What was the moment you knew your marriage / relationship was over? The straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak

After years of alcohol issues, ex got pissed with his mate on Christmas Eve, leaving me to wrap all the presents and do all the other prep that I had been excited about doing together. He was so hungover the next day that he couldn't speak to our 3yo daughter (literally she was trying to interact with him and tell him about Santa coming and all he could do was groan). I suddenly realised his alcohol issues were now directly affecting her and made my escape within one month.

After years of abusing and gaslighting me, he shouted at DC and then told them he hadn’t shouted when they were upset.

i realised I was opening them up to abuse by staying rather than protecting them from it

I'm old and have a lot of exes but I had one that did this exact thing.

I had another I was living with who was a massive perv/paedo/hebephile and I had zero clue until I discovered an order form for very dodgy videos from abroad.

This was pre internet. I can only imagine what is on his computer now!

I was stunned. The document was ready for him to attach a cheque and send and I kept reading it over and over and over trying to take it in.

I had a job I would have lost in a trice if it came to light I was living at an address with that stuff coming through the door.

I handed my notice in at work over the phone within the hour and spent the month of my notice sleeping on a trampoline in an empty flat above my workplace.

I have never really trusted men since then or, if I'm honest, never trusted my judgement.

It is scary!
He could read my texts,see who had called me etc,knew where I was.If I was working with a man he would go in a mood,he accused me of having an affair with my BIL as my nephew left his coat in my car one day and I dropped it off to him and my sister had left for work so I had a quick chat with BIL on the doorstep and that was that,but his thinking was we must be having an affair.If I was stuck in traffic he demanded photographic proof,the list is endless on examples I could give.
Thankfully we only lasted 6 months but I'd never met anyone like him in terms of paranoia.
I'm staying single forever now ha ha.

I had to go for an MRI scan looking for a pituitary tumour, I was super stressed about the medical implications of a tumour and the practical implications as I drive for a living and live rurally. I had to drive 1 1/2 hour each way for it on my own. When I got home I didn't even get a hug. 2 years later I'm finanlly getting divorced. He doesn't understand what went wrong, and has changed the narrative to "pacing around the kitchen with anxiety".

I came out of hospital after contacting bacterial meningitis and septicemia, and being given a 30% chance of survival. The first night back home, he expected sex, I couldn't even wash my own hair, let alone do anything else. I discovered afterwards, he'd been cheating on me left right and centre, and even whilst I was in ICU fighting for my life. Thankfully, I could just walk away, no children, home or finances together. I went on to meet an amazing man, get married and have a son.

This is so true. I think of the breakup from my ex as being the making of me. I'd become a shadow of my former self with him and breaking up with him released me.

In my case, the moment I realise our relationship was doomed was the day he was due home from a business trip and I didn't want him back. He'd been away for a week and I'd had the best week living on my own.

I was a naïve 22 year old at the time but looking back now I'm fairly convinced he wasn't away entirely for work and was either cheating or having an EA with a colleague, but clearly our relationship was falling apart anyway.

I think we lasted about 3 more weeks after he got back. He could see that I'd changed in that week. He attempted to patch the relationship up, but I was done.

Never regretted it for a second and lived alone for 10 years afterwards before moving in with now DH.

This a million times! Even as a kid, I was aware of some of my mother's friends being bullied and mistreated. Also, I knew that my friend up the road had a nasty father from whom the whole family cowered.

Women had few choices in the past. We are the 'lucky' ones - we left.

@Pixiedust1234 bloody hell, what? Your poor daughter😡

Scary how many of them are out there!

As a PP said, what gives these men the audacity to think they can behave this way??? Astounding.

Oh OP, I’ve seen your story online and it really moved me! Not that you’d been left, but how you and your lovely people handled it and enjoyed the day regardless. You’re fab!
Mine sounds very trivial but there were many issues on this camels back before this straw. My bf of 3 years turned up uninvited at my home at about 10pm (as he frequently did) and asked me to put the kettle on. He never did anything for me. Between flicking the kettle on and the water reaching a boil I had added up all the shit he’d done to me and all the things he didn’t do for me and I knew that was the last brew I’d ever make him!

😮

Many moments, but the final final nail in a very well secured coffin was when he told me he was a woman. Out of the blue, no signs, no lead up, no thought for our DC. Just 'I'm a woman and aren't you grateful I trusted you enough to tell you.' I never saw him again after that day.

I do hope you didn't drive him to A&E after you'd kicked him into the other end of next week.

Bloody hell,did we date the same guy?! 😆

There have always been that many, @TheSquashyHatofMrGnosspelius, I'm sorry to say. Quite likely even more of them in the past, and worse. The differences are that we can leave now, and that we can share the stories.

After putting up with his controlling,paranoid (he was convinced I was cheating yet I didnt as much as look at another man)and stalking behaviour (he hacked into my phone so could see all calls,texts,location etc),he faked his own disappearance and had hacked into his families FB accounts pretending to be them and was asking me if I had seen him,they were so worried etc when all along it was him I was talking to!.
Then I came home from work after a nightshift and as I walked through the door I caught a glimpse of his big toe as he hid in my daughters Peppa Pig Wendy House under the stairs so he could see what I got up to during the day!
I didn't let on I knew he was there and he was texting me while in the Wendy House saying he was at work!,I went up to bed and not long after he crawled out and opened and closed the front door pretending he'd left work early to come home that day.I knew it was over and asked him to leave so he demanded I drove him to his sisters with his stuff,I just wanted him gone so I agreed but on the way he was beating me round the head,threatened to kick me out the car and drive my car up a wall with my 3year old DD inside and decided he wasn't getting out of the car and to take him back to mine,I did it because I was petrified by this point and wanted to pacify him.I went straight to bed and the next morning when he went to work I packed all his stuff,left it in the garden and went to my sisters for a week.
I had a barrage of abusive texts,he even messaged me pretending to be his teenage daughter,he was seriously tapped in the head.
He met someone 2 weeks later via online dating and I never heard from him again but I often wonder how his new GF is and hope he didn't treat her the way he treated me.

Bloody hell! I hope the fucker got done for it.

We returned from the funeral of my precious 35 year old friend. I was terribly upset. DC were due to be dropped back home with us in 15 minutes and ExDH suggested we had time for " a quickie". We parted the next day. Hideous man.

Shocking! That's truly awful. What a cunt.

I couldn't take seriously anyone who saw such a shit film three or four times and the sing along version. Absolutely cringeworthy.
Equally, I wouldn't have been cruel to your face about it.

As for mine, I caught two of them cheating. So that was that really.

So many men are absolute rubbish nowadays. How do they get to this level of total control or even thinking they are entitled to that level of control? WTF is happening to men?

If I asked DH for input over an ironing board, he would thing I'd lost my mind. If my Mum asked my Dad the same, he would think the same.

He had been displaying controlling behaviour for a while, but then it escalated to full-on stalking.

He would know which of my colleagues were in the office with me that day (would drive past my work to see which cars were parked outside).

He would know what I had eaten when he was out the house (I thought he was rummaging through the bin for wrappers, but he would also know if I had made a slice of toast or whatever - no idea how!).

He would go through my bag and read any receipts I had in there, and use the information to unsettle me months down the line - "Well, I know you went into x store and bought a pair of size 14 jeans". When I asked how he knew this, he would say things like "I get told things all the time".

The final straw came when I got back from a business trip, and he started accusing me of having an affair. He said "And who was the owner of that blue audi you were parked up next to? Is he the guy you're sleeping with?". The only way he could have possibly known that was if he had followed me all the way to the hotel I was staying at, 5 hours away. I had deliberately told him the wrong hotel too, so he must have had a tracker put on my car.

My blood ran cold and I ended the relationship that same week.

• a boyf- lots of issues, cheating on me but never quite caught him red handed so gave him benefit of the doubt. lots of rudeness with gaslighting. Liar. But one night we were out with friends and he told me to f’off and it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. So I said ‘ok I’m f’ing off’. And that was it - never went back. He was distraught but something in me had broken and I shed no tears whatsoever

10 different guys but great stories!