If you've been on the internet at all in the last two weeks, then you've likely come across TikToker Reesa Teesa's viral "Who The F– Did I Marry" video series. It's a 50-part recount of her experience being married to a "pathological liar," which left millions of listeners stunned by how far the lies went.
Well, after spending eight hours hearing every second of Reesa's story, I wondered how common it is to be in a relationship with someone who completely switches personalities on you. So, I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share their "I had no idea who I was dating/married to" stories, and all I can say is WOW. Here are some of the most jaw-dropping responses:
1. "I had been married to a Duke medical student for 18 months. He quit school and wouldn’t keep a job after our son was born. I kicked him out. While packing up his things, I found fake letters from Duke and official transcripts showing he had been kicked out of UNC Wilmington a year before we were married."
"Throughout our divorce, mysterious letters from Duke would show up in my mailbox regarding his records. My attorney sent all information to Duke medical school and they had never heard of him. This is just a snippet of everything he lied to me, his friends and family about. His mom still believes he went to Duke."
2. "Years ago, I met a guy about my age online. We weren't kids. He lived in the midwest, I lived on the coast, and he came out to visit me and we hit it off really well. He told me all along that he was widowed, and all about how his wife died and that his wife's kids were grown when they got married and all that sort of stuff... And a few months later he was off with somebody other than me."
"I found out at that point when I got a message from his granddaughter. His wife was not dead. I actually talked to her. My conversation with her made me very suspicious and I read his social security number on one of those online databases and found out he wasn't who he said he was. Thank God we were never married but it still cost me a lot of trust."
3. "I came home early from a business trip and no one was home, but when I went upstairs I found multiple Mary Jane plants growing in the spare bedroom. Neither me nor my husband smoked and I had zero reason to ever suspect him of ever keeping a secret from me, let alone something like this."
"This was way back in 2010 in a very conservative state, so weed was very illegal in all forms and growing or distributing was a huge deal. I left and came back when I was scheduled to come home and everything was gone. I gave him the chance to come clean and he lied about everything. Turns out, he’d had a whole lab and operation in the basement crawl space for years and managed to keep it hidden. His lies were incredibly elaborate and I was shocked that he was the kind of guy who could live this double life."
4. "Our daughter married a handsome and charming man who we will call Tom. We all enjoyed him very much and really accepted him and loved him as part of our family. About 18 months into the marriage our house was robbed. All my jewelry was taken. We filed a police report and got a letter from the police which authorized me to go to pawnshops and look at their inventory."
"I was furious and determined to catch the thief, so I took off work and started searching pawnshops. It took me three days, but I finally found one of my rings in a pawnshop and called the police. The officer who responded to the pawnshop asked for all the documentation connected to the sale. I had never been in a pawnshop until now, and didn’t realize they took copies of the identification card of all sellers. The pawn shop owner pulled the documentation, and there was the drivers license of my son-in-law. I almost fainted…literally. When the police pulled a crime report on him, they found out that there was an open warrant in New York for the exact same thing. When I asked him why he would do such a thing to family, he said he wanted to go to a tennis tournament in Denver and didn’t have the money. Needless to say, my daughter divorced him. But the biggest joke is the judge gave him a 90-day sentence even though he had done this before. Talk about a slap on the wrist."
—Anonymous
5. "I was 23 and I was engaged to the person who I thought was the man of my dreams. He was seemingly perfect and I never saw any red flags. The only problem was he didn’t really like my friends. It wasn’t really something big at first, he would just say little things like how such and such gives him weird vibes and things of that nature. I would respond with an 'Ok, but they’re my friends' and he would just drop it. Suddenly, out of no where, almost all my friends stopped talking to me."
"They started cancelling plans, leaving me on read, and being short and weird with me until one day most of them even blocked me. I was so confused and hurt by it and my fiancé was really the only friend I had, so I was spending all my time with him and he would do a lot of things to try to cheer me up. He was really my rock, UNTIL one of my friends agreed to meet up with me after I pleaded to her to tell me what happened to us.
She then went on to tell me how I really hurt her and everyone with the nasty things I said about them. I was dumbfounded, not having any idea what she was talking about. She then went on to show me messages sent from my phone to theirs talking about all the things 'I hate' about them. A lot of it was really rude and apparently this happened with all of them. The only thing Is I never said any of the stuff. As I read through I started to see a pattern. Certain things that 'I' said were the things my fiancé would complain to me about.
I got suspicious and asked him about it. He immediately he broke down crying, telling me how evil they are and how he’s the only friend I’ll ever need and how he had to 'get them out of my life.' We broke up almost immediately, and he still reaches out here and there trying to reconcile, which is a big no."
—Anonymous
6. "A few years ago I started seeing a guy I worked with. He told me he had two kids but was divorced, and he and his wife were in contact only to co-parent. We’d been dating about three months when he took a month off work, supposedly to write a book. But we were still seeing each other, usually during the day for an hour or so when he needed a break from writing."
"About a month after he returned to work, we were still together and I came across his wife’s Twitter page with newly posted family pictures of them and their three kids, one of which was an infant. That month he took off work never produced a book but it must have been awesome paternity leave for him. I can’t get over the fact that his poor wife HAD A BABY and then was at home with a newborn and two toddlers and he was messing around with me every chance he had. The worst part was that every woman I talked to about this had a story about themselves or their sister or best friend who dated or married a lying, cheating sack of garbage. Men suck."
—Anonymous
7. "Married a guy three decades ago who was thoughtful, empathetic, and kind. He helped me while I was financially struggling to afford rent and my mother's cancer treatments. Whenever I was sick he would always show up to visit with the most thoughtful gifts. I was completely in love with him and his heart of gold, but after we married, it was like I didn't exist anymore."
