We recently wrote a post where divorced people shared the signs on their wedding day that their marriage wouldn't last. In the comments, more readers from the BuzzFeed Community shared their stories. Here are the unexpected results:
1. "I know I should have trusted my 22-year-old gut when I developed anxiety attacks planning the wedding. Also, I had to take Valium all day on my wedding day. My second wedding at 32 was so relaxed and joyful."
"TRUST YOUR GUT!!!"
2. "My ex didn't come home the night before we got married. I cut him some slack due to the bachelor party. We drove out of town with a couple people to get married and came back the same day. We stopped at some friends' house on the way home to drink some champagne. We usually hung all over each other, but when I tried to get close, he kept pulling away. Something felt so wrong."
"He used me, cheated on me, and stole from me; two years was enough, and I divorced him. I still suffered financial impact for years after. DO NOT IGNORE THE RED FLAGS!"
3. "I think the biggest red flag was that I had an overwhelming sense of dread, like I wanted to flee. I should have, really. Otherwise, it was probably that I wanted to chat with out of town friends I hadn’t seen in ages, and he kept insisting I only hang out with him — and then, I spent the entirety of the wedding night watching SNL while he fell asleep legit two minutes into checking into the room."
"But it was mostly the dread, honestly."
4. "I knew it wouldn't last when he kept turning around during our couple dances to dance with my beautiful bridesmaids instead. And when he tried to dance with the bride who was having her own wedding next door in the same banquet hall. Oh, and when he sang a song dedicated to his mother!"
"And guess what, y’all? Not a single drop of alcohol was involved. Yes, I know…"
—40, California
5. "When his mom showed up 30 minutes late and said loudly, 'This b*tch couldn’t even wait for me?!' while the wedding had already started. He didn’t want to do our first dance or cut the cake. We've been divorced just over two years now. The marriage lasted seven years."
—33, Ohio
6. "There was a photo of us walking down the aisle. She is looking at other people shaking hands, while I looked at her."
—46, Anonymous
7. "The red flag was when the judge officiating looked at me and said we make bets on which marriage will work and which wouldn't. I looked at her with a knowing look, and she looked back at me with the same look and we both knew."
—43, Tennessee
8. "My brand-new husband went for shots at the bar after the ceremony instead of walking with me to the reception. That didn't even bother me as much as him leaving me on the dance floor during our first dance. I'm not kidding. He had stayed up super late the night before partying with the groomsmen and was doing drugs before the wedding and during the ceremony. During our first dance, he looked at me about a minute in and said, 'Oh my god (my name), I really have to pee.' And he went to the bathroom. My sister and her husband came out to dance with me, then other friends and family. THEN, he left the reception without me and went to the hotel, got our room keys, but then passed out in his sister's room."
"I had no clue where he was because he turned his phone off; this was early 2000s, so things were a bit different then. I ended up alone at the reception hall because I hadn't even known that my new husband had left, so I was waiting for him. Ended up getting a ride from my wedding reception from two good friends. Wow. Typing this out makes me realize how messed up it truly was. We were separated quite quickly and divorced within three years. He was actually usually a really kind, fun, and sweet person as long as he wasn't partying, which is a huge reason of why we broke up."
9. "He forced me to see him the night before the wedding and started a fight, allowing me only 15 minutes of sleep. On the day, when it was time to go down the aisle, my idiot groom did the ugliest cry I had ever seen. At that moment, I realized just how much I disliked him as a person. If there weren't 200+ guests in the room, I would have run in the opposite direction."
"Instead, I thought of my recently passed grandma to muster a similarly ugly cry and got it over with. Looking back, there were so many red flags before and after the marriage. I'm not sure how I stayed married to him for over six years. When divorce is one of your greatest life accomplishments, it says A LOT about the marriage. I'm now remarried and don't have a single doubt that he is the one I will joyfully grow old with."
—38, New York
10. "My now ex-husband's brother pranked my car on our wedding night, which was fine. But he put Vaseline under the door handles, and it was very cold out. Cold Vaseline went everywhere, and I ended up going back in to where we were cleaning up the reception and crying to him. And what did he do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I should've known it would end in divorce when he couldn't even defend his wife's feelings."
—Anonymous, Kansas
11. "On our wedding day, my husband's ex-wife was blowing up his cell phone. We knew it was out of anger, because she had been calling his daughters and yelling at them for attending the wedding. However, my ex wanted to answer the phone and almost did until my maid of honor threatened him not to."
—49, Georgia
12. "My husband-to-be would not look me in the eye during ceremony. He looked beyond nervous. He has real difficulty expressing emotion, but this was beyond. There is a 10-year age difference (I was 40, he was 30), but we got along great, had many similarities, and loved each other. This was not enough. Lack of communication and expressing emotions amongst other things did us in. I knew on our wedding day."
"We slugged it out 10 more years before calling it quits. We should have just been friends and not taken it further. After splitting, we are friends to this day."
—53, Massachusetts
13. "I felt nothing the day of the wedding. The night before, I didn't have butterflies, I wasn't excited, and I wasn't happy. The day of was just any other day. It was a small pandemic wedding, but after the I do's, I remember looking down at the ring and thinking, 'This doesn't feel any different. I guess this is just what life is like now.' In retrospect, it felt like what I should do — what was expected of me — not what I wanted to do."
—30, Texas
14. "I loved him dearly. I loved him in a way I'd never experienced before. But I woke up that morning, and I just knew I was making a bad choice. I ignored it. I blamed it on cold feet. Told myself that it's totally logical to have reservations about such a massive decision. I drank an entire bottle of wine before exchanging vows. No one knew, but there was no way I could have married him if I was totally sober. He didn't even know I had been drinking before the ceremony."
