Did you know that according to the CDC – a leading science-based, data-driven service organization that strives to protect the public’s health – the current divorce rate is stated to be just 2.3 per 1,000 of the population? Not too bad, huh?

Still, ending things with a person who you once believed to be your forever partner is never fun – yet, what’s even worse is realizing that you never actually had a chance with the person and shouldn’t have wed them in the first place.

Building up the courage and finally deciding to call it quits officially is a challenging process that could leave you gutted for weeks, if not months. It’s difficult, painful, and scary, even if you were the one that decided to get the divorce – however, in the long run, it’s bound to bring you nothing but happiness. 

“How did you know you had married the wrong person? What did you do when you realized it?” – this internet user turned to one of Reddit’s communities dedicated to asking women questions, querying its members about how they realized they had tied the knot with the wrong person. Although the post didn’t quite blow up much as most of the platform’s question-based threads do, it still managed to garner 522 upvotes as well as 289 comments containing some bizarre tales. 

More info: Reddit

#1

As I walked down the aisle thinking “This is the biggest f*****g mistake of my life”. Pregnant at 19 I caved to family pressure to “do the right thing”. I had a stillborn two weeks later. I left 18 months later, two days after he threw me down the stairs and choked me. I realized it was entirely possible he would kill me.

Image credits: Mamanej

#2

After we were married, I would lay in bed and keep wishing I could “go home”.

Image credits: greedie1

#3

I knew it before I walked down the aisle. I was too embarrassed to call it off. I went through with it anyway. After we were married things really changed for the worse. He constantly gas-lit me, demanded sex morning, noon and night, told me how fat I was daily (at the time I was 5’8 and 125lbs.), talked about going to strip clubs with his buddies. I paid half of the bills and did all of the housework. 11 months in, I was a wreck and knew I had to do something about it. I got my own place, rented a storage unit and slowly moved things out. I left on a Friday when he was at work. I never looked back and never talked to him again. He filed for divorce two weeks after I left and the divorce cost me a lot of money in the end. Worth every penny and I have no regrets. He ended up with a mail order bride from Bulgaria 10 years his senior and no children of his own.

Image credits: Lynn0c0nn0r

#4

When he threatened me that I would never see my daughter again and would leave for hours on end with her without telling me when where or how when I couldn’t stop crying from post partum depression. She was the greatest gift I could ever give him I knew then I and neither her would ever be treated like we deserved. Started saving money. Waited for his work trip. Enlisted friend help. Moved to my parents while looking for a new place. Got new place, new job, began new chapter as a single mom. Hardest chapter of my life. But worth every single minute!

Image credits: EdibleCrap

#5

I knew before I even married him, but I did it because I felt there were no other options and it was ‘good enough’. I hadn’t been inundated with interest before him so I felt I had to settle for what was on offer. I stayed around for another eight years, trying to avoid thinking about wasting my best years on the wrong person. I eventually left when I got a promotion and pay rise that would give me financial independence (we had no kids – by choice). Looking back, we both wasted time with the wrong person. I love being free and he’s gone on to have twins with another woman. We both got what we wanted in the end.

Image credits: Reddish81

#6

Honestly, I realized 3 months after we got married. Then I stuck it out for another 12 years and put myself and my 3 kids through hell. Wish I would have been strong enough to leave back in the beginning.

Image credits: Accomplished_Fun_366

#7

I knew when he threw me out a week after I miscarried our child with nowhere to go! BUT! I’ve now been married to my second husband for 36 years come this March. He tells me every day how beautiful and sexy I am and how much I’m loved and appreciated. Definitely a step up?

Image credits: MissChris62

#8

when I noticed that I cry a lot and we don’t talk much. I didn’t do anything because I was in denial

Image credits: Linorelai

#9

When I would sit in my car reading a book for a hour rather than go home. Divorced after 8 months.

Image credits: DetectiveDesperate70

#10

There were so many little signs that I ignored because I loved my first husband so much. It really hit me tho when the relationship ended abruptly. He forced me out of the apartment we shared so he could move in a (newly single) coworker he just met about a month earlier.

There were many signs leading up to this like him being on his phone all night, hiding his phone from me when he never did before, saying he’d go to the store for 30 mins and being gone for 2 hours, then calling me crazy when I got upset about that.

I didn’t know about the coworker until after he became so verbally abusive I could not stay any longer. I found out my suspicions were true when he left himself signed into instagram on my iPad and I found all the messages and sexy photos that were exchanged between them.

I had already decided in my mind that the verbal abuse getting to that level was enough. But finding the messages was the icing on the cake. I filed a restraining order and the divorce finalized in July of this year.

