Very few things can make you as thrilled to bits as those early days of a new relationship. You get stirred up by the idea of love. You feel like walking in a fog of bliss and can’t stop thinking about the person. But an apparent match made in heaven can potentially cloud your judgment and make you ignore or miss the bright red flags waving directly at your face.
Luckily, seriously negative behaviors are obvious-looking from afar. And if relationship warning signs somehow go over your head, friends and family members are on a mission to keep an eye on things. So Redditor Nameshavebeenaltered decided to reach out to these attentive people to ask about the moment they realized there was something off about a loved one’s SO.
Thousands of members of the Ask Reddit community flooded the thread with responses about how their gut instinct proved to be right. From less-than-pleasant girlfriends with a taste for threats to boyfriends shamelessly lampooning their partners for everyone to hear, Bored Panda has picked out some of the worst relationship horror stories from an outside perspective. Continue scrolling and be sure to share with us what you think about them in the comment section below.
#21
Long story. Best friend was adopted as a kid. Adoptive parents killed in a car accident when he was 11. He was in the back seat. He survived.
Became even better mates. Same schools and college. He decided he was gonna marry this girl. I was happy for him but I had never met her as I lived out of the country at the time. So wedding is in 6 months. I fly down to see family and end up going with my the girl friend and some friends and we all meet up at a local restaurant.
Meet his fiance. She seems nice and welcoming. She flirts subtly with me. Nothing major but talks about my appearance quite a bit. In front of her fiance. I think nothing much of it.
Later in the evening I go to the bathroom. I end up walking to a cubicle and as I enter she jumps in front of me and closes the door with me inside... I ask her what she's doing. Her response is anything I want.
I immediately push her out. Sit down and in shock have no idea what I'm supposed to do.
I go back to the table. I'm quiet. I realize that I should tell or say something to him.
I pull him outside and tell him what happened. He is too in shock. Ruins the whole evening and next day I flew back to my home town with my girlfriend to see my family.
We don't speak for months until the wedding. I'm his best man.
Whole family was off to me. Bride hated me. We don't speak anymore but I know what happened and friends support my decision to tell him. He claims she says it was all a misunderstanding due to being drunk. I know what I saw. I know what happened. I know what she was trying to do. I feel bad because I have probably lost a friend but my conscious is clear.
Good luck Philip.
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163points
However, Baldwin would also like to remind you to be aware that we might see red flags where there aren't any. "We might put barriers and blocks in the way of relationships because we're scared to love. If this resonates, it's time to explore your fears about getting into an intimate relationship," she concluded.
#22
He had a full-on, toddler-level temper tantrum twice at a group game night. Once because during a trivia question he couldn't remember the planets in the solar system. Then, in the same night, he got pissy playing Uno, threw his cards down and stormed out. We all kind of looked at each other and at our friend. That was when we knew he was.. 'off.' My friends and I were all in our mid-20's and he was over 30, so it was definitely not acceptable behavior.
A couple weeks later was my friend's birthday, so we all went out for the night and ended up at our neighborhood bar. He threw another temper tantrum (I think it was over scoring for darts or something equally ridiculous...), stormed out and peeled away in his car, leaving us with no ride home. This was pre-Uber/Lyft and none of us wanted to spend the money on a taxi, so we sobered up on the ~two mile walk back to my friend's house.
Thankfully...she broke up with him not long after. She is now with a wonderful guy who not only knows the planets of the solar system, but also treats her a lot better.
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163points
#23
My friend's SO in high school had a skinned cat hanging on his wall!! I knew right then that he was f*****g crazy. Thank god she isnt with him anymore!
Edit: He had just graduated. I was hanging out with them in his room, look up and see this pelt with head and everything. I obviously ask "What the f**k?" He then brags about how he killed it and skinned it himself. I love cats and was disgusted and horrified at the same time. I dont think I ever left a place so fast in my life. He seemed like a normal dude, but my first thought when seeing this poor kitty was "serial killer"
Edit #2: It was just your average house cat.
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132points
#24
When he installed some kind of app on my best friend’s computer so that he could control the mouse with his phone. I think this was two months after I met him - 6 months into their relationship. I thought that was real [messed up] but “haha it’s only a joke, why do you think it’s weird gan1lin2?”
About a year later, he asked her to sign into Facebook to ‘see if Facebook was working for her’. Later that day she came over worried and asked me if he could’ve saved her password even if she told Chrome to not save it. We kind of bounced ideas around that “no, I don’t think so... I mean unless he put a keylogger on his computer? But that would be messed up.” And sure enough, that’s exactly what he did.
