People Are Sharing The Moment They Realized Their Relationship Wasn't Healthy, And The Responses Range From Heartbreaking To Rage-Inducing
Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community about the moment they realized something was very, very wrong in their relationship, and their responses were super enlightening — and heartbreaking. Here's what they had to say.*
*Along with replies from this Reddit thread.
1."I realized I needed to file for divorce immediately when I was crying from yet another big yelling match with my husband, and our 10-year-old son said, 'Mom, why don't you just divorce dad!'"
2."When I found child sexual abuse images on my (now) ex's computer and caught him running around at night, naked, in the backyard, probably hoping the 10-year-old girls next door would see him. That was the beginning of the end."
3."I told him I had scheduled brain surgery. He didn't want to take that day off. He gets plenty of PTO."
4."Looking back, there were so many red flags earlier, but the one I first realized at the time was when we had gone shopping, and it had started pouring down rain out of nowhere. Everything is your fault if you're in an abusive relationship, according to your abuser. Neither of us had an umbrella or anything because the weather had changed so rapidly; he then started screaming at me in the train station so badly one of the security guards had to intervene."
"I realized I was 18 years old, in the prime of my life, and was standing there, crying and apologizing to a man for the weather while strangers attempted to diffuse his anger at me, fearing the consequences. That same night a woman sat next to me on the busy train held my hand quietly as he screamed at me across the aisle."
5."I was on a recumbent exercise bike one day, peddling at a moderate pace with a higher resistance. He saw me and told me I was exercising wrong. He said that I wouldn't even break a sweat like that, and I was wasting my time. I told him I was doing high-resistance cardio. He left for work, and a short while later texted me saying that this is why I was 'fat' (I wasn't) and I was so f***ing lazy. Seeing him get so angry to the point where he was swearing at me and calling me 'fat,' all because I wasn't exercising the way he thought I should be, it was definitely an eye-opener."
"Unfortunately, I stuck around for a couple of years after that."
6."I had to get an abortion the first week of lockdown. We were together for two years; he brought up marriage often, and we both agreed on the decision. He promised to pay half, then went and bought power tools and later a boat while claiming he couldn't afford our medical bill. He never paid his half, but he did make a secret Tinder account."
—Anonymous
7."We were moving states, and I noticed that any big decision absolutely immobilized him with panic and fear. Up until that point, all his decisions had been made for him by the military and, before that, by his parents. Joining the civilian world can understandably be a huuuuge transition for a lot of people, especially if they never lived on their own beforehand, but rather than asking for help he just shut down and got angry. I tried to help and be supportive for years afterward, but eventually, there came a point where I realized he wasn't willing to change and wanted me to do everything for him, but he also resented me for doing it for him. It was a lose/lose for both of us, so I wished him well and left. He's still not functioning and blames everyone else for it."
8."My husband and I were hanging out at the house of his female coworker and her husband. I was in the living room with her husband when we heard our partners just **cracking** each other up in the kitchen. We looked at one another, and both said, 'Wow, they don't laugh like that with either one of us.' It was a sobering reality check of how the laughter and joy had left my relationship. Six weeks later, they each left both of us and are now married to one another."
—Anonymous
9."I was working at a coffee shop and while closing one day, started chatting with a new co-worker — by this point, I had been isolated from all my friends, and I thought it was because I was a terrible person, so I was cautiously trying to make a new friend. We were drinking wine while we worked and started dishing about our men, and her reaction to my 'what happened on date night this past week' story was horror. It got me thinking, and once I knew to look, all of the other red flags showed up."
10."When she genuinely chuckled at the sight of me crying and being upset and then vigorously tried to hide it. Her genuine reaction showed me she was excited at my pain. Then I realized throughout the relationship, she would cause pain, then make me feel like an asshole for feeling emotions because it made her feel guilt, and she didn't like that, so fuck me for not being a cyborg. I'm not kidding, after that moment I noped the fuck out of that relationship."
11."There were many red flags stemming from pictures of other women on his phone in their underwear and bikinis, yet they were 'just friends,' to him telling me he resents me for not letting him go out with and chat with other women even though he has cheated on me in the past."
"There were massive amounts of gaslighting, like making comments or doing things then saying that I had just imagined it. There was also manipulation; when I'd call him out on his lies, he'd buy me gifts to keep me happy and quiet. Then he'd continue to talk about what he bought me every time I use or wear it by saying, 'What great BF bought you that' and shit like that. Six years of gaslighting, lies, and manipulation, and he doesn't know I am setting myself up to move out and leave him in an apartment he can't afford. ... I make 4x a month what he makes, so I pay the rent and bills. I hope he can afford it because, at this point, I don't care."
