1. This family affair:
"He told me he wasn't feeling it anymore, and it turned out it was because he had been cheating on me with his cousin, whom he lived with. The worst part is no one knows who the father of her son is."
2. This dinner disaster:
"My ex, who I’d been with for five years, dumped me in a very public place right before my parents were due to pick us up and take us out for dinner. This makes us sound like kids, but I was 24 and he was 28 at the time. I managed to compose myself from my embarrassing public snot-cry before we met my parents. Then, I had to sit through dinner for two hours while he was all charming and friendly, and I stared at my plate and died inside. The next day (we stayed overnight at my parents) he told me he loved me, then fucked off on a train, and I never saw him again."
3. This monstrosity:
"We were engaged, the wedding venue was booked, and everything was set. He messaged me on Facebook Messenger about how he didn’t love me anymore and to let him know when I was ready to talk."
4. This selfish scumbag:
"We had been dating for eight months, and he broke up with me during sex. He finished, broke up with me, and THEN pulled out."
5. This terrible timing:
"I got dumped on April Fools' Day. It took half an hour to convince me it wasn't a joke."
6. This shocking turn of events:
"After four years together (and one year living together), I went to work one morning. On my way home, I texted him asking if he wanted anything from the shop. He replied, 'Nothing, it's over,' then blocked my number. His mom texted me a few minutes later and said they'd gone out and expected me to have moved out by the time they got back. I never heard from him again."
7. This horrible holiday:
"He broke up with me on Christmas Eve through Facebook Messenger while we were engaged and I was 6 months pregnant."
8. This plot twist:
"After almost a year of dating, he left an envelope under my doormat with a note and my key. The note said we couldn’t date anymore because his wife had returned from her tour in Afghanistan. I had no idea he was married."
9. This person who took "save the drama for your mama" literally:
"He texted my mom to tell her that he was planning on breaking up with me when I got off work. The coward couldn't even break up with me through text. He basically got my mom to do it for him."
10. This classroom cringe-fest:
"This didn't happen to me, but I watched it go down. We were sitting in homeroom, and this girl's boyfriend was in the back with his friends. She was saying how she wanted to break up with him but didn’t know how. After five minutes of debating how to do it, she wrote his name on the whiteboard followed by, 'We should break up.' It was brutal to watch."
11. This flighty fool:
"My ex-boyfriend ditched me at the airport six hours before my flight. I ended up paying for a new plane ticket to leave earlier. Then later that day, I found out he had ditched me to see his ex."
12. This stupid scapegoat:
"He invited me to stay with his family for a few days around Christmas. I thought it went pretty well, but after I went home, he ghosted me for a couple of days. Then, he called to break up with me over FaceTime, saying, 'My parents don’t think I like you.'"
13. This absurdly cruel call:
"When I was 3 months pregnant with our second child, he went away for work and only came home on the weekends. During one of those weeks, he rang me, told me it was over, and said he never wanted our baby! Less than three months later, his new girlfriend was pregnant!"
14. This new year, new guy:
"This guy I was with years ago broke up with me on December 30. I’ll never forget it because he said he felt like he needed to start the year off without me."
15. This one that just leaves me speechless:
"We were married for 12 years and decided to start a family. At 3 months pregnant, he told me that he’d been seeing someone at work, that he never loved me, and that he just felt sorry for me."
16. This nauseating nonsense:
"I once stayed over at my friend’s house and ended up sick all night with the stomach flu. My then-boyfriend came to pick me up from her house and accused me of partying, though I was literally shivering from an obvious fever. I hadn’t had a single drink. My friend tried to tell him that, but he didn’t believe her. He took me back to his house and broke up with me while I was delirious and throwing up. He called my mom to come get me, but she was busy. I had to wait at his house for hours until she could pick me up. It was miserable."
17. This two-timer:
"He was such a chicken that he had his new girlfriend call me to tell me it was over. Then, he ghosted me."
18. This fucked-up phone call:
"We were in a long-distance relationship while I was in law school. He called me in the middle of class (I answered, thinking it was an emergency) to tell me that he had been cheating on me and moved in with the other woman, so he couldn't juggle both of us anymore. He said, 'She's here taking care of me, and you're not.'"
19. This cheater cheater pumpkin-eater:
"My ex-boyfriend of a year and a half unexpectedly broke up with me. Then, I came to find out he had been cheating on me with my mother's best friend. This all happened a month before we were supposed to move in together with his young daughter."
