All of a sudden, one day, people realize that their whole relationship has been wrong. One thing shows them the light that they have been denied, sometimes for years. The people that see the light and make the changes never regret it. Their only regret is that they didn't notice sooner.
Here are sixteen emotional stories from Reddit of people that saw the light, made the decision and changed their lives after one thing their significant other did show them what they had been blind to for so long.
Fighting Over The Stupidest Stuff!
“I had an ex who absolutely refused to ever admit she was wrong. Not just important stuff, not just the things that actually matter, but literally anything and everything.
We’d been together for about a year and we were watching Hot Fuzz on TV. It got to the ‘Point Break’ scene. She said she’d never seen it because she didn’t like Kurt Russell. I told her Kurt Russell wasn’t in Point Break. She insisted he was.
At this point I’d been pretty much conditioned to let it go, it wasn’t worth the time and energy arguing over irrelevant nonsense, so I just shrugged and said ‘Whatever.’
Oh no. That would not stand. It wasn’t enough I let it go. I hadn’t specifically stated she was right. She insisted on rewinding the movie, pausing it and saying ‘See! Kurt Russell!’ on a nice close up of Patrick Swayze’s face.
‘Babe, that’s Patrick Swayze.’ I said.
Nope. It was definitely Kurt Russell.
I’d say we argued for about 10 minutes, but we didn’t. She did, I just wanted to watch the movie. The part that finally tipped me over the edge was when she said ‘God! Why can you never admit that you’re wrong?’
Yeah, it was like being called prejudiced by Hitler. I grabbed my laptop, Googled ‘Point Break Cast,’ put it in front of her and yelled, ‘THERE! IT’S FREAKING PATRICK SWAYZE.’
At that point she told me it was impossible to have an adult conversation with me, and told me she was going to bed – it was about 7 pm.
That wasn’t the final moment, but it was the moment everything started to crystallize. I realized just how much time I spent biting my tongue or letting her have her own way just because it wasn’t worth the time and effort arguing.
A few days later, one of my friends was visiting from Portugal and she started an argument with her by insisting that Portugal was part of Spain, so my friend was Spanish, not Portuguese.
She was literally telling someone that they didn’t know their own nationality or the geography of the country they grew up in. When my friend corrected her, she threw a hissy fit and told me that my friend should leave.
I told her she was the one who was leaving, and she wasn’t coming back.
I genuinely loved that girl. It broke my heart to break up with her because when she wasn’t letting the crazy out, she was just the nicest, sweetest most fun person in the world to be around… and when 99% of your arguments are about irrelevant stuff, you convince yourself it doesn’t really matter. But I just could no longer deal with how much time I spent walking on eggshells, avoiding any subject we might disagree on and how much I dreaded her being around my family and friends because I knew something as simple as a conversation about music would turn into a massive argument.”
This Is More Than A Little Subtle
“The wife of a friend of mine asked him to get something out of her car. She then locked him in the garage and called the police claiming he had attacked her. He winds up in jail overnight (having done nothing that she claimed he did).
When he returned home he found that she’d meticulously dismantled his notebook computer, carefully cutting each cord and cable, snapping every rigid component, opening the hard drive and snapping each individual disk platter in two, placing the display panel into a baggie and methodically shattering every square inch with a hammer.
She was mad because he was working too much. They’ve had arguments over this in the past, but nothing like this. He was working a lot running his own consulting business and the complaints were not new.
He kept all the broken parts in a cardboard box in his trunk as a reminder to carefully evaluate every future relationship.”
He Just Couldn’t Stop
“His 3rd drinking and driving charge was when I knew it was over.
I was willing or stupid enough to stand beside him after the first one while we were together. Countless arguments, tears, talks about his drinking. He was then arrested twice for not taking care of his charge after the fact, once when I picked him up from work (my fault we got pulled over…headlight issue), and once as we pulled in front of our apartment, they were down the street waiting for him. Both times I bailed him out, helped pay counseling and fines, and because of ‘love’ stood beside him. Yet I was blind. I once picked him up from jail, first question understandable was if I had a smoke. Next question…was if we could stop at the store to grab a 12-pack on our way home. An obvious no from me, not that it prevented it from happening though.
His last drinking under the influence charge was 4 months after his back surgery. His cousin called me and said he didn’t want to ruin my weekend but he was arrested and wanted to let me know. I told him it was his problem and to figure it out. Stayed 6 more months after that before the drinking got progressively worse and he started staying out more and more and not coming home. I think the topper is when he left me at the hospital after I had my appendix removed so he could go home and get trashed. But he completely gave up on his life and started drinking heavily again, then went and got in a vehicle wasted again. 10 years together, tons of court costs, counseling, and therapy and nothing made a difference.