12."When he was screaming and yelling at me because I wouldn't give him my last $7 so he could go get three Rockstars to get him through the day. We had similar arguments over cigarettes and weed. This guy could get addicted to anything. Cigarettes and weed were pretty typical things. But ROCKSTAR ENERGY DRINKS? Three a day. For months. I'm shocked his heart didn't explode out of his chest. (I should clarify: the cigarettes and weed weren't a control thing. It was all about the fact that we were barely keeping food in the house, and he was smoking a pack a day and spending $45 on weed a week. I also didn't make a big deal about both of them simultaneously. I'm not unreasonable. It was months in between.)"
—Anonymous
13."The afternoon I 100% realized that my partner was totally out of it was when I said I really struggled to sleep in her waterbed with her because she was always thrashing around, and I felt like I was trying to sleep amid crashing waves. That's when she decided to pull out a knife and slash the waterbed with it in multiple places."
"Keep in mind, we had no other bed to use, and the water started pouring out all over the hardwood floor in her bedroom. Yep, that was when I knew for sure that things would never work out between us."
—Anonymous
14."When he told me that he hadn't proposed because my anxiety was an issue — even though I was controlling my diagnosed anxiety disorder with meds — I thought there may be an issue. But everything else was mostly awesome. Then he asked me to marry me, and all of a sudden he was cornering me and screaming in my face about HIS WEDDING and WHY DIDN'T I JUST AGREE WITH HIM!!!!!"
"The final straw was him getting mad at me for asking him not to insult my body. He screamed at me and then gave me the silent treatment for a week. He only broke the silent treatment to tell me that he wanted to screw other men. Which I mean, fine, but also — no? We were monogamous, and he didn't apologize; he just told me that he wanted to sleep with other people. He moved out in February 2020, thank God. If we had quarantined together during COVID, I'm sure he would have killed me."
—Anonymous
15."This one day, my ex-husband came home from work and wanted me and my daughter to go out on the boat with him. We didn't really want to go, but he eventually got his way. He and I were outside in the boat getting it ready when his friends showed up. All of a sudden, he flipped out and started yelling at me for interfering with his going out on the boat with his friends. It made my head spin!"
"That led me to start researching exactly what was going on in my marriage. That led me to leave and end the narcissistic abuse my daughter and I were experiencing."
—Anonymous
16."It wasn't even a big thing in retrospect. That's how it starts. Our first real argument was regarding my response to a letter he was sending to his professor complaining about a poor grade he'd gotten on an essay. The letter was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. I remember suggesting he changed 'could of' to 'could have.' He absolutely lost his shit. He started telling me that I was trying to ruin his self-confidence, that I wasn't supporting him, and how dare I tear apart his grammar. I backed down and apologized."
17."We had only been married a few months. He was a custom jeweler, and I thought he was financially stable. Apparently, he wasn't because he was stealing customers' diamonds from their jewelry and replacing them with fakes. About four months into our marriage, I felt he couldn't be trusted, but I didn't know about the stealing (among other things). I had known him for about three years by this point. I told him I needed to see my attorney since I had remarried. We were living in my 3,000-square-foot house and talking about the work it needed. A couple of weeks after visiting my attorney, I started getting sick, throwing up a lot, and feeling very weak. He was bringing home restaurant food pretty much every day. I had to force him to take me to the doctor, and she thought I had severe flu. A couple of days later, I was sitting on the couch, throwing up in a bucket nonstop. He was sitting next to me, calmly eating dinner. I knew then he was poisoning me."
"He had arsenic at his shop. I called my lawyer. My husband had been offered a position with a well-known jewelry store several states away. My attorney said to encourage him to take the offer. If you file charges, he would still be here and might get violent. Within a week, he took the offer and left. I got an annulment. I found out he took people's jewelry with him and owed the IRS thousands. He narrowly escaped prison time. It took me five months before I could walk on my own and more than a year before I could work or function normally. Apparently, he thought I had changed my will and life insurance and that my death would solve his financial issues."
—Anonymous
18."We became serious and started talking about marriage and kids. He told me he would disown his child if they turned out to be gay. I knew right then I did not want to have children with him. It was the beginning of the end."
—Anonymous
19."It was six months into our relationship. We moved in together. One night, I woke up to my partner masturbating while next to me. I asked him about it and told him to do that somewhere else, but not while I was sleeping. He then told me 'it was all in my head' and that 'I was imagining things.' It happened a couple more times following, and then I had to move out because I was not able to sleep."
