the hospital, right after the doctor let me know if I waited even two days longer, my respiratory system was close to shutting down. All he could say was, ‘But you don’t even NEED to be here. I do! My stomach hurts so bad.’ It took a month or so longer to end the relationship. But I realized then that he never loved me. He never cared. And I was just lucky to have made it out alive. The only reason I made it to the hospital was because my parents had found out about my state, and THEY took me. I hadn’t spoken to them for weeks/months before then.”

“He immediately told everyone that he wanted to take me, but I refused and that he was scared. Then, when it was the two of us, he would scream about how I was so dramatic and lazy. I am glad to have left him behind.”

17. “The nail in the coffin was when I drove myself to the hospital for my hysterectomy because it was too early for him to get up. This might have been at the 13-year mark.”

18. “Before we even got married, I was trying to record our daughter’s first steps, and after multiple attempts of videoing, I was still getting him yelling expletives in the background of every video because he was angry at his computer game. I asked him to stop swearing for a minute so I could get a video of our child’s first steps, and he told me to shut up. He didn’t even look over to watch her walking for the first time. That’s when I knew.”

19. “There was a chance that I might have been pregnant, but our roof was leaking, and I still had to climb up to patch it. He refused. He was too afraid. It was at that moment I knew I would always have to be the strong one. I don’t mind having to be the strong one; I just didn’t want to live my life always having to do so. I wanted to be able to break and crumble when I felt the need to.”

20. “We were married for 11 years. He planned his business trips exactly on my birthdays to avoid being with me. He always worked during our anniversaries, too. He never made any effort in our relationship. When asked, he says he’s not the romantic type or the one who puts in effort. But it hurts so bad when I see him put so much effort into making others happy.”

21. “A week after we were married, we had a minor disagreement. He told me, ‘You know who you married, and you know this is how I want it.’ I realized then that if this was how he thought, he expected me to set aside my wants and wishes forever. I should have seen the red flags before I said yes, but they turned bright red with flashing lights right there and then.”

22. “While we both had full-time jobs, he never once helped with the cooking, housework, or yard chores. All of that fell on me. And it’s not like his job was more stressful; it was quite leisurely most of the time. Whenever I brought it up, he would always protest that he needed a certain amount of free time daily to feel relaxed. I once asked him to bathe the dogs since we were expecting company. He threw the biggest fit until I finally backed down and said I’d do it myself. I’m so thankful that I’m now married to a man who willingly helps with the domestic duties without being asked.”

23. “When I left the religious cult that we were both part of/we got married in. That was when I realized the religion had masked major incompatibilities, which I just couldn’t see until leaving the cult. By this time, we already had a kid together. If I had figured out the cult was BS just a few months earlier, I would not have a kid, and it would be so much easier to split.”

24. “When he said that taking care of my grandfather towards the end of my grandfather’s life ‘ruined me.’ I was depressed because my grandfather was my best friend, and he died, so I was in a bad place. Instead of supporting me, he basically told me I was broken and not worth the emotional support that I needed to deal with such an important loss in my life. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The divorce cost me a bit, but in the end, it was worth it not to be with a man who would not offer support during a bad time.”

25. “When about two years into marriage (eight years together), she started telling me about all the people she wished she’d been with. Then she started talking to a friend at work and told him she loved him. When I confronted her about it, she said it was like her love for her family, friends, etc. There were many signs before that, but I just ignored them because I wanted us to work.”

26. And: “We got married and went on a honeymoon in China. We were both PhD students at the time. I was from the working class, and her family was middle class. Her father gave her $10k for the honeymoon. So we went to China to celebrate, AND she wanted to do some light pre-dissertation research while there for a month or two. Fine. Well, I spent the entire two months alone in tiny hostels while she did research. I only spoke a few words of Mandarin, and I was a broke graduate student, so I couldn’t afford to get to an airport to fly back home easily. I also had no family support back home, even if I did manage to make it home. I felt trapped. I talked to her about how the trip felt like a research trip, not like a honeymoon, and how I was alone almost every day.”

“We were sharing a laptop while on the trip (I was too poor to own a laptop, despite being in grad school). I opened the laptop one morning before she left to survey a field site without me. Her email was open. She left a message up on the laptop screen. It was to her father, stating she wished I wasn’t there on the trip — our honeymoon. Again, I was told this would be a honeymoon with maybe a slight detour for research. It turned out to be a research trip where I was a burden. She apologized. We stayed together for a few more years after she got sick and I became a caretaker. I wish, in hindsight, I had left China after reading that email.”

This breaks my heart. Have you ever had a similar experience? When did you realize you married the wrong person? You are welcome to share your story in the comments or submit it anonymously using this form for a chance to be featured in a BuzzFeed Community post.

Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.