Do men think before they speak? Sometimes they say the darnedest things, other times their words can be quite shocking and hurtful. These women have taken to Quora to share what mean things their husband has rambled out to them. Content has been edited for clarity.
She “Needed” To Do Something About It
“I have been married to my husband for 22 years. I wish I could forget the words he said to me 10 years ago. These words still haunt me today and I have been through countless hours of therapy to help myself through this awful depressed existence and try to be a good mother to my two children (now age 16 and 10).
After my second child was born, I had a lot of problems losing weight. I was feeding, I had returned to work (very stressful job) after my maternity leave sooner than originally planned and I had a very energetic 5 year old who required a lot of time and energy as well as having a newborn child. To say that I was exhausted all the time was a vast understatement.
When my youngest was about 10 months old, my husband decided that this was the right time to deliver some ‘truth bombs’ to me. I am unable to forget what he said that day. He said that was looking to have an affair. He didn’t stop there! He told me that I had gained a lot of weight and that I really needed to do something about it.
I have never been so hurt in my entire life. I cried for days and I couldn’t tell anyone why I was crying. It was like he had plunged a knife through my heart and then twisted it a hundred times. I did not know what to do. He did not even understand why I was upset and crying!! I did manage to get a therapist who helped me pull myself together so that I could take care of my two children and me.
I consulted a divorce attorney three years ago and actually considered divorcing him, but the attorney scared me when she explained what was involved and how much money it was going to cost. I still have all the documents the attorney gave me and I also took lots of notes during that meeting. I saved all of those, too.
Yes, I’m still married to him. Sometimes I ask myself why. It could be that I am too fearful to leave him. He has not been physically abusive to me (although he was on that fateful day of the ‘truth bombs’.) My parents went through a lengthy divorce when I was in my teens and it ripped our family apart. I guess I don’t want my kids to have to go through that horrific experience I endured as a young person. Perhaps it is for financial stability. I have a good job, but his is even better. Our house is paid off…we have hardly any debts. I am afraid that he would use the fact that I have chronic depression and that he would use this fact to take my kids away from me.
Just a few months ago, I finally convinced him to go see a marriage counselor with me (up until this point, I had always gone to therapy alone because he refused to go). When the counselor began to dig deep into our emotional hurts, I brought up the ‘truth bombs’ that had been hurled at me 10 years ago. Can you believe that my husband never remembered saying these things? He basically called me a liar in front of the counselor! My rebuttal was that I knew the exact date that he said these things to me and that it hurt me so deeply that I have been unable to forget about all of it. Heck no, I wasn’t making this up!
My husband did not wish to continue the therapy beyond about six sessions. He doesn’t ‘believe’ in any type of psychotherapy. His family was all about pulling oneself up by the bootstraps and continue living….even when his own dad dropped dead at age 50 of a massive heart attack.
As for me, I have spent thousands of dollars and countless hours on psychotherapy for myself. The wounds go deep. Deeper than I ever thought possible.
I am praying that our marriage can be healed. It has gotten better in the last couple years, but there are different pressures and stressors added to the mix now.”
Not Even You
“As we were on the way to the beach one day, my husband stopped for a bathroom break at just about the halfway point. He forgot to take his phone. It started ringing and continued for several minutes. Finally, I attempted to answer it, but missed the call. I had a sudden urge to look at his text messages.
What I read I still have not recovered from fully and I am not sure that I ever will. He wrote some that I can simply not erase from my memory. Things he NEVER said to me. He was not ever, even in the beginning of our relationship the kind of person that used superlatives. His way with my relationship I interpreted was that of someone who was calm, cool, collected. But really, as it turns out, I believe he was just not all that interested in me. At least nowhere in comparison to this other person!
It was extremely painful. He said in one message, ‘You looked so beautiful tonight!’ (I had never gotten any compliment for anything with an exclamation point after it.)
He got back into the car and I began to read the messages out loud. There were several thousand.
‘I can’t stop thinking about you!’
She replied, ‘You are married!’
‘Ya. It sucks to be married but thinking about you all day.’
We got home. I sat frozen at my desk. Staring at the blank screen of my computer. I couldn’t think. I was not crying or yelling or speaking. I just sat there. I was in shock.
After several motionless hours he began to unravel. I remember him saying, ‘I love you! I don’t want to lose you! I never wanted to replace you! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!’ He was pacing rapidly and behaving erratically. I was in shock to an extent I did not think possible from any emotional injury.
