“Pretended He Didn't Know What A Baking Sheet Was”: 50 Relationship-Ending Moments

He likes to say he is the man and I need to do as he says. He said this to me when I was practically begging him to help me around the house. He's the man of the house even when I pay for 100% daycare, 100% utilities, 100% groceries and half our rent and took care of our kids, the pets, cleaning and cooking. Sadly, it wasn't that or the abuse or the cheating that woke me up. It was my kid telling me we can make it without him. We never looked back after that.

When his dad asked me why I was staying with such an AH when I wasn’t even related to him. “You don’t owe him anything. Neither do we but he’s our son.” It made me realize I’d been waiting for permission to leave the whole time…

When he screamed at me for leaving a light on while he was sleeping, two days after I had brain surgery and was still on some very strong painkillers. The best decision I ever made was leaving him.

After five years of severe abuse, someone I had just met saw me take a phone call with my then-boyfriend. He came up to me a few days later at our mutual friend’s house and said, 'I saw your face when you answered the phone. You looked upset and scared. It’s not right for a boyfriend to make you look the way I saw you look. He wasn’t doing it in a creepy way. He wasn’t trying to get into my pants. He was just a nice guy, making an observation and checking to see if I was okay. Plenty of people in my life had told me to get rid of that a***hole, but something about an acquaintance that I had just met making that observation really snapped me out of the fog I had been in. We became friends, and he helped me get away. I am convinced that that relationship would have k***ed me, and 15 years later, I am still so grateful to him for essentially saving my life.

I told my husband that he needed to lay off our daughter for getting a B on a unit in chemistry. She was asking to quit all her extra-curriculars (that she loved) and didn’t to get out of bed. I said we needed to be worried about her mental state.

He said “Well, if the kids aren’t going to respect what I say, then maybe I should leave.”

It literally flipped the switch on my feelings for him, after 20 years together. Instantly. Our child was struggling and he was so self-absorbed that he could only think about himself.

Done.

It was when I was 2 weeks postpartum with our second child and bedridden, and he left to take a 10 day retreat/vacation in California. He called and said what a relief it was to feel free of me and babies on the beach. It was the first time I thought, "This is wrong, I am being used."

In retrospect, the financial abuse where he drained my wealth should have done it, but it was the more physically vulnerable postpartum time that got the message through.

One night, he went to his friend's apartment and got wasted. He called me at 4 a.m. to come pick him up 30 minutes away. I did as he asked, and just as I am a minute from his friend's place, my cell rings. It's him, drunkenly stating, 'I'm home, thanks for nothing.' He had driven himself anyway because he didn't want to wait for me to pick him up and apparently thought I wasn't actually coming. I snapped my pink Motorola Razr shut and drove back to our place, gathered my s**t, told him I was done, and called my mom. I had put up with three years of cheating, assaults sexually, physically, and verbally, and I was done. My mother's first words to me were, 'Thank God. Come home.'

It occurred to me one day that there would be no relationship if I stopped trying. I was doing 100% and he was doing 0%. So one day, I just stopped everything. We didn’t have a final conversation or anything at all. I just stopped talking to him and we never talked again. It was a 4 year relationship.

He complained about having to go grocery shopping. I had made the menu for the week, planned, budget it and pretty much paid for all of it. It made me so mad I told him to suck it up. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t do it. At the time I was working pretty much two full time jobs and going to school. He was working 30 hrs and used the rest to play video games. I have him a rundown of all I did at home and how much more I paid for everything. He half apologized. That was a big wake up call. Then that weekend he canceled the first date we were going to have in months last minute. He woke up late because he was tired but his friends called and he was up and ready to go in five minutes. By the time he got back home none of his stuff was in the bedroom. And finally I went out with a friend for coffee and I realized that I was laughing. And it hit me that I hadn’t heard myself laugh in a really long time. I almost started crying when I realized how sad my life was and how miserable I felt. When I got back home I told him I was moving out. He asked me where we were moving too. It took him a second to realize that I meant that I was moving out by myself. He suggested therapy, open relationships, he started actually cooking and cleaning but it was too late. A month later I was out of there. He ended up living in his car, crashing it ended up homeless for a bit. Moved in with someone else he got involved with while still trying to get back together with me. His friends reached out to tell me I was over reacting. I wasted over five years with him. Leaving him was the best thing i ever did. My current partner is amazing always has time for me and he will help me out at home even without me asking.

