It should go without saying that marriage is a pretty big commitment (what with those "death do us part" vows and whatnot). Taking the time to really get to know a potential spouse is smart, but not everyone does. Some brave/foolish/romantic souls throw caution to the wind and jump into marriage headfirst...often with disastrous results.
With that in mind, we recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community, "If you got married or engaged super fast and regretted it, what went wrong?" and people shared some jaw-dropping stories (including one where they got married just two weeks after meeting). Here they are:
Note: This post contains mentions of physical, mental, and sexual abuse.
1. "In the military, there’s a culture of getting married super fast. I was in the military and so was my now ex-husband. I was 19 and thought he was the love of my life. One day very early into dating, I said, 'I can’t wait to marry you one day,' and he responded with, 'How about Saturday?' Good thing we already lived in Vegas! We had known each other for maybe eight weeks when we got married. It turned out he was secretly hiring women on Craigslist for…personal interactions. We divorced about six months after we got married. All before I turned 20."
—anonymous
2. "We got married after nine months. I then found out he had written a bunch of bad checks and moved to get away from them. When they followed him, his mommy took care of it, and from that day forward, it was her, 'her Jimmy,' and me. She has him all to herself now."
3. "I married a stripper when I was 24. She was 26. I was in the military and picked her up while she was working. After sleeping together two or three times, she proposed to me. Being young, dumb, and full of you know what I accepted, and we had a wedding two weeks later. I moved into her place, and she quit her job, expecting me to provide everything. I enlisted at 22 and was still in the junior enlisted ranks. My paycheck alone wasn't enough, and she refused to get a regular job. Our divorce was finalized six months later."
—anonymous
4. "My fiancé is an undocumented citizen. He proposed, and after that, he changed completely. Became a narcissist and treated me horribly. Manipulating me and using me, trapping me to marry him. He wants his papers so badly. I’ve never been so hurt."
—anonymous
5. "He was my best friend's cousin. We met right after I graduated high school and dated for a couple of weeks before deciding to elope. We drove out of state, married, honeymooned for a couple of days, and came back. The night after we returned, I started getting text messages from an unknown phone number. Turns out it was his 'ex-girlfriend.' He had just left her house, and she wanted to let me know he had been texting and calling her daily, including the day we got married. I confronted him, and after denying it, he asked if she could move in with us so he could be with us both. I kicked him out, but the court couldn’t serve him the paperwork. It took almost a year to finalize the divorce, and the kicker was that he brought his very pregnant girlfriend to our divorce and asked me to run away with him so we could stay married — he did this in front of his girlfriend. I said no. She still took him back!"
—anonymous
6. "I got married after knowing my ex for six months — two of those months he was deployed. I think I just got caught up in his excitement. Part of it was I was getting close to 30 and wanted to marry and have kids. I didn't move in with him until six weeks after we were married. I learned pretty quickly that I didn't really know him at all. Found some pretty disturbing stories he had written. After a few months, I found out that he wasn't sure about his sexual preferences."
"By then I was already pregnant and had such severe morning sickness that I couldn't work. I had moved to marry him so I felt trapped. We tried marriage counseling, but it was pointless. I was the happiest when he was deployed. I had my daughter and made a plan to leave. Those plans got fast-forwarded when something awful happened to my daughter, and he was responsible. The divorce was traumatic, took almost two years, and cost me $30k. I had to file for bankruptcy afterward. It's been 16 years, and I never want to get married again."
—anonymous
7. "My brother got pushed into marrying fast since the bride's father was having health issues, and dementia was setting in. Once they got married, they regretted it instantly and got an annulment within 30 days. Surprise fact: One of the bridesmaids manipulated the freshly-confused husband and slept with him. It took two people to ruin this, and it was already going down the toilet anyway."