He begged me to stay with him forever. His behavior was extremely confusing to me. I had no idea why he would act that way. Why would he tell me to STAY? Why would he suggest that he LOVES me!?? Someone who loves you don’t choose several thousand times over the course of years to hide something so important from you! They do not do things that have no logical outcome except that it will eventually cause such you to be so deeply wounded. He LOVES me??
At the end of this first day I could hardly think. Words sounded like a foreign language to me. I remained seated in the same position. No food. No water. No bathroom needs. Literally motionless. I remained there until the next morning. Not a wink of sleep.
Eventually I started speaking up. Although who knows whether what I was saying made any sense at all. That continued through the entirety of day 2. Just speaking up. I believe I started crying off and on toward the end of that day.
Still sitting in same position through the entire night following day 2. It was as if I had been paralyzed. I was not choosing to remain motionless. Somewhere inside myself I seemed to accept that it was simply a fact. Still no food. I believe my husband (who was still unraveling before my eyes) brought me a glass of water and insisted that I force a sip or two down. Although the glass of water just became a prop—sitting untouched. Not moving for hours.
Day 3, I decided when the sun came up that it was over. I was very hungry. I told him (during his ongoing rant) that I was leaving and planned to walk to Burger King for food. He insisted on following a couple of feet behind me. He had somehow started to mix his ‘I LOVE YOU’ screaming up with insults. Additionally, confusing, I did little reacting. I was embarrassed as I walked along the busy street with him screaming at me about such unintelligible things.
When we got home, I finally began to fight back. I screamed. I yelled. I hurled back insults whenever they were so oddly hurled at me. Unfortunately, this continued for months. My mother told me to stay. I realized that I was earning nowhere near the amount of money I would need to move out and start a new life. He vowed never to pay me a dime of support ever and would quit his job the day that I left him. I believed him. He denied having any feelings for this other woman. He insisted that it ironically ended just days before I discovered it. Obviously insulting lies. I still cannot believe he thinks I am so incredibly stupid. Stupid enough to believe any of his bull. He insisted and still will (if given the opportunity) that NOTHING physical ever happened. So stupid it aches my fingers to type those words.
I begged him to be truthful. I bought books about how to recover from infidelity in your marriage. He agreed to go through the recommended steps, but never would. He created problems with each of the books insisting it did not apply to him under the guise of his most ridiculous assertion that NOTHING had happened.
Over the following months, we fought almost constantly. During one of the fights we were going to sleep. (Neither of us ever moved out of the bedroom or bed throughout this period.) As we started to go to sleep our fighting began to die down as it would.
What happened next, I still remember like it was yesterday.
He smiled and said, ‘You know Susie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fall…’ I said, ‘In love with her’ He said, ‘yes.’ He opened his eyes. He said, still smiling, ‘I have never felt like this about anyone.’ I said, ‘Did you just say anyone? Not even me?’ He said, ‘Yes, not even you.’
I jumped out of bed. I screamed at him to take his stuff and leave. Immediately. At 1:00 a.m. on that weeknight. He seemed surprised. But in a hurry, he left. He did pack but took no bags with him. I was crying hysterically.
So, there were several things that were the meanest things ever said to me by a spouse throughout all of this. Maybe the most hurtful was the ‘Not even you.'”
Nothing But Life Lessons
“My 1st husband was a real piece of work, and used to say the most crude and disgusting things at the most inappropriate times. He said this in a half minded state when we had 2 other couples over for drinks and to play cards, and one of the other wives asked if we were planning on having any more children.
I had been battling PCOS and infertility for about 2 years by that point (a total of 12 years by the time my miracle baby came along in 2016 with my wonderful 2nd husband), and he knew how much I wanted another baby.
He knew that I cried every month when the pregnancy tests were negative.
He knew that I cringed every time someone would ask if we were going to have more children.
He knew that I desperately wanted more children.
Yet he said ‘I keep telling her that as long as she keeps begging for it up the bum, we aren’t ever going to be able to have another baby.’
He knew all of these things, and he still said such a hurtful, horrible, disgusting lie to 4 people I hardly even knew at the time. I will never forget the look of horror and shock on their faces — and then one of the women (who later went on to become one of my dearest bestest friends) involuntarily and reflexively reached out and smacked him straight across the face and said:
‘You’re a disgusting pig! We’re going home, and your wife is coming with us. She’ll come home when she feels like it, which is hopefully never.’
Unfortunately I did come home the next morning when he called me crying and sober and begging for forgiveness. I spent a total of 8 years in that marriage, and although I received my beautiful amazing daughter from it, I received nothing else but life lessons on what I did NOT want in a relationship.”
