When it comes to divorce, the reasons couples split are all over the board. From cheating to mental and physical harm, to "I'm just not in love anymore." Relationship issues cause couples to split up all the time, but you would never expect they would lead to divorce within the first year of being married!
We took to Reddit to find the tales of people's marriages that lasted less than a year and allow them to explain just what went wrong.
Prepare yourself to feel heartache, anger, surprise and perhaps even a little bit of "Wow, me too!" as you hear from the Redditors who marriages didn't see a full calendar year.
Don't forget to check the comment section below the article for more interesting stories!
#25 I'm Right, You're Left
I went to school with a girl who got married in July 2016 after 3 months of dating a guy. They got divorced in November 2016, after the presidential election. Turns out one of them was an extreme Conservative, and the other was an extreme Liberal, and this was not discovered until then.
#24 And Then He Pulled The Trigger
The straw that broke the camel's back was a night that he went out drinking and came home in the mood for some confrontation. He woke me up demanding some hanky panky. I refused because he was sloppily under the influence and reeked of smoke and adult beverages. In his anger at my rejection, he dragged me from the bed and proceeded to hit me.
He had never physically hurt me before. He beat me until the only place that wasn't completely bruised and swollen was my face. He was smart enough to avoid places that couldn't be concealed by clothes and makeup. And then... he took his service weapon... pointed it at my head, and pulled the trigger.
Because I had removed the clip and bullets, his attempt to shoot me was a failure. Enraged by this, the beating continued until he exhausted himself and passed out on the floor.
I packed a small bag, grabbed my cat, and left. I filed for divorce a few days later and never went back. We were married exactly 11 months.
#23 Deployment, Substances and Dropped Adoption
I married my girlfriend of four years right before getting deployed. She didn't have anything to keep herself busy while I was gone (job, hobby, etc.). She ended up getting into substances while I was gone, and then I got her pregnant during my two-week leave in the middle of the deployment. She felt so trapped that she had talked me into agreeing to give our child up for adoption once she was born (I was so blindly in love with her that I would have agreed to darn near anything she suggested). She ended up leaving me a week after our daughter was born, and canceling the adoption, taking her back from the adopting parents.
#22 Enough Was Finally Enough
The final straw was when he held me down after 6 weeks of marriage and romantically abused me, telling me over and over you can't "romantically abuse" your wife. It took another month to figure out how to leave and put my plan in motion. I moved 400 miles away, started over, and then I believed him when he said he went to detox and recovery and gave him one more chance. Less than two weeks later, I had a weapon put to my head, an ashtray thrown across the room at my face, and security had to remove him from my job twice. I had to get the police involved to get him out of my rented house, then I disappeared again.
#21 Surprise Child
The day after the wedding, a sheriff showed up on our doorstep with child support papers for a 3-month-old baby. Turns out he had been messing around with his coworker. I was willing to look past the indiscretion, but when he refused to take responsibility for his child, I couldn't handle it anymore. The kid shouldn't have to suffer because his dad is an idiot. The divorce was final 11 months after our wedding day.
#20 Loveless Marriage
My ex was previously engaged to a man with a terminal illness. She was also romantically abused by her father, and there was a lot of baggage that came with that too. We were very good friends in high school and reconnected over 10 years later. She was completely open with me about everything, so I knew what I was getting into.
Because of her abuse, she very rarely enjoyed physical romance and thought she was letting me down as a wife, even though I told her I knew this going in and never expected anything and never pressured her one bit.
When she needed space, I gave her space. When she needed somebody to talk to, at first it was me, but I didn't have the history that she and her ex-fiancé had. She would call him in the middle of the night at his third-shift job. At first, I tried to be understanding of it, but it hurt. I knew she still loved him. We struggled and tried separating; it was a roller coaster.
Things were back on the way up while lying in bed one night she asked me "Is it worth it?" meaning all of the ups and downs over the past year. I said, "Of course it is. I love you. As long as we love each other enough, it's worth it." She looked back at me with a look of guilt, and that's when I realized she didn't. Not another word was said; I got up and slept on the couch. Left for the final time the next morning.
