Not all relationships are meant to last. These people have valid reasoning for breaking up with their partner! Here, they share what the final straw was in their relationship. Content has been edited for clarity.
Her Loss Meant Nothing To Him
“I had just received news of my 7-month-old cousin’s death. I had grown attached to the sweet kid and babysat often. I was just back to college when he died of pneumonia
My ex’s response was: ‘Why are you so upset? He didn’t live that long anyway.’
Later he tried to make me get intimate with him while I was still sobbing, puffy eyes and all.”
The Pregnancy Scare That Made Her Rethink Everything…
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“She wasn’t pregnant.
December, last year, we were getting along pretty fantastically and then we had a little ‘late’ scare. We joked about it and teased each other. But we also took turns being ‘afraid’ of having a kid and being excited.
She went to visit family 6 hours away and had a week off from work, I did not. So I stayed at home while she was enjoying her mini-vacation for Christmas/New Years.
We kept in touch via phone, texting, etc, but didn’t talk as much as I’d have liked. When she got back we had a sit-down and she told me she took two pregnancy tests about 2 days apart to make sure. Negative.
I’m a bit let down. I mean we were married and I loved her. There was a slight part of me that was relieved, if only because we aren’t really ready financially, but it was accompanied with some sadness.
She keeps going and was telling me how absolutely happy she was. That the whole week she was away she was terrified she would end up pregnant and ‘stuck with you’ as she put it. She opens up and says that she loves me as a person but I’m not what she wants as a partner and us having a kid would have forced us together forever. It was absolutely brutal. Apparently, the thought of having a kid together made her realize she wasn’t in love with me. “
Nobody Wants To Be In A Toxic Relationship…
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“Let’s call him ‘Jim’.
He was a manipulative loser. He had no job, no future plans, nothing. He’d game all day and either run exceedingly late for dates or would forget them in general, and would always say, ‘Well, at least I came, doesn’t that matter?’ or ‘You’re being too uptight.’ Any time I’d want to talk about our future (holidays, getting an apartment together), he’d say, ‘Why are you complicating things? I only think about the now, the present.’ We broke up for a while because in his words, ‘We’re on different levels’, and I hooked up with a former partner one night, but hey, I was single and free.
I wasn’t thinking straight when I ended up back with ‘Jim’ after he promised to change, but the moment we got back together, it was a nightmare. He accused me of cheating on him while I was single, that I was a streetwalker, that I was nothing. It was just months of fights non-stop. He’d punch in walls and yell in public. I believed I was useless, ‘easy,’ and that I need him and I could make him grow up. I developed an eating disorder and he never took notice, though some friends are sure he was happy with it because of how I looked. I was sickly devoted. I paid for almost everything while he had no job, while his parents paid for the rest. He’d chuck crying tantrums when he didn’t get his way and had his family turn on me. He’d leave me choking in tears after fights when he’d threaten to move on. It became a new normal.
But after 4 years, I was getting tired of his unemployed, hormonal self. I found out he was sending inappropriate videos and pictures to other girls and I had enough. So I dumped him. I also found out after a while he taped us in bed without my consent, which is very concerning and leaves me with anger I want to just leave behind fully.
But, life is better now. I’m healthier, happier, and in a wonderful relationship with another man where marriage seems to be on the horizon. We’re living together and saving up for our first mortgage, we’ve had many adventures, he supports and loves me unconditionally, no fights – things are just normal. It’s perfect.
The only thing I can take from my time with ‘Jim’ is that after I got rid of him, I finally learned what self-respect and true love really are.”
Why Buying Wendy’s Was A Bad Idea…
“We were having major money problems.