Not In The Mood?
“First night after marriage – I make a move. He pushes me away gently and says ‘I am not in the mood’. I took it sportively because it was our wedding night and I assumed he was tired.
So second night, I am all excited and prepped up to get intimate with hubby and guess what he says ‘Not today, I am too tired. Maybe another day’.
One year and three months later, he still says the same lines… I’ve started doubting myself and no longer feel womanly or desirable. I don’t blame him. But at least he could have rejected me before getting married to me and raising my hopes.
I wish he were physically attracted to me.”
That Is A Gut Puncher For Sure
“After being together for 31 years. He stood in our kitchen, looked proud of himself and said ‘And now I am going to kick you in the gut. I am in love with Katie and Katie is in love with me.’ Katie was 27 and our daughter was 23. He was 54.
Then I arranged for us to go to marriage counselling. He told the marriage counselor that our daughter, who was disabled from a car accident should ‘Get off the gravy train’ Meaning he no longer wanted to support her. She is now finishing dental school and remembers that.
Ahh there is so much more but I hardly talk to him anymore and I feel so much happier. He doesn’t live here anymore either.
I actually phoned Katie to tell her how much sorrow she had bought into my daughter’s life. At the time my daughter was 23, Katie was 27 and worked for my husband, and my husband was 54. Katie said to me ‘I didn’t know we had that kind of relationship.’ Well honestly my husband is a chronic liar but she might be too. Are they together? I don’t know and honestly I don’t care. I am only glad that he is no longer part of my life. There is so much more mean and dishonest stuff he did but I choose not to focus my life on that but rather to move forward and be happy. It took me a while to figure out that he was toxic for me but I am much happier now.”
Danny No Good
“We were high school sweethearts, and he was older than I was by two years. We met when I was a freshman and young love blossomed from first sight. Daniel had a gentle soul, and wouldn’t hurt a single fly. He was also very responsible for his age, and was also organized. Not a single curfew was ever broken and while we attended parties, it was always small sized among trustworthy friends.
My parents adored him and saw potential in him, and his parents really enjoyed having me around and frequently invited me to their family functions whenever they came up.
I was the only one who ever called him ‘Danny’, and even had asked if it was alright to call him that to which he smiled and replied, ‘I’ll always be your Danny’.
Danny was in a horrific car crash when I was a junior in late December, where he was T-boned by a truck that ran a red light, which ended up plowing him into the light changing post and the force of it spun his car to where it easily could have nose dived into the river if it weren’t for a tree that caught the edge of the front end, making the car come to a stand still.
He had a shattered jaw, broken collar bone, and a punctured lung.
For two seemingly long and painstakingly days after his emergency surgery, he was in a coma and placed in ICU. Tubes, and wires were everywhere, followed by the sounds of the breathing machine, and the heart monitor and whatever else so-called gizmos they had him hooked up to. The only time I left his side was to go to the bathroom. His mom allowed me to stay the entire time. He was barely recognizable, as his face was three times the size it should’ve been, bruises and cuts covered him, and of course again the endless supply of wires and tubes.
I was never happier when he finally opened his eyes and had looked ever at me, tried to smile, followed by a squeeze of my hand.
My Danny had made it back to us, and he was going to be alright.
After his long recovery had passed, one day he got it in his head that he really wanted to serve the country, and had romanticized the idea of being a hero, and that we would be financially set as he’d be able to afford college (his family wasn’t very well off).
I, while admired and always thanked veterans for serving, just had a bad feeling about Danny enlisting. For some reason, deep down I knew the day he would leave for training would be the day that my Danny died.
Not wanting to be selfish, I communicated to him where I stood with the whole idea, how I had a bad feeling about it, but if this was something he felt that he needed to do, then I’d support him 110 percent and would be right here, waiting for him to come home to me.
After he’d dodged a few red flags (he had a metal plate in his jaw which to my understanding was not something the military would readily accept in a potential solider), Danny succeeded in enlisting and before I knew it, we were saying goodbye to each other.
After he left, I cried myself to sleep every night and I couldn’t understand why, I just did. I wrote uplifting letters to him daily, and counted down the days for his Graduation.
The day finally came when we got to attend the ceremony, and we were finally reunited in joyful smiles and tears. It was then, that I thought perhaps I was just being paranoid and that maybe… Everything would be alright. At least I desperately wanted it to be, yet I had this nagging feeling that he was somehow different. I couldn’t put my finger on it and shrugged it off. I was overjoyed in having him home. I didn’t care that somehow he wasn’t ‘Danny’, that something was… ‘Off’.