#19 Facebook Tells All
We were deployed to Okinawa. My friend married his girl prior to deployment. He found out mid-deployment that she cheated on him.
He checked his Facebook one day and saw a message from some dude he didn't know. The guy straight up told him that he messed around with his wife. She didn't say she was married, and when he checked her Facebook, he saw she was married to my friend. He felt guilty and had to message him.
My friend wasted no time and divorced her in Okinawa.
#18 Monogamy Is Too Much
She started feeling 'trapped' as in, my expectation of monogamy was too much. So she discovered polyamory, decided she wanted to be polyamorous with her boss, and that it was worth opening the marriage no matter what. She was pretty surprised when I divorced her.
#17 Married Here, Married There
After spending a year together, we got married so he wouldn't get deported. I took care of him, paid all the bills, paid to sponsor him... turns out he was already married in his own country. Yup. Took me a while to stop being bitter over the thousands of dollars I got conned out of.
#16 Daddy Issues
We were kids when we got together. Grew up together but in different directions. We got married to fix the relationship. The day after our wedding, my dad was hospitalized with adult beverage-related things and almost died. My new husband told me he would not go with me to the hospital and hoped my dad died since he felt he deserved to die.
#15 Cheater, Cheater
My husband decided to start an affair within 3 months of the marriage, and I found about 6 months after. Still maintains there was nothing wrong, just thought it would have been over before I found out... Oh, and our baby was only 6 months old.
#14 You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too
She had another boyfriend when I proposed and kept him around while planning our wedding. They got married after our divorce.
#13 Love Is Blind
My college roommate met a girl junior year that our ENTIRE group thought was wrong for him. But, love is blind. Fast forward to summer after graduation and they were to get married in the fall.
They were apart for most of the summer, as he was working, and she was finishing school and putting the wedding together. We converged on her hometown in Colorado. The wedding went down and there was a big reception. There was LOTS of money was dropped on this one!
We saw them off to the honeymoon, and I returned to my home in St. Louis. Seven days later, I got a call from him asking if he can come stay with me.
I picked him up at the airport - single.
At his insistence, we hit the nearest bar, and I got to hear all about how she cheated on him over the summer but went ahead with the marriage because she felt pressured by how much her parents were paying. She told him pretty much as soon as they were alone AFTER the ceremony. She insisted they go on the honeymoon to "work things out," but refused to be intimate as she still had feelings for the other guy.
#12 'Til Death Do Us Part
We dated for a few years and decided to move in together with her roommates. The same year we did that, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
We were going to get married in the summer, but her oncologist said to move it up, so we got married this past September. She died in December.
#11 Just Live-In Friends
We had been dating for seven years, so we thought it was a safe bet. I realized a year into our marriage that we were better as separate people. There were a ton of tears, a whole lot of begging not to let it end, a whole bunch of "trying new things" (living separately, splitting money, etc.) so that we could be apart... together, but it just didn't work. We were just live-in friends when it came down to it.
#10 Run-Away Mommy
We expedited the marriage because she was pregnant, and I loved her already, so I wasn't concerned about it. I was working crazy hours so she could stay home with the baby, and our schedule started shifting so we didn't spend as much time together. She had postpartum depression and started playing online role-playing games all night. She met a guy who didn't work and lived off of his mother, so he had all the time to talk to her. Long story short, she kissed our daughter, gave her to me and ran off with him.
#9 Hindsight Is 20/20
My cousin was married for eighteen hours or something ridiculous like that. To hear her tell it, there was a really apocalyptic argument on their wedding night over where they went from there.
The moral of the story appears to be that before you get married, you and your spouse should have roughly compatible ideas of what you're looking for out of a marriage: how many kids, when to have them, where you live, whether you both work, money issues, etc. That's not stuff that just works itself out magically over time.
