Moving in with a significant other is a huge step in a relationship. Taking this step can either help a couple grow stronger or it can help uncover hidden red flags that were there all along. These stories focus on the latter. These women took to Reddit to reveal the dealbreakers they discovered when they moved in with their partners. Content has been edited for clarity.
She Could No Longer Watch Him Slowly Kill Himself
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“I just couldn’t deal with how much he drank. There were a lot of deal-breakers that slowly cropped up after we moved in together, but the drinking was the biggest one.
Apparently, he was buzzed every time we hung out or went on dates and I just didn’t realize it until later. After we moved in and I saw that he couldn’t go a day without at least drinking a six-pack, I said something. His response was, ‘You always knew I was a drinker, don’t try to change me.’
I knew he would occasionally have a drink while we were out together, but I had no idea he had already gotten wasted earlier that day. Combine that with his laziness and entitled attitude, and it was an extreme relief to be rid of him.”
You Can’t Base A Relationship On Lies
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“He lied about everything. We started out long distance as pen pals (the mid-90s, before everyone was online). After a lot of phone calls and letters, we finally met when he came to visit.
The first lie was that he looked nothing like he described. Fine, I can forgive that. We ended up getting our own place and he just kept piling up lies. He talked me into going out to California where his family lived. Here are some things he lied about:
His real name. His brother being a half-brother. His past relationships. His family’s living conditions.
And he got away with all this lying because English was his family’s second language and they never spoke it at home. I was always in the dark. Even if one of them wanted to say something to me, they’d say it to him and he’d tell me. They could all speak English, but they wouldn’t talk to me. It was a hard lesson. But luckily I learned it as a teenager and it taught me a lot about what red flags to look watch out for.”
Was She Living With Her Boyfriend Or Another Child?
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“He was immature and had a ton of hobbies, so there were projects and materials unorganized and laying around everywhere. There were newspapers and paperwork scattered around, all of which were unorganized. He had a train set taking up the center of the living room floor. Saved three broken coffee makers, same make and model with the same broken part.
I tried helping by buying him secondary storage for his hobbies, but he would fill them with whatever and never could find anything. I would clean out and organize closet spaces, and it wouldn’t be a week before he just threw whatever in there.
He was chronically late on rent because he would spend his paychecks on DVD collections and board games. Once I forgot to drop off the rent for three days past due (not a big deal, the apartment’s management was next door and they knew I wasn’t someone who was late with rent or cash-strapped) and he told me, ‘You need to get your act together.’ I slammed the bathroom door in his face when he said that.
He also accused me of leaving ‘rotting food in the sink’ when there was a frying pan in the sink with a tiny, single diced onion cube stuck to the pan. I had a sports injury and could barely walk that day. I was finishing my Ph.D. program at the time and the chaos in the apartment was adding extra stress, but I didn’t have time to look for a new place.
We remained friends after the split, his new place is one thousand fold more chaotic. I can live with my own messes, thank you.”
Dishing Out The Dirt
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“He didn’t mind dirt. I’m not obsessed with a spotless house, but poo on the toilet bowl? Dust so thick you can’t read the buttons on the TV? He was fine with that. He couldn’t stand a single messy pile of clutter but didn’t care much about filth. It was so odd to me, his house was always spotless when I came to visit. When we moved in together, I realized he only bothered with that if someone he wasn’t comfortable with was coming over.
I knew it was probably bad when I picked up one of his two pairs of work pants and made a comment about how I was washing them because they were rather rank, to which he replied, ‘Oh, that’s because I haven’t washed them since I bought them.’
He got a uniform allowance in July. It was December.”
He Will Need To “Find Himself” A New Girlfriend With That Attitude
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“He had no idea how to take care of himself or function as an adult at all. He lived with his rich parents before we moved in together and his bedroom was always spotless because the maid would clean it for him. On his own, he was a slovenly human being with no basic life skills – he threw candy wrappers and garbage directly onto the floor, refused to clean the bathrooms at all, and hid dirty dishes under the bed. He flooded the apartment repeatedly by putting dish soap in the dishwasher or cramming the washing machine absurdly full in an effort to wash everything he owned in one load (it was our own washer, he wasn’t doing this to save quarters – it was just pure laziness). When he cooked, he would put his portion of scrambled eggs or whatever he was making onto a plate, and leave the rest of the food in the pan on high until it set off the smoke alarm.