—anonymous
8. "We got engaged and bought a house three months after meeting and married three months after that. He's in the military so early marriage was normal, and he did so much love bombing I had no issue going fast at the time. Why wouldn't I lock down the best man I ever met? Well, after the marriage, he quickly turned into a narcissistic monster. Even though he saw my struggle with infertility, he made sure to let me know he didn't want to ruin his 'bloodline' with adoption. He also fat-shamed me and neglected me. So yeah...that's why he's my EX-husband. The funny thing is around six months after our divorce, he was engaged to another plus-sized girl. I can't roll my eyes hard enough. I wish I could tell her to RUN!!!"
—anonymous
9. "My first husband and I got engaged after only dating for two weeks. We got married within three months. He came from a wonderful family, and I thought I was lucky to be marrying him at the time. He quickly became abusive, and the marriage only lasted a year and a half."
"Since then, I've married an amazing man that I have known since we were in high school together. We have three children together, and celebrated our 13-year anniversary this year."
—anonymous
10. "I didn't know what love bombing was when I met my ex. He would try so hard to impress me and remember everything I told him I liked. I thought he was just madly in love with me. He was mad, alright. We got married four months after we met. I hadn't even spent any time with his family, only briefly meeting them once before we went to a movie. He ended up being super controlling and emotionally abusive. The first time he told me he wanted a divorce, he immediately ran off with another woman and told everyone I cheated on him (I had actually found him logged into social media on the laptop and read their messages to each other before he asked for a divorce). Then he begged me back, kicked me back out again, gave me no time to regroup, etc. This happened several times before I finally got the guts to tell him I would never come back. I left for good and couldn't be happier."
—anonymous
11. "We met one summer and were married the next. He was my third husband; I was his fifth wife. I should have known better; we both should have. I thought I could just grin and bear it until, five years later, his ex-wife told me that he had molested his two oldest daughters and was accused of molesting his youngest daughter. I can’t begin to say how shocked I was. I didn’t believe her so I told him what she had told me. I was even more shocked when he admitted it was true; he had molested the two older daughters but hadn’t touched the youngest. When I asked him why he hadn’t told me before we got married (I thought we had laid all our cards on the table), he said, 'I didn’t think you’d marry me if you knew.' Damn right I wouldn’t have, and that was it for us."
—anonymous
12. "I was single, having fun and loving life. My friends were getting married and having kids...while I was out partying and living life. After my best friend proposed, I felt the pressure to find a relationship and make it last. After meeting my ex-wife, I proposed a year later. Six months after that, we were married. Three months after saying 'I do,' we separated."
"Before separating, she refused to see my friends and family and would get mad whenever I went out. She was mentally abusive and downright mean. She tried to control my entire life, and when I had a say in anything...it would be a fight. It also didn't help that she was cheating on me with her ex for the entire relationship...but I found that out years later. ANYWAYS, the biggest lesson...don't give in to the pressure of getting married just because all your friends are! Since the divorce, I met the most amazing woman, and we are happily married with two kids."
—anonymous
13. "In the early 2000s, I'd just recently broke up with one cheating man from the military (US Navy) and met a new military man (US Air Force) at a club. We 'fell in love' and got engaged very quickly. He dumped me before a trip I was supposed to take to Vegas where he was stationed (always buy travel insurance!). We got back together months later and were in a long-distance relationship while he lived in Germany. He found a German language 'tutor' who happened to be 17 years old, and ended up sleeping with her. I broke it off with him, and the next guy I dated became my husband. So that's the silver lining; if that cheat hadn't done what he did, I wouldn't have gotten involved with my future husband!"
—anonymous
14. "I got engaged at 19 after only knowing the guy for five months. We got married four months later, and he turned into a completely different person. He was controlling, telling me what I could and couldn't wear, and giving me the silent treatment for weeks at a time. Once he started threatening me with physical violence, I ran."
