Warning: This post contains mentions of abuse and death. Please proceed with caution.
It can be a really tough thing to realize that a relationship you've put all your time, effort, and heart into is, in fact, not working out the way you hoped it would. It can be an even harder thing to get yourself out of it. Sometimes, though, there's one specific, singular moment where you sit there and think, "Yeah, it's time." I asked women of the BuzzFeed Community to share the "last straw" moments that made them break up with their partners for good. Truly, I am so, so proud of these women for doing what they had to and leaving these a-holes in the past. Here are 20 stories they shared:
1. "I was taking pre-reqs for nursing school, working full-time and doing my classes at night. One day I dropped my 3-year-old and 6-month-old off with their dad and headed to class. I came home five hours later — about 10 p.m. — and could hear my infant screaming bloody murder as I pulled into the driveway. Rushing inside, I found my (now ex) sleeping on the couch while my 3-year-old was dirty and running all over the place and my baby had soaked through her diaper and was covered in feces. After cleaning her up and putting both kids to bed, I woke up my husband to ask, 'WTF?!' His response: 'Well, you know I don’t change diapers.' Then, he went to bed. Nope, that was it. I was done. It’s been 16 years since my divorce. Best decision ever!"
2. "I sat alone in a semi-private room in a nursing home and watched my mother die. Multiple texts, voicemails, and video chat requests to him went unanswered. When she was gone, my first call was to my best friend, not him. She made the hour drive in 35 minutes. He lived 20 minutes away, and it took two hours for him to finally show up. That was the night I realized I couldn't rely on him. And if I couldn't rely on my partner...he wasn't really my partner."
—Anonymous
3. "I was seven months pregnant with twins, and I came down with a bad cold. I was supposed to be on bed rest, but with a hyperactive 3-year-old, that wasn’t possible. On the third morning of my cold, my (now ex) husband said to me, 'Are you going to be up to cooking dinner tonight?' I replied that it was doubtful, to which he said, 'OK, I’ll just go out to dinner then,' and turned and walked out the door. That was the final straw."
—Anonymous
4. "I broke up with an ex when I was in my early 20s because he called one of my friends ugly due to putting on some weight after giving birth. We got into a massive argument, and he asked me why I was so mad about someone else. It clicked during that argument that he had no care or love for anyone but himself. I just stopped mid-argument, started packing my things, and left. I knew there was no point arguing with someone like that."
5. "My long distance relationship/fiancé (six years together) claimed him doing something good in a video game was equivalent to me founding a theatre company and running my first auditions as a director. We argued about it pretty viciously, and it brought up all the other times he was jealous because I had true passions in life while he never found any. I decided then that we were going to have to end things. It was hard, because he was a great guy other than the constant jealousy with my life and career. I also didn’t want to be married to someone who was addicted to gaming — I love gaming, but that’s all he did besides his 9–5. Now he is married, and I’m engaged to the love of my life who has many passions and hobbies and supports mine without fail."
6. "My last straw was when he called me stupid in the drive-thru line at Burger King. The day before, I found out he had gone behind my back and told his mom not to help me get loans for school (which she had been fine with doing). She told me he was worried that if I got educated, then I'd leave him. When I brought it up in line at Burger King the next night, I had intended to tell him I didn't plan to leave him once I had completed my studies. But he opened his mouth first. He said I was stupid, and I didn't need to waste my time and money on going to school. So, I got out of the car and walked away, because I was done."
7. "Had been dating and was engaged to my partner of 10 years. During the pandemic, my nephew was in the hospital, and it did not look good. My sister called and said that he was dying. I got off the phone and went out on the porch. My partner came out after several minutes, and I told him what my sister had said. Never looking up from his iPad, his response was, 'I should buy this camera I found; it’s a great deal.' I threw him out and never looked back. I couldn’t live with this level of selfishness anymore."
—Anonymous
8. "My last straw was when I addressed the fact that [he] always hid when my family would come over. By that I mean he would say, 'Hi,' then go to my room and play his PS5 until he got hungry or thirsty enough to come out again. When I brought this up, he leapt up in bed, started hysterically sobbing, and said, 'Why don’t you point my insecurities out some more?' I got up to leave, and he pulled the cliché movie line of, 'If you walk out that door, we are done.' So…we were done."
9. "The last straw was after four years. I'd moved about three hours away, and a friend pointed out that I drove three and a half hours every weekend to visit him, and he'd never made the effort to visit me because he 'was afraid his car would get hit because it's the city.' He never visited, not once in the two years we were in a long distance relationship. Turns out, he was cheating during the week and on the weekends I couldn't go down. Waste of four years of my life. I owe my friend a lot for pointing out his behavior."
10. "On our 23rd anniversary trip, we went camping at a beautiful spring. Anytime I went in the camper, he went outside. I asked if he wanted to go for a bike ride, and he said he'd already gone and didn't want to go again. I put on lingerie, and he looked up and said, 'Oh God, really?' I realized he wanted a mother, not a wife. Someone to cook his meals, pay the bills, and wash his laundry."
—Anonymous
11. "Bi woman here. I dated a woman for a year who was in her late 20s when I was 21. She had attachment issues and was generally emotionally abusive toward me, but the last straw was when I told her I needed a few days to get some stuff together after a family member died. Instead of leaving me alone, she blew up my phone with 960 texts, 150 phone calls, threatened to take her own life, and found my parents on LinkedIn to tell them that I was ignoring her. This was the final straw I needed to break up with her, but she continued to stalk me for months."
—Anonymous
12. "I asked my boyfriend of a year to go to my hometown with me several times to meet my family (which was only 1.5 hours away), and he always made excuses. Then, my dad had a massive stroke. He didn’t go home with me then, either. I still stayed with him like an idiot, and after another couple of months, I told him my dad didn’t have much longer to live...but he still didn’t even offer. My dad died a few days later. Finally, the last straw came when I texted him the next day saying I wasn't doing well and needed him to call me. After more than an hour, I texted back, 'Never mind,' to which he replied, another hour later, 'What? I was at lunch.'"
—Anonymous
13. "In 2015, my family lost my 36-year-old brother suddenly and unexpectedly in a car accident. My husband at the time would not comfort me in any way — would not hug me, would not pick up the slack with housework, etc. We had to go to another state eight hours away for the funeral. My brother died on the 11th of the month, and my husband's birthday was on the 19th of the same month. When his birthday rolled around, my husband said, 'I'm just really sad that I don't get a call from your brother today on my birthday.' My husband's handling of the whole situation was the beginning of the end. He barely knew my brother and acted so victimized by the whole thing. What an odd thing to say and think."
—Anonymous
14. "Mine came after a 20-year marriage. I had just given birth to our third child via C-section. He said he couldn’t stay at the hospital with me because he had a lot of work. He was self-employed. So, when I came home from the hospital, I asked our other two children if their dad had spent the nights in the house. They said no — he told them he stayed with me at the hospital. I always suspected he was cheating, but never could prove it. I hired a detective, and four months later, I got my answer. He had someone else in a little town six miles away from where we lived. I filed for divorce exactly 20 years to the day we got together. I’ve been happily married to a wonderful man for 15 years now."
—Anonymous
15. "My younger sister died after a long battle with alcoholism. The first time I saw him after she died, he blamed her death on my elderly dad because he sent her money. My dad had been trying to save her life. Anyway, we live in Florida, and I asked my ex to come to NYC with me to help with her apartment. I knew from the building manager that it was filled with empty alcohol cans. It was going to be very hard — my mom’s ashes were in there and other family things my dad wanted. It was my job as her only sibling. His response was, 'She’s dead, just throw everything away.' That was when I felt my heart break and knew it was over after seven years."
16. "I was married for 20 years, and my now-ex, my two children, and I were on vacation. I had been quite sick for the last part of the trip, but was rallying to try to participate and give my kids some type of vacation. He decided to leave me and my children on a random street in Hong Kong without access to cellphones (he made us turn off the data to save money) because he wanted to go drinking with a friend who lived there. I had no idea where we were but somehow managed to get us back to our hotel. That was when I made my decision to leave the marriage."
—Anonymous
17. "We were high school sweethearts who married in our 20s after graduating college. I supported us during grad school, and I worked for 10 years up until the day we had our first child. After having our second, I was able to financially stay home with them, and this enabled my husband to develop a very successful business, rarely having to be responsible for keeping a nice home, cooking dinner nightly, or dealing with the education, care, and feeding of the children. He loved the kids, but was somewhat of a workaholic who was only home on the weekends, often fishing for hours on end to 'de-stress' himself. Toward the end of the marriage, this also included too much alcohol."
"During the last three years of our 40-year marriage, I developed a moderate hearing loss and an anxiety disorder. I went to therapy, questioning my feelings of emotional neglect, trying to decide if I should stay in the marriage any longer. I was paralyzed by the fear of living alone, as I had never lived by myself before (childhood home, college roommates, then marriage). I had contemplated divorce, but our long history together, my anxiety, and the fact that I truly loved him made it too difficult for me to take any action.
The last straw came when I was preparing a family dinner, getting out the pots and pans and apparently making too much noise in the kitchen. My ex said, 'Are you deaf?' Yes, partially. And, 'You are so lazy about taking a pan from the middle of the stack!' in a very contemptuous tone. That was when I realized that I could never grow old with this critical man, and couldn’t trust him to be there for me emotionally, or 'in sickness or in health.' I divorced him, got a settlement and alimony that recognized all that I had contributed to the long marriage, and have lived successfully on my own. I met a man who loves me, honors me, and thinks I am wonderful; however, I am happy being single, and have vowed to never get married again."
—Anonymous
18. "I had been dating this man for a few months when I realized I was expectant. I lived in a different city, so he wasn't aware of the pregnancy for some time. I informed him, and he sounded OK with it. I gave birth to a baby girl. We moved in with him immediately, but he wasn't happy. He was always irritable most of the time, and it was uncomfortable. One evening, he came from work with a colleague, and we were having tea. Out of nowhere, the colleague said loudly to him, 'You have been complaining that this is not your baby, but she really resembles you every bit.' I just knew it was over. What followed was dead silence in the room. I left the following morning, and now 27 years later, I have never looked back. My daughter has recently graduated from medical school, and I am so proud of her. She's my world. I don't regret having left him when I did."
—Anonymous
19. "My last straw was learning that after four years of marriage, my husband had given me an STD. He denied that he had cheated on me, and instead insisted that I must have cheated on him and gotten it! I realized then all of the lies, neglect, and verbal abuse from him was how the rest of the marriage was going to be, so I left him."
—Anonymous
20. And finally, "My ex and I were different in many ways, but I'd always appreciated the differences, or so I thought. We bought a house together within walking distance to a vibrant town with lots to do — his desire. Mine was to be just slightly out of town on a big lot with lots of animals and gardens and nature. I sold such a house to combine incomes to get the house in town that he wanted. But we compromised with our long-term plans. We would buy this house in town and take a chunk of money to buy land just outside so we could have a place to have fun on the weekends. Think bon fires and beer brewing and our dogs running around and camping or hanging out in a tiny home. When we both retired in about 12–15 years, we could split our time between the two places to ensure we both got what we needed and wanted."
"We had been having issues in the relationship for a few years, but the final straw last summer was me bringing up buying the land again after two years of nothing moving forward. He finally said, 'When you start going out to the land with (our kid), I am staying behind.' It doesn’t sound dramatic, but it was to me. It was him finally admitting he had gotten all that he wanted — the house and lifestyle and far fewer responsibilities — and my dreams and needs didn’t matter anymore, even though living in town on a tiny lot with tons of people on top of us, the noise, and constant foot traffic in front of our house really stressed me out.
It just made me realize that he didn’t give a damn about what I needed or wanted. I broke up with him that day. It has been really hard on the kid and I, but my child said I did the right thing. You have to be in it as partners and make time and space for both sides to be happy."
—Anonymous
Women of the BuzzFeed Community — do you have a "last straw" relationship story? If you feel comfortable doing so, you can share your own in the comments below or via this anonymous form. You can find more of these stories here.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 (HOPE), which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.