Breakups are never fun or easy for either party involved, but that doesn't mean it is okay to be totally heartless when cutting the cord on a relationship. What ever happened to sitting a partner down and explaining why things aren't working out? It's a much kinder option than ghosting a long term partner in the middle of the night or cheating on them while they're away for work. These heartbroken Redditors share cruelest ways they've been dumped. Content has been edited for clarity.
Why Date If You’re Gonna Do That?!
“I was BEST friends with a guy for four years. We were obsessed with each other and people constantly asked why we weren’t dating. We never did anything physical, even down to a kiss. I basically sat and watched him run through chicks for years, and he would get wasted and tell me he loved me, and he wanted to be with me and even marry me.
I finally caved after four years.
Less than two months later, he started telling me he missed having me as just a friend and left me for a girl ten years younger than him that ran around in our friend circle. I found out when she posted them kissing on Instagram three days after he ‘broke his phone’ and had been ignoring me.”
That’s Pretty Low
“My college roommate spent an entire weekend with his girlfriend from another state knowing he was going to break up with her. When he took her to drop off at the train station on Sunday, he waited until she was leaning in with the car door open to kiss him goodbye. He broke the news instead of kissing her – he didn’t even unbuckle and get out.
She stood there stunned with bags on the curb, and he closed the door and drove off. I thought that was pretty low.”
Why Did He Have To Do It Like That?
“My boyfriend broke up with me by texting me asking how my day was.
I said, ‘Fine, how was yours?’
He responded with,’Great had a fantastic day with my girlfriend.’
I was at work all day. We had been together for four years, and been living together for two. He had been cheating on me and decided to leave me for his mistress.
He proceeded to blame the whole situation on me. He tore me down telling me all the ways I was a failure, and what a monster I was. All publicly on social media. He even posted screenshots of our conversations to Facebook and ridiculed me. Including the ones of me begging him not to leave, and disclosed some very personal things I confessed to him. I was sent videos of him and his new girlfriend during intimate times and he would tell her things like, ‘Oh you do this so much better than her’ and ‘You feel so much better than she ever did’ and ‘I never loved her like I love you.’
The real messed up thing is up until that text I thought we were happy. We had even talked about getting engaged. I guess I had been ‘depriving’ him of attention and was making him feel unwanted because I became a full time student and worked a full time job after high school. He was lonely sitting at the house by himself all day because he only worked part-time. I was ‘boring’ because after a 16-hour day, I just wanted to sleep, and not go out and party. He went as far to say that me being gone that long was emotional abuse and I didn’t love him.
I get where he’s coming from, and I understand why he left. I’ll just never understand why he chose to do it like that.”
She’s (Literally) A New Person Now
“I was four and half years into a wonderful relationship. We spoke of marriage, kids, and our future all the time. We travelled the world and supported each other in all aspects of life. Together, we lived in my apartment in the city. She helped me turn my apartment into a home. We had a wonderful life together.
One evening, I broke my leg playing soccer. I called her to tell her the bad news. She didn’t answer, which wasn’t uncommon as she worked some evening shifts, so I left a voicemail. I messaged her – iMessage failed, so I sent it as a normal text. I didn’t think twice about it. The hospital had horrible reception, so I couldn’t get online. My phone died, so I just chilled in the ED with my teammate.
I got a taxi ride home from the ED around 3:00 am. My leg was in a cast and I was on crutches – exhausted and still in my soccer gear. I assumed she was asleep, so I made my way quietly inside to have a shower. I was still a little woozy from the pain killers. I showered, then crawled into the bedroom and into bed. She wasn’t there, nor were any of her belongings. All her stuff was gone. I tried to call, but her phone was off. Nothing. I was confused and worried.
I hobbled back into the living area. All her stuff and our stuff was gone. Literally everything except the couch. I charged my phone and tried to message her on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Whatsapp. She wasn’t on anything them – did she block me? I was confused and wondering if it was real. I fell into bed and passed out, wondering if its all a dream.
