Recently, Reddit user u/RobertstKA15r4 asked the people of r/AskReddit, "What did your partner do that made you suddenly understand they weren't right for you?" Here are some of the most-upvoted responses:
1. "We were fighting all the time. I'd try to leave and he'd love-bomb me. At some point, I just asked him to make some effort to treat me with some kindness. He replied that he refused to do that because it would be 'a lie'."
"I realised that at the most basic level, he just didn't like me, but thought of me as a toy he didn't want to lose."
2. "We were walking to a restaurant and casually chatting. I off-handedly tried to remember what I was up to a couple of days prior (it made sense in the context of the conversation). He cut me off and said, 'probably sleeping in and doing nothing all day.'"
"It was just a jab to be hurtful, no lead-up to it at all. Not that it should matter, but I had a credit card, car, and the lease on our house all in my name — he had none of those. He worked part-time as a server but couldn't support himself, while I paid all our bills. He didn't want to be on the lease because he didn't want to feel tied down. He was deeply insecure and I guess it just came out, he needed to knock me down a peg when he got the chance. I dumped him over dinner at the restaurant."
3. "They told me that I wasn’t allowed to struggle when they were struggling because it invalidated their feelings."
4. "It wasn’t my partner, but a friend. I was venting about my then-boyfriend to a friend I didn’t see too often when she stopped me and asked, 'Do you even like him as a person? Would you be his friend if you weren’t dating?'”
"We broke up shortly after. It was an eye-opening question."
5. "He gleefully told me about how he screamed at some teenage cashier at a restaurant because she accidentally double-charged him. He told me 'It felt good to yell at someone who actually deserved it.' He went on about how mean he was to her, how he yelled at her. He was so HAPPY. My jaw was on the floor."
6. "I dated a woman for a year. The day she was to start moving in with me, she told me my cat had to go. I told her that wasn't going to happen. She told me I had to choose, her or the cat. I told her goodbye! Never saw her again."
7. "I realised I was parenting him instead of being with him."
8. "My (ex) husband said I should get pregnant because it would 'give me something to do.' I was already working two jobs."
9. "They called me a burden when I was a guest at their house."
10. "He said he’d hurt my pet cats if I didn’t check out of the hospital RIGHT NOW and come home to sort his dinner. Needless to say when he came home the next day neither me nor the cats were there, but the cops were."
11. "On a 19-hour flight, he booked himself up front in business class and put me in the back with our four kids (including the baby on my lap). When I asked him to switch places with me for two out of those 19 hours, he told me he couldn’t believe how selfish I was being."
12. "He, who at the time was homeless and jobless and living in his car with his dog, told me, who lived in a nice townhome with roommates, worked full time, and was going to school for my BA, that I really needed to get my life together. He was a manipulative and gaslighting loser who didn’t deserve the six months he got with me."
13. "He applied for a new job in a city 2.5 hours away from where we lived and only told me about it when he was already about to accept the offer. I tried to be supportive but I felt so lonely throughout the week when he was gone in a city that wasn’t even my home to begin with."
14. "I was violently ill (cryptosporidium) and could barely leave bed for about a week. He made dinner for himself one night and left the dishes in the sink and a mess in the kitchen. He got home from work the next evening and the first thing he said to me was 'well, I can see you did nothing all day.' I asked what he meant and said 'the kitchen is a mess!'"
15. "We were having an argument and emotions were high. He made sure to move into a room in our apartment that had a mirror so he could watch himself cry from time to time during said argument. There were many red flags, but that one stuck out as top-tier narcissism."
17. "He got into a confrontation with someone who was using the dryer in their laundry room for longer than one cycle. He took their clothes out of the dryer and put his into it because 'it was not their turn.' He said he'd fight them if they disagreed — ditched him ASAP."
18. "Our cat climbed onto their leg while we were laying in bed, and when they moved a bit, the cat instinctively extended its claws and hung on to keep from falling off. Instead of just saying 'ouch' or gently moving the cat off their leg, they picked the cat up and threw it against the wall."
19. "My big 'ah-ha' moment was when I realised I was happiest when he came home, and he was happiest when I left."
20. "He ditched me to go play tennis with his roommate the day I found out my dad had cancer. He then complained because he left his jacket there and was afraid someone would steal it."
21. "When I developed severe PTSD after experiencing an attack at work: my ex-husband said, 'I wish I could have a nervous breakdown and have a vacation too.' And he meant it."
22. "My second ex-wife told everyone she had cancer, including her own kids. She didn't have cancer."
"Turns out I married someone who very skillfully hid the fact that they had severe, undiagnosed histrionic personality disorder. She was even able to hide this from medical professionals and psychologists and would give them false information to get the prescriptions she wanted.
When I discovered the ruse, that was it. Immediate divorce."
23. "I told him I was a little depressed. He asked, 'Is it because you haven’t done anything with your life?'"
24. "When, at the thought of potentially being proposed to, I had a panic attack instead of being excited."
Shout out to u/RobertstKA15r4 and r/AskReddit for having this discussion.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.