Warning: This post contains mentions of abuse and drug use.
We recently asked women of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the "final straw" moment that made them call off their wedding and end their engagement. Here are some of the most eye-opening, heartbreaking, and shocking stories:
1. "So, my then-fiancé and I went to Vegas together, and he decided to go club-hopping one night; I decided to stay at the hotel because I was super exhausted. I must have slept pretty heavily because when I woke up the next morning, there was my 'fiancé' sleeping on the couch with ANOTHER WOMAN in our hotel room!"
"Let’s just say, I dumped his sorry ass in Vegas."
2. "We were talking about our reception and ceremony. He was a former firefighter and wanted to 'save me' from a burning stage. At first, I thought it was a joke because he also did improv, but nope. (I know, the red flags were there.) This is a man who was financially dependent on me and also treated me like I was his mother. I cooked, cleaned, paid for everything, and he still saw me as the damsel in distress. After that conversation, I realized how much he had been projecting everything he wanted on me and how much I had been allowing it."
"I also happened to start connecting with the man who would eventually become my husband at the time and treated me as a complete equal. That was the nail in the coffin. When I realized there was someone out there who saw me as the strong and capable person I was without trying to turn me into his mom, I ended it."
—36, Minnesota
3. "My fiancé was in love with his mother. I’m not being dramatic — his phone contact for her was 'Mommy' with several hearts. Sometimes, he would cry and ask for his mommy. I know it sounds harsh, and there is nothing wrong with loving your parents. But he was a 27-year-old man who kept a shirt covered in his mom’s perfume to smell for comfort every morning and night. He texted his mom several times an hour. He called her at least five times a day."
"When we talked about having children, he told me he wanted to honor his mom in all their names. So, if her name was Sandra, for example, he wanted a girl named Sandra, a boy named Sandy, and any other children to have some variation of her name. It got to the point where I left when he told me he wanted me to make some sort of vow to his mother in the ceremony. There is only so much I could take."
—25, California
4. "When he proposed, I had this voice in my head say, 'Oh no, now I have to break up with him.' We never discussed getting married, and after it happened, we talked about continuing to live separately and just being committed to one another. Honestly, he was an OK guy…until he wasn’t. He was a selfish, man-child narcissist, and I just no longer liked him as a person. I started seeing him for what he was, but STILL waited for a 'sign' for me to leave him."
"I got one around the holidays, and the biggest was when he dropped gifts off at my house, but I never returned the favor for his birthday a month later, as if he expected it — this was also post-breakup. I never looked back. Big bullet dodged there."
—40, USA
5. "I was with the guy since high school, and we got engaged the semester before I graduated college. I was working really hard to get my dream job. Long story short, I got my dream job and had to go out of town for training. I found out he was cheating on me through our home security system, which I checked while he was supposed to be working. I never brought this up to him directly but tried to slide it into conversation. Eventually, he knew that I knew and broke up with me officially."
"I moved out within two weeks to another state and completely started my life over. He reached out almost a year later and wanted to work things out. I considered it for a minute before deciding that I already wasted a lot of time with someone who never truly loved me the way I loved him."
—30, Pennsylvania
6. "I just realized he had as many (or more) issues with childhood/parental trauma as I did, and he was not at all interested in working through it. We fought over stupid, childish stuff, and there was always a hint of controlling behavior I never felt comfortable with."
"We briefly got back together and broke up less than a year later over something trivial and unnecessary to fight about, and I don’t have any regrets about it."
7. "We met on a dating app. Our relationship was very intense, moved fast, and had love bombing in the beginning. I was like wow, how is this attractive, sweet guy still single? There were multiple red flags. The first I noticed was alcohol and drug abuse. It would make him act erratic. Whenever we had a major disagreement, he would resort to threatening to kill himself and would corner me so I wouldn’t be able to leave him. I blamed this on the substance issues, so I stayed because he promised to quit. Second, I noticed how irresponsible he was about paying his bills. I had good credit, so I co-signed a couple of his bills and would get emails that he was late. Getting him to pay was like pulling teeth. It was so stressful."