Image credits: meowdamebovary

#11

When I realised that a male coworker who at the time wasn’t a close friend as we hadn’t known each other for long (entirely platonic for both of us) made me feel better about myself than my own husband did. Simple things like ‘you look nice today’ or ‘why are you being so hard on yourself?’ And it SURPRISED me. Not only treated me better than my husband, but purely that he didn’t make me feel horrible about myself.

It made me just wake up and realise that my relationship was an emotionally abusive one, and that I had been conditioned the think that the manipulation/gaslighting/insults were normal, or that I deserved them.

Once I woke up to that reality, i knew I was done. Best decision I’ve ever made.

Image credits: Small_Cartoonist_610

#12

When I would be so happy when he left for work and so miserable when he came home. I had many online friends I’d game with and I tried to get him to join us but he was so socially inept and rude that I realized he was making my friends uncomfortable.

So I would game with them in “secret” while he was at work because he’d always mope if I spent time with anyone and he wasn’t there because he didn’t have friends.

I stayed like that for over a year but we called it quits 4 years ago.

Image credits: Nurvanna

#13

I’m just tired and grumpy all the time. Feels like I have an extra kid.

Image credits: Socksgoinpants

#14

I kept thinking “why doesn’t this feel good” the whole year we were engaged. Ended up calling it off. I am very thankful I didn’t go through with it. Id very much love to be happily married one day. I had a hard time believing it was possible after that

Image credits: DeepDefinition219

#15

It wasn’t just one moment. I had the mindset that I could make it work even though things weren’t working. That was even before the wedding. Overtime things wore at me. The things I tried not to let bother me were tearing me apart.

The moment where I had enough, I got one of his texts “we need to talk”, I broke down at work and just didn’t want to fix it. Everyone around me at work understood. Two of my friends were in target when I called and told them, they waited to tell me that they high fives when I was telling them. My family was also happy I left him.

The biggest lesson for me was learning that when someone is constantly accusing you of things, it’s probably because they don’t trust themselves and trying to find something wrong to justify themselves.

Image credits: Redv0lution

#16

When a neighbour told me they could hear us talking in our kitchen from their house and I found out he had bugged my house.
Kicked him out the house and he never came back.

Image credits: Quick-Cattle-7720

#17

As I picked up the shattered pieces of the glass table that I’d been shoved into. Since I was eight weeks away from delivering my second child, I stayed until my son was about a year old. Then I filed for divorce because he slept with my then best friend.

Image credits: SabersSoberMom

#18

When I lost respect for him. I waited until my kid left for Uni. I decided it was in the best interest of our child to co-exist so I stayed for 12 more years because he was a good father and I was a good provider. I don’t know if that was the right choice — the induced coma I forced a part of my soul under impacted me in deeper ways than I was aware of. As in, I am no longer confident that I know how to be in a romantic relationship. But our kid has a solid relationship with each of us despite it all and I don’t know if that would have been possible if I pulled the plug all those years back vs shifting my energy with purpose, and the knowledge that my ex would do everything he could to break our bond. I didn’t realize how far he’d be willing to go, and it did get dicey for a bit, but was thankful for the foundation we built. Of course it impacted our child to grow up in that loveless dynamic, but I feel I chose the the best of two really tough options under the circumstances.

#19

I think it was a subconscious thing. When we first met I was 18 and I wanted kids. After we were together a few years I didn’t want kids anymore. After I left him, I realized I didn’t want kids with him. He basically treated me like a child which I accepted (he was older). But I didn’t want him treating our kids like that. I think there was a moment where I realized that if I couldn’t accept him treating our kids like that, why did I accept him treating me like that?

Every mistake was the end of the world for him and kids make a lot of mistakes that he certainly wouldn’t have dealt with very well and made them feel very bad for it. I know because that’s what he did to me.

Image credits: massmohawk

#20

At our reception when he barely talked to anyone other than his best friend and snapped at me when I asked him to dance with me…then when he didn’t help with things when I was in labor/after our child was born…then a bunch of other stuff after.

Image credits: Sonyabean23

#21

When most interactions were ending with me crying, and him not offering a single bit of care or sympathy. Just wanted him to hug and reassure me, I never ever got it. That, and the trust was never there to begin with for valid reasons. Lasted 3yrs married, 8yrs as a couple. So embarrassing and quite traumatic. Officially never entering the dating scene ever again!

Image credits: Iworkinfashionblah

#22

My ex husband didn’t dance with me at our wedding lmao. So that was a good indication.