I woke up the next morning – not a dream. She legit emptied my house of everything. I tried to call her parents – their number is blocked. I tried her friends, but none of them have heard from her. I started to get worried.
I spent 48 hours trying to get in touch to find out what was going on. Her friends were trying to find out too. Two days later, she left the country to live with her manager and I never hear from her ever again. Like ever. Not a word. Her mail kept getting delivered to my place. Bills bills bills. She was in severe debt to several companies and the government. I knew nothing of this. They tried to chase me, but I managed to get them off my case. They told me that if she ever returns to the country, she will be held up at the airport.
I randomly saw her at the mall last year. I was so confused. I called her name as she walked past me in a ‘is that you’ kind of way. She saw me and was shocked and practically ran away. Her old best friend (who is a good friend of mine now) mentioned that my ex told her she saw me. She was apparently back in the country for an interview and then left the country again. Apparently she didn’t get held up at the airport.
I later found out that she legally changed her name after getting citizenship in another country and now she’s apparently a sugar baby to a 55-year old rich dude.
Anyway, I never had real closure, but it feels like I dodged a serious bullet. I miss what we had at times because I thought we had the most amazing life. Apparently not.”
Let’s Play A Game
“I had a boyfriend that I had been dating for eight months when he asked if we could have an open relationship so he could find out if he was ‘gay’ or not by dating other dudes. I said no because, well, who in their right mind would let their boyfriend date other people so he could find out if he wanted to leave you? He asked me if he could cheat on me!
I became a bit suspicious of him from then on. Love who you love man, but don’t cheat!
Fast forward a few days later: I hear from one of his close friends that he had been doing some risqué things with guys over Skype. I was upset of course, but I didn’t say anything to him. One day later he texts me, asking if I want to play hangman. I thought that he was just trying to be funny, so I played along with him. I mean, who plays hangman over text?
So anyway we play, and I’m guessing letters. Pretty soon the message revealed itself.
‘Break up’ was what he put as the hangman word.
This guy, broke up with me over text, using hangman.”
Runaway Fiancé
“Two weeks before Christmas, two weeks after my father died, three months after my step-dad died, and a month after I had an emergency operation where I almost died, my fiancé left my home (driving) for New Mexico (as planned) to go and get all the rest of his things to finally, after three years, move completely in with me in California before our wedding that was planned to happen in four months.
Seeing him off he told me that he ‘loved me more than the world.’ We kissed and he drove off waving. Somewhere on his way back to New Mexico, he disappeared without a trace. All of our friends, his friends, co-workers, even strangers. Everyone we knew combed the roads, the hospitals, and morgues from California to New Mexico. No one could find him or his car. His friends were beside themselves. I was incredibly distraught not knowing what had happened to him, crying every day. His phone was turned off, no one could track him. Missing person reports were filed, police were called in. His elderly mother was hysterical. We all went into mourning. Everyone knew he had to be dead.
Three months later, he called me. He told me that he had taken off to Texas with a woman he had met through a magazine subscription I had bought him. There was a problem with the subscription. She was an editor. He met her when he went into the office. He told me that leaving me ‘was the worst mistake of his life’ and begged me to come back. Turns out, he had stolen my engagement ring as well. I noticed it was missing, but remembered he said he wanted to have it reset. I thought he wanted to do something special for the wedding.
Stunned and in shock, I hung up on him and never spoke to him again. Not one of his friends ever spoke to him again. His mother didn’t speak to him for two years. He was universally shunned. He even got fired from his job. Then for years he wrote me long, maudlin letters that I never answered. The wedding was canceled. My family ate the deposits. I ate the pain.
A few years later, I was in New Mexico with my new husband – we met on a trip driven by my grief. He’s a wonderful guy, I’m so grateful. We ran into my ex and the woman he had left me for (when I wouldn’t take him back, he went back to her). He looked terrified. My husband, the prince that he is, with a big grin on his face grabbed this loser’s hand, shook it really hard, and said:
‘Man, I really want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You made my world!’
