It’s gotta be quite a punch in the gut to get married and then realize you married the wrong person.

For some people, it’s a gradual realization and for others, it hits them like a truck soon after they tie the knot.

Take a look at these stories from AskReddit users about when they realized they married the wrong person.

Let’s see what they had to say.

Met someone else.

“About a year and a half into our marriage she got an internship with Disney and had to move to the other side of the county for seven months.

Six months into the internship she tells me that she met someone else. She continued to string me along for another six months saying she doesn’t want to get divorce but she’s just been really confused.

It turns out she just wanted to keep using me to pay all the bills while she finished her degree. Once she was a month away from finishing school she admitted that she never really wanted a relationship with me, she only started dating me to make her ex jealous, had been cheating on me for about ninety percent of or ten year long relationship, and only stuck around because her ex didn’t want to get back together and she didn’t want to take care of herself.

She told me she knew this most recent guy she was cheating with was “the love of her life” after three weeks. They had a kid together less than a year after we got divorced and split up within two years.”

Ouch…

“On our wedding day.

She spent a fortune on unnecessary things, and I knew I’d be the one footing the bill on the credit card she ran up. So I told her no more.

She said she wanted an ice cream vendor there (we already had two dessert bars) told her it was not needed. She fought me on it but finally agreed. Wedding day comes,

I’m standing with my groomsmen, in comes the ice cream truck. Knew right then, sadly.”

Done.

“When I got her to admit she was having an affair.

10 years married, 2 kids. What a mess.

She followed it up a month or two later telling me she never loved a person like she does with new partner.

So welcome to divorce land. Population, me.”

Cheater.

“When I found out he was cheating. Not only was he cheating but he used the same exact lines on his AP that he did when we were in the “talking phase”.

After I discovered his affair and confronted him, he was adamant that he was not going to stop seeing or talking to her. I’ve never seen him so physically angry in our entire relationship. That was enough for me to get my things and go.

Turns out he was a really good liar. One of those cunning fox types that lies about stupid little things to make the bigger lies not seem like a lie.”

What’s the deal?

“I had no idea how he felt about me. Almost 9 years together.

He didn’t propose, I did. He didn’t tell his family when we married, they found out online. He never shared his energy or emotions with me. I ultimately had a realization that I didn’t even know what he thought of me, other than that I was pretty.

I didn’t know if he thought I was cool or funny or interesting or smart. I would share myself with him. My thoughts, interests, humor. I’d get nothing in return. I realized it had always been this way. I felt unseen, unheard. I felt like I was boring and uninteresting. I didn’t feel special. I just wanted to feel some sort of connection. I wanted our souls to meet. He seemed incapable.”

Second time’s the charm.

“The first wife, I had inklings that I might not have married the right person when I was working full time (making very good pay) and she decided to quit her job and just sat at home on her a**.

We had a maid come every week to clean the house top to bottom, do the laundry and all the dishes – and the house was still a hellhole 6 days a week. If dinner was made at all when I got home from work it was hamburger helper or a microwaved hot dog wiener and blue box macaroni and cheese.

It really became clear when I caught her cheating. Her exact words to a friend: “My husband’s an angel, but I’m bored.”

The second wife, I realized multiple times, over and over, that I married exactly the right person for me.”

A shock.

“Together 15 years, married 13. She said one day, to hurt me, “I don’t find you physically, mentally or se**ally attractive”.

I recoiled.

This was about 4 months ago, we’re still together but I just can’t get over it.”

Kept getting worse.

“We had just moved out from my parent’s place with our daughter.

We had been living there for about 6 months because of financial difficulties (I was the only one working, he was not because of a bad back which ended up being a fake injury). We were not getting along at all while living there and for some reason I thought things would get better now that we had our own place.

The opposite happened; the yelling and swearing got worse. His controlling behaviour just got worse and worse to the point where if I had a shower without permission he would bang on the door while screaming at me.

I don’t know the exact moment but it was sometime during that month that it all finally clicked in that it was never getting better. I knew he worked with some attractive women and I started hoping that he would have an affair with one of them and either leave me for her or it would give me the guts to leave. I still felt sorry for him because of his (fake) back injury.

I stayed with him for another year and a half and in that time he forced me and our daughter to move far away from my parents because they were beginning to figure out that he was faking his injury.

He ended our marriage 2 months after the move because I ran out of money for the first time in our relationship but we still lived together for around 6 months until he finally moved out because I suspect he wanted to get with another woman.”

Triggered it for a lot of people.

“When Covid hit.

Lockdown was announced and he said he said he had to go look after his “real family”, i.e. his mother, a healthy and capable 50yo who treated him like a child.

I had those words ringing in my ears for months. Real family. How TF was I not his real family? But I slowly realised that the big old handbrake was off and now I’m out here living my best life.”

Red flags.

“There were a lot of red flags.

Things like him telling me I was low on the attractiveness scale, and embarrassing to him because I was intellectual, highly educated, yet extremely shy- so came across as a stuck up snob to everyone. (Spoiler: only he and his friends thought this… maybe not even his friends.)

He also did other stuff like spending money on toys for himself that we had allocated for remodeling – pretty necessary stuff like getting rid of 25 year old disgusting carpet in a new to us house.

The kicker for me was when it came time to have kids. He swore he was all in, but when we weren’t getting pregnant we both got tested. Turned out he had borderline low testosterone and some other issues that were solved with a simple over the counter daily medication that had zero side effects.

We tried and tried and I increasingly went through more painful and invasive testing and procedures- the whole time with him saying how he was in 100%, because I checked in with him often to make sure.

Turned out he had been sabotaging the process the whole time. Intentionally not taking the daily meds and doing some other stuff to ensure we would fail.”

Watch out for those red flags, fam!