Despite living like a small, human-sized hurricane, he was used to a spotless house and disliked mess. I would leave for work in the morning (he didn’t work, Mommy and Daddy were paying his half of the bills so he had time to ‘find himself’), and when I came home in the evening, the apartment would be a disaster and he would be loudly complaining that the place was messy and no one had cleaned it. What he really wants in life isn’t a girlfriend, it’s a live-in maid who pays all his bills and sleeps with him. Good luck with that.”
You Want To Dress Up Like A Woman But Not Respect Them?
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“He was a cross-dresser but didn’t respect women. All he was interested in was kinky stuff but never actual face-to-face stuff. That made me feel like an object and I moved into my own room at that point.
He also had constant sulfur farts that outraged me because he knew the cause and never tried to change it. Despite him insisting that he worked super hard, he slept half the day, worked a few hours, and then stayed up half the night watching weird smut or playing video games. That was all him on Adderall. When he wasn’t on Adderall, he was uninterested in anything at all. At the time, I was up at 5 am for my job, and worked/cleaned/ran errands the rest of the day until going to bed around 10 pm. This made him insist that I didn’t care about him.
He constantly talked over other people and was annoyingly arrogant about everything, even when he wasn’t educated on the topic. One night, after hanging out with friends and seeing them all cringe and give up talking because of how irritating he was being, I brought it up to him (privately, once we got back home). He cried and cried about how embarrassed he was and clung to me sobbing about how he needed me to help him with these things.
It was all just such a huge turnoff that I noped out as fast as I could.”
Oh, That Fight Never Happened. What Are You Talking About?
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“I lived with a guy who had a complete aversion to conflict of any kind. He would claim conversations never happened or disappear for a day or so to avoid an unpleasant conversation.
I think I did reasonably well at raising issues gently, but then he’d turn things around and vent all the things bugging him. He’d never do this on his own, and it was incredibly frustrating.”
His Weird “Quirks” Were A Little Too Much
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“We dated for a year before moving in together, but I didn’t know just how weird this guy was until I was with him 24/7. He was always doing really strange things, rearranging furniture while I was out, moving my stuff and not telling me where he put it, peeing in bottles and leaving them by the tv.
One time, he used foam sealant to seal the front door shut and we could only use the back door until we finally got it back open. He never made an effort to get to know my family and lied about his own father dying.
I, eventually, was like, okay, I’m out and moved back home. The next day, he totaled the car that was in my name and immediately went out and bought a new one. When I was living with him, he said he was broke and living off of credit cards, but he apparently had a stash of money he didn’t want to tell me about. Weird dude.”
Was He An Adult Or Just A Man-Sized Baby
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“A female friend of mine moved in with a guy who seemed totally normal. Then a large delivery of adult-sized diapers arrived. She stuck with it. Then he insisted on wearing them, and she stuck with it. He insisted on urinating in them and getting her to change it. She stuck with it.
She had a hip operation and couldn’t get upstairs quickly enough to meet his demands and the whole thing fell down. What some people will put up with.”
He Really Needs To Work On His Anger
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“My boyfriend gets really angry when playing Fortnite. He will yell and throw things which I really hate since I’m sensitive to yelling. I love video games and love watching him play Fortnight since I don’t play myself, but it scares me how angry he gets.
I’ve told him how much I hate him yelling and getting violent, but he says it’s not a big deal because he doesn’t ever yell at me and would never be violent with me.
It’s the only thing that he does that I don’t like but it really makes me nervous about our future sometimes and ruins the whole experience of us spending time together while playing video games.”
She Moved Out To Get Away From Her Parents, Not Find New Ones
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“He voluntarily chose to stay unemployed. I once had a long day at work and walked in the door to have him nag me about where I’d left my handbag (near the door but out of the way). I said I’d been up since 5 am, commuted four hours total, and worked a 10 hour day, and could I please sit for a minute to catch my breath and I’d put the bag away?
He replied with, ‘I’ve not been home all day cleaning for you to mess it up. So get to it and put that bag away.’
He stood over me until I did it. Yeah, no, I couldn’t live with this and the many other controlling and manipulative ways of his.”
She’s Got A Difficult Decision Ahead Of Her
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“My husband is against vaccinations for our kids! This is eating me up inside and nothing will change his mind.
I’m pregnant with our first. I really really don’t want to divorce him or vaccinate our kids behind his back. I’m first trying to reason with him, but I feel like I need more ‘ammo’ in the form of more educated people.
He watched this doctor on YouTube who seems to have done a lot of research. There are also plenty of other people who post on YouTube about the side effects of vaccines. He’s definitely more against dead’ or inactivated vaccines vs. alive or activated vaccines.
