"I Had Been Ignoring My Feelings For So Long": Women Are Recalling The Precise Moment They Realized They Needed To End Their Long-Term Relationship
If you've ever found yourself in a relationship where you tried your hardest to make it work, but your partner wasn't pulling their weight, you may understand how difficult it can be to be honest with yourself about the situation and pull the plug.
So when I saw that Reddit user u/Finishthem1234 asked the r/AskWomen community: "For women who took on the load of a relationship (i.e. planning everything, doing all the housework, etc.), what was your lightbulb moment it was time to end the relationship?" I thought it would be helpful to share their experiences. Here's what they said below:
1."It occurred to me one day that there would be no relationship if I stopped trying. I was doing 100%, and he was doing 0%. So one day, I just stopped everything. We didn't have a final conversation or anything at all. I just stopped talking to him, and we never talked again. It was a four-year relationship."
2."When he screamed at me for leaving a light on while he was sleeping, two days after I had brain surgery and was still on some very strong painkillers. The best decision I ever made was leaving him."
3."My husband was gone for a few days and the kids and i didn't even notice. lol."
4."It was when I was two weeks postpartum with our second child and bedridden, and he left to take a 10-day retreat/vacation in California. He called and said what a relief it was to feel free of me and my babies on the beach. It was the first time I thought, 'This is wrong, I am being used.' In retrospect, the financial abuse where he drained my wealth should have done it, but it was the more physically vulnerable postpartum time that got the message through."
5."When she was so terrible with our finances that I had to get a second job, we had to get roommates, and the whole time she came up with excuse after excuse as to why she couldn't get another job and why she couldn't cut back on her spending. And then she turned around and bought her mom a Disney trip on MY credit card without even asking me first or giving me a heads up. I found out when I went to pay the bill and it was a couple thousand dollars higher than I expected. I stayed with her for so long because I'd grown up with people saying relationships are hard work. So I thought it was the right thing to do to stay with her and work through our issues together. But at that point, I realized I didn't care if it made me a bad person or an asshole. I had no desire to continue to be someone's piggy bank."
"Six months after leaving her, I scraped enough together for a down payment on a house. Six months! I kick myself imagining how much more money I'd have had I left her sooner. That's how much she was bleeding from me."
6."When our sex life fell apart. We were having sex once every four to six months. I was practically begging for it, but every time we tried, I realized I didn’t even want him anyway because I was too busy being the manager of the household and basically his mother. I was 29 years old but every time I looked in the mirror, I felt like a washed-up old woman. That was the last straw."
7."Oh hell, mine was the moment back in 2010 when he called his mom on the phone and ask if he could go live with her. He didn't mention if WE (myself and our 5-year-old son) could also live with her. I had to ask him very out loud (so she could hear me) 'What about us??!' Then he changed it to, 'Oh yeah and them too.' I knew then love was no longer a thing between us and I'd fallen out of love at that very moment."
8."He complained about having to go grocery shopping. I had made the menu for the week, planned, budget it and pretty much paid for all of it. It made me so mad I told him to suck it up. He didn’t understand why I couldn’t do it. At the time, I was working pretty much two full-time jobs and going to school. He was working 30 hours and used the rest to play video games. I gave him a rundown of all I did at home and how much more I paid for everything. He half apologized. That was a big wake-up call. Then that weekend he canceled the first date we were going to have in months last minute."
"He woke up late because he was tired but his friends called and he was up and ready to go in five minutes. By the time he got back home, none of his stuff was in the bedroom.
And finally, I went out with a friend for coffee and I realized that I was laughing. And it hit me that I hadn’t heard myself laugh in a really long time. I almost started crying when I realized how sad my life was and how miserable I felt.
When I got back home, I told him I was moving out. He asked me where we were moving, too. It took him a second to realize that I meant that I was moving out by myself. He suggested therapy, open relationships, he started actually cooking and cleaning but it was too late. A month later, I was out of there.
He ended up living in his car, crashing it, and ended up homeless for a bit. He eventually moved in with someone else he got involved with while still trying to get back together with me. His friends reached out to tell me I was overreacting. I wasted over five years with him. Leaving him was the best thing I ever did. My current partner is amazing, always has time for me, and he will help me out at home even without me asking."
