We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community who have been divorced to share the moment they knew their marriage was over. Here are there stories:
1. "We were having marriage counseling, and the counselor asked us to say one thing we still loved about the other person. I said, 'I love that even when I've had a bad day at work, he still tries to cheer me up.' His response? 'I love that she cleans the bathroom because she knows I hate it.' Why I still held on for another six months, I don't know, but it was at that point I knew our marriage was over."
2. "My ex husband left me alone in the delivery room because it was 'taking too long' and he was bored. He went to the gym and then to watch a basketball game. Came back just before the baby was born."
—Anonymous
3. "Even before we were married, in our early 20s, things had been rocky between my (ex) wife and me. Essentially, she wasn't into the marriage, and I had forgiven a few transgressions on her part. I thought we had worked things out and were on track. But, at a Christmas party for her work, we were at a table with a few other couples who had been married for some time. We were the young 'newlyweds.' Someone asked if we were planning to start a family, and I said, 'Yeah, hopefully soon.' She said (in front of everyone), 'A family? We don't even know if we're going to stay together!' It grew really quiet, and the other couples could see I was caught off guard. THAT is when I knew. There was no going back, and getting divorced was the BEST thing to happen to me."
—Anonymous
4. "We'd been married for eight years and had two kids. He decided to go to a 'last minute' (not true) New Year's Eve party. It was too late to get a babysitter, so he went 'just for a little while to be polite' without me. He came home at 3 a.m. drunk and clutching a paper plate with a phone number written on it. He handed the plate to me and informed me that he needed me to put it in a safe place, as he might be too drunk to remember where it was. When I asked why it was important, he told me he had a date with the woman whose number was on the plate and needed to call her to confirm the details. I called a lawyer the next day."
—Anonymous
5. "I called him around 6 p.m., and he answered the phone by saying 'What do you want?' I still don’t know why he is so angry. He then said he’d be home by 8, but at 10, when he still wasn’t home, I walked up the street so that my kid could not see how upset I was. I heard a car coming, and it was him. He slowed down, looked at me, and then sped off. I knew then, for sure, my marriage of 31 years was over. That was almost 10 years ago, and at this point in my life, I am so happy and thankful that God gave me the courage, strength, and wherewithal to leave a marriage full of toxicity."
—Anonymous
6. "This is actually one of those moments in my life I remember a little too vividly. I was four months pregnant, and cigarette smoke (among a myriad of things) made me extremely nauseous. I was a smoker, but stopped when I found out I was pregnant and never started again. My ex smoked A LOT. We lived in a desert state and had an enclosed/screened-in back patio. I knew asking him to quit outright wasn't going to happen, so I explained what his smoking was doing and asked if he would go out to the patio to smoke. I didn't think this was too extreme or too much for his PREGNANT WIFE to ask. He looked at me, pointed his finger in my face, and said: 'This is my F'ing house, and I'll F'ing smoke where the F I want to.'"
"Stunned, I got up from the table and walked to the fridge, not knowing where to go. As I stood there, I can actually remember thinking, 'Nope, not gonna stay.' Right then and there, I started making plans for my departure. That was 27 years ago. My son is healthy, I'm in a 23-year marriage, and he's dead. Life is good."
—Anonymous
7. "He called me 'weak' when I asked for help. It was April 2020, and I was working full-time remote, taking care of our 2-year-old and the dogs, and maintaining our household. My husband found a way to never be around (during a pandemic). I asked for help with our son, and he told me I was weak. I started planning my exit the next day. Two years after I filed, he is refusing to end the marriage, all while living with another woman. Now, I’m a scapegoat for why he can’t commit."
8. "I was cooking bacon for his breakfast, and the grease popped into my eye. He just sat there reading his phone while I cried."
—Anonymous
9. "When he thought the week after my mom died was an appropriate time for a week-long, solo vacation."
10. "I didn't know it was over until I came home from work to find he had packed up all his belongings and left for his parents' house. He didn't even leave a note or tell me he had filed for divorce until the next morning when he sent me a text. I obviously knew we had problems and was looking for a counselor for us, but I hadn't been able to schedule anything yet. It was a slap in the face considering I had been completely supporting him for the last six months since he out-processed from the military and hadn't found a job. He also did all of this five days before Christmas."
