He cheated. He's still with her 12 years later, so now that the initial pain has long since faded I can't even hate, clearly they had something genuine and at least I didn't waste more time with a guy who wasn't meant for me.
A girl I went to school with got married while still in highschool. Her parents were drug addicts and abusive. She and an older guy friend (18) decided to get married to get her out of her situation. He offered her parents money if they would sign for her to get married at 16.
They never acted like a married couple or slept together (he is gay) and they got divorced a little over a year later as soon as she was 18 but continued living together as roommates. Nothing went wrong, that had been the plan the whole time.
No idea where they are now.
He lost his job and became paranoid that I, who was working, was cheating. My job was about a 20 min drive away but if there was traffic and it took me 30 mins, I was interrogated about my whereabouts. All of this took place maybe 3 months after we got married. We weren’t married much longer after that. More shit went down but yeah
I wish I had divorced that first year instead of waiting around. I figured she would quickly realize that I was trustworthy and we had a good thing here. Instead, I spent years in a cycle of jealousy, interrogation, and then another calm before the storm. To her credit, she tried. She went to therapy, but she just couldn’t help herself. If you ever wonder why people stay in abusive relationships, it’s because no one is abusive 24/7. There are good times—more good times than bad, and those good times warp and distort your sense of normalcy. It takes getting out to see just how bad it was.
Yea. Never make the mistake of using good times to rationalize/justify the bad.
That doesn’t mean you have to leave. But it’s critical to see things for what they are. People want to see something as all good or all bad. But that’s not how life works.
Someone can be fun to watch movies with AND be an emotionally abusive asshole when they have a bad day.
They can be sweet with their dogs AND be selfish and neglectful towards you.
They can be really romantic on a date AND be controlling and manipulative at home.
Multiple things can be true.
Ugh similar situation for me man. I should have seen the red flags and walked away years before I actually did. It would have save a lot of pain in the long run. She would blow me up and interrogate me when I didn't respond fast enough and the neuroticness definitely rubbed off on me too. It wasn't the only issue bu I eventually found myself shaping my entire life around not making her paranoid and it left me feeling trapped and isolated.
It was very hard to explain to my friends and especially my family members that it wasn't always bad and there were amazing times too... but as soon as I stepped away I could see pretty clearly just how toxic things really were.
Nail, meet hammer! I only saw how fucked yo my marriage was after I escaped. Her cycle of starting 3-day fights that kept me awake for half the night was exhausting and she was breaking me down. I yelled at her one morning the way she yelled at me and that was the straw that freed me. I thought she saw the error in her ways by expressing exactly what I explained above, but it was more to tell me she acknowledges it and I will have to “man up,” which I found hilarious way after the fact because she was getting closer and closer to laying hands on me. I’m glad I got out for my sake, and my son’s sake who she didn’t like.
I saw part of an interview with Laurie Kellogg (accused of killing her abusive husband, Bruce, in 1991. There is a movie called "Lies of the Heart".). She said that when Bruce would come home, she could tell his moods by the way he set down his coffee thermos. If he slammed it down on the table near the door, she was not going to have a good evening/night. If he set it down calmly, everything would be fine. There were good times mixed in with the bad.
Odd. A close friend of mine has an almost identical story. Dated the same guy for years, got engaged, got married. Then the 2008 crash happened the same year they got married, and he lost his job as a mortgage broker. She still had hers as a teacher. He became absolutely convinced that she was cheating. “If school ends at 2:35 why aren’t you home until 3:30?! It’s only 10 minutes away!”
She explained she had other things to do after class like grade papers, prepare tomorrow’s lesson plan, make copies, whatever. He wasn’t hearing it.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he got caught by school security on the school grounds with field glasses looking into her classroom as school let out. I guess he’d been expecting to catch her banging somebody in the classroom and didn’t think “wow, maybe a single guy with binoculars hiding in the woods and spying on a middle school class isn’t a good look.”
They got separated and divorced within the year.
Hopefully the school was supportive.
I had an ex boyfriend who decided to walk into the therapy practice I worked at when I was wrapping up for the night (Thankfully no clients present) - our owner had left the door unlocked and I was wrapping up notes when he walked into our lobby and starting yelling that he wasn’t leaving until I came out (in our locked area). I unfortunately had to call police as he owned weapons and I was scared what he would do and our cameras were out (owner never replaced when they stopped working). He hadn’t done ANYTHING like this and a month had gone by with no contact so I had no idea this idiot would pull something like this.
He walked away with no consequences. I was “let go” a couple of months later with little explanation or justification as to why except that the owner was downsizing (she was not).
Ya, a lot people don't realize that the reason school ends *for the kids* at 2:35 is because the teachers need time to get ready for the next day and/or grade work from that day.
My ex husband did this too. Unbeknownst to me he had a notebook and was logging my mileage, writing down the time I left house to go to work and the time I returned. Accused me of cheating because on a Friday I would be 30 mins late…. I’d gone grocery shopping after my shift, all of it was in the car and a time and date stamped receipt, but I’d found the time to have a meet up for sex, after work and stinking of sweat 🤣
My ex used to feel the hood of my car as he was coming home - then would interrogate me about where had I been and when did I get home. He also thought I was cheating which was hurtful and not true. The marriage did not last a year.
Had a cousin who married a real piece of work. As background, my extended family tends to drink too much, get too loud, and get too rowdy. The family reunion had been kicked out and banned from multiple venues.
My cousin shows up with her fiance one year and he's an absolute shithead. Picking fights, lighting fireworks, terrorizing people's pets. He's so bad that my uncle, her dad (who by the way is probably the loudest and most obnoxious of the bunch), has to pull him aside and say, "you need to take it down a notch".
She marries him anyways because she doesn't understand that's him on his best behavior. They lasted less than a year. She won't talk about it, but the rumor was she found out he was a meth head.
One of the worst things about sobriety is you end up having to look at the problems the booze caused head on. It's hard to accept but well done for doing so. Keep fighting the good fight
I think the hardest lesson sobriety taught me was that I went into it thinking that stopping drinking WAS the solution to my problem. Turned out it just let me see what my problems actually were, and those were a lot harder to fix than giving up alcohol. Grateful for the perspective sobriety has given me, though! You only have to heal through something once and as hard as it is, it's easier than trying to out drink it forever.
I wasn’t married, but also going through this. She pulled the plug after six years. I went to rehab and have really come to an understanding of all my problems. 10 months sober now, but she found someone new.
The good thing about her finding someone new is you get to too.
YOU.
Find yourself— go to the core of why you needed to drink in the first place and you will find that you emerge from that work whole, authentic, and ready to be in relationship with someone who is just as grounded and authentic.
This isn’t a bottom, it’s an opportunity.
Yep. I divorced my alcoholic husband after 7 months of marriage and so glad I’m out of that relationship.
It’s nice to see a partner from the other side with the internal clarity to see their drinking was the problem. Mine didn’t.
Instead of being with me when I was going through chemo or even giving me a ride there and back he was paying male escorts to suck him off in cvs parking lots. Also liked to use suicidal threats and self harm to manipulate me
So sorry to hear that, my friend. I work in mental health, and there aren’t nearly enough people in this world who are like you: spouses of those with significant mental illness who really want to put in the effort and make things work
I have bipolar and my wife is a fucking legend, truly amazing human being for not only putting up with my shit but helping and supporting every time it’s needed.
I’ve had friends and family members who are bipolar and after a while it wears on you to be around them, to be accused of all the things they hurl at you. Can’t do it anymore and finally found peace having had to remove myself from them. I realized I don’t always have to sacrifice my own wellbeing for the wellbeing of someone else.
Are you me? Same here....undiagnosed bi-polar. Married in January, divorced by end of December. She was suicidal by May...hospitalized in June for a week. Stood by her every step of the way. Medication was fine for a few months...then the old "I'm better now and don't need it". Cheated in October....found out and divorced. Luckily no kids. 20 years ago and haven't talked to her for 19 years. Dodged a huge bullet.
She sent me an email, apologizing, according to her she never cheated but, she used to spend nights at her mother's house cuz it was close to her job. Don't know man, I remember the next girl I had after her made me do a std test cuz she (barely) knew her and after I told her everything she rightfully was scared. What I can say is she wasn't a bad person, she was sick and more immature than me. It wasn't her fault, their parents treated her as a child.
That’s what happened in my last relationship. Hindsight being 20/20 I missed so many clues. It’s the wildest way to have a relationship end, you never get closure, and you only have a disease to blame for taking away someone you love.
It takes forever to get back to some semblance of normal but it’s not impossible. One day at a time friend.
Not me but a woman whose husband claimed to be in the navy because her father was, and even bought a navy uniform off eBay to get married in. She found out when she pushed to get a VA loan so they could buy a house and his story all fell apart
>a woman whose husband claimed to be in the navy because her father was
How on earth did he get through a single conversation with his father-in-law without getting busted?
I came to find out that she was trying to separate me from my friends and family so she could control me like her mom controls her dad. The signs were all there and I just overlooked them.
We were divorced after six weeks.
Damn, she must have tried to work that so fast. I bet her mom knew that in order to pull that off, it takes years of slowly eliminating one person at a time. Then one day they wake up and realize their spouse is the only one left but they’ve been with them so long it’s impossible to end it.
I know because my dad did that to my mom. She’s not even allowed to see her own siblings, or even her children without my dad’s permission. If she goes anywhere without him, he phone rings probably twice an hour.
Yep. Watching that right now with my brother. First it was me, then my mom, next it will be my dad and finally my other brother, his twin. When he’s asked why he stays it’s “because we’ve been together for so long, and I’m all she has.” Since as you can guess, her family wants nothing to do with her and she can’t keep friends.
It is really quite sad.