—anonymous
15. "We married after five months of dating. We'd known each other for about 10 years prior but had never been romantic, just flirty. I secretly regretted it from day one (I spent the entire day crying my eyes out while my new husband was busy with his friends). I guess I was caught up on the idea of romance and marriage. I was determined to make it work, but it was all in vain. He put his mother and sister first; I was second at best, most of the time a third person in his life. After four years of trying, I sent him back to his true love (his mother) and divorced him. As heartbroken as I was, I felt so relieved the first morning after we parted ways. I knew I had the chance to be happy again!"
—anonymous
16. "He was super sweet and so much fun to be around, but the minute we got married, he turned into a whole different person. It was like now that he was 'locked down,' he could reveal his true intentions. He was awful to his parents, never saw his kids, refused to get a job unless it was washing dishes under the table, and lied, saying he was going to go to HVAC school in the fall only to later retract that and say he was going to 'start looking' into going to school in the fall. I quickly realized exactly how much stuff he fabricated and that he was never going to do the things he said he would do."
"One time, he was supposed to go watch his kids at his parents' house — his ex was going to drop them off right before she had to go to work. Well, he was running late but stopped to get coffee anyway, despite my pleas to just make coffee at his parents' when we got there. He was 15 minutes late, and they were gone by then. His ex had to go to work and wasn't going to wait around for him all day. He made coffee a higher priority than his own kids. So glad I left his ass."
—anonymous
17. "I was in the military and met my now ex-husband on our shared ship. We dated for about two months before he proposed. I knew I didn’t really want to marry him but decided to anyway because my 19-year-old self thought she knew everything and could make it work. I got transferred shortly after, and he began going underway (out at sea) a lot. Within two months, he’d met someone he was actively choosing over me. I made him cut her off. He deployed about six months later and immediately started cheating with her. I tried to forgive him, but he became abusive, and we went through an incredibly nasty divorce less than two years later. I regret ever even attempting to forgive him. It’s been six years, and after a lot of therapy, I’m in a much better, happier place now."
—anonymous
18. "I got swept up into a relationship. After six months I moved in, six months later we were engaged, and six months later we were married. Looking back, '666' should have been a hint. When we started dating, she had my exact same interests; it was like a movie. She pushed me into moving in with her, showed me the engagement ring she wanted, and then planned the wedding to happen in March in Wisconsin! After the wedding, everything changed."
"She no longer shared my interests and didn't want to meet or see my friends; it was all her all the time. We ended up getting divorced. I tried to get us into therapy, but we only met once as a couple with the therapist. We both met with the therapist individually, and I kept seeing the therapist after the divorce. One session my therapist told me they wanted to talk about people I should avoid, like someone with narcissistic personality disorder. The therapist went on to explain how a relationship with a narcissist would start, and it was almost the exact timeline of my relationship with the ex."
—anonymous
19. "He stole my identity two days before the wedding and disappeared."
—anonymous
20. "Oh, boy, did I. I was at a particularly vulnerable point in my life when I met and married a woman several years younger than myself. First date to married in about four months. Ignored EVERY red flag, didn’t ask the sort of questions one should ask in these situations, and ended up marrying someone with profound mental issues, and also emotionally and physically abusive. Turns out their entire family was, too, but I lost the rest of my life because of the commitment I made. Shame on me, I was a grown ass man and should have 'looked before I leapt.'"
And lastly, here's one that went a little differently:
21. "My husband and I met spring of 2018 and got engaged that winter — I was already wearing a placeholder ring by the end of the summer. We didn’t wind up officially tying the knot until 2021 (for pandemic reasons), but we were engaged the majority of our time together beforehand. The main reason for my regret? Not the 'growing pains' as we called them (we had constant bickering matches on account of how we didn’t know how to communicate yet). No, the real reason is because we know we’re raising hyper-romantic stubborn children who will more than likely bank on the dumb timeline WE accidentally set up…and they might not get so lucky. Is pre-regret a thing?"
—anonymous
Some entries have been edited for length or clarity.