Sometimes it's better to never make it to the altar...Especially when the person you think you're going to marry, changes for the worse. After all, everything happens for a reason!
Choosing Between The Girl And His Family?
“My ex-fiance and I kept disagreeing about stuff for the wedding.
She comes from a wealthy family and I didn’t have the money to have the type of wedding she wanted. My family offered to help out on some things and she agreed to give a little ground. Well, I found out a week later that she and her mom had completely changed everything without telling me. Most of these changes I couldn’t afford.
When I confronted her about it, she asked me where I had heard that. I told her my sister had told me. She told me that I needed to choose between her and my family. It didn’t take me but a few seconds to tell her that she could get all her stuff and then I put the house for sale, as soon as possible.”
She Changed Once Her Father Fell Ill…
“I was with my girl for 3 years before we got engaged. While we were engaged we had our son (unplanned) and it pushed back plans for the wedding because of money troubles.
Her father then was diagnosed with terminal cancer and she started to withdraw from me after finding out the news. I tried to be supportive and help her through it, but we started arguing about small things constantly. Mole hills started to become mountains and we started to fall apart.
Not long after our 4 year anniversary, she got the news her father had passed away. On Valentine’s Day, no less.
In our 5th year of being together and after a fairly large argument, I left work and grabbed a bottle of wine with flowers to try to signify a ‘new beginning’ for us, but when I got home she had taken my son and all his things, and moved all of her belongings out of the house. She had left the engagement ring on the bed for me to find.
I never did get an explanation, only that she didn’t feel the love between us anymore. I never felt that way, but perhaps I missed something that she was trying to tell me…Who knows.
Now I see my son 3-4 days a week, have a friendly relationship with my ex, and have moved on as best I can.
I still love her, a part of me always will, but I’m fairly certain we will never reconnect as much as I would love to try again. Sometimes you just have to accept what happened and push on.”
How She Ended Up With Her Ex’s Best Friend
“He cheated on me the entire time we were engaged, but being young and dumb I looked the other way.
Finally, one weekend he wanted to stay with his friends for a ‘man get-away’ and on one of those nights he texted me and broke it off. Yes, I said texted. Came back to our apartment 4 days later and I don’t remember all the details, but he moved some of his things out that day. Found out, one of the girls he was cheating on me with had just gotten an apartment at the complex I lived at. He moved in with her and their apartment kitchen window faced my kitchen window, it was great.
Eventually, his best friend laid it all out and told me how long this had been going on and with how many girls, really heartbreaking honestly. His best friend and I became good friends after this and one night he admitted that he had feelings for me the moment we met and knew my ex would leave me at some point because I was the 3rd girl he had done this to! So…long story short, my ex actually married the girl he cheated on me with and eventually she left him, for a woman.
His best friend… we’ve been together for 7 years and we’re getting married next Spring and I couldn’t have picked a better person to spend eternity with.”
She Sacrificed So Much For This Terrible Guy!
“I got engaged while at BYU (as one does) at 21. I chose my job offer for this guy. He had a year of school left and I wanted to remain close to him because we were going to get married a few months before his last year started. I graduated, we had a serious talk and he told me he wouldn’t support me if I wanted a career throughout our marriage.
Three kids were my comfortable area. He wanted six. He wanted me at home, all the time, expected breakfast and dinner being made by me every day for the entire family of six kids and expected packed lunches every day. I was to respect his final decision as he was the breadwinner. This is how his parents were, so it was expected that I would be the same.
I was so desperate to be loved and not graduate single and become an unmarriageable pariah that I tried to swallow my utter terror and go along with it, but I was not demure enough for him, and in his words, ‘We just have different political views.’ (He was leaning dangerously close to alt-right). He called it off and then immediately started a dating a girl we both had used to work with at different jobs who hated me and had long had a crush on him.
Two years later I’m still stuck at the same job, which I hate. Trying to get out and get away from my mistake.
I was extremely depressed over it for about six months. I lost a huge chunk of weight and felt very lost. I’ve since pulled my life together more, but I wish I’d never even met the guy.”
Way Too Controlling And Manipulative To Live With Forever…
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“She was controlling, manipulative, and abusive. She was like this before we got engaged, but since it was my first relationship, I didn’t know any better.
She got worse after the engagement.
I wasn’t allowed to have any friends or access the internet. I couldn’t watch TV, go to movies, or read any books without her permission first. She had to know where I was every moment of the day. As far as she was concerned, my sole reason for existence was to do whatever she wanted.
One day, I got fed up with something she wanted me to do and told her no. She said that she couldn’t marry me if I wasn’t willing to do what she asked. She broke off the engagement a few days later.
A few months later, she called me to try to get back together with me. She didn’t think that the breakup would be permanent. She just thought that I would be so unhappy without her that I would go crawling back to her. We had broken up a couple of times before our engagement, and this was apparently her strategy those times as well. By this time, I recognized this as the manipulative tactic is was, so I refused to get back together with her. Looking back on it, I would have been miserable with her, so it was the best decision I could have made.
Pilot Fiancé Kept Delaying The Wedding!
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“He was a pilot in the air force and doing a bunch of training. He proposed before he left for officer training. Since we weren’t married I couldn’t go with him, and he wanted to wait to live together until marriage. We set the 1st wedding date for Christmas weekend of that year and he asked to postpone it. We set the next date for Thanksgiving weekend of the following year, while he would be in pilot school for a year and a half. He asked to postpone that one too, not because of training, but because he ‘wasn’t ready to get married yet.’ We set the 3rd wedding date for after his training ended. 3 months before the wedding (my dress bought, my bridesmaid dresses bought, stuff booked, save the dates sent, etc.) he asks to push it back again.
He wanted to just keep us being engaged, but he was going to be moving to the next base in a few months and would be deploying regularly. In order to stay together, without being married and see him, I would have had to literally drop everything: call out of work, and drive 6 hours whenever he would happen to be stateside for a few days between missions. It would have been impossible. We had been together for 5 years at this point, and I figured if he still ‘wasn’t ready’ to marry me by then, he never would be so I gave him the ring back. I had hoped it would scare him and that he would not want to lose me but he didn’t care much.
When we broke up I was visiting him half way across the country and had 2 days left until my flight home. It sucked! He didn’t tell anyone what happened, any of our friends who asked he would just ghost. He didn’t cancel the DJ or anything like that, he made me do everything. I have never had anyone want to buy my old dress so we’re stuck with that too.
2 years later he (a 30-year-old man) was engaged to a 17-year-old he met through his church at his next base. Bullet dodged.
All these years later I realized he never loved me. He loved the attention, love, and support I gave him. He needed a constant ego strike and I gave it to him. The man I wound up marrying is 10,000% more of a real man.”
Finding Out His Secret Preference…
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“We were friends for almost 15 years. We also lived together as roommates, then finally one thing led to another. We had been together for about 6 months when I found out I was pregnant. He was incredibly supportive and I was so happy.
We have the baby and then he asks me to marry him a few months later on New Year’s Eve. Of course, I say yes.
We move along, planning the wedding about a year and a half out (it would have been this November). We have our arguments, I keep getting a weird feeling in my gut but learn to the ignore it.
I had always known he wasn’t entirely straight, but then again I hadn’t always been either so I trusted that he had made a commitment to me and that should have been that.
It came out in an argument this past January. He had been chatting and exchanging pictures with who knows how many guys all over the metro area. He claimed he hadn’t actually met with or slept with any of them (because THAT was the time he was being truthful?).
I was heartbroken but tried to stay for our child. I finally realized how stupid that was in May and moved back in with my (freaking awesome) parents.
It’s awkward because I don’t necessarily feel like it’s my place to ‘out’ him to our friends. My family knows the basic details and that’s all they’ll ever get. But I know he walks around saying it was a mutual thing and every time that gets back to me, it’s like all the air is being knocked out of me over and over. If your two choices are being absolutely miserable and being alone but possibly happy, what do you ‘choose?'”
Choosing Her Own Happiness!
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“We dated for 3 years before getting engaged.
His family was very religious and I was not so I made sure to bring up things I thought might be sticking points early on in our relationship. Things like living together (a big no-no on their end and a deal breaker on mine if we didn’t), the type of ceremony we would have, etc. For 3 years he would always say he agreed with me, he felt the same way, that his family would just have to learn to live with our decisions. And then it came time to actually make those decisions. When push came to shove, he sided with his family on every. single. thing.
Over and over I had to ‘compromise’ or ‘make sacrifices’ to make his family happy. He wouldn’t stand up to them. All he could say was that he didn’t want to alienate them.
Finally, about a year and a half before our wedding date, 6 months into our engagement, I brought up living together and I said it was about time we started looking for a place. Instead of telling his parents, he ASKED them how they would feel if we moved in together. They were obviously not okay with it and threatened to take away our wedding gift (a sizeable chunk of money) if we did. I told him I didn’t want their money, we didn’t need it. He said: ‘That’s a lot of money to turn your nose up at.’ So I discussed it with my parents, my dad came up with the perfect solution: My fiance could just move out on his own, he could afford it and was 24 years old, it was about time he did anyway. And then what could his parents say? My parents would lie and say I was still living at home.
So we presented the idea to my ex. His response: ‘Yeah, but then I’d have to start paying rent and buying my own groceries when I could spend the next year and a half saving by living at home.’ That was it.
From day one I had said this was my only deal breaker. We live together or we don’t get married. He chose his money and his family over me, so I chose my happiness over him. Best decision I ever made.
Now I have my own, dream place in the city, 15 minutes from my dream job (which I didn’t get until after we broke up). And I live my life the way I want to.”
So Crazy That The Cops Arrived?
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“Well, after we got engaged her whole attitude changed and she began to become super controlling. About 6 months in, I had gone to a buddy’s place and was there really late ( nothing sneaky with girls as I am a faithful person and asked her to marry me for pete’s sake). Anyways my phone had died and I didn’t go back to my place at the time until 3 am or so. (we were looking at houses at the time and still lived separately although she stayed at my place majority of the time) I came home and passed out. Next thing I know I hear broke. Glass, so I grab some defense :p and go to check it out. It was my fiance, and she was wasted(not allowed to drink because of meds). After I realized it was her I put my defense back in the safe and tried to calm down a drunken rant about how I was cheating blah blah blah.
Next thing I know I got tackled from behind straight through a sliding mirror door of a closet (I was trying to get some clothes on to handle the situation). I got up and the craziness continues. Next thing I know she is trying to attack me with scissors.
After a small altercation, I managed to stop the assault and get to the phone to call police as I didn’t know how else to handle it at that point and didn’t want to end up hurting her. While on the phone she re-entered the room and jumped on my back. BITING ME 3X, one of them being a finger somehow (thought she was gonna bite my pinky off).
Needless to say, the cops arrived, and the situation was taken care of. I decided to be nice and not press felony charges, but let them charge her with the other 4 items. Since then I have only seen her once, and it was two years later when she was putting sugar in my current girlfriend’s gas tank, ruining her car and forcing me to press charges again.
Looking back I thank the powers for my phone dying and this happening. I dodged a bullet.”
Not Mature Enough To Get Married Or To Ever Have Children!
“We started dating sophomore year of community college and dated for five years. I transferred to a four-year university while he stayed home for and became a fireman/paramedic. I graduated from college and moved home with him into a house that we picked out together and he bought. We got a puppy and a kitten together. I thought we were happy together. We talked seriously about getting married, and he proposed.
While we were living together, I started noticing how much he drank – several times he got blackout drunk and puked everywhere. He played video games for hours on his days off and would play in the evenings at the firehouse too. He had some friends who were awful to me, as well as his brother. We would have everyone over to the house and I would clean everything from top to bottom and cook for everyone, and they would be complete jerks to me.
I started noticing him talking to a girl on a Facebook game a lot, so I looked her up. She was what we call a ‘badge bunny’ – a girl who loves to chase police and firemen. There were a lot of racy photos with fire hats, hoses, etc. I told him to block and stop talking to her, or I was gone. He grudgingly stopped.
The final straw was when he left to go to the casino with one of his buddies and simply didn’t come back. I called and texted both of them. His friend was married and was good about going home to his wife, so I was pretty sure they weren’t together.
By 8 am the next day I was exhausted from crying, and he finally dragged him back home. Turns out he had gotten trashed with a bunch of people he’d met after his friend went home, and had spent the night sleeping in his truck in the casino parking lot. I was glad he didn’t drive drunk, but not telling me where he was or answering any of my phone calls was not okay with me. I asked him if he intended to do this kind of stuff while we were married and had a couple of kids, and his answer was yes.
