Random Married People Who Fell Out Of Love Explain What Happened (20 items)

• (#1) She Became Too Much Like Her Mom

  From Redditor /u/gdon88:

  There wasn’t one specific moment but rather a long, gradual progression. She stopped caring about us. [She] focuses on the kids, on her work, on everybody and everything else. She admires her parents and now she’s becoming her mom. She stopped being the person I married and fell in love with and is now adopting the views and personality of a grandma. She’s literally becoming a sexless, no passion, grandma. She has no hobbies or interest of her own. Over the years she’s become overweight and our sex life couldn’t be more boring. If we have sex, there’s no foreplay. It’s missionary and it’s an in and out and your done kind of experience. [There are] lots of rules about what I can and can’t do. The “can” list is very short.

  We’ve gone to couples counseling - have seen three different counselors over the years. We are now going to individual AND couples counseling. She forgets everything we learn the second she walks out of the session. Instead, as a conservative Christian, she just wants to pray about our marriage. Meanwhile she loses [it] when I communicate my needs and feelings. [She] doesn’t want to hear it. [She] wants me to “figure out what’s wrong with you.” I always lift her up and tell her how beautiful she is but she is an anomaly. At once, she feels bad about herself physically, but she is so entitled that she doesn’t take a lot of responsibility for our situation. She just likes to call me a “miserable person” who is “destined to [end up] alone.”

  We’ve gone through these patterns over the years and have managed to make up without actually resolving the issues. That’s only because I usually give in and take responsibility even though sometimes I’m not to blame. But now I’ve stopped doing that. She can’t handle it. I’ve mentioned divorce or even seeing other people. My heart has been hardened over time and I no longer get upset. I just engage her in conversation that attempts to solve the issue but with her temper, she just loses [it]. She can’t deal with difficult problems without getting angry. She’s gotten in my face, screaming red faced to the point I can feel her hot breath and spit on my face. I walk away. I used to yell back but now I just don’t care.

  We are together for the kids at this point. She punishes me by withholding sex. I guess her thinking is 'if he’s so unhappy with our sex life maybe he’ll appreciate what he does get if I deprive him at all.' Idk. It used to work but now it doesn’t. I’m thankful for our wonderful kids and I don’t regret the circumstances that brought them into the world but I do think my marriage is over. I worry about the affect a divorce will have on them. It’s all I think about all day every day. It just sucks that we both say we want to fix it, but she isn’t doing [anything] except blaming me. In her mind if I wasn’t such a miserable person none this would be an issue. 
• (#2) She Felt Like His Mother Because He Was Immature

  From Redditor /u/lemonf*cker007: 

  Most people would say that there isn't a distinct moment that it happens, but there can be if you've been on your way there for some time.

  My ex-husband and I had just gotten married and I was learning exactly how immature he really was. I felt like I was his mother and that the stability of our small, new household was contingent on me kicking his ass to help me pay bills, clean, etc. The exact moment that I decided, "I'm f*cking done with you" was when we were so poor that we had no food, we were behind on bills and we were one day away from losing our car insurance because we couldn't afford to pay it. Meanwhile, I'm looking through our bank statements trying to figure out where the f*ck all our money is going, and I find a $150 statement from Radioshack.

  He spent our very last money on a f*cking Bluetooth speaker while his wife was having broth for dinner and going to work hungry every morning. That's when I finally figured out that he wasn't on my team and he did not care about me. He liked the convenience of me.

  Jokes on him though because his last girlfriend spent all their rent money on a lizard.
• (#3) She Lied About Their Problems To Friends

  From Redditor /u/FranchescaFiore: 

  After my ex-wife and I separated, it became crystal clear that she was embellishing details of our relationship problems to alienate me from our mutual friends. I later found out that she claimed I was a habitual sexual predator who preyed on vulnerable women. I went from "still in love but aware that we're bad for one another" to "I will celebrate the day I never have to speak to you again like no other" pretty quickly.
• (#4) He Tried Scaring Them Into Spending More Time Together

  From Redditor /u/oakspark:

  After 21 years of marriage he said he wanted a divorce unless I spent less time helping my daughter with homework and more time with him.