Notable favorite: After breaking up, he also tried to pose as me on kik so he could talk to her. He used a username that was like “gan11in2” so it was easily mistaken.
The whole relationship was a mess.
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131points
#25
The first time I met him was at her birthday party. He shook my hand then proceeded to try and grind on me in front of her and her family. Then when I called him out on it everyone said I was the problem and was just jealous. A year later, it turns out he had been cheating on her continuously and had gotten 2 girls pregnant while dating her.
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124points
#26
When my husband and I were helping them move and he would only speak to or answer my husband. I had an idea of how to move some stuff up the stairs and the guy just blew me off. So I told my husband to casually mention the same damn idea and poof! It was an awesome idea so we had to try it right then and there. This always put her down and she would just take it. In the end HE broke up with her because he felt she wasn't thin/pretty enough for him. Then would get mad at her for trying to move on and tried to sabotage every relationship she tried to have. I ended up ending the friendship because I couldn't stand listening to her complain about how he was treating her and she would keep going back.
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123points
#27
My best friend's ex boyfriend walked like he was trying to intimidate people. And every time he asked someone a question about someone's opinion (hey what do you think of that statue, do you like sauerkraut) he'd respond to their answer with "I had a feeling you were going to say that." It seems harmless but it was every single time, and if you called him out on it (you couldn't possibly have known I was allergic to x!) he lashed out in anger. Every time she tried to break up with him he cornered her and wouldn't let her leave the room until she relented, and even their couple's therapist thought she should leave him for her own safety after two or three sessions. He would wait for her shift to end just sitting in his car in the parking lot and if she didn't come out fast enough he'd storm into the building in a fury, but if she came out on time he'd just leave. He wasn't there to pick her up, just to monitor her... which he also did through a gps tracker he put in her car.
She now has a restraining order and has moved twice. He broke into her apartment with a gun while she was deep asleep and just snuggled up behind her with the gun between them as if it was his d**k, and that was how she woke up. There are other things but this is getting long.
edit because people are ~~nosy~~ curious about other things he did:
-helped me move, but only to find out where I lived. After their breakup he came to my door several times looking for her, and when she was generally Not Here he settled for monitoring my house
-extreme fitness nut who was obsessed with telling people whether or not he could bench them (hint: usually not)
-lots of gaslighting, don't remember the details
-insisted on changing her cat's name, which didn't stick
-wouldn't let her *not* watch tv with him even though there are a hundred things she'd rather do than watch tv at any given time, up to and including a pap smear. This inspired multiple fights
-charmed her parents so successfully that they insisted she go to couple's therapy to "work out their differences" which were "I don't want to be constantly monitored, also your general controlling behavior is creepy" vs "you have nothing to hide if you're doing nothing wrong"
-ultimately their breakup was supervised by the couples councilor , who had building security waiting in the lobby and her hand on a panic button (who knew she'd have that)
-stormed into her work when she quit (post-breakup) because he decided they fired her and his plan was apparently to threaten them to get her her job back
-took her to court to argue against the restraining order. Judge looked at friend's documentation and how she was leaning away from him even on opposite sides of the room and he was making kissy faces at her and granted the order
-made very public posts on some weightlifting social media thing about what a crazy ex-girlfriend he had and *linked her profile in his own profile*
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122points
#28
She messaged me to let me know she wouldn't be on her phone until she got a new one bc the one she has is busted. When I pressed a little, he had thrown it and stomped it when she complained about it dropping calls and having a s**t battery. So, typical best friend I'm like, I would make the bastard pay, blah blah. Fast forward a few hours, he is on her Facebook messenger, reading our conversation, trying to justify it to me. It gave me the w*****s to have him read our conversation. He has also thrown a remote through their plasma tv when he was mad. I know that he will be violent with her one day, if he hasn't already and she is just keeping it secret. It makes me sick to my stomach.
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122points
#29
He hated her spending time with me. Snide jokes about lesbian lovers and wondering about the true mature of our relationship. The day we met finally, he told me that m**f-munching can't compete with a good hard dicking. Then he started insisting that I was closeted and obsessed with her, my boyfriend was just a beard. Funny thing is, I was meeting this girl after 5 months. He was scary controlling and insecure.
4 years later, they are sadly still together. I have given up at this point.
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105points