20. This birthday bust:
"My partner of six years cheated on me twice in one week during the pandemic. The second time was the night before my birthday and two days before our appointment for couples therapy. So I officially got broken up with first thing in the morning on my birthday."
21. This indecisive ending:
"I went to a three-day music festival with a guy I had been dating for years (and had actually just gone ring shopping with). On day two, he decided that it wasn't working between us anymore and broke up with me in front of the condo we were sharing with four of my friends. After crying for a while, I asked him not to say anything to my friends so they could enjoy the last day and we could deal with it at home. The next day, he decided he made a mistake and he wanted to stay together. I agreed, only to have him stay the night at my parents' house with me a few months later and dump me as he left in the morning."
22. This pathetic present:
"He broke up with me on my birthday and told me that it was my present."
23. This cross-country coward:
"I had been dating a guy for three and a half years when he signed up to work across country for three months and told me to wait for him. He planned for this job, applied, and got accepted, and then decided to bring it up to me. A week and a half in, he started telling me he didn't have cell service. Late one night, we were talking about how hard long distance was, to which he replied, 'We'll talk about it tomorrow. I have an early morning,' and then I didn’t hear from him for three weeks. When I finally DID talk to him, he said he didn’t have service that entire time, but said he'd already found a girlfriend and she had moved into his dorm. Needless to say, he NEVER returned to our hometown. He left the program and went straight to a different state. Such a damn coward. Best thing that ever happened to me, though."
24. This unfair affair:
"My husband of five years came back after visiting his daughter for two weeks to tell me that he didn't love me anymore and we were done. Turns out he’d been shagging his ex-wife for 18 months, and they ended up remarrying after our divorce."
25. This beastly breakup:
"I got broken up with during the intermission of Beauty and the Beast on Broadway on Valentine's Day. Needless to say, we left the venue and didn't see the rest of the show."
26. This one that just makes me say, "What the fuck?":
"One of my ex-boyfriends dumped me at one of my favorite restaurants by telling me, ‘I’m a writer, and I do my best work when I’m unhappy, so I don’t think we should be together anymore.’ I was shocked, to say the least. It caught me off guard because we had just been talking about introducing each other to our families."
27. This shitty surprise:
"I had stayed at my then-boyfriend's place for the weekend, and everything was great. He took me home, kissed me, and told me he loved me. Not even five minutes after he left, he sent me this long message saying he had been losing feelings for me for a while and wanted to break up. Thanks for the heads-up, dude."
28. This Snapchat asshat:
"I got dumped over Snapchat. He didn't even have the decency to do it over chat either! He did it by sending photos that disappeared."
29. This family man:
"A guy broke up with me less than two weeks in because he was pissed I didn’t tell my parents about him on the first date like he did with his parents. I told him that of course I would tell them, but I wasn't going to call my parents up the second I got into a relationship We were adults in our 20s, not high-schoolers. I dodged a bullet I think. He always wanted me to do things his way."
30. This homebody:
"My ex lied to me and told me he was moving back to Nevada to 'be by himself for a while.' I found out later he was still living in Florida with one of the multiple girls he had been cheating on me with."
31. This frickin' chicken:
"When I was in high school, my then-boyfriend called my parents to tell them he was going to break up with me at work. Well, he chickened out and decided not to do it. My parents were so confused when I got home and told them nothing eventful had happened at work. Apparently the guy had made a pretty big deal about it to them."
32. This dick move:
"I was 7 months pregnant, and my then-boyfriend suddenly packed up his stuff and left, stating that he couldn't take me anymore. He was tired of my emotions, my complaints of being either too hot or too cold, my pickiness with food, my inability to sleep because of restless legs syndrome, and my choice not to let him have anal sex with me. Again, I was 7 months pregnant with our first child. My employment insurance hadn't gone through yet, so at that time, I had $12 in my bank account. He came back three days later saying he forgave me and if I changed, we could make things work. More shit happened after that, but I left him for good last October and have never been happier."
33. Finally, this double agent:
"My friend met a guy who had just moved to our town. They dated for about a year, and things were always sort of weird. He would go 'visit his parents' for long weekends or holidays and wouldn’t answer calls or texts whenever he was out of town. He would always say things like, 'I don’t keep my phone on when I am with my family.' Finally, he told her that his move to our town was always meant to be temporary. His work assignment was ending, and it was time for him to move home to his wife — the person he had really been visiting every time he 'didn’t have his phone.'"
What's the shittiest way you've been dumped? Or have you ever dumped someone in a not-so-great way? Share your story in the comments below, and we can all commiserate!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.