Even if you’ve been in a relationship for years, there’s always something new you can learn about your partner — and hey, just about anything can come up.
Recently, redditor u/Soft-Calligrapher-82 asked the question: "What's something you found out about your S.O. years into the relationship that made you reevaluate the whole relationship?"
Responses from fellow Reddit users ranged from wholesome and lighthearted to actually wild. Here are some of the best ones:
1. "He lied about his age. Not just one or two years, but nine years."
2. "My mom had recently died, and a girl I knew started coming over and explaining how she went though something similar — and we really connected over it. Imagine my surprise six months into our relationship when her mom showed up randomly one day."
3. "He constantly accused me of cheating on him during the first half of our marriage. He was very jealous and insecure. Five years in, he told me he cheated on me with a woman I actually knew."
4. "I've been married to my husband for five and a half years, and only yesterday, I found out that he makes so much eye contact because he heard someone years ago (when he was a kid) say that looking into someone's eyes for a long time draws your souls closer together and forms a deeper bond."
"He's always been able to look in my eyes for a long time, and I would always get a little embarrassed/shy and look away because I didn't know how to react or what to say. Turns out, he just wants to look at my eyes and deepen our bond. It's a way for him to show he loves me.
Now all I want to do is look him in the eyes and hope he feels how much I love him. He's genuinely made me believe in soulmates."
5. "Lied about his job. As in, pretended to have qualified for the job and actually left to work shifts for it."
"We lived in different countries for a little while, then moved closer, but still lived in different cities, so it wasn’t like I was watching him put on his suit and tie every day and leave. When I moved to his city, he suddenly went to the reserves, only worked a few weekends a month, and then eventually quit his job because he didn’t want me worrying about him doing dangerous work (I wasn’t worried).
It wasn’t until years later when I got a job in his field and worked with some of his former coworkers, that I mentioned, 'Yeah, my S.O. used to work here,' and I got curious looks that I didn’t question. Finally, one of them approached me and said they ran the records, and there was no record of my now ex having ever worked there. Amazing.
Three guesses as to what — whom — he was actually doing with his time."
6. "After we'd been dating for a while, he took me to a nice bar one evening to tell me that I couldn't stay over that weekend because his fiancé was coming to see his new apartment."
7. "She’s amazing at piano. Never so much as mentioned it after two and a half years together, and then one day, she saw a piano and randomly played in front of me. Blew my mind."
8. "He decided six years into the relationship that he wanted to have multiple partners. I don't mean he wanted to start swinging or he wanted an open relationship. He just wanted to have the same relationship he had with me, with a bunch of other women at the same time, and he wanted them to live with us. Completely out of the blue."
"I'm aware that polyamory is a thing, and I don't have a problem with people who are. I have friends who are. It just isn't for me."
9. "When she burps, she says the word 'burp.' We've been together for seven years. I discovered this on Sunday. What the hell is wrong with her?"
10. "When my ex and I got together, we sat down and discussed our past relationships. He told me that his ex had passed away, which is why he had moved halfway across the country for dental school. Couple of years later, I find out through a mutual friend that not only was she alive, but he kept tabs on her. I didn't confront him because I'd planned on breaking up with him (not because of this but for various other reasons). But after learning the truth about his ex, I just ghosted him."
11. "She was cheating on me with her ex-husband."
12. "She lied more often than she told the truth. She'd lie to me about a lot of things in her background. She'd lie to friends and acquaintances about things that weren't even important to sound more interesting. She'd lie about things that were important to get what she wanted. We'd get into arguments about it, and she claimed everyone lives this way."
"It became a much bigger problem for me after the divorce."
13. "That he had three other children. Not two. The third one 'just didn’t matter.'"
14. "He didn't like Hamburger Helper. Not the biggest deal, but I made it occasionally because it always had leftovers and I ate leftovers for lunch. Apparently, his ex would make it almost every night, which he told me two years into our relationship. I felt bad."
15. "I've lived with my S.O. for four years now, and I just learned last week that he PUSHES ON HIS COMPUTER SCREEN when showing me something on it. Like, the colors distort and everything."
"He did it again today. I almost lost it."
16. "Eight months into our relationship, I found out she could cook! She makes the most amazing steaks, and this sweet potato hash I absolutely love, and such good chili. But for the first eight months, I exclusively did all the cooking. I would even cook just for her when she got out of her late-evening classes. I’m a really good cook, too, so this wasn’t a problem. I would have done it anyway even if she could cook. But she hustled me!"
"Anyway, we got engaged two days ago. She made us steak for dinner."
17. "We were well-off financially, but she had been stealing for the thrill of it behind my back the entire time. I even found out that a lot of the gifts I was given during our time together were stolen. I found this out just after she broke up with me."
18. "Eats the toppings off the pizza first. All of them, cheese included...then the plain crust. An absolute monster. Still married her."
19. "She purposely doesn't finish books. An absolute mad lass."
20. "The morning of my college graduation, he called me and said he couldn’t make the ceremony as his overnight job didn’t cut him until 4 a.m. Years later, he admitted his cousin invited him out, so he spent most of the night at a bar and was too hungover to make my graduation ceremony. Definitely showed me his priorities."
21. "Leading up to Valentine's Day, she started giving me cute drawings every day. I didn't know she had an artistic bone in her body. Now my heart is 1% more full."
22. "Told me he had graduated from college. I was at a holiday dinner with his family, and his aunt mentioned that it would be so easy for him to finish his degree since he was less than a year away. The degree wouldn’t have been a deal breaker. But the lying about it was huge. Within a week, more lies came out, and I broke it off."
23. "He told me that he had slept with his best friend's wife, who also happened to be his ex's best friend. I was the only other person who knew about it. After a few days, I started thinking about the timeline he gave me and the age of the best friend's kid, and some alarm bells went off. He assured me it was not possible that the child is his because he 'didn't finish.'"
"I decided not to stick around for the inevitable shitstorm when all this into comes out."
Have you ever learned something surprising about your partner that made you reevaluate your relationship? Let us know in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.