"Apparently he only did nice things for other people just so that they would all think he was this great and amazing guy, while with his own family he treated them like shit because they were already his to have."
—Anonymous
8. "My live-in boyfriend of 1.5 years turned out to be a total liar. We also lived across the street from each other and were friends in high school. I thought I knew this guy. When we were dating he took me out to eat for every meal, took care of things around my house, was a gentleman, committed, spent time with each others families, had a job, car, and his own place. Turned out that he spent all his money trying to impress me and move in with me because he was about to go broke and couldn't pay his bills."
"Later it came out that he was an alcoholic, had substantial debts, was sleeping with half the town,, had stolen cars, robbed stores, stolen from friends, slept with his friend's step-mom, had domestic abuse charges, and was scamming people on the internet. After we broke up he stole my belongings and childhood trinkets. I had to go no contact, change my phone number, and be careful about what information I make available online. It's been almost 10 years ago now and I haven't been able to trust anyone else since."
—Anonymous
9. "I’m a disabled vet that married and had a child with a woman who, upon recovering from child birth, actually told me she only married me and had the kid for my money. Before I met her, I had saved $50,000 from balloon payments, owned one home outright, and had $100,000 equity in the home we lived in at the time. I planned on using that to get us a roomier home for our growing family."
"She had two kids when we met, plus the baby. I warned her not to, but she went ahead, so I spent every penny, put a lean against the value of the home, and the rest went to lawyers. She’s broke and alone after spending years turning the kids against me, claiming I was rich and withholding from them. I hope the kids realize this someday, but it’s been 15 years and they won’t have anything to do with any family other than maybe two times a year when they speak to my dad. Love you guys."
—Anonymous
10. "I met an amazing man after not dating for 13 years. People asked me out but I just wasn’t interested in trying to meet anyone else after my divorce. Here comes this guy who was not cute but so loving and caring, and he showered me with love and attention... that is, until our wedding night."
"We didn’t have sex before we got married, so we dated for three months and then I figured if he was this awesome as a boyfriend, as a husband, he would be just as good! Well he wasn’t, and after our wedding night festivities, he turned over and scooted all the way to the edge of the bed and turned his back on me.
He started not kissing me and saying small comments about how he didn’t like what I cooked or how my hair was or that if I wanted a boob job, he would support me in doing it. He said he needed money to keep his company going but would pay me back as soon as he got paid for the job (he was self employed), but never did and would come back again to borrow more. If I didn’t lend it, he was cold and more distant. I went from marrying a dream guy to being in a nightmare that took me a year to get out of."
—Anonymous
11. "I should have seen the red flags. But I chose to ignore them and I paid the price. She’d steal money and credit cards from my wallet then lie about it. Without my knowledge she got a credit card in my name, ran up the bill, and never paid it. I got a collection call at work. When I decided to leave her, she used my step-daughter as weapon. We had become close, she called me dad. My wife would say how much it would hurt my step-daughter if I left. So I’d stay."
"I hid my wallet and locked my social security number. (By then it was too late. My credit was destroyed, but I did it anyway.) But it continued. There were a few times she would ask for money and I said I didn’t have it. So, she would call the police and ask that I be removed. She would lie and say I was yelling at her. I wasn’t, I never did.
After five years I finally had enough and filed for divorce. For my troubles I had to pay alimony for three years."
—Anonymous
12. "I had a friends with benefits relationship with a guy for five years. I considered him one of my best friends. We texted everyday. One day, I got a text from his 'brother' saying that he killed himself… yeah, that wasn’t true."
"He reached out about six months later with some bullshit witness protection story. Turns out he lied to me about everything, including his first and last name, age, and the fact that he was married. He was such a good liar."
13. "I had been dating this guy for a year and a half. Then I found out he had a live-in girlfriend, but he promised and promised they were breaking up and I very stupidly stayed. I gave him an ultimatum and he said in October that he was going on a trip so she could pack up her stuff and leave. He said she followed him there, so I broke up with him. He begged me to get back together and I accepted it because I was so in love with him."
"During New Year's, he promised he was moving out and said that I should start looking for apartments. I very stupidly did, and started buying stuff for our home.
After Valentine's Day, I asked him if we were on the same path, and he said, 'Yes, only it’s going to be more difficult now, but I love you with all my heart.' I asked him why, and the piece of shit tells me, 'You know you are the love of my life right? It’s going to more difficult because I PROPOSED to her because of money, but I want you in my life forever.' I started screaming and crying and didn’t know what to do with myself, my body, mind and soul exploded."
—Anonymous
14. And finally, "I learned six years into my relationship that my ex-husband never worked as an adjunct professor as he’d told me on our first date. In fact, he’d never graduated college. He was expelled for stealing money from the college he went to. And the personal loan he told me was for his ex-fiancé’s engagement ring was actually to pay the college back, so they wouldn’t prosecute him for theft."
"I took on extra hours to financially support him for four months so he could quit his dead-end job to work on 'career development.' At that time, I didn’t know he didn’t have the degree he claimed he did, and he wasn’t trying to develop his made-up career, he was just drinking at the bar with my hard earned money every day. When I finally broke up with him, I was talking to my ex-mother-in-law about why we broke up and I cited all the lies. She said, 'Well, we all know lies roll off that boy’s tongue like water.' I wanted to punch her. I DIDN’T KNOW. It was common knowledge among his family and friends but they all hid it from me in hopes it would work out anyway. I wasted seven years of my life and got gaslit to the moon and back because none of them ever warned me."
—Anonymous