I was working full time, he was going to school full time and watching the kids. I checked our bank account and found out we were overdrawn by like $5 on the day before payday. I ask my best friend for a $10 loan and get it to the bank before noon so they don’t charge me a fee. I call home and tell him to not, under any circumstances, use the debit card. I get home from work, he hands me the baby and goes to school. The next day, I see the fee was deducted from the checking account, so I call the bank. I’m all like, ‘What’s up? You said if I had the money in by noon we were cool.’ They said, ‘Well, yeah, but then you went and bought a $6.95 meal at Wendy’s at 6 pm and were overdrawn again.’
With the overdraft fee, that ended up being a $45 Wendy’s hamburger. We stayed married for a few years after that, but that was when I KNEW.”
She Had No Sympathy For Him!
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“The relationship was circling down the drain, it was nearly dead anyway. Then my Dad passes away. He was sick and was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer only 2 days before. He was in a coma. So the first person I called is her.
When I got home that night, I emailed to thank her, she emailed back saying I had plenty friends to talk to. She was also the first person I called when I was told he had at most a month left (2 days prior).
So I wasn’t exactly in a great state of mind (I had a great relationship with my Dad). The last time I actually talked to her was the first day of his wake. The last communication was an email and a text asking me why I wasn’t talking to her. Oh, I don’t know? Maybe because I was busy dealing with grief? But she was trying to make his death all about her.
She never came to the wake or funeral. Everything crystallized at the moment, and I knew that she wasn’t part of my life anymore. Forget that woman. I walked away and never looked back.”
He Couldn’t Control His “Urges”
“He wanted bjs/ handies twice a day every day. I wanted to have a break for two days. He was very upset because ‘it is a primal human need and being around me made him need it’ and ‘he couldn’t change or control his actions.’ He finally called me and offered a compromise. The compromise is that I wouldn’t come to his house unless I was willing to get him off. That way, I wouldn’t make him unnecessarily turned on and I wouldn’t have to say no to him. I thought about it. It made sense so I agreed. However, he was floored when he realized that I was never coming back.”
The Engagement Was Over With One Lie
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“We were long distance for the whole relationship because we met online. We did that for 4 years. Our plan was that he move to my country after he finished college and that time was coming up. He was making no effort to get things together for preparation.
I felt like I was the only one preparing and my family and I were the only ones researching and everything. He didn’t really make an effort but insisted he wanted us to be together, we were already engaged – he was just lazy and a procrastinator.
I can’t remember what made the topic come up, whether we were in a fight or something, but he let slip that he had failed a class a while ago and that pushed back the timeline of him moving here by half a year to a full year. Now, he had lied to me before about some things, but this lie blew me away.
All the prep I did as I was certain that our long distance was coming to a close – I had all the money saved for him as I spent a year saving it, hardly spending any money.
The fact that he lied about something so big and didn’t tell me because he was ‘afraid I would break up with him’ made me instantly know our relationship was over and I broke it off almost immediately after he told me.
I also then found out he never even wanted to go to college at all…you know which is fine, it’s not for everyone. But he went anyways because he assumed I’d be mad? He wasted his own money and we could have just started his moving process right away instead of waiting years.”
IKEA Drama
“I worked the night shift for my first few years out of school – 6 nights a week (Saturday night/Sunday morning was my ‘day off’) and usually got home at 8 am Saturday.
My girlfriend at the time asked if I would take her to IKEA on Saturday. Sure no problem, home at 8, sleep a few hours, then go. Sounds like a plan.
I wound up working a big overtime shift, which happened frequently enough and I had to go in at 8 pm Friday and didn’t get to her place until 3 in the afternoon Saturday. I went to go to bed as soon as I got there, only to hear: ‘What the heck?! I thought you were taking me to IKEA today?’ Insert argument here. I wind up at IKEA without any sleep.
