People Are Sharing The Very Moment They Knew Their Partner Was Not "The One"
by Hannah Loewentheil · BuzzFeedNot all relationships are meant to last. But when do you realize that "the one" actually isn't meant to be? Well, redditor ruxpin82 asked, "At what point did you realize she would never become your wife/he would never become your husband?" Here's what people said.
1. "When I realized I was making excuses for his behavior instead of feeling proud to call him mine."
2. "The night before I was going to propose, she called and said, through tears, 'I need you to know that if you ask me to marry you, I will have to say no.' That was only the start of the realization..."
"...Over the next week, she divulged how years earlier she had been abducted and sexually abused, such that she could not have children (though she wanted kids). Moreover, there was a lot of trauma she had not processed. She had wanted to reveal all this earlier but could never discern the right moment or find the courage.
Now, with intimacy on the immediate horizon, the reality of a sexual relationship has become too overwhelming. For three months, I held out hope that counseling would fix things. Sadly, she was just nowhere near ready. One day, while I was cooking soup and talking to her on the phone, she told me that she hoped we could stay friends forever but didn't see us ever marrying. I told her that I couldn't be around her and not stay in love, so it was better to go separate ways. Even as I said it, I realized the soup had been boiling over for some time. After hanging up the phone, I wept for an hour. That was when I accepted it was the end. Five years and all my dreams for the future went belly up."
3. "She said, 'You're a pathetic excuse for a man. I hate you.' We'd been going through a rough patch for a few months but had been together for 11 years. She was drunk and angry, and it came out. She didn't remember saying it, and we never talked about it. TBH this is the first time I've actually said or typed those words out. That was over five years ago, but it still hurts like hell. I called it off a few months later. She'd never said anything that hurtful to me before, but those words came from somewhere. I just couldn't get over them."
4. "I went for a minor medical procedure, and my gut told me that listing him as my emergency contact wasn’t the right choice."
5. "I left town for two weeks for a trip through the wilderness. I missed her like crazy and thought about how great it would be to see her once I got back. As soon as I get back home, I call her, and she first says, 'Oh wow, I didn’t think about you at all.' That really hurt, but it was the wake-up call I needed for that terrible relationship."
6. "When she asked me to bring her home fries after work. So I stopped into McDonald's and got her two large fries. I came in with them. She proceeded to take the bag from me, open it up, pull out the fries, and throw them in the trash right in front of me..."
"...I was pretty shocked and asked what was wrong. 'I wanted frozen fries!' then asked why I even came over. This caused me to think really hard about things in the past and there were so many other incidents like this that I just brushed off. Then I realized no matter what I did, she would resent me and not be happy with me."
7. "I saw my ex's mother had asked if I was getting a ring for Christmas, and his response was, 'Oh dear God, no. No. Absolutely not. No.' We had been together for three years and we'd discussed all the future stuff."
8. "Small fights started to last longer and with less provocation. And she wasn't particularly eager to make up afterward. So basically, when she stopped trying."
9. "When I realized we were no longer growing together, but apart."
10. "When I took her to a movie that I had wanted to see for several years and the only thing she said after was, 'We don't have a lot of things in common.'"
11. "When I had that feeling in the pit of my stomach when you realize how many excuses you make for their shit, and then honestly ask yourself if you could see yourself, even on a terrible day, treating someone the way they treat you."
12. "We were at my parents' house and got a lot of snow overnight. In the morning, I went out to help my mom shovel. He sat on our couch on his phone for almost two hours while my mom and I shoveled. He had winter clothes with him. We had extra shovels. I asked if he wanted to help, and he just said no. It didn't itch at his conscience in the slightest to see me and my mom out the window working while he played Angry Birds. I wasn't mad. It's not his house or his driveway. He was a guest. But I just knew at that moment our sense of care or duty or responsibility (or something along those lines) did not align, and we had an expiration date."
13. "When a friend told me, 'It's been a year that I hear you tell me the same stories about him, the same rants, the same complaints. I don't tire of you, my friend, but don't you tire of repeating yourself? Will you be telling me the same words in 6 months, 6 years, 16 years?'"
14. "She just kept leaving town. I soon realized that it was building up to leaving permanently."
15. "I found a text to his friend saying he saw no future with me. We had been together for four years, and he had recently convinced me to leave my high-paying job and move to a small town for his career."
16. "Honestly, I think it was just a gut feeling because I knew I didn't want to marry him deep down. I didn't pester him much about getting married or having kids, even after being together for five years. He showed no initiative to propose anyway by not doing anything he said he would need to do before getting married. It bothered me, but at the same time, not nearly as much as it should have, I guess? I am married to someone now, and I'm so glad it turned out the way it did! I cannot imagine being with anyone else."
17. "We were living together, super poor, when one of our favorite bands came to town (Big Sugar). We talked about it, but it wasn’t included in the budget. Friday night rolls around, and he gets dressed to go out with the guys. 'Where are you off to?' 'Uh — Big Sugar.' 'What? We talked about this and decided we couldn’t afford to go!' 'Oh, we can’t…but I can.'"
18. "When the intimacy was gone. I don’t just mean sex (although he started not to want that, too). I mean little touches here and there, a kiss and a hug when he got home from work. We had a rule — always kiss each other goodnight — and if I didn’t hug or kiss him during the day, that goodnight kiss was the only physical affection I would get..."
"...I didn't want a platonic marriage; I didn't want a roommate. I called off the engagement, the hardest thing I've ever had to do. We do love each other, and we coparent well now, we're friends even. But he'll never be my husband."