Relationships are rough. Maybe it’s because we expect them to last forever rather than accepting that different relationships will naturally last for varying amounts of time. It can be difficult to tell when a relationship you’re in is going south, usually, there is a defining moment of realisation.
These divorced individuals revealed the moments they realised their marriage was over:
Finding 6 250-count CD cases filled with burned DVD porn, and $30K in credit card charges racked up for various porn websites, DVD purchases, etc.
I’m not against porn, but I discovered that he literally spent every waking hour that he wasn’t working copying porn DVDs. 6-8 hours a day of copying porn. And he’d call in sick easily once a week to spend more time with the porn.
I will never forget this for as long as I live. Our marriage had been on autopilot for a while and one night we finally had a brutally honest conversation/argument. She asked me, “What do you want from me?!” I said, “I just want you to be with me the way I want to be with you.” This is when I knew our marriage was over. She said, “Well, that’s just not going to happen.”
That memory is so incredibly painful for me, even now after we’ve been divorced for years and I am remarried with a beautiful child. I still cry sometimes thinking about my ex. It still hurts.
She decided to stay at a friends place for a couple of days to be closer to work while working long shifts. After a week she decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore and filed for divorce. After about a month of her ignoring me I found out through a mutual friend that she had been screwing her boss and had gotten pregnant and that’s why she left.
I got it right the second time around but the first time…no. We didn’t live together first, big mistake. He had been able to hide his alcoholism from me even though I knew and worked closely with him for 3 years before we started dating.
After we got married I tried to put him on the lease, he was denied for having 3 DUIs and a contributing to the delinquency of a minor charge. He said those were in his past and he’s changed. Six months later, I was dusting a bookcase and found a liquor bottle wedged behind some books and upon further sleuthing found 5 more assorted bottles stashed around the apartment. We had a stocked liquor cabinet but he wanted to hide his habit.
He said he would get help, he didn’t. One night he drove home drunk and shoved me against the wall when I told him how reckless that was. I called the cops, he got held overnight, I boxed his stuff and downloaded the divorce papers and told his dad to bring him to the bank after picking him up from the station so we could split the account and notarize the paperwork.
He said, “Why are you overreacting to this? It’s not like I hit you.” I said, “Why do you think I’m stupid enough to wait until you do?” That was that.
My ex and I got married very young. I was 15 and he was 17. We were together 11 years and loved each other, but realized we weren’t letting each other grow up. Staying a teenager forever isn’t an option when you’ve got kids. It’s been five years and we still care about each other. We’ve both moved on, he’s a great dad. He and his fiancee are my youngest sons godparents and they are having my goddaughter in January.
She threw a pot of boiling water at me because I was paying more attention to my son than her. I had just gotten home from work and he asked me to play the Nintendo with him.
She told me that the voices were telling her to hurt the kids. It broke me. This was after 4 years of treatment for schizophrenia. She wasn’t getting better, only worse.
He became a totally different person after we got married. He became very controlling and manipulative. I was expected to do all the chores and make dinner every night (this after working a highly stressful 40 hour/week job). He became emotionally and verbally abusive to me. Constantly thought I was cheating on him. If I had anything other than a smile on my face at all times I was ridiculed. Everything that happened was always my fault. He was never wrong. He was always the victim. I didn’t want to go home because I didn’t know if I was walking into Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Had him go to 2 different counsellors and didn’t make it more than 2 sessions with each because he didn’t need therapy. I decided to stop it all when I started to become depressed from the constant stress. I am a normally very happy positive person and I became a walking bunch of nerves. I couldn’t get past the belief that anyone who truly loved me would never treat me like he had been. Have been divorced for 6 months now. Although I get lonely sometimes, I would still take loneliness a thousand times over being back with him.
After 4 years without sex we knew it was dead. We had two great kids but were just two roommates raising kids together. I moved out and after 8 years apart were still good friends. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
It took years for me to finally get to the point where I was done. The last straw was the night he drunkenly screamed at me for hours, at least 5 hours. Then, he blared crappy music for another hour or so, before finally passing out. He’d done it several times in the past, but that time, it broke me. I spent most of the next day crying. That gut wrenching, mournful type of crying. I had a job and moved out six months later. It’s been 4 years, I don’t regret a minute.
I just realized that no matter what I did he was never going to change. I let him walk all over me and cheat on me for years and kept thinking of I just did more, was more patient, a better wife etc, he would realize his mistakes.
He would cheat. I would catch him. A huge fight would break out. He would manipulate me into it somehow being my fault he did it. “You don’t love me enough, you’ll never trust me again, you didn’t have sex with me that one time back in 2006 and I felt rejected”. Somehow I would have to make it up to him and prove to him I trusted him.
I’d forgive him and work my ass off to be happier, nicer, more understanding (all the bullshit he fed me) and after a few months I would just catch him all over again.
The last straw was when he convinced me he had really changed. He wanted to be a family, the whole package.
Of course I ended up pregnant. It turned out to be high risk and I was hospitalized often. Only allowed home with bed rest. Even then he wouldn’t stop running around on me.
I lost 45 pounds, my hair started falling out, I was to weak to even walk. My own family thought I was dying.
He didn’t even care.
So at one point I was sitting by myself and I just realized. I was done. He was never going to change. And it wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t fix whatever was broken in him and I was done trying.
It took six months after the baby was born before doctors would let me go back to work. I moved out. Spent a few years alone. Now I’m with a fantastic man that loves me.
The divorce is still dragging on. My ex tried a lot of crappy tricks when he found out I was leaving. I laughed in his face at every one.
He doesn’t get it. At one point I seriously thought I would die. I thought my kids would be left alone with only him to take care of them. After going through that, nothing he could do could bother me. Ever.
I worked with special needs people, and my ex would say the nastiest, most disgusting things about special needs people to put me down and mock my career ambitions. That’s when he bothered to talk to me at all. He wanted a woman that would take care of him and his needs, but he cared very little about reciprocating. I didn’t want to have kids with him and have the kids think that how we were living was acceptable.
Easy answer?
Steve.
See, Steve was that guy my ex knew in high school. That guy where there was always a spark of chemistry, but the time was never right. He was the “one that got away”.
Years later when we’d been married for a few years she got back in touch with some old friends and wound up going to visit those old friends – Steve included. Old sparks began to fly, and next thing you know the missus was carrying on an affair with Steve.
She left me to be with him. They were soul-mates, after all. Denied their true love by fourteen years of time and two intervening marriages (me and my wife and Steve and his).
That’s the easy answer. Blame it on Steve.
Truth is, I never should have got married in the first place. At least, not to her. It was doomed from the get-go and Steve was just a willing scapegoat.
Basically about three months after she her green card, she wanted to separate. After another six months she said she was homesick and wanted to go back to Japan and wanted a divorce. Since then (April of 2009) she has gotten a dental hygienist degree, a nursing degree, remarried( last summer ). And she is still in the U.S.
When I got into a big fight with our 19 year old son and punched him in the face. She understandably left me for that. Me and my son were fine like a month later. It was all because of him playing Xbox all day and not looking for a job. Everybody else in the family was working or going to school.
That was the first time I ever hit anyone. I went to 26 anger management classes, and it was my last. It happened 6 years ago.