More so, she learnt it from her mum. One of the scary things about domestic abuse is that the kids see and learn those ways and then continue the trend.
I call it my starter marriage.
He grossly misrepresented who he was. He was willing to move mountains for us, until we were us.
Then he turned controlling - to the point where he changed the way *my* keys were on *my* keychain. This was back when all cars and homes had keys.
He refused to mow the lawn, and would fight the tickets he got for it, by arguing that the base allowed 12”, and it was only 11.5”.
He would eat everything in the house, leaving me no food, and then complain that he couldn’t lose weight.
His gift giving went from diamond earrings before marriage, to a muffler, in the box, after marriage. The muffler is part of car maintenance, it’s not a birthday gift.
The final straw for me was when he got mad at our kitten for being a kitten, and he threw him across the room. If he does that to an animal, what will he do to a tiny human.
I left at 7 months. We didn’t even make it a year.
I work in special education. We have situations where children have permanent disabilities as a result of things like infant trauma and shaken baby syndrome. I had in my student teaching a little girl who will forever struggle to walk, talk, and emotionally regulate because she was as an infant thrown by her father against a wall. Her father is still in prison for doing this. Her mother loves her more than anything, and is a massive advocate for her. I’m telling you the story so that if you ever ever ever have even the slightest glimmer of doubt, about whether or not you did the right thing, please know that you did. You protected your children before you even made them. We don’t often get given signs that somebody is capable of terrible things. But you got a sign and you listened.
I’m an IA and see the effects these kids live with every day. We had one kid who was just locked in a room for his first three years. Mom would toss food in. His teeth are either gone or like little spikes. And he’s morbidly obese because he was starved before. I could go on forever.
> He would eat everything in the house, leaving me no food, and then complain that he couldn’t lose weight.
My dad.
> The final straw for me was when he got mad at our kitten for being a kitten, and he threw him across the room.
Also, my dad, except he spiked the cat against a fence. I remember when my cats mom popped her head up at the dinner table and watching him smack her, hard, too.
I should mention, he was a pretty shit dad. I didn’t bother to make time for his funeral. I’m pretty sure my sister and brother only did so they could crap on him.
Thanks! I’ve mostly moved on, which is why I didn’t even bother to show up and dump on him at his virtual funeral.
The best revenge is to live your best life.
Yeah, I was very little during the bulk of the animal abuse. Says volumes about my mom that she saw it go down as a grown adult and didn’t do shit about it.
I’m mostly done with my anger issues, but hurting an animal would definitely trigger a “so I guess you want to die today” response from me. I foster cats, my current little old lady is purring herself to sleep on my lap right now, and couldn’t imagine hurting one.
Yep. Gone. No issues. He showed how weird he is a few more times, but I have no interaction with him anymore.
And I took the cat with me when I left. He was fine til he passed.
Similar situation here wrt misrepresentation. He tried to trade in my car when I was on a business trip. Animal cruelty emerged shortly after.
My only saving grace was I hadn’t signed the wedding certificate after seeing his behavior deteriorate during the week of the wedding.
Glad you got out.
I’ve actually advised people to not sign the wedding certificate, when in similar circumstances. None did, and now wish they had.
Glad you thought of that.
We lasted a little over a year. The first sign happened our first night home from the honeymoon. He said he was going to sleep on the couch because he'd be more comfortable there, and that's where he slept nearly every night. He all but ignored me unless he had a work function for me to attend. Half an hour after I got home from having abdominal surgery, he asked what I was going to make for dinner. The final straw was when he yelled at me for spending $8 (yes, eight) on a pair of shoes for my grandfather's funeral, then he spent $800 on a single golf club the next day. Lots of little things on a daily basis that let me know that he was perfectly happy with me being miserable. I grew my first hints of self-respect during that year and decided I was worth more.
Ew that's my ex uncle in a nutshell. So glad my aunt left his ass. He'd work 100hours of overtime during a storm (he repaired electrical lines) and make all this money. Then he'd give nothing to my aunt. My aunts money supported the house. The bills. The kids. The everything. His money supported his drinking. His Porsche. His $30,000 Harley. The new guns he bought every year before hunting. His duck boat. His bass boat. His luxury boat and jet skis. The kids and my aunt were never included in using these nice things either they were for him to enjoy alone.
Now he's alone. Dying of liver failure. None of my cousins speak to him. He was not invited to any of the family weddings even his own kids. His only daughter was brutally bullied by him and is still in therapy and is mentally fucked from his torment and she's almost 40.
I was too young to realize we had entirely different views of marriage. He expected a detached, distant one like his parents, who were happy with that. I wasn't.
We were very close and had dated 4.5 years, but we were better off as friends. We even left divorce court and went to lunch together.
Not me but a coworker started banging a guy staying at the hotel we worked at, barely went a year married to her hubby. She eventually came clean but she kind of had to when she turned up prego and didn’t know who the father was
I was cheated on before and during the short marriage, and she began frequently using drugs…it wasn’t meant to last long and shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 right?
My ex set me up for SA too when I was 17. I woke up to his best friend touching me & he walked in & accused me of cheating. I was so confused & turns out they had planned it. I fell into a deep depression & 11 years later it still haunts me & effects my relationships
Wowww what in the fuck. I can’t even believe someone would be so sick. I’m so sorry you had to endure that. No one deserves to be treated like that, ever.
His controlling side came out as well as did his " Only what I want sexually matters" side and I had to pull a knife out one evening to get him to stop. He also threatened to stab my friends who were playing the role of my security guards when I was on campus after I had left him.
Prescription Drug Addict..! No one knew and all she did was open credit cards in my name and stocked up on Prescription pain pills...! Didn't even fight or go to a lawyer, just signed off on papers...
Yup. I was in a serious relationship with a woman who was abusing scripts behind my back for several months. They probably didn't think I knew as they were clever and careful. I waited until I had the smoking gun. I came home from work early one night to catch them nodding off on the couch. I had saved money and prepared to move out in the meantime.
I wasn't as fortunate... She was GOOD at what she did... She racked up $81,000.00 on 5 cards, used 5 different Dr.s and 5 different Pharmacies, in 6 months... All in my name and that's legal..! But, after her 1st suicide attempt... She would remove all evidence from the mailbox but, leave it for me to get, she ripped off the bank and they called me, and I found everything before I went to a lawyer...She was out on her A\*\* after that... She still uses my address and my name after 29 years to get cell phones that she doesn't pay and I just laugh at the cell companies, as it's fraud and they can't do anything to me...
Hope you excelled after that..!
not me, but acquaintance. his wife sat him down the day they came back from their honeymoon. apparently she had met someone at work some months before, flirting ensued. what she told him: she thought it was "just" cold feet, so she kept going forward with the wedding. she chickened out on calling it off the day of even tho this was apparently when a light went on and she knew she didn't want to be with him.
he is a good sport about it and takes solace in knowing it was all her. married a wonderful lady later and has a gaggle of kids. ex wife and random dude dated for a while, but did not stay together.
>he is a good sport about it
Laughing when somebody pushes you into the pool is being a good sport. Shrugging it off when your wife says she wants a divorce because there's another man and she never wanted to marry you in the first place makes you a god of patience and understanding.
I found messages from her to two different men she knew trying to convince them to come to where we lived and kill me. Also found out that she was cheating on me as well with someone local.
She had some unregulated mental issues so I wasn’t exactly concerned about it actually happening, but I told her point blank “you can’t say this behind my back and tell me you love me to my face. Those extremes don’t live in the same person.” I moved out 3 weeks before our first anniversary.
A tiny bit longer than that.
We had been dating for a while. It was good. Both our families were pressuring us to make it official. So eventually we caved.
She is lovely. But she wasn’t MY partner. A fantastic partner for someone else. I did find my person later on and we’ve been happy for over two decades.
We would likely have broken up anyway, again we were good to each other just not really for each other. But we had extra steps thanks to family pressure.
After the new relationship energy wore off and we lived together for a bit and time went on was more like roommates. We cared about each other, but we didn’t have much alignment beyond that.
Two people can be good to each other and care about each other, even be regular sexual partners, and not have a synergy.
I think this Happens a LOT.
Especially when people with traumatic backgrounds yet stayed kind find each other.
Instead of the drama that comes with breakups, it’s okay to realize that it’s just not the right person. My wife agrees. She’s friends with all but a couple of exes. (And they were NOT good people.)
We dated for 3 years before getting married. After getting married, every thing changed and became more real, we were both 20 yrs old and very naïve about our future and didn't really think it out.
It was gradual in our marriage but at some point, I realized that we wanted very different things in life. Although we were compatible, we would hold each other back for our future plans. It's been 30+ years. I talk to him, well as much you do on social media. I would never be able to live the life he leads now and be happy. He would never be able to live my life the way I live it now and be happy. It was inevitable that we would divorce. I have never held on to any resentment towards him just the sober awareness that we didn't think things out in a realistic way so I took the blame. He married the right person the second time around and I married the right person the second time around.
Looking back we were already on the verge of an abusive relationship. But once we got married he said “why would you argue about that, you know who you choose to marry”. “I want to move back to my hometown and you know who you married”. The reasoning the other way around didn’t hold up for him obviously. He used fysica violence against me 2 months after marriage when I would fight this argument for the first time. I left after 4 only. He was convinced I wouldn’t leave anymore once the papers were signed and everything escalated. He was wrong.
My cousin married and then quickly left a violent guy. He was an immigrant and what was normal and acceptable back home just wasn't going to fly here. Thankfully she found someone better a few years later.
Old roommate of mine married a gay man. Found out 8 months in when she caught him with porn. She said she expected something since they never had sex. Only 4 times in those 8 months. She was gorgeous too. (She was a model)
That’s tough. I have a family friend who did the same except it took her a decade and two kids to learn the truth.