He had been gaslighting me for our entire relationship, to the point that I started recording our conversations. He said something, and I disagreed and told him he'd said something else previously. He was adamant that I was lying and started to get angry. When I didn't back down, he told me I needed to go to the doctor to get on medication for my 'paranoia,' even though I had proof that I was right.

When I started to look forward to his business trips, because everything was so much easier and more pleasant when he was gone. I was only cleaning up after myself and an infant! (Which, that sucks in and of itself, but...) There was no second adult making messes and waking me up in the middle of the night to pester me for sex.

I got the idea, *this could be every day.*

I made it happen. And then the baby was the only one waking me up, because that's what babies do.

When I had cancer and had to have surgery. My grandma was coming over and I asked him to do the dishes, not much because I did them before I went to the hospital. He complained the entire time and we got into a fight. He told me it was “his coping skill”. I ended up doing them with a drain coming from my neck.
He called out of work “to help me” but played video games all day long and I did everything for myself.
He took me to my follow up appointment and road raged on our way there, then lectured me after I got upset with him. He wouldn’t come into the appointment with me. I left that day. It’s been 2.5 weeks since I moved back in with my parents and I realize if I had stayed, nothing would have changed. Lies have since come out and he has been blocked. I am healing, mentally and physically. I just can’t believe myself for letting it get that far.

When she was so terrible with our finances that I had to get a 2nd job, we had to get roommates, and the whole time she came up with excuse after excuse as to why she couldn't get another job and why she couldn't cut back on her spending. And then she turned around and bought her mom a Disney trip on MY credit card without even asking me first or giving me a heads up. I found out when I went pay the bill and it was a couple thousand dollars higher than I expected.

I stayed with her for so long because i'd grown up with people saying relationships are hard work. So I thought it was the right thing to do to stay with her and work through our issues together. But at that point I realized I didn't care if it made me a bad person or an a*****e. i had no desire to continue to be someone's piggy bank.

6 months after leaving her, I scraped enough together for a down payment on a house. 6 months! I kick myself imagining how much more money I'd have had I left her sooner. That's how much she was bleeding from me.

My fiancée barely reacted when I told him I got a big promotion, which involved a 25% pay rise, a car allowance, and managerial responsibilities. He never listened when I talked to him about my job, but this especially stung. We'd been together for seven years and had our wedding planned, deposits paid, and invites sent out. I'm so relieved I realized I didn't want to spend my life with him when I did.

My husband was gone for a few days and the kids and i didn't even notice lol

One day, he crossed a line I did not know I had: He called me a stupid b***h. He had cheated, manipulated, gaslit me, and called me crazy so many times in the couple years we were together, and I stupidly put up with him, but for whatever reason, this was my last straw. I no longer felt weak — I felt angry. I threw all his stuff into the dumpster at my apartment and never spoke to him again. It was so out of character for me, but I felt so powerful.

Oh hell, mine was the moment back in 2010 when he called his mom on the phone and ask if he could go live with her. He didn't mention if WE (myself and our 5 year old son) could also live with her. I had to ask him very out loud (so she could hear me) "What about us??!" Then he changed it to, "Oh yeah and them too". I knew then love was no longer a thing between us and I'd fallen out of love at that very moment.

When he spent daycare money on cigarettes. Our rule was diapers first, even if it meant we ate ramen a few times a week. I scrubbed toilets to cover rent when he lost his jobs. This was after 7 years of me doing 99% anyways, but once I couldn't make up for his deficiency and it impacted my ability to care for our kids, that was the lightbulb.

Been almost 4 years. Best choice I ever made.

The moment I knew happened the first time he saw me after nine weeks of being apart. Instead of being excited to see me, he snapped at me immediately. I realized I had been happier without him and left for good two days later.

I let myself into the house after work after travelling 45 mins one way. It was after 6pm. The house was in darkness. Husband worked from home. He was lying on the couch watching YouTube. He did not get up off the couch to greet me. He was not unwell. No food was ready for dinner. This was the standard situation but this one got to me.

Also, my daughter and I were rear ended in the car. We drove it home not far away and went into the house and told him. “How’s the car” he said. Later on I said how it had upset me that he didn’t ask how WE were. Cue shock. “ I could see you were fine!”. I cooked dinner that night with an ice pack on my shoulders.