#8 Serial Cheater
When I got home from Afghanistan, my wife at the time admitted that she messed around with 23 guys while I was gone. Needless to say, our marriage ended real quick.
#7 No Money, More Problems
My ex-wife and I lasted about 7 years, but her first marriage ended pretty much right at the year mark.
They were both 19, she got pregnant, they got married and tried to make their life work on one $8/hr income. She was a stay at home mom with no money, no car, and no friends in the same place in life she was.
Day-in and day-out stress drove them apart.
#6 Marriage Plagued With Terrible Life Events
We were high school sweethearts and literally got married right after high school.
Our whole marriage was plagued with terrible life events. We moved closer to her college but had to move back due to finances, and right at that time, my grandmother died. We were pretty poor after moving back home, but we managed for a while. Things were even looking nice. We had moved out of my mom's house and had our own apartment again. We were working, had money, and were enjoying our time together.
I got deathly ill, and this put me out of work. With medical bills and rent, we were back to struggling. I had a lot of mental issues like anxiety and depression at the time, as well, and so did she.
She started to get really close to a coworker while I was out of work, too. They're dating now.
#5 Virtual Affair
She maintained several online affairs in exchange for items in Everquest (which she hated until I told her to play for a bit to see if she really liked it).
I ended up coming home one day about nine months into our marriage and heard the unmistakable sound of her doing the hanky panky. I confronted them, and he ran away. I told her I was going to go spend the weekend at my best friend's place, and that I wanted her and all of her stuff out by Monday.
I filed for divorce immediately. I was contacted by the guy she cheated on me with. She'd been cybering dudes for months and using fake pics. She finally decided to cross the physical line, and this guy took the bait. He had weeks worth of chat logs. He offered to testify in open court about it. At the hearing, he said his piece, and the judge gave me my divorce and gave her nothing.
#4 Fell Out Of Love
I got married after five months. He wanted to move to Washington and virtually forced me to do it since I didn't want to. I quit my job, left my house and stayed at a hotel for a couple of days. The day before moving, he said he fell out of love... and would go without me. He left me heartbroken, homeless, and jobless.
He didn't move to Washington; he's in Davenport, Florida, around 10 minutes away and got a boyfriend the day after leaving me.
#3 Impossible To Live With
A friend of mine dated this girl my wife knew from school. Very nice, sweet girl, but definitely not his type. She was formerly "very wild" due to swearing, drinking, smoking, taking substances, partying, etc.
He was VERY religious, and he set impossible limits on her. He was always belittling her for having had serious boyfriends in the past that she slept with and treated her like he was her dad - like she had little-to-no good ideas. He also would never understand why it bothered her when he would comment how "hot" a chick was he'd see in the mall.
They only dated 5-6 weeks or so before they decided to get married. He confided in my wife that he wanted to marry her because he was "just too tired of the dating scene." Married and divorced in the same calendar year.
#2 Helicopter Marriage Lasted Less
My dad's second marriage lasted five months. I remember moving into my old stepmom's place when I was a kid and then, less than a school year later, moving right back out.
I had a stepsister who was physically handicapped from birth; she could walk very slowly and laboriously with a walker but primarily used a wheelchair. My stepmom was so protective of her. My stepsister was 16, and my stepmom would cut her food for her. She's not mentally handicapped whatsoever, and my stepmom was treating her like a kindergartener, which obviously made my stepsister hate my stepmom.
My dad tried to get my stepmom to let up. The stress of the poor relationship between mother and daughter led to my stepmom and my dad fighting constantly. My dad tried to get therapy for everyone, but no one would bite.
My dad divorced her, and she hated his guts for not "being strong enough for her daughter," with whom my dad had the best relationship.
#1 Maid Of Not-So-Honor
I dated a girl for 6 years. We got married, had a big, expensive wedding and a two-week honeymoon in Italy. I come to find out, less than six months later, she was sleeping with her boss who was also in our wedding.
Yes, she left me for the maid of honor. I did not see that one coming at all. The divorce took longer than the wedding.