I’m too young and too old to put up with all that. I’m lucky and thankful we never had a child, told him we wouldn’t unless he got sober. Suppose he obviously never really wanted one because in 10 years the only times he was truly sober were if he had court-mandated testing.
I am now happily married to a wonderful man, he very rarely drinks and has no adult criminal record. It’s a nice change.”
“It Felt Wrong To Be In A Relationship And Not Feel Scared All The Time”
“My ex seemed to revel in finding something to throw a fit about. We would be having the best time, then BAM.
One instance that stands out to me was our last Mardi Gras together. We had been out in costume since dawn walking around for hours, and everyone in the group was tired. We were having a blast, but we were clearly hitting the wall and needed to get home. When we finally found a cab (a miracle in itself) and got in, she proceeded to throw a fit that the cabbie had his meter off and was charging a $30 flat rate. After he wouldn’t turn the meter on, she made us all get out and took a picture of his license to report him. I didn’t want to get out. I wanted to pay the man his reasonable $30 and go home. I was embarrassed that she was holding up other people who now wanted to get in what should have been our cab. But I was afraid to say anything because it would have triggered another fight.
The joke was on me, though, because as we made our way home on foot, she got angry that I was walking faster than her and the rest of the group, and I ended up getting separated from them for a few minutes. When they caught up, she threw a fit in the middle of Canal St., ripped off part of the costume I had spent months working on for her, and literally stomped on it. But yet everything was my fault. That was the moment.
I am finally in a new and healthy relationship with the most chill person on the planet, but frankly, I still struggle with expressing my feelings in some everyday situations because of that ingrained fear of my ex and her meltdowns.
I didn’t realize how much it had messed me up until I started dating my current girlfriend, and the lack of constant, crippling anxiety made me anxious. It felt wrong to be in a relationship and not feel scared all the time, and it took me a few months to start getting used to being able to relax and have feelings and sometimes express them! I feel silly saying that considering there was no physical trauma or severe emotional abuse that some people go through in relationships. But the literally not knowing from one minute to the next what was going to happen and running every scenario in my head trying to figure out what was going to set her off but ultimately knowing it was going to happen anyway… ugh, I’m getting anxious thinking about it. For me, it was crazy how it snuck up on me. Like I’d never have thought of myself as the kind of person who would end up in a relationship like that. Thankful I made it out.”
He Thought Ignoring Her Was Totally Acceptable
“He went over a week without answering my calls/texts because he was ‘busy.’
I finally realized that I couldn’t (and shouldn’t have to) convince anyone to put effort into our relationship. I was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the relationship, both when it came to emotional support and making time to see him. For a long time, I chalked it up to his demanding schedule, but eventually realized that I also had a difficult schedule and still made our time together a priority. We had many conversations about this, but it didn’t seem to do much. We had been planning to get married within a few years, but I realized that I was setting myself up for a life of being taken for granted.
He was shocked when I told him I wanted to end things and he became more emotional than I had seen him in the 3+ years we had been together. Of course it didn’t make up for years of him ignoring my needs. Actually, the shocked response and the promises to change were kind of insulting to me. It wasn’t as if I never voiced that it was a problem and just broke up with him. I had already told him in great detail that it’s a serious issue for me and I gave him a super long time to work on this behavior. He had just gotten too comfortable thinking that I would never get sick of it and leave, I guess. We eventually reconnected and became friends, which works much better. We don’t talk every day or anything, but now he’ll actually text first or ask to hang out when I’m in town. Initially, it was most certainly an attempt to get us back together, but even after I told him there was no chance of that, he still actually puts forth some effort.
Maybe the whole thing taught him that relationships with people require a little work.”
“I Honest To God Thought She Was Dead”
“Towards the end, her drinking had become out of control. I knew something was going on, though I didn’t have concrete evidence until one day I opened one of our closets (it was primarily for her stuff, hence why I rarely went in there) and I discovered garbage bags FULL of empty bottles.
Every night when I’d come home from work she was clearly wasted and I could smell it on her breath, often going to bed the second I got home because she was so trashed she couldn’t stay awake anymore.
On multiple occasions, I’d get home from work (example, most nights I got home at 7 PM which in my neck of the woods is usually night time and dark outside), and she’d accuse me of being out all night, wondering where I had been (she was convinced it was actually 7 AM and NOT PM because she was so hammered she didn’t know what time of day or even day it was).