—Anonymous
20."When she went through my phone and Facebook and removed my female friends. I knew that, normally, that'd be grounds for leaving her, but I took pity on her because she'd been abused in the past. That was a mistake."
21."I went with a friend to dinner that lasted longer than usual because we were catching up. We left the restaurant with tons of texts and calls. When I called back, he was fuming. We had only been seeing each other about a month at that point."
22."When he started trying to isolate me from my family. I had already moved out of the house to live with him, but my family lived just a couple of exits up the highway, so I still saw them frequently. He would make snide comments about my little sister and always try to find ways to put my father down (my dad is a colonel in the army, my ex was an enlisted soldier, and he always had a bit of an insecurity complex about officers vs. enlisted). If he had plans to go out, I would make plans to see my family, and then he would cancel his plans and urge me to cancel mine."
"He never wanted me to go to their house anymore or see them at all. When I met him, I had just moved to the area and was a recent 17-year-old graduate who was taking a year off before starting college. So I didn't know anyone, but my family wasn't in any position to meet anyone and had no other connections. But he never wanted me to find other connections or continue the ones I had.
That was when I first started to think, 'Yick, what is with this guy?' but I made excuses for him. As young fools in abusive relationships often do."
23."I was berated for hours about two weeks in for 'causing' him to miss out on a weed pickup that I was buying with my money. I was stunned. I just kept saying sorry because I'd never encountered anything like that. No matter how many times I said sorry, it didn't matter, that is, until he finally got his weed. It was a red flag, but that fucker was still around for several more months. I finally kicked him out after he tried to make me kill myself at four months pregnant."
24."For me, the first red flag was when we were joking around with one another on the couch. She threw a playful insult at me, and I threw one back. Then, she hauled off and slapped me in the face. There was no indication beforehand that she was like that. I had grown up getting abused physically, and I didn't want to go back to that, so I called the evening off early and broke up with her the next day."
25."Around three weeks in, when he randomly started arguing with someone over some dumb shit, I sided with the other person who I thought was being reasonable. The piece of shit got furious at me, saying, 'I expect you to be on my side.' Aghast and pissed, I walked away, ignoring him. He suddenly started playing nice and sweet again. I should have never looked back at that point because he soon turned out to be a massively manipulative, immature, emotionally abusive piece of fucking scum. Ugh."
26."He tried to make me sign a contract for rules to follow when I went to college. I tore it up and left his house. My dumb ass stayed with him for about six months or so because I was young and dumb. However, I broke up with him and never spoke to him again."
27."It took way too long for me to fully realize. Too much happened that he managed to convince me was my fault. He took a wrong turn driving — I'm not a driver, but he blamed it on me and punched me in the face. He blamed a lot of things on a condition he had and me, and I stupidly fell for it. A lot more happened before I finally realized it was a total train wreck of a relationship. But I think the one time I really realized was when, after I'd had a chemo treatment, he invited friends around to get drunk and possibly more. I couldn't even go into the bedroom because he'd put our mattress in his van for 'traveling,' so I had to lay on the sofa, where there was no chance of getting any sleep because it was directly against the wall of the kitchen where he was with his friends and there was no door."
"So I had to lie there feeling like absolute rubbish, unable to sleep because of him and his selfish friends, laughing and joking and playing music way too loud."
—Anonymous
28."I was in high school taking the PSATs, and they organized us by last names. This put him in a different classroom than me, a fact which greatly angered him. I finished early, but we were not allowed to leave until the testing time was up. Sitting there waiting, I realized that I felt calm for the first time in a long time. As time passed, I grew increasingly anxious because he would soon have access to me again. That was when my eyes started to open to the mess I was in."
29."Once, I couldn't answer my phone for an hour because I was busy. I had 47 missed call from him and a series of escalating angry voicemail accusing me of everything from cheating to dying. In hindsight, I should have realized sooner that he was bad news. But I was 19 and thought he was ~~so passionate~~."
30."He 'broke up' with me and said we could only get back together if I cut off my two best friends, guys I had known since I was two years old. He then continued to break up with me every time he wanted me to cut someone out of my life. I was 15 at the time. By the time I was 18, I barely had anyone left in my life. Thank god for my family."
31."When I finally broke down and asked for help with my depression. Not for her to fix it, but for understanding and loving me while I tried to get help. She responded with, 'I don't care, just let me know when it's over with.'"
What made you realize your relationship wasn't normal or healthy? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