The Daniel that came back was short tempered, he seemed angry at the world, and was no longer organized, his car was constantly full of garbage, his room was a disaster. For the first time we actually got into heated arguments versus calmly talking things out, trusting that the other would be heard and have a turn.
Another red flag I had ignored was my dog’s reaction to him when he first stepped through the door. My dog had literally bolted from the room that he was in and hid, refusing to have anything to do with him. This was a dog that loved to wiggle her butt and push her nose into the leg calf for attention from visitors.
As little time passed by, it became harder and harder to ignore the fact that ‘Danny’ was no longer and in the place of him, here I had a man who looked like him, smelled like him, walked like him, talked like him which made it impossible for me to ‘let go’. I had hoped that maybe he just got buried deep down inside and over time he’d find his way back to me.
One day, while he was driving me somewhere, I don’t rightly recall exactly where, but we had gotten lost. I tried to get him to ask for directions and he had snapped at me for it. Taken aback, I fell apart. I finally said, ‘Who are you?! I just want my Danny back. You are hurting me by being like this! I don’t understand it!’
Dead silence had filled the car as he slammed on his brakes, violently pulled over, and looked at me dead in the eye with this sheer coldness that I’d never seen, and he said,
‘Danny is DEAD! He is never coming back!’
He then looked straight ahead, and spun his wheels as he got the car back into the road, causing a car to honk his horn, swerve to miss us. Daniel didn’t even flinch and ignored that car completely and kept on driving. I cried and cried all the way back home and he never apologized or said a single word.
One night around Halloween, he’d announced that he was inviting his best friend’s girl of his dreams (the best friend’s) along with his cousin over for to drink and play cards. He had me join them. As he interacted with that girl, I noticed that I saw glimpses of ‘Danny’, but only towards her. It finally struck me… I no longer had the ability to bring “Danny” out, that despite everything I’d done, I just could not make him happy anymore.
I then announced to the table that I needed to get up early with my daughter and was going to bed. While in bed, I cried as I felt a huge burden lifting off me as it was then, that I finally was ready to let him go. I knew even while we had a few month old daughter together, that it was for the best that we parted ways, that neither her nor I should be subjected to years of unhappy family and constant torture. I grieved for my Danny, not the man that sat downstairs, but I finally was freed.
The next morning, he announced to me that he slept with his buddy’s girl, and it felt good. I think he was shocked that he collected zero reaction from me. Looking at him with an indifferent face, ‘Cool beans, I’m glad that you had a good time, Dan.’ I should note that my folks were gone at the cabin so we had the house to ourselves, and he did this in their bed.
I played along with our routine for a month as I looked into divorce process. I then finally broke it off with him and kicked him out of the house, and never looked back since. No amount of pleading and empty promises was going to change my mind.
I am so grateful that I had woken up and snapped out of it. I’m in an even better relationship with a wonderful man, who treats me and has treated me so well in ways that I never thought were possible, even after 7 years together. He is also an amazing dad, so good at it that my daughter asked me to get an engraved key chain that says, ‘Thank you for being the Dad you didn’t have to be.’ For Christmas.
For those wondering… Daniel finally found a new wife.
I like her a lot, she keeps him in line.
Sound of whip crack.”
She Got Revenge At Least
“My husband and I were separated. He came to my house for some reason (I can’t remember why now). I asked him if he could help me with something and he responded with,
‘It’s like you think I’m still in love with you or something, well let me tell you this, I’ve never loved you!’.
That comment absolutely stabbed me in the heart. We had been together for over 20 years, and we have 3 children together.
The positive that came out of that comment was that I no longer needed to give a rat’s behind what he thought of me. Up until that point, I hadn’t asked him for child support (we had been separated a year) and he didn’t contribute to the children at all during that time, but I got that paperwork filed pretty quick after that.”
That Was Unexpected
“One time we were having a disagreement. It got rather heated.
My husband hugged me and said softly ‘Ya know Maureen, every once in a while, and it is by no means often, you can be a bit of a pain in the neck’.
He went into the other room to cool down.
He came back after a little while and apologized. ‘I am so sorry. No man should ever talk to his wife like that.’
That was it. That was the meanest thing he has said in thirty-five years.
My heart breaks for all the ladies that have such deplorable husbands. I’m glad to see that many of you kicked those guys to the curb, where they belong. How devastating. You deserve way better.
I know I got very lucky. I drop to my knees daily and thank the good Lord for bringing me someone far better than I could ever deserve.”