The ex was maaaaad. Then I looked at the woman he had left me for. No kidding, she was at least 15 years older than I am, had at least 50 lbs on me, and looked like a grizzly bear in a muumuu. I literally burst out laughing, but at that moment, I let it go. The ex was more miserable in the life he had made than I could ever wish on him.
So yeah. That breakup was pretty awful.”
The Exes Loss Is The New Girlfriend’s Gain
“I was working away in another country for a year and would come back for a week every few months. To make up for being away, I’d spoil her with gifts, get flowers delivered to her house, buy her massages/fuel/food vouchers she could use whenever. This was on top of messaging her and video calling whenever I could, despite the unfriendly time zones. Basically I was doing what I could with the position I was in. The plan was to buy us a house when I got back – it was a whole reason for me taking the job in the first place.
The year was up and I gave her my flight details for my last trip home. She wanted to pick me up from the airport. She messaged me an hour before I got on the plane to tell me she had been cheating with her ex pretty much the entire time I was away and that were over because ‘she needs some time to herself.’
I was bitter and heartbroken, but fell on my feet and met the best girl ever a month later. I ended up taking the new girlfriend on a year long world trip with some money I’d saved. The ex found out about this and completely flipped her lid. My God, it still feels good even today.”
A One-Two Punch
“My mom had an awful boyfriend. Last year, my grandmother (her mother) was slowly dying of cancer, eventually ending up in hospice. We were over at her house nearly every day. Needless to say, her boyfriend got mad that she ‘wasn’t paying enough attention’ to him. He ended up ignoring her, and she continued to focus on her mom.
So my grandma dies at the end of June. Here comes this guy the next day, telling my mom he’s sorry. His daughter (she’s dating my brother, both of them are handicapped, and I know that’s weird that he was dating my mom too) tells us that her grandpa (his dad) just died very recently too. His dad was in hospice at the same time, but they weren’t close.
The county fair starts at the beginning of July. Mom’s boyfriend has my mom go with him for his birthday, spending all this money on him. He used my mom to buy him stupid stuff at the fair.
A few days later, he makes up something to be mad about and dumps her. Days after her mom died. He also forces my brother and his girlfriend to break up and stop talking.
The extra kicker? We found out his dad actually died a month after he said he was dead. He used his daughter and lied to all of us.”
It Wasn’t Any Better The Second Time Around
“My fiancé of seven years (friends for 15 years, aka half of our lives) left while I was sleeping. He took everything. Never told me why and it was the most horrifying, mentally damaging experience of my life. You have to really not care about someone to hurt them like that.
As much as I hate to admit this, here goes. After he did that, I spent the next eight months desperately trying to convince him to snap out of whatever that was and come home. I allowed him to treat me like total garbage constantly (which he later told me he was doing in an attempt to make me angry rather than sad/needy so it would be ‘easier for me to deal with’). I was seriously desperate for any kind of attention from him so his awful treatment of me did next to nothing to stop me from sleeping with him again. I ended up getting pregnant with our daughter, despite us both deciding a long time ago neither of us wanted children. A much larger part of me wanted to keep the baby and when I told him I was doing so, he told me he wanted nothing to do with us.
At that point, I knew it was time to stop chasing him for good and ended up becoming very close with a mutual friend of ours which soon evolved into a romantic relationship. Literally the second he saw me happy with our friend for the first time in a year, he completely flipped a script and wrote me this phony letter outlining his sudden realization that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, raise our child together, and spend the foreseeable future rebuilding trust with me after what he had done. And ya know what? I stupidly bought it. Mostly because it was what I had spent 9 months waiting to hear, even though it was painfully obvious that he was only having this revelation because he became jealous the moment he saw another man making me happy. So the friend and I broke things off and I went back to my ex.
To his credit, he was wonderful to me throughout my pregnancy. I’ll give him that. However, three months ago he left me again. This time he had the gall to actually tell me he was doing it, but failed to bring up any of the reasons he cited for it at any time before that exact moment so that I couldn’t have possibly done anything to change it, as I was unaware of it completely.