"I realized that his parents were happy about our engagement because then he would have someone to look after him — like a caretaker, not a partner or equal. I was emotionally checked out. I was so turned off by him, that I would instinctively push his touch away. I would only be able to have sex with him if I had alcohol. Even then, I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Then, I started to be a binge drinker, too. I was very fit when we met. He was extremely jealous. I couldn’t work out without him because then he would get insecure. When I invited him on a run, he faked asthma attacks. I invited him to the gym, and he would get mad because 'everyone is staring at him.' My health was something I used to be so passionate about, and I ended up gaining 20 pounds with him.
I started not wearing my engagement ring because I felt so fake. I kept 'forgetting it at home.' We started not planning a wedding due to 'saving up.' Even he started catching on at this point. He initiated the breakup, and I gladly agreed. I guess he was expecting me to fight for us so he threw a tantrum. The breakup was so dramatic. He started sending me harassing messages and stalking me. All of this was over and done within two years. I’m too weary to date now. I'm happy and peaceful in my solitude. I don’t care if I meet anyone again. I have trauma and don’t trust my judgment anymore."
—31, California
8. "There were a lot of red flags, but I realized that I was never a priority for him and never was going to be by the proposal itself. It was our five-year anniversary, and he hadn't made any plans whatsoever. He kept saying, 'I don't care where we go for dinner.' So, I found a place. We went. I paid, as usual. Got home and got ready for bed. Contacts out and everything. He asked for a sip of my bedside water and the ring box was next to it."
"He didn't sit up, get on bended knee, have any words prepared. I said yes in the moment. We were done two weeks later."
—37, New Jersey
9. "I was engaged to a soldier in the army. We had been together for six years and engaged for two. When he returned from his second deployment, we went to Disney World where we befriended a woman, and all three of us hung out at the parks (which is important later). Once he and I got home from the trip, he found out he got orders to a base in Virginia. He asked me to go with him."
"Being an Air Force daughter, I knew what benefits were available to married soldiers as well as single soldiers. I knew that I would be on my own for all my moving costs since we were not married and that if I moved with him as his fiancé, we would be on our own to find a place to live and not be able to live on base housing. I explained all this to him and told him I wanted to get married before we moved. He said no, so I said that we were through and for him to enjoy Virginia. I later found out that not only did the woman we befriended while we were in Florida move to Virginia, but he also slept with her while we were in Florida on Valentine’s Day while I was by myself at the Magic Kingdom. Last I heard, he was in Florida working at Walgreens and in security at one of the theme parks. I’m happily married now, so all is well."
—Anonymous, Texas
10. "I realized that I shouldn’t marry him when he threw an emotional tantrum at me wanting to spend an evening with my parents. In his defense, he was in the hospital after a work accident. I’d spent the previous week by his bedside every evening after my workday. My parents were passing through our city and wanted to take me to dinner and give me a little emotional support. He reacted badly, shouting, screaming, and swearing at me over the telephone. My parents heard it all."
"I calmly hung up with him and told them that I would not be marrying him. It took several months to extract myself, but after more drama, he was involuntarily committed. I finally fled the house when the police showed up and told me that he’d escaped and 'was looking for me.' The officers gave me cover to pull things from the house and drive to a friend’s place."
—42, Pennsylvania
11. "Me and my ex-fiancé had been dating for 10+ years, since high-school age, and had been engaged for a year. The wedding was planned and almost everything was arranged. I slowly started to realize I was carrying most of the burden in every way — from household to finances to romantically to mental load. Despite communicating, nothing changed to an equal level. At some point, I got exhausted to the point of depression, and my relationship caused me anxiety. Eventually, I opened my eyes to the possibility that this relationship was not right for me, as the rest of my life would likely be this way (or worse, once children entered the picture)."
"Roughly eight months before the wedding, the engagement was called off and our relationship ended. Now, I am dating the most amazing, caring, and funny person, and it occasionally is still unreal to me how amazing it feels to be in an equal partnership with someone who cares as much about my well-being as I care about theirs. It was simultaneously the most difficult and best decision to end my engagement."
—27, Anonymous
12. "We were six months away from the wedding, and he became controlling and verbally abusive. If I dressed too nicely, he was angry and thought I was trying to impress people, so he’d make me change, but if I dressed too sloppy, I was embarrassing him. If I stood up to him, he’d call me damaged goods and say that no one else would want me. He put a picture of a bikini model on the fridge so I’d eat less. He would throw out food I would cook if it wasn’t right, and the last straw (I was very young, and it took a while for me to see how bad it was) was when he called me stupid and yelled at me over something silly in front of my mom and tried to get her to agree with him."
