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

[LavaLaamp]

For me it was after he’d repeatedly told me that mama Mia in the cinema was a total joke and the fact I wanted to see it with my mum was pathetic, he refused to see it with me and took the piss repeatedly for weeks. I ignored him and went with my mum, aunt and cousin and had an absolutely brilliant time. Then the week after we went for the 2nd or 3rd time (sing along obviously) with more piss taking from boyfriend (not light hearted) it was my birthday and we had plans for my birthday.

I had a huge party which he didn’t turn up for and when I asked him why he wasn’t there he said he’d taken his co worker to go see mama Mia as she really wanted to go. I realised I would never be a priority in his life and dumped him, he married his co worker and then cheated on her with his male colleague 3 years later, lucky escape!

I was also ‘left at the alter’ on my wedding day- I found out about an hour before that he wasn’t to be found anywhere, I was in my dress, hair and makeup done etc. his mum told my moh that they didn’t know where he was but he wouldn’t be coming to the wedding, so I asked my moh and bridesmaid to tell everyone that the wedding wouldn’t be going ahead but everyone was welcome to come and enjoy the reception because we’d already paid for it all so we had a fab day with lots of tears and laughter at what should have been my wedding day! All his groomsmen stayed to be with me, his best man was incredible It went viral and he did apologise and ask to come back but I said no. 4 years on and I’m married to my soul mate and my ex is single and none of his friends speak to him.

Im so grateful that he did that because I’m so happy now.

what about you?

Mine was small and boring sounding compared to these. I made dinner and put it on the table in front of him and he huffed. That huff was the last straw. I waited until DD had eaten and left the table and then I told him I was fed up of being miserable and asked him to leave. He packed a bag, took the big car and the caravan and left that evening. He came back a week later to ask what was happening next and I said I wanted a divorce.

He never cheated, never hit me, didn't gaslight me. But oh my lord above he was a misery. Everything was doom and gloom, everyone was out to get him, the world was against him, every meal was awful, every activity uncomfortable or dull. He had sucked the joy out of my life by degrees until I was so unhappy it felt unbearable. He hadn't worked in years - and if he'd been happy with that I'd not have minded but it made him miserable but work made him more miserable. He wanted a puppy and then that made him miserable. Our daughter made him miserable. I had tried getting him to go to the GP but the pills, whilst they made him more bearable, made him eat so he got fat and killed his libido (not a problem for me) so he stopped taking them.

We split 7 years ago now and he hasn't changed a bit, he is still like a walking Eeyore. I had to help him find a rental flat last summer after he needed to move and got so overwhlemed with it all he quit his job. He is now pretty much 100% out of his daughters life all by his own hand. He just makes no effort and she can no longer be bothered to carry the load. He would probably blame me or my new partner or the universe as he does for every other thing in his life but the truth is that he is just the anti-joy and no one can put up with that for long. I feel incredibly sorry for him and utterly grateful that he is no longer my problem.

There was a thread on here last week from someone who wanted to leave her partner, but felt that she couldn't as he had a DD from a previous relationship whose Mum had left her with him. He was a rubbish Dad. The OP was the only responsible adult in this child's life. The OP really loves the child and it's the only thing keeping her there.
So it definitely is a thing.

So do I! I don't know how my husband tolerates it!

Yes, I have, thank you for your kind words. I've now been married 20+ years to a man who'd never do that kind of thing. My sister and I are also much closer than we were back then.

With exH, here was no straw. It was a million tiny things over a few years that my head tricked me into thinking were "normal".

But looking back, when I realised we no longer laughed together. Then I started realising the other things had also died. It was bloody sad.

I've had another relationship end recently, which I've found way more painful, because we still had fun, still laughed, still enjoyed one another's company. I thought we could work on the things that weren't working, but he didn't. So here I am 😥

He was pleased about the Hamas attack on the music festival.

My exh was emotionally and physically abusive. I only ‘saw’ it when he turned the ea on to our eldest dd. Like scales lifting.

next ‘d’p; when I came into a bit of money and he was increasing pressure on me to use it for his ‘business venture’ (latest pos stupid idea).

He was up a ladder painting the living room ceiling when, over his shoulder, he said, 'Oh, your grandma's in intensive care'.

Same ex that I left when told me I had to go to his that night or never go back when my Mum was dying of cancer. He used to get at me via my food.

I cooked for him and made a bread and butter pudding. I know it's traditionally made from old bread but I bought bread, cream, duck eggs, vanilla pods, big grain sugar for topping and those huge yellow sultanas that you can buy in delis. It was work of art, it rose like a souffle and smelled divine.

He wouldn't eat it because 'it's the food of the poor'.

Both of us are from a council house background and neither of us had much money but it was apparently beneath him to eat this pudding that had cost me a lot of money to make.

I ate mine and I could tell it was driving him mad not having any and that I had gone ahead and eaten it. I was hurt by what he had said though.

It's death by a thousand cuts. If I cooked for him he moaned. If I didn't he moaned.

I actually don't know what "the moment" was.
There were lots of things wrong and then he had an affair but I'd decided to try and forgive him.
But a few weeks later I was out, bought my friend a drink and handed it to her saying "I think my marriage is over"

I know it's not the point of the post but I so want some of that pudding 😋

No you'd just be cruel online.

The only person who is cringeworthy is you.

@TreeDudette

Did it disadvantage you financially and with child contact that he'd been staying home and not working?

It's an absolutely shit film. I'm allowed an opinion.

Just because you don't like it. Well, I really don't care. Lots of love xx

Oh, don't be sorry, I'm laughing at this now too! I hope everything turned out great for them and maybe she never even saw these notes, but yeah, thinking about her finding them and him trying to act as if that was him all along is really entertaining! Must have been really awkward.

I was 29 and thinking about what my ex and I could do for the weekend. I thought about a load of plans and then remembered that he doesn't like new things or going out. It struck me that if I stayed with him I'd spend the rest of my 20s watching TV. I broke up with him the next day.

You’re the only one, the sole voice being like ‘that’ on this whole thread.

Oh sweetheart, sending you lots of love and hugs 🥰 🥰 we all wish you a happy (belated) birthday! 💐xx

I found this thread tragic and empowering to read.

And highly narcissistic.

I could just about cope when he was working away from home and came back for a long weekend every fortnight. Then he decided he was going to quit his job because he just wanted to be together and I thought - 'Oh Fuck'.

Limped really is the word for those times, isn't it. That sounds so rough. When I was 28 I bought a house. My student boyfriend was so against it because it needed work to be done. One day all my friends and my dad came to paint for the whole day, we had a music, food and a little party, and my boyfriend stayed in our rented flat 100 metres away and never showed his face. He was studying and I was wrong to expect him to interrupt his workflow, obviously.

He lived in my house for free for a few years before I saw the light, and I got it in the neck whenever the work on the house would disturb his studying! Oh and when I asked him to stop smoking in the house, and he told me how me sanding the skirting boards was as bad for his health as the smoking was for mine...

It fills me with rage when I think back at those times, but I do wonder if my rage is directed at myself, for having such cripplingly low standards. I spend a lot of time wondering how to make my children feel worthier than I felt.

I do have a lovely husband and kids now, so I feel very lucky, but I wasted 7 years on that guy.

'Food of the poor'
It's King Charles favourite pudding !

Ahh Ok, thanks for that. DMum used to make it from bread past it's best. It was lovely. She wasn't the best cook but she always got the spices just right and it was eggy and buttery and lovely.

He used to have a dig because I was born and raised in a council house. After I left him, I discovered that he was too.

I wish we had had MN back then or something akin to it. I'd never heard the word narcissist back then but he ticks all the boxes but the main reason I should have stopped trying was that he was simply nasty. He was horrible to his mother too. Talk about red flags!

OK, so, thinking about it, my moment of clarity was on our wedding night! I'd always thought it was just his postmodern sense of humour being grumpy about things, and that when it came to something important (e.g. wedding day?) he'd come up trumps. But all day he'd been in a foul mood, furious with me for some reason, constantly pulling me aside to whisper rebukes into my ear, gave a sarcastic speech, and kept shouting at me on the journey home (we spent the night in a shitty little house we'd recently moved into) because I couldn't keep up with him as I was struggling to carry all (!!!) our luggage through the turnstiles on the London Underground.

I remember lying in bed as he watched football on telly downstairs and thinking I wanted to run away and never look back. But I knew that marriage has its ups and downs and is a commitment for life, so I stayed another 15 years.

Then... nothing happened! Nothing changed. I just woke up one weekend and noticed, with indifference, that I had absolutely nothing left in me. No enthusiasm for life at all.

I waited to see if it would go away, but it didn't.

I started keeping a secret journal to try and make sense of it, and one morning found myself writing "I want to live alone." The minute the words were on the page, it was like an electric shock going through me. I stared at them and knew it was what I had to do.

He made our separation absolute hell, making me feel I hadn't got a leg to stand on. How dare I suddenly pull the plug on things for no reason, etc etc. I'd just gone mad overnight, etc etc. I really believed I had no excuse for doing this terrible thing I was doing and was terrified that he must be right that I was mad.

When I finally escaped to a little rented bedsit, I cautiously began my new life, anxiously waiting for the time when I would miss him. Instead, I gradually began to realise how much I'd been living my whole life tiptoeing on eggshells, and began to relax and enjoy life (although I did go on to have three more ghastly relationships, just because I didn't know any different).

Over the years that followed, and particularly since the internet has made it possible to compare notes on abusive relationships, I came to understand in retrospect just how bad the marriage had been. I'd spent all that time as his skivvy and punchbag. I'd been his personal chauffeur, cook, general handyman, secretary, the list goes on... all thankless. An accidental pregnancy made him erupt with "You've ruined my life, you bitch" and "How do I know it's mine?" (needless to say, I ended up having an abortion -- and at the time this was surgical, outside the UK, and he went to a football match that day). Little things like him forcing sex on me when I'd just got off the phone from being told a much-loved family member had died ("You're so sexy when you cry"). Me having to work several jobs to pay my exact half of the mortgage and bills. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture!

The next relationship I had, the guy used to get pissed off with me because I was constantly asking him "Are you OK?" I now realise it's because I had to do that with ex-DH all the time, I was on constant tenterhooks around him.

It's been a long and rocky road since, but I'm now married to the gentlest, kindest, funniest man in the world, the only person I've ever met who "gets" me 100%, immediately notices the slightest trace of discomfort cross my face and does everything he can to make me happy, jumps to help me with things without me asking, etc. We celebrate our 10-year anniversary soon and are ridiculously happy. He makes me laugh from the moment I wake up every day.

Looking back on the person I was in my first marriage, I can hardly believe it was me. I suppose it wasn't, really, it was a tiny version of me that had been forced into a smaller and smaller space until I could hardly breathe. I'm so proud that I somehow managed to get out even though I had no idea why I was doing it. I wish I could go back and reassure her how great things were going to be one day.