Not too long ago, Reddit user u/nocturnt asked divorced people to share the red flags they ignored, and the responses were seriously eye-opening:
1. "I married my first wife extremely quickly. She wanted to get married, and I didn't want to break up."
2. "My wife cheated on every single long-term partner she ever had, and even cheated on her first boyfriend with his brother! And she would talk about it almost as if she was proud of it, as though they deserved it."
3. "I enjoyed my time away from him more than my time with him."
4. "I was 'the other man' in her previous marriage."
5. "She lied about seemingly small, insignificant things too often."
"Once she introduced her friend as her sister. No problem, except when her 'sister' needed to borrow money. I didn't even find out she wasn't her sister until years into the marriage! If they can lie about something small, they can definitely lie about something big."
6. "Her bad credit. I knew it wasn't good, but I didn't realize how bad it was until right after we got married when we showed up to our apartment community with all of our shit in a moving truck and the manager wouldn't give us our key because she had a vehicle repo on her credit that she hadn't mentioned."
"I had to call my parents from their office and have them wire money to the bank before we could move in! We made it 50 weeks."
7. "We were best friends with little bedroom chemistry."
8. "Before we got married, his mom said, 'If you ever get divorced, we will know it was because of him and not you.'" That was a huge red flag, but at the time, all I could think was, 'Wow, what a mean thing to say about your own son!'"
9. "She wasn't mean, she was 'honest.'"
10. "I was always alone. I'd come home and be alone, I'd wake up and be alone, I'd have a few days off, and she'd always be gone with her friends, the majority of whom were men."
11. "When we were filling out the marriage certificate in the courthouse, I remember thinking, 'Huh, so that’s your middle name.'"
12. "I was shaking and had drops of sweat rolling off of everywhere — even my legs — right before I said, 'I do.'"
"Also telling was when the officiant had us repeat the vows, 'And fidelity,' and he said, 'Infidelity.' Turns out he had been cheating the whole time!"
13. "She was always jealous of my accomplishments. It was me vs. her in her mind."
14. "Insisting on a wedding dress that cost more than I could afford, and refusing to understand that it was too much for me."
15. "I'm a lawyer who has been a bystander for many marriage implosions, and I will say that if you can't sit down at the kitchen table and go over household finances honestly, it's a red flag. You don't have to actually do it, but you must be able to."
16. "When he told me I 'saved' him from being gay."
17. "I had a gut feeling that I was marrying the wrong person — as I was walking down the aisle."
And finally:
18. "All of my mom's eight ex-husbands apparently ignored the red flag of how many times she's been married. Poor husband number nine ignored them, too!"
Some responses were edited for length and clarity.