We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the heart-shattering moment they realized their partner wasn’t the person they thought they were. Here are their stories:
1.”The day after I came home from brain surgery, he asked if I could go to the post office for him, since I was off from work. I couldn’t even walk straight, let alone DRIVE.”
—Anonymous
2.”The moment I realized I didn’t really know my husband was when I was pregnant with our child, and he confessed to me that he had been cheating on me throughout most of our nine-year marriage. He even had an account on Ashley Madison and would hook up with women when I was out of town. I had no idea and was not suspicious, nor had I ever checked his phone because I trusted him. I knew that he had a pornography addiction, but I had no clue it had escalated to this level. Needless to say, our marriage did not last long after that. I tried to make things work because of our child, but we got divorced shortly after she was born because the trust was irrevocably broken.”
—Anonymous
3.”When he told me during mediation he would never NOT see me as a whore. I had never been unfaithful, acquiesced to his (often wild) demands regarding my appearance, mannerisms, and way of speaking, and had changed my career trajectory to ensure he could ‘find meaningful work’ at the drop of a hat. He was not the man who wooed me from afar during COVID. I wish I had stayed off Tinder.”
—Anonymous
4.”When I met my husband, I had a 4-month-old baby that he immediately stepped in to help me raise, no questions asked. I thought I found ‘the one.’ Eight years later, he dropped the bomb on me that he had opened credit cards without my knowing and had accrued a balance of $25k. He also told me he’d been stealing money from a family member to make the payments. THEN, I found out he’d been making videos of us during our intimate moments without my consent or knowledge. I’ve been gone for almost eight months and haven’t missed him.”
—Anonymous
5.”At the beginning of our separation, while having difficulty parenting our teen son, I asked him for help. He told me I was getting everything I deserved and that I was on my own. He didn’t care about our child; he was just trying to hurt me. Turns out he was totally self-motivated our entire 20-year marriage, and I hadn’t seen it as clearly as I had in that moment.”
—Anonymous
6.”He wouldn’t let me have the children vaccinated against COVID because he bought into conspiracy theories over science.”
—Anonymous
7.”When he swatted a bee just enough so it was still alive, put it in the freezer until it fell asleep, and put it in a plastic bag when it woke up so he could watch it suffocate. He did this every time an insect got into our house afterwards and laughed while doing it. That’s when I realized how abusive he had been and how preying on innocence was his game. I left him soon after.”
—Anonymous
8.”I was eight months pregnant with my first and went into his email to get a recipe from his mom. We had each other’s email passwords, but I had never checked on it unless I needed something, and he always knew when I was. This time, laid out very clearly, was a long-term affair where he was engaged in a BDSM situation. Not going to harsh anyone’s kink, but to say I was shocked was an understatement. Even given all I did know about him and his preferences, an affair, especially such a long one, when there was nothing lacking in bed with us (to my knowledge), was jarring. Especially considering I still did anything he asked, even while I was very sick (went into liver failure) with his baby. He wasn’t the person I thought he was. I should have run then, but I was young and naive.”
—Anonymous
9.”When I saw the texts he sent to his affair partner, like, ‘I can’t control myself around you,’ and more. After 10 years together and eight years of marriage with no other partners, his explanation was, ‘How was I supposed to know we were monogamous?’ Or maybe the email I found caused me to finally decide to get divorced. We had separated while I was in a two-month-long intensive outpatient therapy program to deal with the PTSD symptoms and suicidal ideation from the discovery of the affair. Despite promising me that he had no interest in dating and would let me know if that changed, he emailed his affair partner to reconnect. The first line of the email? ‘It’s been a while…silence at best, contact from my wife at worst.'”
—Anonymous
10.”When I found out he had been secretly taking Cialis for a year, and the amount of pills missing from the bottles didn’t match the number of times we’d been intimate. I could never trust him again, and we eventually divorced.”
—Anonymous
11.”Within the first month, he threatened to leave me. That didn’t feel great, but I chalked it up to the intense emotions brought on by our argument. What made me realize he was operating on a whole other level was when he apologized for saying it. He followed his apology with, ‘Don’t worry. If I ever didn’t want to be here, I promise I still wouldn’t leave you. I’d just make you miserable enough to want to leave me.’ It took eight years, but he kept his promise.”