After being ordered by her to pick up several big items and pushing her cart around, we get to the line and she claims she’s hot and tired and needs to go get a drink and leaves me in line (we didn’t live together – all this stuff was for her apartment). I was up for almost 24 hours and running on empty, thirsty and tired and figured she’d get a drink and bring it back and I could get a sip, or she might even bring me a drink. Nope. She’s gone almost 10 minutes and I get to the front of the line (IKEA on a Saturday afternoon…) only to see her sitting down at a table having a drink. I leave her cart and go over to her and tell her that she’s at the front of the line. ‘Why didn’t you just pay for it? Can’t you see him taking a rest?’ I was fresh out of school and had pretty much no money so nope.
After a long silent ride home and carrying her stupid dresser drawers up the 4 flights of stairs to her walk-up apartment, I figured I could finally sleep. Nope. ‘You aren’t going to assemble it for me?’ I put it together and then I went home and slept. She called me a cranky baffoon for being ‘moody.’ I wish I could say that was the last time I saw her but I was young and dumb. It was definitely a tipping point and it ended pretty shortly afterward. Now I hate freakin’ IKEA – I’m pretty sure I hated it before too, but now it holds a special place of hatred in my heart.”
Convincing Her He Didn’t Actually Hate Her
“My ex-girlfriend had a ‘temporary’ mental disorder due to a miscarriage with a previous long-term boyfriend. Their relationship fell apart because she blamed him for everything, which drove him to drink, heavily.
When I dated her, every month she accused me of hating her. Every month for an entire day, I had to convince her that was not true.
A few months in, she suggested that we should not be dating (at this point, I was living with her). I told her that she could choose that but I was moving out if that happened, she backed away from that cliff.
We lurched along until December of that year. Every month a new fight about how I hated her and laced with comments about how terrible my family was. I asked her if we were done and she said, ‘Yes.’
An hour later I was Facebook ‘single’ and she was freaking out that she didn’t have time to tell her family. That weekend, I moved everything out.
About 6 months later, she was marrying into my sister’s family. A year later, my sister was getting remarried to her husband and my ex-girlfriend’s boy toy was in the bridal party. Due to some issues, I was pulled into the bridal party as well. He is pretty amazing, I feel sorry for him.”
She Never Showered
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“She wouldn’t shower, ever – that was the final nail in the coffin.
I just looked at her one day, she looked like she rubbed bacon fat in her hair and all over her body and her clothes smelled bad and I felt like an idiot for asking her to shower. She played WoW (World of Warcraft) for 18 hours a day, but yet didn’t want to play WoW at the LAN gaming center that I ran, even though I could have hooked her up with free food.
Later, I learned she was having an e-relationship with a guy through WoW. After we split up, she moved up there and called me a couple weeks later because she found out this guy that ‘had an amazing job and amazing house’ was actually unemployed and lived in a 1-bedroom apartment with his mom, dad, uncle, and 2 brothers and they all played WoW.”
She Was Not A Fan Of His Behavior…
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“Oh geez. He wanted to do EVERYTHING together. I need recovery time from everyone periodically (nothing big, just chilling in my room alone is enough) and he told me that wanting time to myself was unhealthy in a relationship. He told me that he spent his recovery time with me so I should spend mine with him. He didn’t like me doing anything other than talking to him when we were together (doing homework around him was out of the question) and he HATED when I wanted to go places without him.
Last summer, I went back home for my school break and it was long distance for a while. I worked part-time and babysat my much younger sisters and cooked in exchange for rent at my house, and he was upset that I was ‘too busy’ to call/skype him daily or when I continued doing my chores when he called me. When I told him I had responsibilities as the oldest child in my family, I was accused of being mean.
The final straw was when he told a mutual friend I dumped him (I got mad and told him to leave me alone so I could cool off) and lied to me about having a nervous breakdown because I told him he was smothering. He also stalked me online for a while, both while we were in a relationship and after it ended.
I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t the perfect girlfriend, but I just couldn’t deal with him guilt tripping me all the time.”
His Nightmares About Her…
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“When I had a nightmare that my ex-wife was going to stab me in my sleep the night after she assaulted me and landed herself in jail.