I think with prayer and wise counsel, he might change his mind. Otherwise, I’ll have to make a grave decision. I hope it doesn’t come to that.
We’re committed to each other and our faith, so I doubt that will happen. But if it does then, I will survive with the love of my friends and family and with my savior.
Until then, I’m going to take this life a day at a time.”
She Can’t Seem To Stay Away From The Kid Diddlers
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“One of my exes I lived with turned out be a kid diddler. I mean, I knew he was a weird dude, but that revelation was shocking.
I had another ex who talked to some minors online while we were together and said they were ‘just friends’ while he was obsessively texting them all the time.
I unfortunately never got enough proof for either.”
She Knew He Was Old, But Not The Other Stuff
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“I ‘dated’ a man twice my age when I was around 17 or 18 years old.
At some point, my mother kicked me out of the house (I was a mess at this age, I don’t blame her), so I had no option but to go live with him.
Before he came to pick me up to start our lives together, he came clean about his real name, the fact that he was still married, (in the process of divorcing) and that he had seven kids. His oldest child was only a year younger than me.”
“I Felt Like I Was His Mom Telling Him No”
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“He was smoking pot in the apartment at least three times a day. It’s never something I had thought about before we had lived together because I’m not against pot. But when I lived with someone who refused to smoke outside and smoked multiple times a day in the apartment, it drove me crazy.
It’s hard because I asked my ex at the time if he could please smoke outside, but he kept coming up with different excuses. He would say things like he kept the window open or bought something that was supposed to cut out the smell. My landlord ended up being able to smell it and was not happy about it. But it sucked having to tell my ex what to do. I didn’t want to be that person.
The smell was so strong that it kind of took over everything. It sucked because he smoked so much he couldn’t smell it like I could. I wasn’t mad that he smoked, but I was mad that he didn’t seem to care that I had asked him a couple of times to smoke outside since we’re renting.
I felt like I was his mom telling him no, and eventually, I stopped asking and just started to resent him.”
She Got Sick Of His Nasty Habits And Attitude
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“I quickly learned that he was a totally self-absorbed dirtbag. Oh, and that he peed in bottles when he was too lazy to go to the bathroom and then would leave them around our bedroom. It was heinous.
It was nasty. Needless to say, I eventually kicked him out, but not for the pee bottles.
We lived together for about six months before the dealbreaker put an end to the relationship. That came when he intentionally ignored my 19th birthday.
I never looked back. Although supporting myself at 19 was difficult, it made me a stronger and more responsible person
My poor current boyfriend is stuck with the ‘takes no prisoners’ version of me.”
She Found Out About His Issues A Little Too Late
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“Before my boyfriend and I moved in together, he used to spend a lot of time staying with me at my parents’ house because he had ‘family issues.’ My mom basically bought all his food and gave him a place to stay for the summer because his dad was hard to live with.
In September, we moved in together. I was going into my second year of college and he was starting his first. Everything was good for a month until he decided to tell me that he never applied to the school, let alone enrolled.
This guy was just waking up every day and leaving to do absolutely nothing. Pretty soon after that, I realized that HE was the problem in his family, but not before he faked grandparents’ deaths, weird childhood memories, and a group of friends that he never seemed to speak to or meet up with.”
She Could Only Deal With So Many Lies From Him
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“My friend was with a guy that eventually turned out to be a disaster. I met him through a friend of a friend sort of thing. I personally got on with him really well and looked forward to seeing more of him as a member of our group. Later down the line, he started dating another friend’s sister, and everything was fine…or so we thought.
They moved in together and he needed a job. We managed to get him a job in our office (I worked with the brother of this girl) and everything, again, was ok. Several months later, I was approached by the brother who said, ‘You know that guy my sister is dating? Well, remember how we got him a job here? Can you remember the last time you even saw him here?’ And then it struck me, I hadn’t seen him in forever. Like, literally months. I worked in a different office, so I didn’t think much of it, but I hadn’t seen him walking around, at lunch, or anywhere else.
It turned out that he’d just stopped turning up one day, but kept telling his girlfriend that he was ‘going to work.’ Then he’d spend the day just walking around town until it was time to go home. We called him out on it and he apologized, and work took him back. But then he did it AGAIN. He got fired, got a new job…and DID THE SAME THING AGAIN. It’s just some weird thing he has.
He also lied about several other stupid things, like being a good cook, injuries he had in the past, his citizenship (all of which were quickly found out due to other members of our group actually doing the things he’d lied about).
The girl rightly dumped him after he was caught out lying AGAIN, other something else stupidly trivial, and we’ve not seen him since.”
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