Image credits: Familiar-Let-5035

#23

Well, I knew my ex husband was the wrong person when I found out he had been cheating. I entertained the idea of staying if he cut contact with the woman he was cheating with, but he didn’t want to do that, so I left. He bought out my half of all the stuff he was keeping, I payed him half of all the things I was taking. I kept the dog because I had him before we got together, and he kept the cat (a decision I regret having seen the state of my cat about a year after this all happened) because the cat liked him more.

Image credits: kokihi_55

#24

When my ex was pissed that I was the caregiver when my mil was dying of cancer. Ex wouldn’t do it, but was pissed when I did

#25

It was after my 2nd child was born. He suggested she might not be his. She was 8 when I finally got divorced. In that time I tried everything to get us to a point of being healthy. He would put no effort in. Divorced in 2020 with a solid knowledge that I had tried everything. If I had to go back, I’d get divorced at least 4 years soo er. I knew it was over but didn’t want to be a “failure”. Society needs to quit talking a out marriages failing. It’s not a failure to leave an emotionally bad situation.

Image credits: SJoyD

#26

I realized a month after settling in to my new home in another country. He was a totally different person and suddenly didn’t pay any attention to me. I stuck it out for almost eight awful years because I felt so stupid.

#27

After many years and on the “final” try to make the marriage work. Moved to another city with 2 kids, no family & no resources for support. He moved us to go to school create a better life, things eventually fell back into same old pattern of bs. Ended up losing the apartment with no where to go, lived in hotels for 2wks before calling my Mother for help. That was the absolute hardest phone call of my life, I knew nothing would change for that marriage….ever.

Image credits: holliday4

#28

I realized before the wedding but by then the social pressure had me pretty much locked in. It was either go through with the wedding or break up and disappoint everyone. I made the wrong choice.

Image credits: OpinionatedNonsense

#29

When they didn’t defend me. When I wasn’t supported and when he was happy to sleep beside me for two full years without so much as interaction. If I didn’t instigate it, then it didn’t happen.

Image credits: RecordComfortable130

#30

My routine became crying and vomiting in the shower, every morning.

#31

I feel like I’m not alone when I say, I knew before I married him.

#32

A couple years later but he had already beat me down mentally/emotionally and made me feel worthless. Took 8yrs but when he finally got a job and left for work I packed what I could with my friends help and moved several states away. Filed for divorce he did nothing like the calls for divorce with the judge it was easy process for me and the best thing that had happened to me in the last 8yrs of my life , I still get sickened thinking about how “dumb” I was and didn’t see it .

#33

When he took our tax return to flip a car to help with extra income when money was super tight during covid and when we needed to money to catch up on rent he had already gambled it away.

#34

The day after we married his personality did a 180 🙁

#35

When I realized how much I gave and gave into the relationship and it would never be enough.

Image credits: Moonlightdreamer91

#36

First let me say, I was in my 20’s. No kids, no real estate.

I knew 10 months into the marriage when our tax refund never showed up. Gambling problem. Divorced a month later. I didn’t sign up for that.

Image credits: CrisisDancing

#37

About three years into the marriage. He had been out of the army for two, depressed af, and turned into an unemployed basement-dweller. I stuck around for another two years, when he had a sudden inspiration to move to a big city and start a new job. I grew up in a big city–I did not want to return to that life. I like the small city we lived in (and I let him know this multiple times throughout our marriage). I *still* live in the same small city, in fact. I finally threw in the towel and filed for divorce. I let him know via phone call.

That was…almost ten years ago? I hope he’s doing well.

#38

When we were on our honeymoon. I looked around at all the happy couples and wondered when it was my turn. We went to couple’s therapy and I also went to individual therapy to sort out my feelings. We divorced 2 years later.

Image credits: inkwell_jade

#39

I knew when I cried so hard thinking I was not ready to marry him… before marrying him. I told myself it was ok bc his parents told me that we were made for eachother. We weren’t.

I didnt realize it until I started wanting attention from other men & just felt disgusted at his lack of effort. He just shoved any issue he had with me under the rug and expected me to love him endlessly.

I left him and I feel so much better now.

Image credits: unlikelycactus

#40

We weren’t married but had vague plans to get hitched sometime soon. I realized it was over when I started standing on the outer ends of the row in family pictures of his, thinking it would make it easier for them to crop me out later. I didn’t immediately leave because I had a hard time getting used to the idea. Eventually he cheated so the decision was kind of made for me.

#41

I realised I had married the wrong person when they completely disregarded my feelings during their transition despite my initially supporting them…finding out about the lying, alcohol/drug abuse just compounded the fact.

Image credits: lepetitgrenade

#42

He turned out to be not just slightly boring but staid and placid and a middle aged man (at early thirties) for whom life was finished/fulfilled now that he was married. I left within the year.

Image credits: therealladysybil

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