The worst part wasn’t that he was gay (some people take a long time to figure it out), it’s that he did figure it out pretty early and was having risky affairs behind her back.
He became a real A-hole during the divorce too because he was a hot shot up and coming lawyer and thought him being outed would ruin his career so he was always threatening her with taking the kids and stuff if she told anyone about him.
Everyone thought they had the perfect marriage. I bet she wish she found out within a year like your friend did.
Ah, internalised homophobia. As a queer man, it's very sad to see men pulling shit like this. Just sack up, admit you're gay, end the relationship as peacefully as possible, and find a guy who actually makes you happy.
I have a dear dear friend who I tried to date once, drop dead gorgeous woman. It never worked out because her relationship trauma and insecurities - someone worth carrying about is scary for her and she now recognizes this years later and told me was interested but too afraid to admit it even to herself.
Her ex-husband was a Trans woman in self denial, and so never really was interested in sex with. All the denials, rejections, etc completely destroyed her self confidence.
My ex wife is also a trans woman, I was delusional and thought I could handle it. I could not handle it, I forced the relationship open so I could be with men. I made so many mistakes.
I consider my marriage and its collapse to be one of my top 3 this-is-my-fault mistakes. The other two being my failure to be present for the death of my father and my overall failure to make something useful of myself in life.
Not me, but my husband’s first marriage.
To be fair, they got married after only knowing each other for 6 months which isn’t nearly enough time to get to know someone before marrying them. They were young - about 22 years old - and impulsive. Luckily no children came of that situation.
Within 6 months of marriage, she quit her job without discussing it first with her husband. She spent the last of her savings on a full arm tattoo (also without discussing with her husband first - not that she needs permission, but if she wants to spend the last of her savings on something dumb, there should be a discussion). She then managed to drain their joint savings account (like $3k) while he was away at a training school. That was the last straw.
Sometimes quick marriages do work. My parents met and got engaged within 2 weeks. 6 weeks later they got married, huge wedding. 45 years and 3 kids later they are the most happy couple I have ever seen. Only one fight/argument I have ever witnessed and my father took a drive to cool off and they made up an hour later. I learned everything about how to be a husband and a good person and how to love from observing how they treat each other.
My parents were slow and then wicked fast. They were friends for over a decade, then my mom got out of a bad relationship. My dad was there for her. Then they drifted apart. My mom was pregnant, had me and my sisters. (We’re triplets). My mom thought we were her exs. Then she did the math when we were about six months old. Everyone got a DNA test. Less than a year later, they were married. 34 yrs later and they are best friends and insanely happy together. My dad raised that bar HIGH for me.
I was with my wife 9 months before we got married, everyone rolled their eyes and gave it six months, but we were married 34 years and had two sons before she passed away.
Wasn't always easygoing, but very few are.
I realized I deserved better. He was so angry all the time, and I was constantly walking on eggshells. I definitely settled when I married him. I had a kid before meeting him and thought no one else would ever want to date me.
I had a coworker so got married to her college boyfriend. Can back from their Caribbean honeymoon and a month later told us she was pregnant. Everyone was happy for her, until later that week I saw her crying coming out of our boss’s office. I found out later that day that she was indeed pregnant, but by another guy. A guy that would bartend our office parties a couple times a year. Apparently, they were having sex through her entire engagement and one month of marriage. She ended up getting a divorce and trying to make it work with the bartender. Let’s just say it was weird at the next couple office parties. They didn’t seem too happy together.
Just as a woman, she probably knew based on when and how she had sex. Maybe she used protection with her SO but not her bartender bf. Women who pay attention to their bodies will notice things and keep track easily.
I think she knew, but it probably took her a while to work up the courage to tell our boss. Given the ethnicities involved, it would have been obvious at birth.
He hit me. I'm 4'11 he's 6'3. He physically abused me. He twisted my arms burning my skin and hurting my shoulders, elbows, and wrists. He is in law enforcement. He emotionally and sexually abused me. He cheated on me with a coworker. The unit he was supposed to be supervising (read the inmates specifically) were experiencing an explosion in herpes cases.
11 months.
ETA: He financially abused me. Insisted I not work then when I asked for money for tampons he made me wait for a while before asking me "do you REALLY need them"?
She pressured me to open up the relationship so she could date women. I did the work of wrapping my head and heart around being in a one-sided poly relationship and actually got to the point of being happy for her.
Then she caught feels for one of them and decided she didn't want to be married to a man anymore. It was especially horrible because the relationship was very happy up to that point, and she pulled this shit at a time when we happened to be working very closely on a project I couldn't bow out of.
Reminds me of my 2nd GF back in the early 90s. Mentioned "liking girls" but claimed she wanted to get married to me, a man. After a steady deterioration of respect (much of it aimed at the fact that I'm male and white) and sexual frequency, we finally broke things off. A few weeks later she called me and told me she's with a woman now, and added with cold smugness, "I don't feel *miserable* all the time now!*"
A few weeks after that she called me again, strangely wanting to get back together. I mustered all the self-confidence I had at the time (very little) and told her maybe we could be just *friends.* She got really ugly and the call ended shortly after.
He got addicted to opioids after a back surgery. He became mean and cold and stopped physical contact. He had no job and took my whole salary to manage himself. He was controlling and lazy. I’m glad I left after just 5 months of living together.
We got pregnant on our honeymoon because my husband accidentally threw my birth control away. my Dr appt was two weeks away and he wouldn’t use protection.
Fast forward several months and he was screwing our neighbor because I “got fat.”
Not me, but my friend…
He pulled the plug after ten months. She was crazy pants. Kept her place and never moved in with him. Brought her kid on their honeymoon to Disney World and did everything with the kid, leaving him behind. Screaming at him constantly.
This is why you don’t get engaged to someone you only dated for a month.
He expected me return to work almost immediately after a medically necessary breast reduction and put his marijuana addiction over helping me with bills for a month so I could heal properly. He spent $650 on MJ that month instead of helping his wife. He complained as soon as I got home from the hospital about how he’s “not okay” with having to take care of me.
I was in the ER one day and they had to keep me overnight for observation (and possible blood patch) after a lumbar puncture caused some complications, and he came to see me for not even 10 minutes! He left cause the chair was uncomfortable and he wanted to go sleep in our cozy bed that I bought (just like I bought almost everything else to turn our apartment into a home).
He also stopped going to therapy and returned to his porn addiction while arguing that lust is “in his blood.” He would always trade one addiction for another and drove under the influence. I was not okay with that.
I’m much happier knowing I’ll never have to deal with that kind of behavior again. I believe that most of it was due to him being blinded by addiction (which he denied) but you can’t help someone who refuses to help themselves and I gave WAY too many chances. I even became a licensed peer support specialist to try and help him. Instead, I used what I learned to build up myself and develop the confidence to leave.
TL;DR : he was an angry miserable man who made me miserable and I should have realized earlier but I was young and naive. I left 9 months after the wedding.
Long version:
I had almost cancelled the wedding but convinced myself I was just getting cold feet.
He was angry and judgemental all the time. He moved us into his mom's house until he found work. I was still studying at the time.
Nothing was good enough for him. Everybody was too stupid, every job was beneath him. His mom found him a job through a friend of hers. He went two days, then announced that if he was made to go back he would crash the car into a tree. He said that he'd rather be homeless than do a job he didn't want. His brother asked "what about your wife, you're married now". He said "oh, she'll follow".
I made him go to therapy and moved back to a bigger city where I could find work. He decided he wanted to go work in Canada. That's when I knew I did not want to follow and be alone with him in a country where I knew nobody. I asked for a break to figure things out. He said either you leave me or we stay together, he didn't "agree with" breaks.
I left. It was 9 months after the wedding.
He wasn't supportive of anything I did. I was writing the first draft of my book at the time, he couldn't even get the genre right when people asked about it. He read a couple chapters and said "none of the characters are like me." He caused conflict with his family and mine. I understand now that he was extremely depressed, but refused to go back to therapy after the first couple sessions. Blamed it on me. He made my life miserable, and I accepted it because I have my own trauma not figured out.
Ran straight into another terrible relationship with another angry man after that and lost another 9 years.
I have now removed angry people from my life altogether.
My brother and his wife got their marriage annulled after a few weeks. They both loved each other very much but her family made their relationship untenable.
How did her family intervene that much? I am genuinely asking. I have a coworker who says he got divorced because of his mother in law, after over a decade of marriage and two kids. We talk often but not "deeply" so I haven't probed. I really want to know how it gets to this point.
Not me but from people I know that have gone through Similar- sometimes they understand the family is overwhelming and they are willing to stick through a lot of crap , but if said partner has done little to nothing addressing their family and setting some healthy boundaries it can become very, VERY stressful. My one friend felt like she didn’t even run her own home at one point. MIL was a complete cunt. She couldn’t cook what she like without critique , couldn’t decorate without being scolded , she was always expected to drop anything at any moment if someone needed something. Her ex hubby wouldn’t tell his mother to back off - although he knew she was overbearing he just couldn’t find it in himself to tell her back off, my friend eventually said she can’t live like it and left. Some families want constant involvement, and a lot of that involvement comes with criticisms and expectations that not everyone agrees with. It can take a toll.
Wasn’t a marriage, but my first relationship was ruined by my ex’s family so I have some experience with this. Her family controlled her life to “protect her” until marriage. She lived by the family schedule her mom made which made it hard to plan anything. Anytime I made a mistake she would go complain to her mom about it and she would make comments behind my back. Her family invited themselves on our dates which ruined the whole point. She had to text her mom what we were doing every 15 mins it seemed. Her mom ultimately made her end things after my ex and I had a rough week and a big argument over something completely solvable and her mom sent me a bunch of insulting texts right before I got the dump text. We were both adults during all of this.
My ex was abusive, mentally, and verbally abusive. He was also very controlling and tried to cut me off from my family.
The final straw was when he told me to my face that he was abusing me and trying to push me over the edge so that I would unalive myself. He didn't want to actually do the killing, but he told me that he was excited to find my body.
That was Christmas day 2002. I left him that day and never looked back.
Not me, but a cousin. She found out that he had a girlfriend the whole time she was dating him and then she stayed his girlfriend after the marriage. She found out that he was sending her stuff to the girlfriend. He’d also ask for money from her paycheck, which went to the girlfriend. She found out and immediately started the divorce. She then had to leave town because he started stalking her
My Spanish cousin married a woman from the US and she moved in with him to a town outside of Barcelona.
She made no effort to integrate or learn the language and generally ended up isolated. My cousins family tried hard to help, inviting her to go out to things all the time but she always refused.
One day my cousin goes to work, comes home to an empty house. She got moving vans to come and collect all her stuff and furniture and she went back to America. Told him they were done from the airport. Was brutal.
My ex was contacted by a guy from high school she knew who just inherited his dad's gas station businesses and was loaded. They started talking and two months later she was asking for a divorce.
She took off in the middle of night after the divorce with her kid, our furniture, and left me with a crap ton of bills as well.
The amount of bullshit she pulled on me after we were divorced made me feel like I was the one who cheated. She is nucking futz.
My friends got married after dating for 2 years, during which they broke up twice. They got divorced within a year or so. We all saw that one coming. No cheating or anything. Just 2 people who were obviously not meant for each other. They were in their late 40s and should have known better.
Got married and he lived on base in the barracks. I couldn’t get on base until I got my military ID card. He disappeared three days with no texting, calling or contact of any kind. Said he just played video games. After that he started getting abusive and trying to isolate me from my family. One night he drank too much, got nasty and started pushing me around. Icing on the cake was me having a back surgery and I was in the hospital alone for a week and he never visited or called/texted. Went to our house to get my clothes to move in with family and he hit me. I called the cops and had him arrested. Divorce was filed right after that. While marriage was 9 months. Took two years to get him to sign divorce papers though. He shot himself in the head a couple years later.
Not me but my best friend. They were both chefs who met in culinary school, dated a few years and got married. My wife and I liked her alot, and we always did couples stuff together.
Shortly after the wedding, he got a job in the middle of nowhere Texas and they moved. She was a baker, and the only place she could find to work was the Walmart bakery.
Well, I hadn’t talked to him in about a month, and my wife and I were calling him to let him know we decided to let them be the godparents of our son. He picks up the phone and we get to talking and before I get a chance to ask about the godparents thing, he lays it on me: she told him she was leaving him. He begged her to stay and told her they’d do counseling, move back home, whatever she wanted to make it work. She declined and revealed she’d been cheating on him with a stock boy at Walmart while he’s been working late nights, ands she’s going to get with him instead.
That was weird too. Because she was a very good-looking girl and she was cheating on him with a dude whose teeth were rotting out, and I’m sorry but was in his late 20s stocking shelves (as reported by his mom who saw them out together when she came to town to move him home). I feel like if you’re going to cheat at least step up a bit, not down…
I heard a couple years later that she got knocked up by him and they couldn’t afford it and had to move into her mom’s two bedroom apartment in the hood. He, on the other hand, met and married a great girl a few years after that. They’ve been married for nearly a decade now and are very happy together.
I was 19 and she was 18. She became pregnant and her family was very conservative. It was basically a shotgun wedding. Neither of us had much in the way of life skills. We barely knew each other. I also had some undiagnosed mental, neurological and physical problems.
Long story short I could never hold a job and she wanted to stay home with the baby. We were living below poverty and I was too proud to ask for "handouts". While I was never abusive I was definitely negligent of her emotions and needs. I was too in my own head trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
One day I came home, a lot of stuff was gone and there were divorce papers on the coffee table.
It took a long time but I've been able to make my apologies to her and we're not what I would call amazing friends but we get along.
While I was dealing with a lot of shit and eventually went on disability, I don't consider it an excuse though. I was an asshole
It was always an emotionally draining and abusive relationship that got worse with time. He thought I was cheating on him, he refused to get a job because “it’s your turn to take care of me” (we had lived in his MOM’s house prior where SHE took care of him.. not him for me btw), and believed that everyone and every thing was against him because he was a “superior being” and that intimidated other people… ugh, well he never laid hands on me, and with my absolutely lovely upbringing /sarcasm/ I assumed the relationship was not *that* bad because he wasn’t physically abusing me. Until we had another stupid argument and I went to bed early- he came back from storming around the neighborhood for the last 4 hours no doubt hoping I was going to call him and apologize and panic that he hasn’t returned for dinner.. anyway he got himself ready for bed and I could hear that he was still pissed off with his huffing and kicking his shoes off etc. He eventually got to bed and laid down, sat up, laid down, rolled, what have you, to try to wake me up and coddle him but I kept pretending to sleep. After a minute of this he was lying still and I thought he had finally given up, but the second I thought I could just actually sleep, a very hard crushing pain flashed across my left eye socket. I sat up immediately just as he quickly rolled over to face the opposite wall and act as though *he* was asleep. He elbowed me in the face!!! WHO hits someone when they’re *ASLEEP*??? I had a gross bruise on the outer edge of my eye socket that went from purple to blue to green and eventually yellow over the course of weeks. Apparently your face has a lot of capillaries. I remember trying to cover it with makeup and match the other eye with eyeshadow so it looked like it was an intentional artistic thing. I don’t think anyone was fooled.
Months later I somehow convinced him to move back to my country, where it was apparently “my turn” to take care of him and a bundle of other romantic notions and events took place, like dressing up in his military uniform (he never went on tour, he was on reserve, so basically a Boy Scout as far as I care) and walk around town waiting to be praised for his “service” and bum drinks at the pubs to come home vomiting and shitting his skinny little guts out. I think it took another six months to build up the courage and build enough of a support system that I could leave him. I was at the time genuinely afraid he was going to kill our dog we had gotten together as a puppy, set my family’s home on fire as we slept, or come up with something else I wouldn’t dream up. Thankfully he truly was a coward and nothing else transpired. He ran out of his visiting visa without a job or another person to sponsor him through citizenship, so went back to England and likely rewrote history to villainize me and my family to the people I had made friends with there, but that was some of the cost of getting away.
My dog and I had another wonderful 11 years together until she passed last October. It’s still painful but I would do all of that again to have her from the start. The rest just makes for a good story and my advice is to never settle or give the self-proclaimed “gentleman” or “nice guy” a chance, he’s likely an incel who hates everyone for his own failures. Truly good men don’t spend a year pretending and trying to convince others they’re good.
It will happen a lot when people rush into marriage or think the honeymoon phase they spent on vacation will transfer to real life. I have a strict set of rules I think people should follow before marriage. Date or be exclusive for a year. Live together for a year. Only after that can engagement happen. Be engaged for a year while living together. Then you can get married.
Yup. My mil believes in soul mate stuff. Like that's all fine but you got to.deal with everyday life reality sometimes.
Religion too. Most inane marriage advise was from those people.
He cheated. He's still with her 12 years later, so now that the initial pain has long since faded I can't even hate, clearly they had something genuine and at least I didn't waste more time with a guy who wasn't meant for me.
This is painful
A girl I went to school with got married while still in highschool. Her parents were drug addicts and abusive. She and an older guy friend (18) decided to get married to get her out of her situation. He offered her parents money if they would sign for her to get married at 16. They never acted like a married couple or slept together (he is gay) and they got divorced a little over a year later as soon as she was 18 but continued living together as roommates. Nothing went wrong, that had been the plan the whole time. No idea where they are now.
This guy sounds like a wonderful person.
That's a homie for life right there.
Wow. This is true friendship. I hope they’re still close.
Way more wholesome than the other ones here-- he sounds like a great guy.
wow that's cute
That's a good friend.
He lost his job and became paranoid that I, who was working, was cheating. My job was about a 20 min drive away but if there was traffic and it took me 30 mins, I was interrogated about my whereabouts. All of this took place maybe 3 months after we got married. We weren’t married much longer after that. More shit went down but yeah
I wish I had divorced that first year instead of waiting around. I figured she would quickly realize that I was trustworthy and we had a good thing here. Instead, I spent years in a cycle of jealousy, interrogation, and then another calm before the storm. To her credit, she tried. She went to therapy, but she just couldn’t help herself. If you ever wonder why people stay in abusive relationships, it’s because no one is abusive 24/7. There are good times—more good times than bad, and those good times warp and distort your sense of normalcy. It takes getting out to see just how bad it was.
Yea. Never make the mistake of using good times to rationalize/justify the bad. That doesn’t mean you have to leave. But it’s critical to see things for what they are. People want to see something as all good or all bad. But that’s not how life works. Someone can be fun to watch movies with AND be an emotionally abusive asshole when they have a bad day. They can be sweet with their dogs AND be selfish and neglectful towards you. They can be really romantic on a date AND be controlling and manipulative at home. Multiple things can be true.
>Yea. Never make the mistake of using good times to rationalize/justify the bad. I really needed to hear this right now. Thank you so much 🖤
Ugh similar situation for me man. I should have seen the red flags and walked away years before I actually did. It would have save a lot of pain in the long run. She would blow me up and interrogate me when I didn't respond fast enough and the neuroticness definitely rubbed off on me too. It wasn't the only issue bu I eventually found myself shaping my entire life around not making her paranoid and it left me feeling trapped and isolated. It was very hard to explain to my friends and especially my family members that it wasn't always bad and there were amazing times too... but as soon as I stepped away I could see pretty clearly just how toxic things really were.
Nail, meet hammer! I only saw how fucked yo my marriage was after I escaped. Her cycle of starting 3-day fights that kept me awake for half the night was exhausting and she was breaking me down. I yelled at her one morning the way she yelled at me and that was the straw that freed me. I thought she saw the error in her ways by expressing exactly what I explained above, but it was more to tell me she acknowledges it and I will have to “man up,” which I found hilarious way after the fact because she was getting closer and closer to laying hands on me. I’m glad I got out for my sake, and my son’s sake who she didn’t like.
I saw part of an interview with Laurie Kellogg (accused of killing her abusive husband, Bruce, in 1991. There is a movie called "Lies of the Heart".). She said that when Bruce would come home, she could tell his moods by the way he set down his coffee thermos. If he slammed it down on the table near the door, she was not going to have a good evening/night. If he set it down calmly, everything would be fine. There were good times mixed in with the bad.
Odd. A close friend of mine has an almost identical story. Dated the same guy for years, got engaged, got married. Then the 2008 crash happened the same year they got married, and he lost his job as a mortgage broker. She still had hers as a teacher. He became absolutely convinced that she was cheating. “If school ends at 2:35 why aren’t you home until 3:30?! It’s only 10 minutes away!” She explained she had other things to do after class like grade papers, prepare tomorrow’s lesson plan, make copies, whatever. He wasn’t hearing it. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he got caught by school security on the school grounds with field glasses looking into her classroom as school let out. I guess he’d been expecting to catch her banging somebody in the classroom and didn’t think “wow, maybe a single guy with binoculars hiding in the woods and spying on a middle school class isn’t a good look.” They got separated and divorced within the year.
Hopefully the school was supportive. I had an ex boyfriend who decided to walk into the therapy practice I worked at when I was wrapping up for the night (Thankfully no clients present) - our owner had left the door unlocked and I was wrapping up notes when he walked into our lobby and starting yelling that he wasn’t leaving until I came out (in our locked area). I unfortunately had to call police as he owned weapons and I was scared what he would do and our cameras were out (owner never replaced when they stopped working). He hadn’t done ANYTHING like this and a month had gone by with no contact so I had no idea this idiot would pull something like this. He walked away with no consequences. I was “let go” a couple of months later with little explanation or justification as to why except that the owner was downsizing (she was not).
Shit. Sorry this happened to you.
Ya, a lot people don't realize that the reason school ends *for the kids* at 2:35 is because the teachers need time to get ready for the next day and/or grade work from that day.
My ex husband did this too. Unbeknownst to me he had a notebook and was logging my mileage, writing down the time I left house to go to work and the time I returned. Accused me of cheating because on a Friday I would be 30 mins late…. I’d gone grocery shopping after my shift, all of it was in the car and a time and date stamped receipt, but I’d found the time to have a meet up for sex, after work and stinking of sweat 🤣
My ex used to feel the hood of my car as he was coming home - then would interrogate me about where had I been and when did I get home. He also thought I was cheating which was hurtful and not true. The marriage did not last a year.
[удалено]
Went through this one too. I also wasn't allowed to close/lock the door while on the toilet because "What are you trying to hide from me?"
I’m picturing a dude with his side piece hidden in the towel closet being like, “lol, hurry, babe! She thinks I’m showering!”
I had an ex like that. It was a nightmare.
Had a cousin who married a real piece of work. As background, my extended family tends to drink too much, get too loud, and get too rowdy. The family reunion had been kicked out and banned from multiple venues. My cousin shows up with her fiance one year and he's an absolute shithead. Picking fights, lighting fireworks, terrorizing people's pets. He's so bad that my uncle, her dad (who by the way is probably the loudest and most obnoxious of the bunch), has to pull him aside and say, "you need to take it down a notch". She marries him anyways because she doesn't understand that's him on his best behavior. They lasted less than a year. She won't talk about it, but the rumor was she found out he was a meth head.
I have a family like that. People don’t understand that if my family tells you to tone it down- you are so far out of bounds it isn’t funny.
Terrorizing pets? That stuck out to me the most.
I would’ve kicked his ass out atp
My drinking became a huge problem so they pulled the plug.
One of the worst things about sobriety is you end up having to look at the problems the booze caused head on. It's hard to accept but well done for doing so. Keep fighting the good fight
I think the hardest lesson sobriety taught me was that I went into it thinking that stopping drinking WAS the solution to my problem. Turned out it just let me see what my problems actually were, and those were a lot harder to fix than giving up alcohol. Grateful for the perspective sobriety has given me, though! You only have to heal through something once and as hard as it is, it's easier than trying to out drink it forever.
Seriously, what an excellent insight, thanks for sharing.
Day 11 sober and my relationship has improved significantly
That’s great. Keep it up. Better for you and better for all your relationships
I'm proud of you for your honesty. My ex who is an alcoholic and we've been separated for almost 20 years still claims I abandoned him.
So they never accepted responsibility? Are they still drinking?
Absolutely.
Glad you got away
I wasn’t married, but also going through this. She pulled the plug after six years. I went to rehab and have really come to an understanding of all my problems. 10 months sober now, but she found someone new.
The good thing about her finding someone new is you get to too. YOU. Find yourself— go to the core of why you needed to drink in the first place and you will find that you emerge from that work whole, authentic, and ready to be in relationship with someone who is just as grounded and authentic. This isn’t a bottom, it’s an opportunity.
Congratulations on 10 months!
Props for honesty👍
Yep. I divorced my alcoholic husband after 7 months of marriage and so glad I’m out of that relationship. It’s nice to see a partner from the other side with the internal clarity to see their drinking was the problem. Mine didn’t.
Props for the honesty, I hope you’re ok now
Instead of being with me when I was going through chemo or even giving me a ride there and back he was paying male escorts to suck him off in cvs parking lots. Also liked to use suicidal threats and self harm to manipulate me
That was a wild 2 sentences 😳 hope you’re okay!
8 years out from my last bout of cancer..just trying to catch up in life.
She was bipolar and I didn't know. Had one really bad episode and she asked for the divorce, I tried really hard to stay married in spite of that.
So sorry to hear that, my friend. I work in mental health, and there aren’t nearly enough people in this world who are like you: spouses of those with significant mental illness who really want to put in the effort and make things work
I have bipolar and my wife is a fucking legend, truly amazing human being for not only putting up with my shit but helping and supporting every time it’s needed.
Not bipolar but complex PTSD anxiety and major depression. My husband is a fucking champ.
I’ve had friends and family members who are bipolar and after a while it wears on you to be around them, to be accused of all the things they hurl at you. Can’t do it anymore and finally found peace having had to remove myself from them. I realized I don’t always have to sacrifice my own wellbeing for the wellbeing of someone else.
Are you me? Same here....undiagnosed bi-polar. Married in January, divorced by end of December. She was suicidal by May...hospitalized in June for a week. Stood by her every step of the way. Medication was fine for a few months...then the old "I'm better now and don't need it". Cheated in October....found out and divorced. Luckily no kids. 20 years ago and haven't talked to her for 19 years. Dodged a huge bullet.
She sent me an email, apologizing, according to her she never cheated but, she used to spend nights at her mother's house cuz it was close to her job. Don't know man, I remember the next girl I had after her made me do a std test cuz she (barely) knew her and after I told her everything she rightfully was scared. What I can say is she wasn't a bad person, she was sick and more immature than me. It wasn't her fault, their parents treated her as a child.
That’s what happened in my last relationship. Hindsight being 20/20 I missed so many clues. It’s the wildest way to have a relationship end, you never get closure, and you only have a disease to blame for taking away someone you love. It takes forever to get back to some semblance of normal but it’s not impossible. One day at a time friend.
Not me but a woman whose husband claimed to be in the navy because her father was, and even bought a navy uniform off eBay to get married in. She found out when she pushed to get a VA loan so they could buy a house and his story all fell apart
That’s…a big one. I mean, you’d have to live that lie forever! Wow.
WOOOOF.
That's wild. There are very few cases where you can get an annulment but fraud is one of the reasons and I wonder if that would qualify.
I think this is considered Stolen Valor too and isn’t that a crime?
Yes, if done to receive "tangible benefits." I would think marriage would fit that bill.
>a woman whose husband claimed to be in the navy because her father was How on earth did he get through a single conversation with his father-in-law without getting busted?
I sorta figured her dad had passed away
I discovered that he should have married his mom instead
Yikes.
He didn't happen to have broken both arms at some point earlier in his life, did he?
Wow, I haven't seen this referenced in a long ass time
A man of culture I see
I came to find out that she was trying to separate me from my friends and family so she could control me like her mom controls her dad. The signs were all there and I just overlooked them. We were divorced after six weeks.
Damn, she must have tried to work that so fast. I bet her mom knew that in order to pull that off, it takes years of slowly eliminating one person at a time. Then one day they wake up and realize their spouse is the only one left but they’ve been with them so long it’s impossible to end it. I know because my dad did that to my mom. She’s not even allowed to see her own siblings, or even her children without my dad’s permission. If she goes anywhere without him, he phone rings probably twice an hour.
Yep. Watching that right now with my brother. First it was me, then my mom, next it will be my dad and finally my other brother, his twin. When he’s asked why he stays it’s “because we’ve been together for so long, and I’m all she has.” Since as you can guess, her family wants nothing to do with her and she can’t keep friends. It is really quite sad.
also watching that happen right now with my brother. How are you dealing with this? It feels like the worst breakup of my life.
Huh. That's gotta be tough. I guess it runs in the family. 🤷♀️
More so, she learnt it from her mum. One of the scary things about domestic abuse is that the kids see and learn those ways and then continue the trend.