"We were happy until we weren't. A part of me hoped we could make it work forever. Part of me even believed we could because we were so happy for several years. But a deeper, more honest part always knew that I messed up."
—33, Texas
15. "The whole wedding day, my ex-husband barely paid attention to me. He was focused on his friends instead! At the end of the night, I tried to tug him away so we could go enjoy our hotel room, and he actually grew enraged! He yelled in front of a few people that I was 'tearing him away from his friends.' On a night that was supposed to be about our love, he was angry that I wanted to be intimate with him."
"Sure enough, throughout our marriage I was just a pretty accessory to him, not a person. He actually told me explicitly, more than once, that he didn't care whether I was happy or healthy. When I grew so depressed during lockdown that I couldn't get out of bed, he berated me about letting myself go and often compared me to his friends' girlfriends. It explained what I saw on our wedding day: He was focused on his friends because he was getting married to impress them. It didn't matter to whom."
—28, Washington, DC
16. "The night before my wedding, I wet the bed. I remember waking up and being horrified — this hadn’t happened since I was 4. I figured it was nerves, but looking back (and knowing what I know now about the body/trauma), I think it was a signal from my subconscious. On my wedding day, I got ready slowly and methodically, but with very little emotion. On the day I got divorced, I woke up GIDDY, threw on a white cotton sundress, and got a pedi on the way home. Then, I held my daughter (of whom I had won sole custody) and gave thanks for how far we’d come."
"If I ever get married again, I know exactly how it should feel."
—35, South Carolina
17. "He gave a toast at our wedding reception and never looked at me or said a word to or about me. My heart just dropped. Gave it a go for three years and finally left him after he cheated on me and lied about it."
—63, California
18. "I knew it wouldn't last when I teared up seeing my mom before the ceremony, but when I saw my soon-to-be wife walk down the aisle, I had no emotion."
—Anonymous, California
19. "Shortly after the wedding vows, I invited one of my girlfriends (who lived out of town) to come visit us before she went back home. When my new husband found this out, he yelled at me that we should discuss who visits before inviting anyone. (Control freak, anyone?) We had been married for one hour. I was miserable at the reception."
—63, Florida
20. "During the engagement, my now ex went out with friends and didn't come home until 9 a.m. the next day when he knew we had big day of planning. He had his bachelor party on the Thursday — before our wedding on Saturday. He promised me he wouldn't go to strip joints. He not only lied about not going but was hungover to the point of being completely useless the day before the wedding when he KNEW I needed him to help me with last-minute things. My parents had to help me while he was out of commission. He was still sick the day of our wedding."
"I remember having the most terrible gut feeling and thinking, 'I will MAKE this work.' You can't make something work with someone who doesn't want to make it work. Someone who lies, stays out all night, and cheats."
—50, Missouri
21. "She spent little time with me during the reception and just made everything about her. Multiple people told me not to marry her prior to the wedding. I believe it was because she was so selfish and self-centered."
—41, Virginia
22. "His stepdad said, 'Don't womanize,' and his mom said, 'I hope it lasts' in the wedding video. In hindsight, I see they were trying to warn me."
—50, California
23. "My now ex-husband showed up to the ceremony an hour and a half late and was just so nonchalant about it. I remember calling him, and he was legitimately stuck in traffic, but he knew it was our wedding day; it was a Friday, and there was a Phillies game, and people heading down the shore, so 95 was going to be a mess. That theme continued throughout the marriage. He would be super late making it to events, work, everything."
"He operated on his time and nothing or no one else mattered."
—37, Pennsylvania
24. "I had a gut feeling just before the doors opened to the sanctuary and I was to walk down the aisle. I told myself that it was just last-minute jitters and to proceeded. After the reception, we went to the hotel (where other members of the wedding party and some family were staying). My new husband didn’t even wait for me to remove my wedding dress (or help me remove it) — he changed into his clothes and left me in the room. We had moved from our hometown to the west coast six months prior to the wedding, but went home to be married. He decided that he’d go spend one last night with his buddies up in their room and party with them. I was left completely alone and found myself wandering the halls looking for something to eat. This should have been my first alert to annul the marriage the next day. It didn’t get better from there."
"Six years later after much turmoil, he left me at the hospital for a planned inducement of our first baby. He wanted to go home and sleep; the nurse had to call him to come back some hours later just before the baby arrived. He left me and the baby in the birthing room to go 'celebrate at a bar' — I hadn’t been moved to a regular room yet. A couple of weeks later, he told me he was leaving me and confirmed he had a girlfriend. In the end, I was left traumatized with an infant. I’m happy to say that 26 years later, I’m happily re-married and have another child. My ex owes me 18 years of back child support and lives alone."
—56, California
25. "His friends were taking bets on how long the marriage would last. My dad, right before walking me down the aisle, told me that if I WANTED to leave then we would just leave and my parents wouldn't say anything about the cost of the wedding. Lastly, my best guy friend the night before came over and begged me not to marry him."
"He was a cheater. We made it six years. Six years too long.
—33, Arizona
And finally...
26. "Not only was I thinking of someone else the ENTIRE time, but my new husband wanted to go home after. We had a destination wedding. I think we both knew we loved each other, but we weren't IN love with each other."
—35, Rhode Island
Can you relate to these? If you knew on your wedding day that you married the wrong person, feel free to share your story in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.