—Anonymous
11. "It was 2018, and we had been married for two years. She was a great singer and wanted to work with a cover band that she had auditioned for, and I, being supportive, pushed her to pursue the goal. She got the gig as the lead singer for a band that traveled around the country, mainly weekends, performing a setlist of cover songs. This meant she'd be away almost weekly, but I wanted to support her ambitions, so I was fully onboard. At first, I would drop her off at a studio the band used or at the airport on Fridays, depending on where the gigs were, and she would typically return on Sundays. Very quickly, the weekends started extending into Thursdays, and sometimes Wednesdays, for the drop-off and then Mondays and Tuesdays for the pickup. Something began to feel off. The weekend gigs weren't changing, so why was she asking to be dropped off days earlier?"
"She'd claim they were rehearsing, and it was easier to stay closer to the venues because it was about a two-hour drive. I don't believe in snooping through a partner's phone. I've always felt that if you need to do that, then you shouldn't be involved with that person, but something was off, and I could feel it like an itch that could not be satisfied. Eventually, the night came where her phone became like the 'Telltale Heart.' I was in bed, and I swore I could hear it vibrating. I couldn't take it anymore; I quietly took it and went to the living room. I opened the phone and saw a very strange wallpaper photo. It looked like two people kissing, but I wasn't sure. I opened the photo library and found the picture. She, not being tech savvy, did not realize that you could revert a photo to its original format, so I hit edit, revert, and there it was. The picture was zoomed in and cropped. It was her and the band leader kissing. I was devastated. I could feel my heart beat in my stomach. I started to breathe like I had just sprinted 100 yards. I was sitting on the couch in our living room, and all the pictures of us around me instantly began to make me feel like I was sitting in a funeral parlor. I paced around a bit and tried to figure out what to do. This had been going on for two months at this point. I went to the bedroom, opened the original photo, placed the phone down, and turned the lights on. She began to slowly wake up, and the first thing she went for was her phone. She saw the photo and had nothing to say. We tried to work on things for about a year, but the damage had already been done. I knew deep down when I opened that photo, things would never be the same and that it would essentially be the downfall of our marriage and relationship. Cheating is extremely difficult to recover from."
—Anonymous
12. "We had been unhappy for several years, but I knew it was irreparable when I broke my ankle on my job and his primary concern was making an extra trip downtown to pick up my car. He complained so much about it that I told him to just drop me off at the car and I would drive home...with my freshly-broken ankle. No matter how bad things were between us, I would never have treated him so callously if he was hurt. I realized then that he didn't really care about my happiness or wellbeing at all. I was just a possession, like the sofa. I left eight months later, in January 2020. I got a couple of cats, bought my own place, and reunited with my high school boyfriend. Life is good."
13. "I married young (18F) and knew it was over a year later. We moved all the way across the country for his work, only for me to catch him on my sofa with the girl next door while I was home, upstairs, entertaining HIS PARENTS, who were visiting. Talk about a waste of my time."
—Anonymous
14. "I knew when my husband went away for a conference/training and I found out the night before that the other woman (his secretary) was also going. I decided I'd call to check in the second night, and I couldn't get him to answer his cell or room phone. His response was that his phone died and was charging in the bathroom while on vibrate, and the room phone wasn't working because he never heard it ring. I'm not that stupid. He came home, and we separated days later."
—Anonymous
15. "We had separated for the second time in a few months, and I had set some terms for our reconciliation that included him getting a job before I'd consider getting back together. I told him to really think about it and that I didn't want to talk until he had made a decision on whether or not he could agree to those terms. He immediately responded that he had one question for me: Would I pay him an allowance while he looked for a job? He felt bad asking his parents and grandma for money. It was that exact moment I saw the rest of my life supporting this grown child like I birthed him myself, and I was done. He responded and said it sounded like my mind was 'already made up anyway.'"