9."When I started to look forward to his business trips because everything was so much easier and more pleasant when he was gone. I was only cleaning up after myself and an infant — which sucks in and of itself — but there was no second adult making messes and waking me up in the middle of the night to pester me for sex. I got the idea, this could be every day. I made it happen. And then the baby was the only one waking me up because that's what babies do."
10."When he was nearly 30 and pretended he didn't know what a baking sheet/cookie sheet was because I asked him to make dinner one night. It was a frozen lasagna. The instructions were to put it on a cookie sheet and shove it in the oven."
11."He likes to say he is the man and I need to do as he says. He said this to me when I was practically begging him to help me around the house. He's the man of the house even when I pay for 100% daycare, 100% utilities, 100% groceries, and half our rent and took care of our kids, the pets, cleaning, and cooking. Sadly, it wasn't that or the abuse or the cheating that woke me up, it was my kid telling me when can make it without him. We never looked back after that."
12."I was doing everything but paying the rent and bills — and I offered to pay a fair portion, but he insisted that he ought to do it. I was keeping house, running errands, making minor repairs, planning dates — you name it, it was me. I was encouraging him to pursue his dream job as a writer, so he would spend his time after work in the office I cleaned up for him and I would bring him his dinner. I found out that he hadn’t been writing at all, instead, he had been playing StarCraft for weeks, maybe months, while I waited on him so he could write. THEN I found out that his parents were paying for everything for us, including rent and bills. His paycheck went mostly to buying bullshit he didn’t need. His parents weren’t wealthy and his dad worked a very taxing blue-collar job."
13."I kept going to take a shower and realized I already had. The only time I had a minute to myself was in the shower. It was like working two full-time jobs. I worked all day in the office to drive home to do housework/child care until bed. I would wake up hating life. Now I'm single and so much happier."
14."When I had suffered through one and a half years of post-partum depression without realizing it, and I was sitting on the couch with our child sleeping in my arms, and I was sobbing to my then-husband, saying, 'Something is wrong with me. I need help. I can't do this alone.' He didn't even look up from his phone. He just kept scrolling and flatly said, 'I already raised my kids. This one is yours.' I stayed with him for eight and a half more years for a total of 12. I'm finally out now, tho!"
15."When his dad asked me why I was staying with such an asshole when I wasn’t even related to him. 'You don’t owe him anything. Neither do we but he’s our son.' It made me realize I’d been waiting for permission to leave the whole time."
16."I was away for a couple of months, and about a month in, I cried on the phone with him because I missed him. All I wanted was to know I wasn't alone in this, and that he missed me too. He got angry and said I'm asking too much of him. So he stopped talking to me because I was upset he didn't miss me."
17."I let myself into the house after work after traveling 45 mins one way. It was after 6 p.m. The house was in darkness. My husband worked from home. He was lying on the couch watching YouTube. He did not get up off the couch to greet me. He was not unwell. No food was ready for dinner. This was the standard situation but this one got to me. Also, my daughter and I were rear-ended in the car. We drove it home not far away and went into the house and told him. 'How’s the car?' he said. Later on, I said how it had upset me that he didn’t ask how WE were. Cue shock. 'I could see you were fine!.' I cooked dinner that night with an ice pack on my shoulders."
18."In college, I was going through pre-med finals and he offered to make me dinner so I could relax. He had no car and no money so I picked up and paid for the groceries after helping him decide what to make. I get home after a 15-hour day of classwork and studying and he was sitting in my apartment using my TV and didn’t start dinner until I asked him to. I ended up having to coach him through the entire dinner until I was the one actually making the dinner. My roommate pointed it out to me in passing and I woke up."
19."We were married for six years, and I was just blind, maybe not willing to give up on the marriage. It didn't go downhill right away, he just got more and more lazy during the years, leaving all the chores for me (I also had a full-time job). Luckily, we didn't have kids. Trying to talk to him did nothing. The lightbulb moment: I guess it happened when I came across a guy who was kind to me and thought of my needs (unlike my ex). It wasn't at all easy to admit to myself that the marriage was over. I broke down because I had been ignoring my feelings for so long."
Did you ever experience a "lightbulb moment" where you realized you had to break up with your partner? If so, tell us what happened in the comments below:
