Marriage vows cover a lot of ground. Sickness and health, richer or poorer, till the Grim Reaper tears us apart. What they leave out is the fine print about secretly emptying the joint account or deciding the family dog should go to a shelter without telling anyone. A lot of scorned women are flocking online to compare notes on the exact moment the vows stopped applying.
A few viral threads asked wives to share the thing that made them call a lawyer, and the answers go far beyond dirty socks on the floor. Some stories are the final straw after years of smaller ones. Others are the first and only straw, coming from an oblivious narcissist who thought their actions were completely fine. Grab a drink, and maybe call your mom afterward.
#1
He cracked my back for me… It’s was so good I was still for a moment. He immediately started getting his s**t to leave. When asked why it was because he thought he k****d me. His first instinct was to LEAVE.
5points
#2
Six months before I ended it we went to Mexico and got paddle boards. We paddle out & a huge wave comes and knocks me off and I loss grip of the board, it goes flying. HE KEEP PEDDLING OUT. Sees me and keeps going. A stranger man helped and got my board and got me shore. He sees this AND THATS what made him mad. Another man helped me and I MADE HIM LOOK BAD.
5points
#3
I was losing chunks of my hair.. I would walk around wearing a beanie. He thought it would be funny to take it off of my head in front of everyone exposing my bald spots. I was in tears.
5points
Until 1970, a woman who wanted out of her marriage had to prove her husband had done something awful. In most US states, divorce required legal grounds, meaning a judge had to agree that someone was at fault, usually because of adultery or cruelty.
California ended that with what is widely seen as the country's first true no-fault divorce law, which took effect in January 1970 under Governor Ronald Reagan. The other states followed over the next four decades, and New York was the last in 2010. Today "we want different things" is enough to end a marriage anywhere in the country, and the women in this thread still came with receipts.
#4
My ex husband and I had taken our boys to Disney. Crowded AF. I'm carrying our infant son while our oldest, who is on the spectrum and an eloper, takes off. I say "Hey grab him please". Obviously I had my hands full. He looks me in my face and says "Shut up b*tch”. I divorced him within 6 months. He came home to an empty house.
5points
#5
My ex left me in the hospital after I almost d**d birthing our son and was in the icu because grand theft auto San Andreas was was being released at midnight.
5points
#6
My Exs sister was pregnant. Her and her husband had watched a scary movie in theater and came home, they went into their apartment and he saw himself in the mirror. He freaked out thinking it was an intruder and pushed his pregnant wife into the apartment and ran out. They are still together.
5points
And the numbers say those receipts mostly belong to wives. Michael Rosenfeld, a sociologist at Stanford, analyzed a national survey of couples and found that women started 69% of divorces among heterosexual marriages. Unmarried couples ended their relationships at about the same rate as each other, so the gap only appeared once a ring was involved. Rosenfeld's reading was that marriage still tends to work out better for husbands than for wives, which gives wives more reason to walk.
#7
night after my hysterectomy, my ex husband decided he was going to sleep in the back bedroom and leave me alone, fresh from surgery. I was also on blood thinners due to clotting disorder. he left me alone that night without water, without pain meds, without anything. I crawled to the kitchen on my hands and knees to get my meds. slept at the kitchen table. he didn't check on me all night. came out around 9 am.
4points
#8
Our dogs got in a fight over food he left on his nightstand. I broke it up and one of their fangs snagged my arm and ripped it open.
The entire time I was at the er to get fixed up, he was on the phone with his mother, loudly saying that *my* dog should be put down, even though *his* dog was the one who went apes**t.
When he shoved his phone in my face so his mom could argue with me about it, the nurse kicked him out of the hospital, then turned to me and said I should love myself enough to know I didn't deserve to be in a relationship like that.
4points
#9
my ex husband did many worse things but one that always sticks with me is during my pregnancy I was extremely ill the entire time throwing up. one night I jumped out of bed and was throwing up in a bucket on the floor by the door. he got out of bed, stepped over my vomiting body, filled a glass with water and drank it then got back into bed and turned the light off on me.
i thought the water was going to be for me.
4points
Researchers at the University of Denver asked divorced Americans to name the reasons their marriages ended. Roughly three quarters pointed to a lack of commitment, and more than half named too much conflict or infidelity. About one in four cited domestic violence. Most people gave several reasons at once, so a long list of smaller problems usually sits behind the one dramatic event that gets retold at dinner parties.
#10
The day after I gave birth to our son, 1 month early so baby was in the NICU, my husband drove across the country to go on a week long fishing trip. I had surgery while he was gone, which he knew about and still left. I was left alone freshly postpartum and fresh out of surgery to care for our medically fragile newborn. Fun times.
4points
#11
My ex-husband and I were talking all night and we heard the living room window shatter at about 4am. He jumped off the bed and hid in our closet. *I* went to check what happened because our 2 young children were asleep in their room across the hall from us and someone needed to protect them. Thankfully it was just the delivery person who accidentally threw our newspaper too hard. I divorced him immediately!!
4points
#12
I was in the hospital and had been for over a week and my ex came to see me with my daughter and he hadn't said he missed me so I was reaching for the comfort and asked "did you guys miss me" in a cute tone to him and my daughter and he said "we miss eating" I left him when I left the hospital.
4points
Money is a repeat offender. Jeffrey Dew, a family researcher at Utah State University, found in a 2012 study that couples who argued about finances weekly were over 30% more likely to divorce than couples who argued about it a few times a month.
Then there is financial infidelity, the term for secret accounts, hidden debt, and purchases nobody was told about. Surveys from the National Endowment for Financial Education suggest roughly four in ten adults who share finances with a partner have kept some kind of money secret. A husband who quietly drains the joint account is doing something very common, and very expensive.
#13
He didn’t get up from his computer when I came downstairs crying after learning my dad was d***g of cancer.
4points
#14
We didn’t get divorced but we were engaged. While we were planning our wedding, specifically the entrance to the reception, he was pitching to me what could only be described as flash dance with his best friends to the hustlers anthem. Like, the first time walking into the room as husband and wife and I wasn’t even a thought. And when I pointed it out he said “well you need a groom to have the wedding, so good luck planning your dream wedding without me.” And I did. And I have never made a better decision in my life.
4points
#15
I had just given birth. I hadn't eaten in 37 hours. He slept at home while I was in the hospital all night. He was there for the birth the next day, and my mom brought us burgers so I could finally eat. He sat and ate while I held our baby. I asked if he could bring me my burger so I could take a bite, and he sighed like he was super annoyed and put the burger on the table next to the hospital bed. I was really nervous to hold the baby with one arm (brand new mom, not used to juggling everything yet) so I asked if he could hold it up so I could take a bite. He snapped at me that he just wanted to relax because HE WAS TIRED.
4points
The daily workload is another source of friction. In 1989 sociologist Arlie Hochschild published The Second Shift, based on years spent observing working couples. She calculated that women with full-time jobs did about an extra month of 24-hour days of housework and childcare every year compared with their husbands. Plenty of wives in threads like this one describe the same arrangement: two people with jobs, and only one of them managing the household. The husband usually considers this fine because he has never had to count the hours.
#16
I will never be able to unsee "men marry because it looks good to other men. Not because of sentiment."
4points
#17
My ex-husband encouraged me to take a girls’ trip. When I came back, the locks were changed, another woman had moved in, and he threatened to call ICE if I entered the house I paid for with all my belongings still inside. I had a work visa and was the provider. I had 2 days left on my work visa, and unbeknownst to me, he had also withdrawn his immigration petition for me. I lost my home, my marriage, and my legal path here almost overnight.
4points
#18
We were 21 and 22, I had just had a baby 5 months before, we went swimming with friends. He picked me up out of the water, threw me over his shoulder and pulled the back of my bottoms down in front of everyone and laughed about it. He was the only one laughing. I’m talking women, men, and children present.
4points
Communication breakdowns follow a similar pattern. John Gottman, the researcher famous for predicting divorce from couples' arguments, reports that about 85% of stonewallers are men. Stonewalling means shutting down mid-argument by going silent, leaving the room, or answering in grunts. Gottman's lab measured heart rates and found that stonewallers are often overwhelmed, with pulses above 100 beats per minute, and shutting down is their attempt to calm down. That explains the behavior, but it does nothing for the wife still standing in the kitchen waiting for an answer.
#19
He went to a bachelor party when I was very pregnant and sick with strep and a sinus infection and a teething toddler. Came home about 3 o’clock in the morning and said - Oh should I not have gone?
4points
#20
I caught him having an affair, and his response was to tell me I should be thankful he hadn't kicked me out to move her in, and if I wanted to keep my comfy life I'd just look the other way (I was a SAHM to HIS two kids).
I started packing my stuff and was out in two days. Last thing he said to me before I left was that I was: "Too stupid to make it without him, and he gave me a month before I came crawling back begging for another chance." Anyways, that was 16 years ago, I'm happily married to an amazing man, have a successful career, and a wonderful son.
My ex? He lost everything (including his job, the mistress, the house, his kids etc) a year after I left. Sweet, sweet, karma.
4points