16. "He took the car keys (we lived in NYC and only had one car) and told me I wasn't allowed to use the car until I 'stopped acting stupid.' I've been single now longer than I was ever married."
—Anonymous
17. "When he was messaging other women while I was going through a miscarriage."
18. "The last Christmas my first wife and I were together, I decided to purchase her a gold necklace with the birthstones of her children (from her first marriage). The cost of the necklace was $1,200, but I was in a good spot to be able to afford it. When I gave it to her Christmas Day, she insisted I return it. Bewildered and a bit hurt, I did just that. Valentine's Day roll around, and I got her flowers and a sweet card. She started crying and informed me she wanted a divorce. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised."
—Anonymous
19. "There had been affairs in the past, but we were married and had a 6-month-old at this point. He was never home, usually off playing softball or hanging out with friends, and when he was home, he didn't help me with our son. If I brought issues up or mentioned I needed him home to help me because I was really struggling, he’d threaten to break up or make me feel bad for making him feel bad. The breaking point was when we were visiting a different state to see about relocating for my work. It was our first time being without our son, and I thought we would be able to reconnect a little. There was no intimacy left; it felt like we were just existing near each other. I realized that the thought of moving away from my friends and family with only him gave me anxiety, and I started to picture life without him."
—Anonymous
20. "We were in northern California visiting some of my ex's family. Some of his family lived wayyy off the grid in the woods — out in the middle of nowhere in tiny houses — and my ex said, 'I totally could live out here.' Immediately, I thought to myself, 'Holy crap, I could never. We want totally different things.' This was not the only reason we split, but it was the final 'aha' moment. Funnily enough, almost 20 years later, I would love to live in the woods with my current long-term boyfriend, so I think it wasn't the woods that was the issue, but the person I'd be in the woods with."
—Anonymous
21. "I knew it was over when I suggested couples' therapy, and he told me he didn't want to go because 'the therapist is going to think I'm cheating,' which...he was. I just hadn't acknowledged it. I kept what I was going through a secret, but he had been so emotionally abusive that I just thought I had to deal with it. We had been together for 13 years, and it wasn't until we separated that I was truly able to accept that he was cheating. I have PTSD from it, but I will never let anyone else treat me the way he did."
—Anonymous
22. "We'd had off-and-on issues through our marriage, but there was a moment of truth for me. Due to COVID, we were both unemployed and had to move in with his parents. After a couple of months of unemployment, I started working retail to save up some money so we could get our own place. I was running long hours and working overtime, and he was in his room being very picky about applying to jobs while his parents watched our then-5-year-old. He spent a lot of the time complaining about living with his parents. I finally asked him a few months later, with no longterm bites on the academic jobs he wanted, if he'd be willing to work retail just for a year or so, so we could get on our feet and get our own place again. He looked at me in disgust and said, 'Me? With my PhD, working retail? That's ridiculous.' It was at that moment I realized he had no respect for retail workers, or me as a person. It was good enough for me, but he was too good to humble himself."
—Anonymous
23. "We actually had a relatively good marriage, but around 20 years in, we started to grow apart as I became more successful and he couldn't handle it. There started to be these little moments over the years that I had overlooked where he said or did things to make me feel small or less than (or honestly, to make himself feel better — he probably wasn't thinking about me at all). But, it actually came down to one specific incident. We had a three-zone HVAC system, and I was in one zone of the house and he was in another. I wanted the thermostat set to 68 degrees in mine, but he said the whole house should be set to 76 because it was summer. I paid the majority of the bills, and it was just one zone. I set mine at 68 and left the others at 76, but he came in and changed it. I changed it back. We went back and forth for two hours until the compressor broke. I asked for a divorce the next day."
—Anonymous
24. "We were in couples' counseling. He picked the day and time for the appointments so that way he couldn't say I was 'pressuring him to go.' The second to last session, the therapist asked us to think of three things the other person does that really bother us. The next week rolls around, and I went first. I discussed the one I felt was most important. When it was his turn, he said, 'I was busy. I didn't have time to think about it.' Then proceeded to complain that I didn't unload the dishwasher. I knew we were done after that."