The last straw was when I got home, walking into the front door (which was made of glass so I could see inside before getting inside) I saw her laying there on the ground right next to a big bookshelf we had. I honest to god thought she was dead when I saw her lying there motionless.
I walked over, saw she’s wasn’t dead, just passed out trashed again, and knew there had to be more to life than this.
The good news is, after the breakup, she got pregnant (not mine) and has been taking it very seriously and quit drinking! We’re still friends and talk on occasion and she seems to be doing much much better. It was scary there for awhile (we were together more than a decade), but all in all, our break up was for the best because she’s healthier and my life is also better alone.”
And Yet, The Breakup Always Shocks Them
“We’d been dating for just over a month. There were plenty of red flags before this point (she said she loved me the first day), but while sitting on the phone listening to her berate me and list off everything I was doing ‘wrong’ for 45 minutes, I finally said ‘You know what, you’re right. I guess we shouldn’t be together anymore.’
‘Uh…okay?’
‘Okay, bye.’
Five minutes later she called back and left me a voicemail saying that wasn’t what she meant at all. Yeah, too bad. I was kind of a low self-esteem pushover before that relationship, but that broke me of a LOT of that in a very short period of time. This particular ex also threatened to beat the heck out of anyone else I have ever dated before while we were together and was massively jealous of my female roommate (who shared a two bedroom apartment with bedrooms on opposite sides of the floorplan). That threat made it especially aggravating when she tried to contact me a year or two ago (over ten years after we dated) to say hi. No thanks, not going to let you anywhere near my wife and daughter!”
Sometimes It’s The Little Things
“My boyfriend didn’t talk to me for hours because I had a spoon of Nutella without offering him some.
(He had told me earlier on that he didn’t like Nutella.)
When he finally told me what was wrong I was really perplexed. He then said that my action of not offering him Nutella showed him who I really was and called me a selfish ‘witch’ who only cares about herself. I cried and apologized for some reason. He then told me I would get fat and ugly if I ate Nutella.
Jokes on him I did get a bit fat but not ugly. I am also now married to the love of my life while he still blogs about renewable energy sources and utilities to a very limited audience.”
The Therapy Worked
BlurryMe/Shutterstock.com
“There was nothing physical for 4 months (and only 4 times that entire calendar year) and, when confronted, she completely dismissed how painful this was for me and said it just wasn’t a priority for her. Her tone implied that I was in the wrong for even broaching the subject to begin with.
That and zero communication reciprocity – it was like trying to talk to a wall. I’d get excited about something I had learned, would share it with her, only to be met with a dismissive ‘hmmpf.’ After three years of this, I had lost most of my self-confidence and buried myself in my work to cope.
Then I went to therapy to work on myself. The more I grew, the further I emotionally drifted from her. I knew that I deserved better and got out of there.
I have zero regrets. My life is so much better after ending that chapter of my life.”
She Wasn’t Able To Deal, So He Left
“We’d been together a couple of years and it was literally going nowhere.
We’d often make plans to do something and then I would stay at her place after only for her to say late into the evening that she didn’t want me to stay. As I didn’t drive at the time, this then leads to me making my way home (20 miles away) by train late at night and being shattered.
Before that she’d stopped staying over at my place after about 6 months as she ‘didn’t feel right’ staying anywhere other than her place. She was super anti-social and didn’t do anything other than sit at home and watch DVDs. I was her first and only serious boyfriend at that point. She lived a very low key and introverted life in general and preferred being alone to being with other people. She didn’t even like seeing the few friends she had.
The turning point was New Year’s Eve. We’d been out for dinner, gone back to hers (naturally) for a quiet evening with the idea for me to stay. It got to about 11 and she said she’d rather I didn’t stay as she just wanted to be alone and watch movies. By this point I could drive so I rang the new year in on the drive home.
I broke up with her shortly after that, I told her I wanted a real relationship, not the one I was in where I saw her 2-3 evenings a week and then spent the rest of the time alone.
Never regretted my decision. 10 years later I’m still with the next girl I started seeing and we have 2 awesome kids.”
He Takes His Gardening Seriously
“My ex-husband kept a shelf out on our patio with seedlings to be planted when they got large enough in our raised beds. A really nasty storm blew through one night, and when I got home from work the next day I saw that the winds had blown over the shelving unit and all of the seedlings had fallen out. No big deal, at least I thought. It was a fresh batch and nothing had really sprouted yet. I took a picture of the mess, sent it to my ex, and cleaned everything up.