Long story short, I wasted many years of my life being hopelessly in love with a total loser who had zero qualms with making sure I had horrible trust and abandonment issues for years to come because he didn’t feel that learning to effectively communicate was worth the effort. He also made a point to sleep with anything that could fog a mirror within moments of leaving me both times.
He’s an awful person and I have serious issues with mistaking quantity for quality. Just because you have a large amount of time under your belt with someone, doesn’t mean its worth anything. And people will always surprise you.”
Terrible Timing
“My first year at college, I was in a long distance relationship with a girl from back home. I didn’t have a car at the time, so I had to take a bus if I ever wanted to make the 300-mile trip back home. I tried taking a bus to visit her a few months in, but the bus was cancelled for maintenance issues.
Fast forward a month later and I book another one. At this point, we had been talking about how we were both so excited to see each other since my last visit hadn’t panned out. I got on the bus, put in my headphones and dozed off. About an hour into the bus ride I get a call from her, and she asks ‘hey I’ve been thinking we should just be friends from now on.’
This girl waited until I was on the bus heading to her to break up with me, after months of telling me how excited she was that I would finally be able to visit. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the worst way to break up with someone.”
Slight Miscommunication
“When you thought you were together, but you found out you in fact, were not. It just happened to me. Her kids love me, and don’t know why I’m leaving. Because she and I don’t see eye to eye on what we are. I didn’t really have much feeling about leaving as she didn’t think of us as in a relationship, but then I took her 8-year-old son to go disc golf with me one last time. He expressed his feelings for me, and how he has enjoyed going to swim at the lake, playground, and overall spending time with him. Then he started talking about how he likes that I treat his mom nice and misses having a dad figure. I didn’t want to cry until he talked to me about his feelings of me being around, but I didn’t cry in front of him.
She has three kids – ages 6, 8, and 10. The 10-year old is a computer gamer at heart and I build computers since it’s cheaper, so we joke all the time. I will still be friends with her, but I’m moving on with looking for someone that is of like mind in what they want and/or need with a partner. We live in the same area and I don’t mind being cool with the kids as long as it’s a free activity.
The best thing I got out of it is that now I know I can take on a girl with kids that wants a relationship now. Before, I just knew I was good with kids. Now if it’s a healthy relationship too at least I know from experience I can live with it.”
It Wasn’t Even An Actual Breakup
“My girlfriend and I were together for around two years. We’ve both struggled with depression, although due to totally different reasons. We decided to move to where she originally was from, and she was to move a few months before be because I still had uni.
The last few days with her were anxious, but I felt loved and loved her. We made love and everything seemed normal. Then when she left, our contact with each other slowly declined. My mental health also deteriorated, in part because of this situation. She started ghosting me and didn’t want to talk over Skype anymore. In the end, she even blocked me for a brief while. Then during one of our Skype conversations, I asked her if she even wanted me to move after her. When she told me no, I slammed my laptop shut and started crying. I rejoined the call and then she accused me of emotionally manipulating her with my tears.
For full context: while we were together she started to develop schizophrenia. In her case, severe paranoia and conspiracy thinking was what she was suffering under. At the point of leaving, she started to get it under control (with medication). I suspect this had a role in the whole situation.
Either way, it was a pretty bad way to break up. I fell deeper into depression and there were multiple moments where I probably would have killed myself if I had the energy to do it. No less just to show how hurt I was, but I also didn’t want to make someone else responsible for me taking my own life.
To cut the story short, I’m feeling a lot better now. I wouldn’t even say depressed. I got my life in order and, while I’m still on antidepressants, I don’t think I’ll stay on them for long.
It took me more than 8 months to fully deal with it, but I am over it. I cannot be mad at her. She really had a bad life and our relationship really took a dive the months before the move. It did get better right before though. We were both very irritated during that time. It’s hard to completely understand without full context. Was it a very hurtful way to break up? Heck, we didn’t even really break up (which made it worse at the time). Yes. She could have told me her true feelings before, and not the way she did. Maybe she wanted to protect me because I was waiting for a spot at a psychiatric clinic at that point. Breaking up when I was ‘safe?’ I don’t know. I since have only communicated with her to swap our remaining belongings.”