At that point, I grew a spine and told him I was done. I did not see a life with someone who had no respect for me, whose friends treated me like garbage, and thought it was cool to spend all night out drinking while his wife and kids sat at home wondering where the heck he was. I am so glad that I didn’t go through with the wedding!”
Possible Pedophile That Caused Her Extreme Weight Loss…
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“I called off my wedding 3 months before it happened. Why? I was a 17-year-old (I’d have been 18 at the time of the wedding) about to marry a 26-year-old man that had been dating me for 3 years. I was a victim about to marry her abuser.
The engagement ring, which I did eventually find out was fake (he has money. Lots of it, but that didn’t matter to me) was to buy my consent/silence/whatever. He was an alcoholic, a narcissist, a pedophile (seriously, I wasn’t a 14-year old that looked like an 18-year-old. I was a 14-year-old that looked like a 12-year-old.)
I loved him because I thought he was saving me from my horrid situation with my family. My mom and I moved in with her boyfriend, only to find out too late that he was an abuser. He’d take me away from it, even if it was just for a little while.
I was so messed up. I ended up living in a boarding house when things finally broke in my abusive household because, of course, I was 17 and he didn’t want me to move in until I turned 18 (his career depended on a squeaky clean image.) I ended up pregnant, having a violent end to my pregnancy that resulted in my daughter’s stillbirth.
Despite this all, I loved him. But he started picking at my appearance. I was ‘gaining too much weight,’ even though I was at a healthy weight for my age/height. I had gotten hips and breasts… so we talked about dieting. I stopped eating. I drank water when I’d get hungry. Everything had to be low fat/no fat, low calorie/no calorie, and sugar-free. It worked. I went from ‘healthy’ to ‘underweight.’ What made me realize that I wanted out was a box of chicken wings.
I ended up moving back in with my mother after she was able to escape her ex. We lived near an indoor flea market/farmer’s market that had the most amazing food vendors. I love food, and this diet was killing me. I was freaking miserable. So, I decided to have a cheat day, and I went and ordered a box of hot wings from the chicken place in the farmer’s market. As I sat down with my favorite movie, eating my favorite food, I realized that the extreme dieting would always be my life. I also realized that him wanting me to be so unhealthy wasn’t right. I was tired all the time, cold all the time, hungry all the time. I decided, while happily munching on that box of wings, I was done.
I called him, told him that I was done. It took me another 3 years to truly be done, but the very expensive wedding was done and over. He never got any deposits back. It took me almost a decade to realize that he wanted me to look like a 14-year-old forever. I was also always dismissive about the age difference, citing that I was mature for my age. I now realize it didn’t matter. I was a child.”
“Other People Will Love You Better!”
“She said yes, and then started getting further and further away from me. She started to go out drinking with her friends, quit her job, stopped talking to me honestly about her feelings. She would get really upset with me when I tried to talk to her about what was going on.
She left me in the middle of my hardest semester and left me heartbroken. I climbed out of that hole, pushed through and did really well that semester. Then I met another girl at college and started to fall for her.
And who should try to come back into my life, but the one who left me? She told me she couldn’t believe I got over her so fast after almost 5 years, and that I was just using another woman to hide my pain etc. And that I actually still loved her.
Yeah…she was wrong. Through the gauntlet I went through, I was determined that I did not at all deserve to be unhappy. I treated her amazing for the entirety of our relationship and if she didn’t know what she had when she had it, she didn’t deserve it. So I moved on. I left her behind with no regrets.
I’m now in a relationship with the new girl I met and extremely happy! It’s been almost 2 years
My advice is this:
Life is going to move on. It’s going to be hard and terrible but you have got to push through and come out stronger on the other side. As sad and as wrong as it sounds, there are other people who will love you better and right.
Maybe you’ve made some mistakes and that’s why things didn’t work out. Maybe you didn’t and the problem rested elsewhere. Regardless, you need to gather yourself and work towards making yourself happy. You deserve happiness.
Your worth and happiness are not defined by a person. They’re defined by yourself. Go out and make yourself happy. You can do it.”