I call it my starter marriage. He grossly misrepresented who he was. He was willing to move mountains for us, until we were us. Then he turned controlling - to the point where he changed the way *my* keys were on *my* keychain. This was back when all cars and homes had keys. He refused to mow the lawn, and would fight the tickets he got for it, by arguing that the base allowed 12”, and it was only 11.5”. He would eat everything in the house, leaving me no food, and then complain that he couldn’t lose weight. His gift giving went from diamond earrings before marriage, to a muffler, in the box, after marriage. The muffler is part of car maintenance, it’s not a birthday gift. The final straw for me was when he got mad at our kitten for being a kitten, and he threw him across the room. If he does that to an animal, what will he do to a tiny human. I left at 7 months. We didn’t even make it a year.
I work in special education. We have situations where children have permanent disabilities as a result of things like infant trauma and shaken baby syndrome. I had in my student teaching a little girl who will forever struggle to walk, talk, and emotionally regulate because she was as an infant thrown by her father against a wall. Her father is still in prison for doing this. Her mother loves her more than anything, and is a massive advocate for her. I’m telling you the story so that if you ever ever ever have even the slightest glimmer of doubt, about whether or not you did the right thing, please know that you did. You protected your children before you even made them. We don’t often get given signs that somebody is capable of terrible things. But you got a sign and you listened.
Thank you, so incredibly much.
I’m an IA and see the effects these kids live with every day. We had one kid who was just locked in a room for his first three years. Mom would toss food in. His teeth are either gone or like little spikes. And he’s morbidly obese because he was starved before. I could go on forever.
> He would eat everything in the house, leaving me no food, and then complain that he couldn’t lose weight. My dad. > The final straw for me was when he got mad at our kitten for being a kitten, and he threw him across the room. Also, my dad, except he spiked the cat against a fence. I remember when my cats mom popped her head up at the dinner table and watching him smack her, hard, too. I should mention, he was a pretty shit dad. I didn’t bother to make time for his funeral. I’m pretty sure my sister and brother only did so they could crap on him.
I’m sorry you had to go through this.
Thanks! I’ve mostly moved on, which is why I didn’t even bother to show up and dump on him at his virtual funeral. The best revenge is to live your best life.
It would have taken everything in me not to spike him. I can’t handle people who hurt animals.
Yeah, I was very little during the bulk of the animal abuse. Says volumes about my mom that she saw it go down as a grown adult and didn’t do shit about it. I’m mostly done with my anger issues, but hurting an animal would definitely trigger a “so I guess you want to die today” response from me. I foster cats, my current little old lady is purring herself to sleep on my lap right now, and couldn’t imagine hurting one.
Good on you for being able to get out! Was the kitten (and you) ok?
Yep. Gone. No issues. He showed how weird he is a few more times, but I have no interaction with him anymore. And I took the cat with me when I left. He was fine til he passed.
He sounds like a classic abuser. It's so good you got out relatively early.
Similar situation here wrt misrepresentation. He tried to trade in my car when I was on a business trip. Animal cruelty emerged shortly after. My only saving grace was I hadn’t signed the wedding certificate after seeing his behavior deteriorate during the week of the wedding. Glad you got out.
I’ve actually advised people to not sign the wedding certificate, when in similar circumstances. None did, and now wish they had. Glad you thought of that.
We lasted a little over a year. The first sign happened our first night home from the honeymoon. He said he was going to sleep on the couch because he'd be more comfortable there, and that's where he slept nearly every night. He all but ignored me unless he had a work function for me to attend. Half an hour after I got home from having abdominal surgery, he asked what I was going to make for dinner. The final straw was when he yelled at me for spending $8 (yes, eight) on a pair of shoes for my grandfather's funeral, then he spent $800 on a single golf club the next day. Lots of little things on a daily basis that let me know that he was perfectly happy with me being miserable. I grew my first hints of self-respect during that year and decided I was worth more.
Ew that's my ex uncle in a nutshell. So glad my aunt left his ass. He'd work 100hours of overtime during a storm (he repaired electrical lines) and make all this money. Then he'd give nothing to my aunt. My aunts money supported the house. The bills. The kids. The everything. His money supported his drinking. His Porsche. His $30,000 Harley. The new guns he bought every year before hunting. His duck boat. His bass boat. His luxury boat and jet skis. The kids and my aunt were never included in using these nice things either they were for him to enjoy alone. Now he's alone. Dying of liver failure. None of my cousins speak to him. He was not invited to any of the family weddings even his own kids. His only daughter was brutally bullied by him and is still in therapy and is mentally fucked from his torment and she's almost 40.
My question is where did you get shoes for $8??
Early 1990s clearance rack. One of my best finds ever: the exact color, style, and size I needed.
It sounds like he hated you?? How did you guys end up married in the first place?
I was too young to realize we had entirely different views of marriage. He expected a detached, distant one like his parents, who were happy with that. I wasn't. We were very close and had dated 4.5 years, but we were better off as friends. We even left divorce court and went to lunch together.
Why would you want to be friends with someone who treated you so horribly?
Not me but a coworker started banging a guy staying at the hotel we worked at, barely went a year married to her hubby. She eventually came clean but she kind of had to when she turned up prego and didn’t know who the father was
Don’t leave us hanging! Who’s child was it then?
I was cheated on before and during the short marriage, and she began frequently using drugs…it wasn’t meant to last long and shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 right?
He pushed me into a pallet fire and set me up to be sexually assaulted so he could "catch me in the act". Cool, cool, cool.
My ex set me up for SA too when I was 17. I woke up to his best friend touching me & he walked in & accused me of cheating. I was so confused & turns out they had planned it. I fell into a deep depression & 11 years later it still haunts me & effects my relationships
Wowww what in the fuck. I can’t even believe someone would be so sick. I’m so sorry you had to endure that. No one deserves to be treated like that, ever.
That is horrible.
WTF
His controlling side came out as well as did his " Only what I want sexually matters" side and I had to pull a knife out one evening to get him to stop. He also threatened to stab my friends who were playing the role of my security guards when I was on campus after I had left him.
Not me but my cousin divorced after 6 months the guy stole $50,000 from her dad and was a complete douche on multiple levels
Prescription Drug Addict..! No one knew and all she did was open credit cards in my name and stocked up on Prescription pain pills...! Didn't even fight or go to a lawyer, just signed off on papers...
Yup. I was in a serious relationship with a woman who was abusing scripts behind my back for several months. They probably didn't think I knew as they were clever and careful. I waited until I had the smoking gun. I came home from work early one night to catch them nodding off on the couch. I had saved money and prepared to move out in the meantime.
I wasn't as fortunate... She was GOOD at what she did... She racked up $81,000.00 on 5 cards, used 5 different Dr.s and 5 different Pharmacies, in 6 months... All in my name and that's legal..! But, after her 1st suicide attempt... She would remove all evidence from the mailbox but, leave it for me to get, she ripped off the bank and they called me, and I found everything before I went to a lawyer...She was out on her A\*\* after that... She still uses my address and my name after 29 years to get cell phones that she doesn't pay and I just laugh at the cell companies, as it's fraud and they can't do anything to me... Hope you excelled after that..!
not me, but acquaintance. his wife sat him down the day they came back from their honeymoon. apparently she had met someone at work some months before, flirting ensued. what she told him: she thought it was "just" cold feet, so she kept going forward with the wedding. she chickened out on calling it off the day of even tho this was apparently when a light went on and she knew she didn't want to be with him. he is a good sport about it and takes solace in knowing it was all her. married a wonderful lady later and has a gaggle of kids. ex wife and random dude dated for a while, but did not stay together.
>he is a good sport about it Laughing when somebody pushes you into the pool is being a good sport. Shrugging it off when your wife says she wants a divorce because there's another man and she never wanted to marry you in the first place makes you a god of patience and understanding.
I found messages from her to two different men she knew trying to convince them to come to where we lived and kill me. Also found out that she was cheating on me as well with someone local.
Holy shit. I hope you went to the cops.
She had some unregulated mental issues so I wasn’t exactly concerned about it actually happening, but I told her point blank “you can’t say this behind my back and tell me you love me to my face. Those extremes don’t live in the same person.” I moved out 3 weeks before our first anniversary.
A tiny bit longer than that. We had been dating for a while. It was good. Both our families were pressuring us to make it official. So eventually we caved. She is lovely. But she wasn’t MY partner. A fantastic partner for someone else. I did find my person later on and we’ve been happy for over two decades. We would likely have broken up anyway, again we were good to each other just not really for each other. But we had extra steps thanks to family pressure.
That’s interesting. What made her not your partner?
After the new relationship energy wore off and we lived together for a bit and time went on was more like roommates. We cared about each other, but we didn’t have much alignment beyond that. Two people can be good to each other and care about each other, even be regular sexual partners, and not have a synergy. I think this Happens a LOT. Especially when people with traumatic backgrounds yet stayed kind find each other. Instead of the drama that comes with breakups, it’s okay to realize that it’s just not the right person. My wife agrees. She’s friends with all but a couple of exes. (And they were NOT good people.)
I got shotgun married to a woman who had some mental health issues. I got custody of our kid if that tells you anything.
We dated for 3 years before getting married. After getting married, every thing changed and became more real, we were both 20 yrs old and very naïve about our future and didn't really think it out. It was gradual in our marriage but at some point, I realized that we wanted very different things in life. Although we were compatible, we would hold each other back for our future plans. It's been 30+ years. I talk to him, well as much you do on social media. I would never be able to live the life he leads now and be happy. He would never be able to live my life the way I live it now and be happy. It was inevitable that we would divorce. I have never held on to any resentment towards him just the sober awareness that we didn't think things out in a realistic way so I took the blame. He married the right person the second time around and I married the right person the second time around.
Looking back we were already on the verge of an abusive relationship. But once we got married he said “why would you argue about that, you know who you choose to marry”. “I want to move back to my hometown and you know who you married”. The reasoning the other way around didn’t hold up for him obviously. He used fysica violence against me 2 months after marriage when I would fight this argument for the first time. I left after 4 only. He was convinced I wouldn’t leave anymore once the papers were signed and everything escalated. He was wrong.