"It was then my mom looked me in the eye and told me to move him with my young son. A few months later, I got the courage to leave, and I never looked back. The list of things he did was endless, from taking me away from friends and controlling my every move and constantly putting me down. I left and met my now-husband of 18 years . Calling off my first wedding and engagement was the best thing I ever did!"
13. "We wanted different things: I wanted to move away and finish my degree, and he would never leave and was convinced he was about to become a rock star. His heavy metal garage band was going to make him famous and that took precedence over everything and everyone. I had booked the church and reception, and I had just bought my dress. During a fight, I told him it was nonrefundable, and his response to that was my ring wasn't either, and all it was was '$x of band equipment he didn't have.' But what finally made me realize we were over was when I told him I didn't want him at my sister's wedding (because I knew his sulking would ruin her pictures). He didn't even fight it, consider how it would make him look, or care how awkward it would be for me."
"So, I gave back the ring, moved back to my hometown, and got my degree. Three years later of that would-be wedding, I married the love of my life and now we have two very noisy children. Our marriage isn't perfect (no one's is), but it's perfect for us — it's strong and our anniversaries keep coming. I know I wouldn't love him the way I do if I hadn't given back that other ring. And by the way, my husband's ring cost $1K less than what my ex spent, but it was appraised for $1K more, and I LOVE IT."
—41, North Carolina
14. "We got engaged after less than a year of dating. Even though we'd already broken up twice in the two years we were together, I still moved in with him. One week, I was sick, and he chose to go out drinking with his colleagues instead of taking care of me. Then, one evening, I asked him to bring some food home, and he didn't. When I realized I wasn't getting any better and told him I needed to go to the walk-in center, he threw pound coins on the bed and told me to get a cab because he needed to go to work."
"When I went to the hospital the next day, he did come with me, but all he could do was talk about how he was missing work. A lot had happened in our relationship, but how he treated me when I was sick was the final straw. I knew I couldn't marry someone who made caring for me seem like a burden. The moment I recovered, I started packing my bags. I moved back home a few days later and ended our engagement on the phone the following day. That weekend, he came over to my family home to fight for our relationship, but it was too late."
—42, Ireland
15. "I left him on our wedding day. Our relationship was toxic, lots of emotional and mental abuse from him. I stayed because I got pregnant and wanted our baby to have a family. It was a beautiful sunny day as I was driving with my aunt to the outdoor wedding venue. There was one cloud off in the distance that was dark and ominous. That cloud waited until it was right at our wedding venue to open up and rain. Not just a little rain either, but so much freaking rain that it flooded the whole wedding area in 15 minutes. Then, the cloud moved on, and it was beautiful and sunny again. My aunt said, 'Well, God didn't want that to happen. If that's not a sign, I don't know what is.'"
"After a lot of red flags I ignored and issues that never got resolved, I decided that she was right. I got back into my aunt's car, and we left. I felt so good in that moment, I can't even begin to describe it. Don't marry someone because you feel trapped, you always have a choice."
—38, Virginia
16. "Over 25 years ago, I learned that my ex had gambled away the down payment for our house and thousands more. After a week of me assuring him that I loved him and we'd get through it, I came to my senses and called the wedding off with two weeks to spare. We had a 6-week-old daughter, and I put her first and called off the wedding. I couldn't live day to day with a child waiting for a bookie to show up (which apparently is a real thing)."
"My daughter still grew up with her father in her life, but I moved on. I focused on raising her and building our great relationship. I met my husband about 10 years ago, and we got married this past fall."
—45, New York
And finally...
17. "Cheating. But not just any cheating, no. I found him one week before our wedding (which we paid several hundred thousand for), with my maid of honor. I called off the wedding, and he begged me to take him back. We went to therapy to try, and then he found out my maid of honor was pregnant with his child."
"He tried to convince me to raise the baby with them. No. I was so done."
—37, Florida
Fellow women, have you ever ended your engagement? Feel free to share your story in the comments below. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, feel free to use this Google form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.