—Anonymous
25. "After 20 years of marriage, my ex and I were at a concert with a couple who we considered our best friends. They were both in our wedding, as we met at their wedding. We vacationed with each other's families. Well, my buddy got too intoxicated at the show and started having a hard time. He kept asking if everything was OK. I did my best to reassure him that all was well with the world. Eventually, he said, 'So I screwed Sarah, and everything is good?' Turns out my wife and my best friend (her best friend's husband) had a two-year affair smack-dab in the middle of our 20 year marriages."
—Anonymous
26. "There were a lot of moments that boiled down to me not feeling like I was supported as a new parent, but there were two standouts. My ex had gone back to work and largely resumed the social activities he'd been involved in before our child was born. One morning, he told me he wanted to add another weekly event, which meant I'd be on my own with the baby for 12+ hours. I knew I wasn't in a place where I could do that. I asked for more time before he went back, but he told me this is what he needed. Luckily, some friends and family stepped in to help me, but I really resented him for not being there for me and our child."
"The other was about a year later, when I had a minor but painful accident and asked to get some help from our families for a few days (I was physically struggling to pick up my child). He initially said it would be too much of an inconvenience. He came around after a few hours when his own family expressed concern, and he did apologize, but the damage was done."
27. "I met my ex-husband at undergrad, and we got married after we graduated. Very early on in our marriage, we decided to terminate a pregnancy. He took off as soon as he got me home, leaving me alone all weekend. I was an emotional mess and just wanted to stay in and cuddle. I felt pretty abandoned, but tried to be understanding and give him space. Everyone grieves differently. In my solitude, though, I realized our marriage wasn't much of a partnership at all. We weren't communicating or coordinating as a unit, and he would just check out like this when life got hard. My (hypothetical) kids and I deserved better. We tried couples' therapy soon after, but eventually split."
—Anonymous
28. "We'd been married for about 15 years, and we were behind in rent. He never worked steadily, and my check only went so far. The apartment manager had been flirting with him for the entire time we lived there. In front of me, she asked him if he wanted to stay married. He didn't answer. We stayed together for a few more years, but the knowledge never left me. Don't get me wrong, I knew he never loved me, but I didn't think he'd dump his only source of income. I was wrong. I know he regretted it when he had to move back in with his mom."
—Anonymous
29. "At the time, I chose to continue to love her because she was going through some rough spots with others, but I should've known. After almost 20 years of marriage and three kids, the moment our marriage was over was when she confessed that she never loved me and the only reason we were married was because she wanted to leave her home and small town."
—Anonymous
30. "I said to my ex: 'I want you to put me first the way I put you first.' My ex responded: 'I can't imagine anything worse.' There was no coming back from that."
31. "I knew my marriage was over the day I got married. Well, not really. But, he told me on the way to our honeymoon that as I was walking down the aisle, all he could hear in his head was the 'Imperial March' from Star Wars. I knew it was REALLY over when I asked him to go to marriage counseling for over two years and he repeatedly said no. He told me, 'Maybe if you go to therapy and work on yourself, then our marriage will get better.' He denied ever saying that (major gaslighter). I ignored his comment and went to therapy because I figured it could only benefit me. I felt great about the changes I made and the work I put into myself for over six months, and he said he didn’t notice any difference in me."
"When I finally got him to go to marriage counseling, he put in zero effort and sounded like a robot. He lasted three sessions and then said it was time to end it. He never put in any effort in our marriage. I read books, journaled, confided in older married couples, and went to therapy. All he did was play video games and hide in his man room. I honestly felt so relieved when he said it was over. I wanted to get divorced for three years, but I refused to give up without fighting for us. We have been divorced for over a year, and I have never been happier. Best decision I’ve ever made!"
—Anonymous
32. Finally: "When I realized that I didn't want my kids to look like him, act like him, or be raised by him."
To those who wrote in, thank you for sharing your stories and being vulnerable. I hope you've found happiness and peace, and perhaps your stories can help others going through the same thing.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.