I woke up in an extreme state of fear, panic, and paranoia and cried for about an hour before I went back to sleep. The next morning, I woke up in the exact same state of fear, panic, and paranoia and just knew I had to leave the relationship. So I packed some basics and began moving out before she got out of jail.
Three months prior to that night, I had discovered she had been cheating on me since we first met and it never stopped. It wasn’t just one guy, but 15 men and a woman. They were friends, ex-boyfriends, online guys both from the US and abroad, and men from clubs and parties. She told her friends that we were in an open relationship and not to discuss it with me so that I wouldn’t find out.”
“We All Deserve To Be Somebody’s Number One!”
“She broke up with me in October. I got the ‘we can be best friends’ speech nonsense, and the beginning of February, I got a message from her (we hadn’t spoken since November-ish) saying how she missed me and she made a mistake and she loved me, etc.
Let’s also keep in mind that about a day after she broke up with me, she started to see somebody else (my theory is that, now, looking back at it, when they didn’t work out she came back to me).
So yeah, she came back to me, and me being an idiot, I let her back in thinking she had changed and wasn’t going to do that again (she gave me the whole speech: ‘I’m not asking you to trust me yet because I know what I did before, but just watch me and I’ll prove it to you, just wait for me’).
Well, two weeks ago, she broke it off with me again. Coincidentally, she was again talking to and hanging out with the same guy she left me for before just before she broke it off with me…and now I’m sitting here feeling like garbage again because I had just started to get really over her right before she messaged me.
When we got back together, I allowed all of my feelings for her to come back, and now they’ve been ripped out again and it feels like I have to go through the whole process again. It freaking sucks because I was watching her like she told me to and I was waiting for her, and I got played again.
So when she broke it off again, I completely lost my cool, and for the first time ever, I had a go at her. I just said everything that came to mind and that I had been thinking since October. I was so fed up because I realized that I don’t deserve this, I shouldn’t be putting myself through this cycle because it made me so unhappy. Also, she was so on and off, constantly messing with my emotions whereas I was constantly ‘on’ – my feelings for her never swayed. I finally realized that I’ll find somebody who won’t do that to me, and someone who won’t leave me for someone else that they’ve only just met. I’ll find somebody who won’t use me for my body after we broke up, and someone who won’t toy around with my emotions. Yes, I loved her dearly, I honestly did, I thought the world of her. But it was clear she did not reciprocate those feelings, nor did she respect me or my love for her – she just used me it seems. Everybody deserves love, not just me – we all deserve to be somebody’s number one!”
He Was In No Position To Go Out To Eat!
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“A stomach bug was the cause of the breakup.
I had been dating a girl who was a freshman in college (I, being a year younger, a senior in high school). We had dated the year prior when we were both in high school, and it had gone pretty well, but as one could guess, long-distance made things more difficult. By that point, I had decided where I was going to college (not where she was) and the relationship had started to go downhill.
Come Thanksgiving break, she’s back in town, and we’ve made dinner plans for the night before Thanksgiving. Now, my grandmother was in town, and the day before our dinner plans, my family decided that we’d have a group dinner with my mom’s family that night (all live elsewhere, one was expecting her first child at the time) and my dad’s family, which is something that in all likelihood, won’t happen again. I recognize this and canceled dinner plans with my girlfriend to go to that instead. She was understandably annoyed, so to make up for it, we planned to go to lunch the next day (Thanksgiving Day).
Thanksgiving morning, at around 2 am, I wake up and puke my guts out. About once an hour for the rest of the morning, I go back to dry heave for ten minutes or so – for nine hours. At around 11 (two hours before we were going to meet), I text my girlfriend that I’m not up to eat and can’t drive, but will still physically go to lunch with her.
From her perspective, I totally understand why this would look sketchy. First I cancel on dinner plans, and I plan a makeup lunch, then say I can’t drive (I always drove) and can’t eat. Long story short, the conversation we ended up having over that resulted in our breakup.”