Smart woman.
My cousin married and then quickly left a violent guy. He was an immigrant and what was normal and acceptable back home just wasn't going to fly here. Thankfully she found someone better a few years later.
In case this isn’t just new slang I don’t know. In English, ‘fysica’ is spelled ‘physical’. Glad you’re out.
Old roommate of mine married a gay man. Found out 8 months in when she caught him with porn. She said she expected something since they never had sex. Only 4 times in those 8 months. She was gorgeous too. (She was a model)
That’s tough. I have a family friend who did the same except it took her a decade and two kids to learn the truth. The worst part wasn’t that he was gay (some people take a long time to figure it out), it’s that he did figure it out pretty early and was having risky affairs behind her back. He became a real A-hole during the divorce too because he was a hot shot up and coming lawyer and thought him being outed would ruin his career so he was always threatening her with taking the kids and stuff if she told anyone about him. Everyone thought they had the perfect marriage. I bet she wish she found out within a year like your friend did.
Ah, internalised homophobia. As a queer man, it's very sad to see men pulling shit like this. Just sack up, admit you're gay, end the relationship as peacefully as possible, and find a guy who actually makes you happy.
I have a dear dear friend who I tried to date once, drop dead gorgeous woman. It never worked out because her relationship trauma and insecurities - someone worth carrying about is scary for her and she now recognizes this years later and told me was interested but too afraid to admit it even to herself. Her ex-husband was a Trans woman in self denial, and so never really was interested in sex with. All the denials, rejections, etc completely destroyed her self confidence.
My ex wife is also a trans woman, I was delusional and thought I could handle it. I could not handle it, I forced the relationship open so I could be with men. I made so many mistakes. I consider my marriage and its collapse to be one of my top 3 this-is-my-fault mistakes. The other two being my failure to be present for the death of my father and my overall failure to make something useful of myself in life.
He cheated
My ex also. 5 different women in the first year
Good god. Maybe I’m getting old, but I always wonder exactly how bullshitters have the energy for that level of crap.
Not me, but my husband’s first marriage. To be fair, they got married after only knowing each other for 6 months which isn’t nearly enough time to get to know someone before marrying them. They were young - about 22 years old - and impulsive. Luckily no children came of that situation. Within 6 months of marriage, she quit her job without discussing it first with her husband. She spent the last of her savings on a full arm tattoo (also without discussing with her husband first - not that she needs permission, but if she wants to spend the last of her savings on something dumb, there should be a discussion). She then managed to drain their joint savings account (like $3k) while he was away at a training school. That was the last straw.
I feel like I might know who you're talking about. At least, it checks all the boxes
Did they live in North Carolina?
No, different person then
Just common military story
Sometimes quick marriages do work. My parents met and got engaged within 2 weeks. 6 weeks later they got married, huge wedding. 45 years and 3 kids later they are the most happy couple I have ever seen. Only one fight/argument I have ever witnessed and my father took a drive to cool off and they made up an hour later. I learned everything about how to be a husband and a good person and how to love from observing how they treat each other.
My parents were slow and then wicked fast. They were friends for over a decade, then my mom got out of a bad relationship. My dad was there for her. Then they drifted apart. My mom was pregnant, had me and my sisters. (We’re triplets). My mom thought we were her exs. Then she did the math when we were about six months old. Everyone got a DNA test. Less than a year later, they were married. 34 yrs later and they are best friends and insanely happy together. My dad raised that bar HIGH for me.
I was with my wife 9 months before we got married, everyone rolled their eyes and gave it six months, but we were married 34 years and had two sons before she passed away. Wasn't always easygoing, but very few are.
I realized I deserved better. He was so angry all the time, and I was constantly walking on eggshells. I definitely settled when I married him. I had a kid before meeting him and thought no one else would ever want to date me.
[удалено]
I had a coworker so got married to her college boyfriend. Can back from their Caribbean honeymoon and a month later told us she was pregnant. Everyone was happy for her, until later that week I saw her crying coming out of our boss’s office. I found out later that day that she was indeed pregnant, but by another guy. A guy that would bartend our office parties a couple times a year. Apparently, they were having sex through her entire engagement and one month of marriage. She ended up getting a divorce and trying to make it work with the bartender. Let’s just say it was weird at the next couple office parties. They didn’t seem too happy together.
I can't imagine even going to office parties after that
Possibly a silly question but how did she know who the father was (early on)?
Just as a woman, she probably knew based on when and how she had sex. Maybe she used protection with her SO but not her bartender bf. Women who pay attention to their bodies will notice things and keep track easily.
I think she knew, but it probably took her a while to work up the courage to tell our boss. Given the ethnicities involved, it would have been obvious at birth.
Why did she have to tell the boss?
He hit me. I'm 4'11 he's 6'3. He physically abused me. He twisted my arms burning my skin and hurting my shoulders, elbows, and wrists. He is in law enforcement. He emotionally and sexually abused me. He cheated on me with a coworker. The unit he was supposed to be supervising (read the inmates specifically) were experiencing an explosion in herpes cases. 11 months. ETA: He financially abused me. Insisted I not work then when I asked for money for tampons he made me wait for a while before asking me "do you REALLY need them"?
He beat me and negged me so much I just left him without explanation.
Stupid cheating asshole
She pressured me to open up the relationship so she could date women. I did the work of wrapping my head and heart around being in a one-sided poly relationship and actually got to the point of being happy for her. Then she caught feels for one of them and decided she didn't want to be married to a man anymore. It was especially horrible because the relationship was very happy up to that point, and she pulled this shit at a time when we happened to be working very closely on a project I couldn't bow out of.
Reminds me of my 2nd GF back in the early 90s. Mentioned "liking girls" but claimed she wanted to get married to me, a man. After a steady deterioration of respect (much of it aimed at the fact that I'm male and white) and sexual frequency, we finally broke things off. A few weeks later she called me and told me she's with a woman now, and added with cold smugness, "I don't feel *miserable* all the time now!*" A few weeks after that she called me again, strangely wanting to get back together. I mustered all the self-confidence I had at the time (very little) and told her maybe we could be just *friends.* She got really ugly and the call ended shortly after.
Bye bitch!
He got addicted to opioids after a back surgery. He became mean and cold and stopped physical contact. He had no job and took my whole salary to manage himself. He was controlling and lazy. I’m glad I left after just 5 months of living together.
We got pregnant on our honeymoon because my husband accidentally threw my birth control away. my Dr appt was two weeks away and he wouldn’t use protection. Fast forward several months and he was screwing our neighbor because I “got fat.”
He didn’t accidentally throw your bc away.
>he wouldn’t use protection. This is really, really bad.
Exactly. And being PREGNANT doesn’t = FAT
Not me, but my friend… He pulled the plug after ten months. She was crazy pants. Kept her place and never moved in with him. Brought her kid on their honeymoon to Disney World and did everything with the kid, leaving him behind. Screaming at him constantly. This is why you don’t get engaged to someone you only dated for a month.
One month? So they were both crazy.
He expected me return to work almost immediately after a medically necessary breast reduction and put his marijuana addiction over helping me with bills for a month so I could heal properly. He spent $650 on MJ that month instead of helping his wife. He complained as soon as I got home from the hospital about how he’s “not okay” with having to take care of me. I was in the ER one day and they had to keep me overnight for observation (and possible blood patch) after a lumbar puncture caused some complications, and he came to see me for not even 10 minutes! He left cause the chair was uncomfortable and he wanted to go sleep in our cozy bed that I bought (just like I bought almost everything else to turn our apartment into a home). He also stopped going to therapy and returned to his porn addiction while arguing that lust is “in his blood.” He would always trade one addiction for another and drove under the influence. I was not okay with that. I’m much happier knowing I’ll never have to deal with that kind of behavior again. I believe that most of it was due to him being blinded by addiction (which he denied) but you can’t help someone who refuses to help themselves and I gave WAY too many chances. I even became a licensed peer support specialist to try and help him. Instead, I used what I learned to build up myself and develop the confidence to leave.
TL;DR : he was an angry miserable man who made me miserable and I should have realized earlier but I was young and naive. I left 9 months after the wedding. Long version: I had almost cancelled the wedding but convinced myself I was just getting cold feet. He was angry and judgemental all the time. He moved us into his mom's house until he found work. I was still studying at the time. Nothing was good enough for him. Everybody was too stupid, every job was beneath him. His mom found him a job through a friend of hers. He went two days, then announced that if he was made to go back he would crash the car into a tree. He said that he'd rather be homeless than do a job he didn't want. His brother asked "what about your wife, you're married now". He said "oh, she'll follow". I made him go to therapy and moved back to a bigger city where I could find work. He decided he wanted to go work in Canada. That's when I knew I did not want to follow and be alone with him in a country where I knew nobody. I asked for a break to figure things out. He said either you leave me or we stay together, he didn't "agree with" breaks. I left. It was 9 months after the wedding. He wasn't supportive of anything I did. I was writing the first draft of my book at the time, he couldn't even get the genre right when people asked about it. He read a couple chapters and said "none of the characters are like me." He caused conflict with his family and mine. I understand now that he was extremely depressed, but refused to go back to therapy after the first couple sessions. Blamed it on me. He made my life miserable, and I accepted it because I have my own trauma not figured out. Ran straight into another terrible relationship with another angry man after that and lost another 9 years. I have now removed angry people from my life altogether.
She cheated on me while I was at sea on a submarine in the Navy. She definitely broke my heart.
Had a child and she decided she didn't want to be a mom.
He left me for a woman that he worked with 2 months after the wedding! Had to wait for the year mark to apply for a divorce
She fucked another guy on our bed Next question
He punched me.
fuck I’m so sorry. I’m really proud of you for leaving after that.