  I cried all night then the next day when I said okay then let’s get a divorce, he said he was joking and was just trying to scare me into spending more time with him. Any love I ever felt went out the window. I left a month later.
• (#5) Their Husband Bought A Super Bowl Ticket Instead Of A Bed For Their Child

  From Redditor /u/Im_Phoenix:

  When my ex husband told me that I should hold off on buying our kid a bed. He then turned right around and spent $14,000 on superbowl tickets. I couldn't and still can't get over that.
• (#6) A Sheriff Came To The House Because He Hadn’t Paid Taxes

  From Redditor /u/CoffeeHermit: 

  A sheriff showed up to deliver a lien on the house as my first husband hadn't bothered to pay any property taxes for how long? In retrospect, almost 20 years later, it forced me to become more financially educated and make sure my partner in a relationship is just as involved. People marry for love but it's the paperwork that will trip them up if they let it.
• (#7) He Never Admitted He Was At Fault For Anything

  From Redditor /u/doggypaddle6: 

  My (now) ex-husband has told me he didn’t love me and that he’d cheated throughout our marriage. We had a four week old baby boy. We’d been together 15 years and I still couldn’t shake the love, but I knew my son deserved better. I told him I was filing for divorce (he didn’t want a divorce because it "didn’t make financial sense"). When I said I was filing, he lost his shit and screamed, "you broke our family!" That’s when I realized that he would never admit fault for anything and that he is truly not well. Fell out of love right there and never looked back.
• (#8) He Stopped Taking Meds That Made Him Less Angry

  From Redditor /u/slhopper:

  When my kids were in the backseat sobbing because their dad had been screaming at them and calling them names and they begged him, "daddy please take your medicine, you're nice when you take your medicine."

  He replied, "I'm not going to take a pill to make you happy."

  That was it, he had taken his meds while in a court ordered anger management program from a road rage incident. As soon as he completed it he quit taking the medication and went right back to his angry self. He had the ability and tools to change and wouldn't, that day I lost all hope that he would change and began planning how we could safely get away from him. There were some scary times but we are happy and safe now, yet I remember that day 14 years ago like it was yesterday.
• (#9) Her Spending Got Out Of Control

  From Redditor /u/Adddicus:

  I was thrilled when I met the woman I would later marry. She had moved to Long Island to be an au pair (that's a nanny to you and me) for a very nice professional couple. She was originally from Wisconsin and was very down to earth, hard working, goal oriented, and so incredibly sweet and generous that she was, for all intents and purposes, adopted by the family she worked for and essentially became their eldest daughter.

  We married when I was 35 and she was 27. She was already a volunteer EMT with the local fire department, and wanted to be a nurse. I helped put her through school. I even edited most of her non-nursing related papers. She graduated with honors, won some sort of leadership award and was very successful as a nurse. And then she began to change.

  The woman I married was willing to work for everything she had or would get. After working with so many Long Island women, her views began to change. Her three best work friends were married to a patent lawyer, a stock broker, and an investment banker. I, on the other hand, am just a blue collar shmoe. I make a very nice living, but I'm not even close to the same tax bracket her friends' husbands are. She grew very envious of how her friends lived. They drove cars from Lexus and Mercedes, while my wife drove a Jeep. They lived in expensive neighborhoods close to NYC, while we lived in a semi-rural suburb much farther east.

  Her spending got out of control. Whether we could afford the things she wanted (that her friends already had) didn't really matter; she was going to have them anyway. The last straw was the trip to Paris. One of her friends had a relative in the airline industry and could get them (relatively) cheap flights to Paris. The three friends were going and my wife wanted to go too. When she approached me with the idea I told her flat out that we could not afford it. We already had too much credit card debt. She went anyway. She told me she deserved it. Later she told me she deserved a Mercedes. Her basic values changed dramatically from the time we married. She was not really willing to work for the things she wanted anymore. Her friends were simply given these things and she thought she should be given them too.

  There is, of course, a great deal more to the dissolution of our marriage, but in the end she hooked up with one of the doctors she worked with and we divorced. Last I heard she still hadn't received that Mercedes she wanted so much.
• (#10) He Insulted Her For Gaining Weight

  From Redditor /u/Marsandtherealgirl:

  I got into a bicycling accident and had a bad shoulder injury. I couldn't use my left arm at all for three months. My (now ex) husband and I were very active people so this really messed me up. I was in constant pain and had a really hard time taking care of myself. He didn't do a whole lot to help either. I gained a bit of weight while this was happening. He started telling me that I needed to do something to work out or eat differently because I was getting fat. He seriously said that.

  He also didn't respect my art and didn't believe that I could start a business. One time he asked me why I made so much stuff because I never sold any of it. It was a lot of little things that lead up to a lot of big things over the course of ten years. In the end I happily paid for my part the divorce with money I made from my business.
• (#11) Her Husband Was Unsympathetic When She Got Sick

  From Redditor /u/dizzytulip:

  This is not how I fell out of love so much as the straw that broke the camel's back and the event that really drove home to me what a total a**hole I was with. We were married and living outside our home country, no friends or family around. I was really sick with a sinus infection. Like just laying in the silent darkness because you can't sleep, but light and sound makes your head hurt worse. Like I could hardly stand up and walk around.

