When we fall in love, we tend to go in with rose-colored glasses. As time goes on, we may become annoyed by little habits, but we overlook those annoyances because we’ve built a solid relationship on trust and honesty.
Sometimes, though, we may find out something that has us reconsidering our entire relationship. Something that rocks everything we thought we knew about our significant other. Here are 10 stories from people who learned something that made them rethink everything.
10. Well, that would have been good to know sooner
One weekend we were supposed to go out on a date and he stood me up. I couldn’t get ahold of him at all. I was fre*king out thinking he was dying in a ditch somewhere!
Turns out he had gotten married over the weekend to the girl who had given birth to his child. I never knew about them.
9. Deja vu all over again
That I had been inside his house before.
Years before we dated, I went to a house party and did a “Centurion” (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes). Was obviously wasted and barely remembered the night.
Cut to us dating, I’m lying in his bed and I ask him his exact address to tell my friend. The second he said the address, it prompted my entire memory of that night. I just gasped and said I HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE. Pretty sure he was like, “uh yeah no sh^t. You’re here all the time.” haha
Then a couple years later I discovered that I had vacationed at his parents’ property when I was 12. We were mutual friends with the family who owned it before, and it came up. It was truly bizarre.
Honestly a lot of weird sh^t like that has come up. It didn’t make me question the relationship exactly, but it made me feel like the universe had always intended for us to meet.
8. Love is blind
7 years in I found out he was a high school dropout without even a GED. He had initially told me he was a game design major and turned down a job opportunity (or internship, I can’t recall which) with EA Toronto because he didn’t want to leave me. I literally told him “GO, we can figure other sh^t out later, this won’t wait.” I should’ve known then. Ugh, love is blind, but only for so long.
7. Extreme narcissism
After several years together my ex told me nonchalantly one evening that he stole $500 from one of his best friends because he “really needed it”. This ex was a college educated person trying to get into dental, medical, or pharmacy school. Not only was there no reason for this person to steal their friends’ money, I didn’t understand how someone could do that and feel no remorse whatsoever, especially to someone they considered a good friend. It was at that moment that I seriously began to believe I had given my trust and love to a total sociopath. It was the catalyst that pushed me out of the relationship.
I found out later that while I was working on a degree in another city, he found dates on tinder, spinning lies about being in med school, and owning a luxury condo overlooking the Wisconsin state capitol. He’d take girls for rides on my motorcycle and bring them back to the condo I owned; I don’t know who or how many, but a neighbor specifically went out of their way to tell me what was going on. One of his tinder dates was with a good friend’s best friend, and I heard through her the lies about being rich and working in medicine. A high school classmate of his texted me to warn me the same things; he hit on a girl at a reunion by saying he was in med school at Wisconsin, but the girl was *actually* in med school at Wisconsin and promptly told everyone about the exchange. When I went to kick him out of the condo, he told me that his mother had turned into a raging alc*holic and that kicking him out would mean he couldn’t take care of her anymore.
He stole a whole bunch of stuff from me, some of which he still has. And, after all of it, he had the gall to text and ask if he could manage my finances for me at his new job in– believe it or not– wealth management. I guarantee you he’s stealing from every one of his clients. But, when he said he stole from his friend, it really changed my opinion that he wasn’t just an insecure millennial trying to find his way between college and the real world; he’s a class-A raging narcissist and holy sh^t am I glad he’s out of my life forever.
6. How someone talks about their exes says a lot
There’s a ton of things that I discovered over the years we were together but the biggest one was how he had lied about his exs. He talked terribly about them and would make them all sound like cheaters and liars or just plain psychopathic. It turns out, that’s not the truth at all. They were none of those things and I found out the hard way that it was him that embodied those qualities all along. We have broken up and gotten back together many ties over the past six years but it ended for the last time this weekend.
5. Wow
When I had my first child. The pregnancy wasn’t a surprise or an accident. We talked and planned. He got a little overbearing during the pregnancy, like insisting on breastfeeding without even discussing it with me. I put it down to new dad nerves, and not knowing any better.
Turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg. He believed that children were completely and totally a wife’s responsibility. He wouldn’t change a diaper. He wouldn’t pick up the baby when it cried. No way would he get up in the middle of the night. He expected me to work a full-time job, plus do all the childcare.
At that point, I was confused and appalled but I told myself he just needed time to adjust.
I realized how delusional I was when the baby got sick while he was on a fishing trip. The doctors thought baby had meningitis. So not just sick, but life-threatening sick. I called and asked him to come home. He refused. He’d paid for two more days of fishing. He didn’t want to lose the money.
4. RED FLAG
Mine crashed and totaled MY car and blamed ME. He is incredibly reckless on the road and rear ended a guy at a RED LIGHT when we were going to TURN SO EVEN IF IT WAS GREEN HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN SLOWING DOWN. But fifty feet from the intersection, where another car was stopped, I realized he wasn’t hitting the breaks. He hates it when I say anything while he’s driving so I made the mistake of waiting until the last second to start screaming “STOP!” aaaaaannnnnddddd it was my fault for yelling at him. If I hadn’t said anything, he would have stopped in time. Sure. You can stop from 45 mph in 20 ft no problem.
Yet another reason I’m moving out.
3. Age was only the beginning
Found out my boyfriend of two years was actually ten years older than he originally told me (so instead of the 8 year difference I believed we had, it was actually 18…yup), had three kids (the oldest of which was only a year younger than me), and was in the middle of getting divorced.
It was a doozy and it sucked a lot and kinda derailed my life for the next three years.
Edit – To clarify the age stuff because I’m an idiot and made it sound like I was dating an 8 year old, I was 22 when we started dating. He told me he was 30. He was actually 40.
2. Gaslit?
She would lie about tiny, inconsequential things. Made me question my own perception of truth and self-instinct. Eventually caught her in a lie, and she denied even when presented with full proof. It wasn’t something huge, but it was something that opened my eyes a little. My friend swears I was being gaslighted. Gaslit?
1. And murder
She and her second spouse declared bankruptcy. She convinced me that her partner was all to blame and she knew how to manage money. She nagged me until I gave her control of the bank accounts. When I found out about the second part, they had racked up $40,000 in unnecessary credit card debt. Together we made about $80K/year so we should not have been hurting.
For the second part, my darling loving spouse started watching those true crime dramas. For the sole purpose of learning what real criminals did and how they got caught so they would be making the same mistake. Because they was going to use this information to not get caught when they were going to kill me.
I found this out as she took $45000 from my inheritance to pay her debt and as she ran out the door to go find another victim. I couldn’t sign the papers fast enough. She did leave me a whole $5000 to pay off my debt and take care of the house. So generous.