Marriage is hard work, but sometimes engagements are even harder! These couples called it quits before they ever stepped foot in the aisle, but their reasons for doing so are totally understandable. Not everyone's cut out for matrimony, especially some of the cheaters, liars, and abusers in these stories. They'll probably think twice before they even dream of saying, "I do," to the next person that asks for their hand in matrimony!
We scoured Reddit looking for the worst of the worst as far as cancelled engagements go and boy, did we hit the jackpot. The content has been edited for clarity.
He Had To Beg Her To Stay
“Every time we fought, she would throw her engagement ring somewhere, make me get it, then make me plead with her to put it back on. Even for very small disagreements and even in public. That was the final straw. It was a very messed up feeling, to be begging somebody to be with me all the time. It gave me huge insecurity issues.
That was on top of the fact that she began to call me names and hit me a lot. It all started after we got engaged for some reason. Things were so perfect but as soon as she got that ring, everything changed. Suddenly she was calling me a loser, piece of crud, and ugly a lot. She was making sure I never saw friends, limited my free time and stuff like that. She always made comments about how somebody like me should be begging her every day not to find a better man. I finally snapped and left. I got married to a much better person a few years later.”
He Would Never Be Satisfied With Her
“He was obsessed in making me look/speak better. He would control my food intake and make me exercise every day. Whenever I was out with him, I had to wear heels and dress well, and even then he would point out what other girls were wearing and what I should try on. Putting makeup on as a must, even when I’m on a plane.
I wasn’t allowed to speak any other language aside from English and not allowed to watch dramas that were ‘trash’ to him. At that point in time, I was pretty brainwashed and I really loved him so much I wanted to become who he wanted me to be. I forgot to love myself first.
My last straw was him asking me to consider to get chest implants when I lost too much weight from all the exercise/controlled diet. I realized I could not live this way anymore and he would never be satisfied, never.
Even though I still love him, I was mentally drained and constantly felt that I was ugly and unworthy. I’m much happier and healthy now.”
His Mom Caught Him In The Act
“I was engaged to a guy I’d dated for three years and planning a destination wedding with. He cheated with a mutual friend one night. His mom (who he lived with while we were apartment hunting) accidentally walked in on them in the middle of it while letting the dogs out. He didn’t know his mom had seen, but his mom called me and told me what happened. He denied it when I confronted him which made it worse. He finally came clean after I said his mom had walked in on him and called me. And the mutual friend admitted it to me too when I confronted her. His mom was basically sobbing when she called me because she didn’t want us to break up, but knew she should tell me. I’m actually sad about losing the mom so much more than my ex. She was awesome! Some other things were revealed about him later, too, like he lied about finishing his degree at university and had failed out instead. I dodged a big bullet for sure.
The mutual friend and I definitely stopped being friends. She wasn’t even apologetic when I confronted her. She had also been in a relationship that she broke off. They ended up dating for a while after that which was a bit of a mess because my ex and I ran a large, well-known community together. The rumors of what happened got out, but I attempted to be civil about it for the sake of the community. They, however, parked in the front window of the weekly venue and made out for everyone to see as a way of announcing their relationship. Super classy.
Weirdly enough, he got married about five years later to someone else in the exact same destination wedding location/venue/package/colors I had always dreamed of and planned out for us. He must have kept my planning binder and just reused it or something.
I ended up moving across the country a few months later, meeting the man who is now my awesome husband of 8 years, and we just had our first kid last year. I’m much happier with this outcome!”
She Could Abuse Him As She Pleased, But He Didn’t Dare Fight Back
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“We had been dating for over two years and engaged for about six months.
Then one night, we had been drinking and got into an argument about something stupid. I wanted to let it all go until the morning when we could talk about it when we were sober. But she was doing that thing she had been doing for a while at that point…refusing to relent until she felt she won the argument. I was going to sleep at her apartment that night, but when she wouldn’t stop arguing, I decided to get up and leave.
As I was starting to put my pants on, she tackled me in a fit of rage. Then she bit my arm…hard, so much so that she drew blood (I still have the scar.) I squirmed away, but she grabbed my legs and then she bit me again, hard, this time on my butt cheek. I still have that scar too, only it’s bigger.
The second bite, she wouldn’t let go…she was gnashing on my butt like a dog with a chew toy. So I grabbed her hair, pulled it, then slapped her.
She was SHOCKED that I would slap her. SHOCKED. She called the cops. They showed up, saw all the blood and that I was the only one bleeding, then arrested her. I was actually kind of surprised by that, but they were reasonable individuals.
I did not want to press charges. I was done with her and saw no need for them at that point. Turns out the town she lived in has a domestic violence law that compels the prosecutor to file charges without needing me to press charges. She took a deal that put a misdemeanor on her record (vs. felony battery) and a year’s probation.
About six weeks after this incident, I met the woman who is now my wife. Next month will be our 22nd wedding anniversary. And in all that time, she has never bitten me and I have never slapped her.”
Even After Breaking Her Heart, He Had The Nerve To Ask For THAT
“I found out the guy was no longer working when I called to see why his paychecks hadn’t come in. I handled the finances for us and he kept saying his boss would be sending it. It turned out he quit and instead of telling me, he spent the next few weeks pretending to work. During that time he started going to exotic clubs on what little money he had hoarded.
When I went to break it off with him, he punched his hand through the wall and lost his mind. By the time he finally calmed down, he had turned strangely morose. He looked at me and asked if we could bang one last time.
My response: ‘No.’
Him after a long pause, sifting through his pockets and holding out a dollar bill: ‘I’ll pay you a dollar to sleep with me. It’s all I have left.’
Needless to say, he left with a dollar in his pocket and no ‘final goodbye.'”
Their Common Demon Drove Them Apart
“Both of us had drinking problems.
I met him at age 22, he was 26. Love at first sight. It was immediately understood without even speaking of it that we were just going to be together now, and that was that for two and half years.
I have still never met someone I have loved entirely as much as I loved him. And when I broke things off with him, I honestly think a piece of my soul died. Because I have truly never been the same since.
My mom and dad were both drinkers and it messed up my childhood. I had a drinking problem myself that I didn’t understand yet. My drinking increased when we began dating because it seemed so normal to indulge more with him. The more I drank, the more neurotic and needy I became. The more he drank, the more he just faded away from the world.
He always drank to the point of blacking out and I hated it. I would see his facial expression go kind of blank while we were out and I’d know he was blacked out, like, nothing there, dead behind the eyes. And I’d wonder where the guy I loved was. I’d tell him we needed to go home and he’d brush it off and refuse. He had to close the bar down no matter what. He’d just always get so hammered.
Seeing the man I loved really wasted would always trigger this really lonely and dark sadness inside me. I felt invisible like I did to my parents my whole childhood. And he drank every day. He never slept at night so much as he actually just kind of passed out. I always felt like I was sleeping next to a ghost when he was passed out from drinking. I felt like I was dating him, the perfect person, and then also his twin, who had nothing to give and no life inside of him. It was just a shell of him. It broke my heart constantly.
After some time of cyclical arguments (usually while both of us were wasted), I started to realize he didn’t feel like he had an issue, and I wasn’t sure he would ever face it. I wanted to face my issues. I wanted a better life and better mental health. He was not in favor of making changes.
He had socialized with the same group of guys since he was 5, all of whom drank to blackouts regularly, and his dad was a big drinker. They were from a privileged, upper-middle-class kind of circle where binge drinking was just normal and fine because they went to more expensive bars and only drank craft brews and top shelf. In a way it was almost a hobby to them. There was no part of his life that didn’t revolve around drinking and I knew if I didn’t get away from that lifestyle, I was going to end up miserable or maybe even dead.
I still fight for my sobriety every day. He just got married last month. I saw photos from the wedding, where he had a drink in his hand in every photo and the same blank expression I could never cope with. I wish him the best, and I still miss him every day. I freaking hate drinking for all of the stuff in life that it absolutely destroys.”
She Was So Willing To Give Up On Her Family
“The last four days, my fiancée has decided to stay at her new coworker’s house, either overnight or until well into the morning. I told her that it’s ridiculously not ok to do when you’re engaged, even though she claims it was just stress relief playing video games with a new guy friend. We also have a 4-month-old son that I’ve been taking care of for the past four days while she’s been gone, and I’ve been very sick with what I thought was a stomach bug. Well, this morning I fainted and she insisted I just get some rest and maybe go to Urgent Care if I don’t get better. Then I lost my ability to keep any liquids down and was insistent that she take me to the hospital then go home and take care of our son. This was too much to ask, though, as she’d already made plans to meet this guy again tonight.
She walked to her work and left her family behind to go spend the night at his house. I told her that if she chooses to abandon her family to go spend time with another man, who I never accused her of cheating on me with despite the numerous red flags, then her family won’t be waiting for her when she got home. I involved someone in my family, out of necessity, and got my dad to take me to the hospital while his fiancé watched my son.
My fiancée’s last text to me simply said, ‘I can’t come home so I guess I just lose everything.’
After multiple chest X-rays and an abdomen CT, it turns out I’m not sick, but the stress caused by my relationship started causing massive problems throughout my body. Oh, and apparently I have a kidney stone.
I know it was petty but when I got home, I just sent her a picture of our son and told her that this was who she chose to give up on tonight.”
“Tragedy” And Her Family Tore Them Apart
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“Tragedy.
An accident happened and she had a severe brain injury, which led to me meeting her family that she had been trying very diligently to hide from me.
Her mother was an addict (to what I never really found out), and she constantly threatened me and my family with terrible things. She was after money and would do anything to get it. There was a settlement involved with the accident and quite a bit of money was given to help with the recovery. Instead, the mother bought herself and my fiancée’s sister two brand new cars.
I met her father (adopted, the biological father is still a mystery) who was also a victim to her mother. His life was in complete shambles. He invited me over and wanted to have a drink with me and talk (he had a severe drinking problem, but he was nice). He told me that I need to leave as soon as I could because the mom and sister were 100% going to ruin my life. I had already suspected this, but he told me, ‘I know you see my life, it will be yours too if you don’t do something and save yourself.’
He gave me his permission to leave and told me he wouldn’t think that I was a piece of crud for leaving my now mentally disabled fiancée. A lot of people ended up thinking I was (the mother and sister didn’t help this at all), and he warned me that this was probably going to happen. Which is why he wanted to give me his permission – he knew I’d stick with it and have my life destroyed because I was afraid of the image it might give me if I left.
And that was it. I was gone. It was terribly difficult and there was no ‘right’ answer for what to do.
On the bright side, my ex-fiancée is actually doing good in life now. She never recovered 100% but she miraculously reached a point to where she almost lives a normal life, and the mother doesn’t have much say in what goes on anymore!”
They Thought She Was The Perfect Woman
“I was renting a house with three dudes. We all had day jobs and we would cook dinners most nights. It was a pretty great roomie situation, everyone was chill and any issues were resolved quickly between us.
One roommate, Mark, started dating this girl. He was pretty proud of himself, for good reason, she was a solid 10. She seemed like a great girl, she would often come over in the middle of the day and clean our place, do all of our laundry, buy groceries, just because. It was awesome. She worked as well, she just had flexible hours.
So one day, Mark proposed to her with this big fat diamond ring. Everyone was happy, we threw a big party.
In the months planning their wedding, she started eating… Like, a lot. She went from 120lbs to probably close to 200 in about six months time, though this was not really a huge issue for Mark, he loved her. But then she started acting kinda crazy. I am fairly confident she had developed an addiction at this point. We got a series of traffic tickets in her name, (she was basically living there at this point) including a fantastic picture of her running a red light while stuffing a huge hoagie into her face.
One day, I came home early and she scurried out of the house as I was coming in. We later discovered she had taken our other roommate’s baseball card collection he had been gathering his entire life and sold them to some sketchy pawn shop. She was no longer allowed in the house. She pawned her engagement ring and that was the last straw. Mark broke off the engagement.
That night she got good and cracked out, came to the house around midnight, kicked the front door in, then she pulled a Jack Nicholson from The Shining on Mark’s bedroom door. Once she made it in, she beat the heck out of him.
So what was supposed to be a nice happy wedding turned into a huge headache and a restraining order. To this day, it is the prime example I use when explaining how a person can pull a complete 180 personality-wise.”
It Was The Worst Time Of Her Life…Not That He Cared
“My mom was dying. It was my last Thanksgiving with her. Without discussing it with me first, he had his mom buy him plane tickets to spend Thanksgiving with his parents then asked if I wanted to go with him. No. I was not missing the last Thanksgiving I would ever spend with my mom. We would have our whole lives to spend Thanksgiving with his family after this. ‘You’re leaving me to face this one alone, or to abandon my mother on her last Thanksgiving?’
It was suddenly very clear (being happy to cancel wedding plans to do it later, and many other things) that he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me, but wouldn’t break up with me because my mom was dying, and he was too nice a guy to dump his fiancée whose mom was dying.
To his credit, we remained close friends, and he continued to be there as my best friend and emotional support through her death, and some months following. Although it was eight years ago, we still chat/text a few times a year, and catch up on how our families are doing.”
He Showed Her Again And Again What He Really Thought Of Her
“His mother called me ‘common’ TO MY FACE. As in, common as muck because I’m not from a wealthy background. He didn’t say a word to defend me.
Then his colleague obviously quite fancied him and instead of telling her to back off, he told me I was being ‘crazy.’ I never asked him to stop being friends with her – just to clarify he wasn’t interested so she would stop making snide comments to me.
The final nail in the coffin was when I was struggling a lot with my mental health and he told me to ‘get out of bed and get over it.’
Instead of one dramatic event, I suppose these showed me what kind of guy he really was!”
His Baseless Accusations Became Too Much For Her
“I’m pretty sure he lost his mind.
He was constantly accusing me of cheating, going through my phone and emails, jumping down my throat if I ran late at work. Calling my work when he found something he felt was incriminating to berate me and threaten to throw me out.
He took texts and emails he found between me and another guy, whom I was dating during a 9 month period where we’d broken up, and used that to berate me and call me a tramp because even though we were BROKEN UP, ‘we still meant something to each other and I shouldn’t have done it.’
He was so cruel. He’d put me down and make me cry, then mock me for it. Anytime I tried to defend myself, he’d tell me he was the only thing standing between me and standing in line at the Salvation Army and to be careful how I spoke to him.
I was on my knees at one point, begging and crying for him not to leave me. I loved that man like a senseless fool.
Everything kind of blew up when I went to the beach for a day with a friend and he basically accused me of sleeping my way up and down the coast.
It was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. I couldn’t do it anymore. I had reached the event horizon for my tolerance of emotional manipulation and abuse.
A huge argument ensued, we broke up. I got home and he’d already packed my stuff and I left right then.
I was homeless for a bit, but I had my dignity and self-respect back.”
No Honor Among Soldiers
“I was violated while in the military. My fiancé was also in the military. I told him what happened and he went out, did it with someone, FILMED IT, and showed me the film because ‘I cheated on him so he was making it even.’ I ran immediately.”
He Couldn’t Believe How Violent She Got
“She got weird and violent after the engagement. The final straw came when she couldn’t find her shoes that matched her outfit when we were going out with her sister and her husband for the night. We had just moved and stuff was still packed away. I packed the shoes and couldn’t remember which box it was in. When we got home, she raged really hard and pushed me so hard into the bathroom that I fell into the bathtub and hit my head. I cried in the bathroom for a good portion of the night. We broke up the next morning. Weird how putting a ring on her changed things so quickly.”