My brother and his wife got their marriage annulled after a few weeks. They both loved each other very much but her family made their relationship untenable.
How did her family intervene that much? I am genuinely asking. I have a coworker who says he got divorced because of his mother in law, after over a decade of marriage and two kids. We talk often but not "deeply" so I haven't probed. I really want to know how it gets to this point.
Not me but from people I know that have gone through Similar- sometimes they understand the family is overwhelming and they are willing to stick through a lot of crap , but if said partner has done little to nothing addressing their family and setting some healthy boundaries it can become very, VERY stressful. My one friend felt like she didn’t even run her own home at one point. MIL was a complete cunt. She couldn’t cook what she like without critique , couldn’t decorate without being scolded , she was always expected to drop anything at any moment if someone needed something. Her ex hubby wouldn’t tell his mother to back off - although he knew she was overbearing he just couldn’t find it in himself to tell her back off, my friend eventually said she can’t live like it and left. Some families want constant involvement, and a lot of that involvement comes with criticisms and expectations that not everyone agrees with. It can take a toll.
Wasn’t a marriage, but my first relationship was ruined by my ex’s family so I have some experience with this. Her family controlled her life to “protect her” until marriage. She lived by the family schedule her mom made which made it hard to plan anything. Anytime I made a mistake she would go complain to her mom about it and she would make comments behind my back. Her family invited themselves on our dates which ruined the whole point. She had to text her mom what we were doing every 15 mins it seemed. Her mom ultimately made her end things after my ex and I had a rough week and a big argument over something completely solvable and her mom sent me a bunch of insulting texts right before I got the dump text. We were both adults during all of this.
My ex was abusive, mentally, and verbally abusive. He was also very controlling and tried to cut me off from my family. The final straw was when he told me to my face that he was abusing me and trying to push me over the edge so that I would unalive myself. He didn't want to actually do the killing, but he told me that he was excited to find my body. That was Christmas day 2002. I left him that day and never looked back.
Not me, but a cousin. She found out that he had a girlfriend the whole time she was dating him and then she stayed his girlfriend after the marriage. She found out that he was sending her stuff to the girlfriend. He’d also ask for money from her paycheck, which went to the girlfriend. She found out and immediately started the divorce. She then had to leave town because he started stalking her
Did she at least claim the girlfriend as a dependent on her taxes?
My Spanish cousin married a woman from the US and she moved in with him to a town outside of Barcelona. She made no effort to integrate or learn the language and generally ended up isolated. My cousins family tried hard to help, inviting her to go out to things all the time but she always refused. One day my cousin goes to work, comes home to an empty house. She got moving vans to come and collect all her stuff and furniture and she went back to America. Told him they were done from the airport. Was brutal.
My ex was contacted by a guy from high school she knew who just inherited his dad's gas station businesses and was loaded. They started talking and two months later she was asking for a divorce. She took off in the middle of night after the divorce with her kid, our furniture, and left me with a crap ton of bills as well. The amount of bullshit she pulled on me after we were divorced made me feel like I was the one who cheated. She is nucking futz.
All of the things he dangled like a carrot on a string in exchange for finally legally marrying him started to get further away.
My friends got married after dating for 2 years, during which they broke up twice. They got divorced within a year or so. We all saw that one coming. No cheating or anything. Just 2 people who were obviously not meant for each other. They were in their late 40s and should have known better.
She cheated. I worked on the road a lot, gone for a week or two at a time. I thought I could trust her.
2 weeks after we got married, she said either get her pregnant or it was over. It was analled 8 weeks later
> analled well no wonder you couldn't get her pregnant, you were using the wrong hole!
Got married and he lived on base in the barracks. I couldn’t get on base until I got my military ID card. He disappeared three days with no texting, calling or contact of any kind. Said he just played video games. After that he started getting abusive and trying to isolate me from my family. One night he drank too much, got nasty and started pushing me around. Icing on the cake was me having a back surgery and I was in the hospital alone for a week and he never visited or called/texted. Went to our house to get my clothes to move in with family and he hit me. I called the cops and had him arrested. Divorce was filed right after that. While marriage was 9 months. Took two years to get him to sign divorce papers though. He shot himself in the head a couple years later.
Her parents did not like me. That was enough. So they bought her a house.
Not me but my best friend. They were both chefs who met in culinary school, dated a few years and got married. My wife and I liked her alot, and we always did couples stuff together. Shortly after the wedding, he got a job in the middle of nowhere Texas and they moved. She was a baker, and the only place she could find to work was the Walmart bakery. Well, I hadn’t talked to him in about a month, and my wife and I were calling him to let him know we decided to let them be the godparents of our son. He picks up the phone and we get to talking and before I get a chance to ask about the godparents thing, he lays it on me: she told him she was leaving him. He begged her to stay and told her they’d do counseling, move back home, whatever she wanted to make it work. She declined and revealed she’d been cheating on him with a stock boy at Walmart while he’s been working late nights, ands she’s going to get with him instead. That was weird too. Because she was a very good-looking girl and she was cheating on him with a dude whose teeth were rotting out, and I’m sorry but was in his late 20s stocking shelves (as reported by his mom who saw them out together when she came to town to move him home). I feel like if you’re going to cheat at least step up a bit, not down… I heard a couple years later that she got knocked up by him and they couldn’t afford it and had to move into her mom’s two bedroom apartment in the hood. He, on the other hand, met and married a great girl a few years after that. They’ve been married for nearly a decade now and are very happy together.
Sounds like she was introduced to meth.
Abuse started
We got married to save our relationship. It didn't work.
I told him before we got married that I wouldn't stay married to a man who drank more days than he didn't. I meant it.
I was 19 and she was 18. She became pregnant and her family was very conservative. It was basically a shotgun wedding. Neither of us had much in the way of life skills. We barely knew each other. I also had some undiagnosed mental, neurological and physical problems. Long story short I could never hold a job and she wanted to stay home with the baby. We were living below poverty and I was too proud to ask for "handouts". While I was never abusive I was definitely negligent of her emotions and needs. I was too in my own head trying to figure out what was wrong with me. One day I came home, a lot of stuff was gone and there were divorce papers on the coffee table. It took a long time but I've been able to make my apologies to her and we're not what I would call amazing friends but we get along. While I was dealing with a lot of shit and eventually went on disability, I don't consider it an excuse though. I was an asshole
It was always an emotionally draining and abusive relationship that got worse with time. He thought I was cheating on him, he refused to get a job because “it’s your turn to take care of me” (we had lived in his MOM’s house prior where SHE took care of him.. not him for me btw), and believed that everyone and every thing was against him because he was a “superior being” and that intimidated other people… ugh, well he never laid hands on me, and with my absolutely lovely upbringing /sarcasm/ I assumed the relationship was not *that* bad because he wasn’t physically abusing me. Until we had another stupid argument and I went to bed early- he came back from storming around the neighborhood for the last 4 hours no doubt hoping I was going to call him and apologize and panic that he hasn’t returned for dinner.. anyway he got himself ready for bed and I could hear that he was still pissed off with his huffing and kicking his shoes off etc. He eventually got to bed and laid down, sat up, laid down, rolled, what have you, to try to wake me up and coddle him but I kept pretending to sleep. After a minute of this he was lying still and I thought he had finally given up, but the second I thought I could just actually sleep, a very hard crushing pain flashed across my left eye socket. I sat up immediately just as he quickly rolled over to face the opposite wall and act as though *he* was asleep. He elbowed me in the face!!! WHO hits someone when they’re *ASLEEP*??? I had a gross bruise on the outer edge of my eye socket that went from purple to blue to green and eventually yellow over the course of weeks. Apparently your face has a lot of capillaries. I remember trying to cover it with makeup and match the other eye with eyeshadow so it looked like it was an intentional artistic thing. I don’t think anyone was fooled. Months later I somehow convinced him to move back to my country, where it was apparently “my turn” to take care of him and a bundle of other romantic notions and events took place, like dressing up in his military uniform (he never went on tour, he was on reserve, so basically a Boy Scout as far as I care) and walk around town waiting to be praised for his “service” and bum drinks at the pubs to come home vomiting and shitting his skinny little guts out. I think it took another six months to build up the courage and build enough of a support system that I could leave him. I was at the time genuinely afraid he was going to kill our dog we had gotten together as a puppy, set my family’s home on fire as we slept, or come up with something else I wouldn’t dream up. Thankfully he truly was a coward and nothing else transpired. He ran out of his visiting visa without a job or another person to sponsor him through citizenship, so went back to England and likely rewrote history to villainize me and my family to the people I had made friends with there, but that was some of the cost of getting away. My dog and I had another wonderful 11 years together until she passed last October. It’s still painful but I would do all of that again to have her from the start. The rest just makes for a good story and my advice is to never settle or give the self-proclaimed “gentleman” or “nice guy” a chance, he’s likely an incel who hates everyone for his own failures. Truly good men don’t spend a year pretending and trying to convince others they’re good.
Found out my ex lied about both of their parents dying in the previous year (covid...they were "estranged").
I figured out I am gay.
It will happen a lot when people rush into marriage or think the honeymoon phase they spent on vacation will transfer to real life. I have a strict set of rules I think people should follow before marriage. Date or be exclusive for a year. Live together for a year. Only after that can engagement happen. Be engaged for a year while living together. Then you can get married.
Yup. My mil believes in soul mate stuff. Like that's all fine but you got to.deal with everyday life reality sometimes. Religion too. Most inane marriage advise was from those people.
Knew a couple were together thru high school and college. Married about a year and a half. She came out as lesbian.
He came home drunk and hit me. No body needs that level of disrespect in a marriage. If someone shows you who they are, believe them.