Apparently, he decided to rush home. He came into the house absolutely screaming about how I didn’t salvage any of the seeds. He really did want me to pick through all of the dirt to find seeds that may be ready to sprout to save. When he saw that I had already swept up all of the dirt, threw the mess into the garbage, and had started replanting some stuff (but didn’t finish because I had to start dinner), he locked himself in his office and didn’t speak to me until the next morning. He even slept in his office because he was so angry at me for not saving anything.
I moved out that weekend.
To give a little more background, his behavior was at a point where there was a 50/50 chance that I would get yelled at for not cleaning it up and a 50/50 chance I would get grief for cleaning it up. There was absolutely no winning with him because there was no rhyme or reason to what would upset him. He flipped a switch during the last year of our marriage and became so unpredictable. I would constantly ask and try to understand where he was, but there was no pattern to follow.
I have so many more stories from that last year, including getting kicked out of the car on a busy street for not knowing how to use Snapchat and him leaving me at a theme park on our one-year anniversary after I tripped down some stairs and skinned up my leg. Other fun bits from that trip:
-He wanted his mom to come along…on our anniversary weekend.
-He threw a toddler-level temper tantrum because Disney doesn’t sell Monster energy drinks.
-He got upset when cell phone data was bogged down and he couldn’t post on Snapchat.
-Me tripping down the stairs happened because he was upset that I didn’t know off the top of my head where the nearest restroom was. I was looking at a map when he stormed off in anger, and I went to follow him. I didn’t realize that I was standing on a step and fell.
But the seeds, that was the last straw.”
The Old 180 Degree Turn
“I’d known my former husband for 20 years prior to marrying him. He was ambitious, fun and very very smart.
After one year of marriage, he literally turned into a different person. He quit his job to start his own company (which I 100% supported) but he decided to make up for lost time and went into full-blown mid-life crisis mode at 39. All his new friends were now in their early 20s, partying and even started to dabble in illegal activity.
One night (like many) he came stumbling in from a night out with the boys, at 2 AM. I’m a corporate director and had a 6 AM flight, meaning I had to be up at 4 AM. He proceeded to puke all over our white carpet and was too wasted to realize. I had to pull his face out of it, clean it up and get on my flight.
That was literally the last straw. I didn’t come home from my business trip and moved to New York.
Bye bye sucker.”
Perception Was Everything
“When I realized that her desired perception that she gives off to her friends is more important than how I feel. By this I mean, she used to get mad at me when I didn’t do ‘perfect’ boyfriend things in front of her friends.
The last straw is when she called me yelling at me for leaving a weekend hang-out session without individually saying bye to each and every one of her friends. What happened was I was not feeling good and wasn’t really in a great mood all weekend, so when it came time to leave, I just quickly waved off everyone with a smile and peaced out. She called me yelling at me about it later.
Yeah, so forget that. I had to end the relationship.”
Thoughtless
Maridav/Shutterstock.com
“After losing a pregnancy at 20 weeks, I was sitting in the living room sobbing after receiving an invitation to a friend’s baby shower. He patted me on the head and said ‘Time will make it better,’ and went downstairs to work. Pregnancy wasn’t planned but also wasn’t unplanned.
I realized that he was absent. He traveled a lot for work. Accused me of cheating all the time (I didn’t). I was a flight medic and he refused to meet me for breakfast after a shift if I was in my flight suit because ‘I got lots of attention.’ It finally opened my eyes that I was married to someone that didn’t want the best for me and that was absent due to his career that he committed all of his time and energy to. I never wanted to attempt a child with him again.
We divorced about 6 months later. I never looked back.
Today I have a husband that words fail me to describe his kindness and humor and patience and adoration and acceptance that’s made my life extraordinary wonderful. So, it all turns out ok.”
Wound Tight
“It was the day after Christmas, we were making the usual 6+ hour drive to see his parents, and I needed to pee before our usual stop.
Every single thing about this made him angry – the disruption of our routine, the way I gave directions when I found a gas station, the road we drove on for a couple of minutes. After I got back in the car and tried to talk it came out that he was angry at me from the beginning for making us late out the door washing the dishes too slowly after I’d made us breakfast, when he had never given me any reason to think we needed to be on a tight schedule.
Something clicked in my brain. We had been married seven years. He was never going to chill out. There was no amount of work I could put into the relationship; he was never ever going to change despite having talked about this several times over the years in different contexts. Early on I’d just internalized that I was doing everything wrong and worked to get better, but the real problem was that once he’d become frustrated with me over something once he could never ever let it go. He’d be angry at me all over again for it years later, independent of our actual situation at the time. He admitted this freely but didn’t ever try to do anything about it, and the longer our relationship went on the worse it got.
I packed a bag and walked out three days later. It’s been rough since, but still the best choice I’ve ever made.”