—Anonymous
12.”After giving birth to our new daughter, he was insistent on going out all the time and said if I didn’t accompany him, then he would be swayed to find a new girlfriend. We had only been married for about one year at that point.”
—Anonymous
13.”I loved him, and I was sure he was the one. But one day, he didn’t show up after work. My friend works with him and told me she saw him leave with another woman. I called and texted him, trying to get him to reply, and when he didn’t, I drove to his location. He was parked outside a Starbucks, cheating with that woman. I later found my now husband. And he has been there for me every step of the way. There’s truly no one I’m more grateful for, so really, my ex cheating was just a stepping stone to my husband. There’s always someone out there.”
—Anonymous
14.”After a very intense, emotional conversation about the fact that we were drowning in bills and going to have to choose between paying rent/utilities or the car payment, I finally broke down and cried like I never had before. He looked me straight in the eye and swore he would watch his spending and help find a way to fix the situation. I woke up the next morning to over $300 spent out of MY account on ridiculous Google Play purchases. The fact that he knew how badly it would hurt our family and my feelings and did it anyway immediately caused me to shut down emotionally. We separated shortly after when several other situations came to light. I will NEVER allow someone to know my account info, whether we’re married or not. The complete lack of shame or empathy still gets me to this day. How can someone not care at all?”
—Anonymous
15.”When Homeland Security busted down my door at 4 a.m. I had been married for 28 years and had no clue who my husband really was.”
—Anonymous
16.”When I came home from being hospitalized for bilateral pulmonary embolisms. I was on two different blood thinners and needed to be super careful. I asked him to bring down the Christmas decorations from the attic for me, seeing as our attic stairs were steep and narrow. He refused. I did it myself. The person I married made me feel adored and respected. The person I divorced lacked empathy and was full of contempt.”
17.”We (both women) were long distance, and after she went to bed one night, I was having a chat with her friend, and things started to not add up. Long story short, I found out she was cheating on me with her male cousin.”
—Anonymous
18.”Right before the wedding, he got a call from a number labeled with a girl’s name. He has no siblings, and it wasn’t his mom’s name.”
—Anonymous
19.”Five months into our marriage, he was in the middle of a custody battle for his son from a previous relationship. His ex wanted him to get drug tested. No problem, right? He tested positive for cocaine. Turned out he’d been using benzos and coke on and off for over 15 years. Never disclosed that before we got married because he thought I wouldn’t marry him. Ya think? We stayed married for eight years. After the cocaine, it was fentanyl. After the fentanyl, it was meth. He’d get sober but couldn’t stay sober, and then he’d just lie to me about his drug use.”
20.”We hadn’t spoken to each other in five years, but reconnected through social media. I thought everything was going okay until I peeked at his socials and discovered he was in a relationship with some girl on the other side of the country. I gathered from their posts that he was planning on moving to be with her, which his daughter confirmed. Had I not asked, I wouldn’t have known, and sometimes you’re better off not knowing, just like you’re better off without that person. When I found out about her, I stopped returning his calls.”
—Anonymous
21.”Probably two days ago, when he told me that I was the reason women shouldn’t be president because we always put emotions before thinking — alI because I found out it would probably cost about $600 to fix my radiator fan, and I loudly exclaimed, ‘What the fuck? I don’t have $600!’ Too emotional, no rational thinking, apparently.”
22.And: “After five tumultuous years with a man who professed his undying love for me one minute, then would tear me down the next, we tried a three-month separation. I agreed to get back together under the premise that we would get therapy to work on our problems, and he agreed. Fast forward two weeks, and he made me promise I would never leave him. I reminded him that we were going to get therapy to work on our issues, and I could not make any such promise; I only promised we would seek help for our problems. He lied about everything he said he would do and berated me for deceiving him. His outright denial about what he did and simply refusing any accountability made me realize that the man I thought I loved never existed. I feel sick for giving such a narcissistic human five years of my life. RUN from a narcissist!”