  He came in the room and said, "Are you going to make dinner?" I said no.

  He made himself some spaghetti and meat sauce and didn't offer to make me anything to eat, or even get me a glass of water.

  I got up a while later to get my own water from the kitchen, and saw the mess he had left for me to clean up. Meat all over the stove and even on the floor due to his negligent stirring. He had put a pound of ground beef in a pan that was too small for it, then stirred it around, f*cking oblivious. There were dirty pans stacked in the sink.

  If I had felt better I think I would have [ended] him.
• (#12) He Wanted Children - With Someone Else

  From Redditor /u/ilulisaat: 

  He said, "I want children, just not with you." [We've been] married eight years and I don't know what to do. 
• (#13) Sleeping In The Snow Was Better Than Sleeping In Bed At Home

  From Redditor /u/domestic_omnom: 

  When I realized I was happier sleeping in a sleeping bag in the snow on a military training exercise than I was sleeping in a bed at my house with my "wife."
• (#14) They Kept Fighting But Their Ex Didn’t

  From Redditor /u/Ender070: 

  There isn’t one specific thing for me. I think it was when I was fighting for us, and she wasn’t fighting at the time. It hurt to see that I was putting everything into saving our marriage and she didn’t see it or didn’t want to see it. When I finally gave up and said I wanted a divorce she started fighting. I was already checked out mentally by that point. I think that is when I fell out of love with her. I still care about her, [I'm] just not in love with her.
• (#15) She Realized How Critical He Was

  From Redditor /u/localgyro:

  It's complicated. We'd been married for 15 years, and things were rocky. My husband had always been a bit critical, but it really picked up steam in recent years and contributed to my depression. Due to some family issues, I spent a lot more time with my parents than usual, and ended up realizing that I'd married a man much more like my father than I had ever intended to. Watching my parents interact was like looking into my future marriage, and I didn't like what I saw.

  I went back. I tried to work on it. My husband was about as willing to negotiate as my father would have been under the same circumstances. I stopped believing in his good intentions and desire to be equal partners, despite what he said.

  No one saw the little emotional undercutting or negging that happened when we were in private. He would say the right things in public, but I stopped believing that other people saw our "real" relationship and started trusting my own experience.
• (#16) He Relapsed After Rehab

  From Redditor /u/LovingDatDee: 

  When [my] addict husband several months out of rehab took my vehicle one morning and returned with [substances] he'd obtained from his secret post office box.
• (#17) A Long-Distance Marriage Didn’t Work

  From Redditor /u/mrhoopers: 

  [My] wife and I had a long distance relationship due to work. [The] plan was that every three months we’d have a talk about fixing the distance (she was supposed to move to where I was). After a year she told me she’d resigned her lease on her apartment for another 13 months without talking to me about it. So she chose her new life without me. I didn’t stop loving her but I did stop liking her. Done and done.
• (#18) Intimacy Always Got Pushed Aside

  From Redditor /u/dstam:

  Maybe I should break the TV. Every evening we get home from work and kiss each other and want to do more but we have the kids, dinner, dishes, playtime, walk, bath, bedtime, nextdayprep, etc. and then we plop down, exhausted, and zone out in front of the TV for a couple hours until we drag ourselves to bed around midnight.

  By that time we just sadly say we'll push off intimacy until tomorrow. If we do do anything, its as quick as possible. We know how to get each other off super fast, and that is fine sometimes, but the rare occasions when we really have the time to spend with each other being really intimate it makes me realize how much we need and miss that in our relationship right now.
• (#19) A Cup Of Coffee Woke Them Up To The Truth

  From Redditor /u/PhilyMick67: 

  One morning I was drinking coffee alone on the couch and I heard my wife getting out of bed and my first thought was, "F*ck I wanted her to sleep longer so I didn't have to be around her." We had been having a lot of issues that I ignored, I kinda hadn't noticed that I had been waking up at the crack of dawn every weekend (for almost a year) so I could just not be around her. That morning it became obvious. We split up.
• (#20) They Preferred To Stay At Work Rather Than Go Home

  From a deleted user: 

  I realized that I was staying late in the mornings at work (I work graveyard) just so she would be gone by the time I got home and I wouldn't have to see her. I knew then that it was completely over between us.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking