People Who Got Divorced After Being Married For 10+ Years Are Sharing What Inspired Them To Walk Away

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Reddit user friendlytrashmonster recently asked people who got divorced after being married for 10+ years to share their reasons for divorce. Each story was uniquely heartbreaking, even though it sounds like these people made the right calls in the end. Here's what they revealed:
Warning: A submission in this post discusses child neglect and loss.
1."I (F) was the breadwinner for all 15 years; he contributed basically nothing. I paid for our home, travel, savings, fertility treatment, birth bills, and childcare. He never made any effort to increase his minimum wage (despite having a college degree, being entirely capable, and knowing his lack of effort to change things would be a dealbreaker). He had $20 in his bank the day our child was born. Resentment built up, then it turned to contempt. There's no way back from that."
—Mlclarkee
2."He cheated on me while I was five months pregnant with our second kid...with another pregnant woman!"
—MadameChaos2
3."Things were great when I was healthy. Then came the sudden stage-four cancer diagnosis, and it was like he wrote me off completely during treatment. I had no idea he didn't believe I'd make it. I was receiving world-class care, fighting with everything I had to heal, all while caring for two children, one of them a fragile preemie. While I was focused on surviving, he was having an affair with a young, healthy coworker who was also married. The betrayal stretched across the years it took me to recover. I thought the emotional distance was his way of grieving or coping. I thought the long hours and late nights were because I could no longer work, and he was carrying the financial weight."
"But something in me knew. One day, I felt it — that unshakable sense that something was wrong. I kept asking him, but he wouldn't tell me. So I looked at his phone and found all the heartbreak I needed to see.
I know it's hard on my young kids now, but I think it's better to come from a broken home than to grow up in one. And maybe someday if they are in a similar abusive situation (which I hope not), they will find the strength to leave like I did."
—beaux_beaux_
4."She wanted to be polyamorous. I reluctantly agreed. She refused to do any of the work required to make polyamory work, and I was tossed aside. Eventually, she just left."
—misterfistyersister
5."I didn't feel loved. I begged him to show me he loved me more than just when he wanted sex. Then I found out he voted for Donald Trump, and I decided our morals were too different, so I decided to leave."
—doodaronirigatoni
6."One of my kids came out as gay, and she is anti-gay and became their antagonist."
—spicythunder
7."She had to work out of town for a few months, and I realized how miserable I was when she was around. Also, I got the mail (she used to get it every day) and learned about her hidden spending and the massive debt she was getting us into. Then all the lies came out, about stuff that was going on with her, that I should have known about, but I had been willing to believe what she was telling me because I mistakenly trusted her. It was bad. Even my friends and family said I was much happier when she was gone."
—Packfan1967
8."She cheated on me with her first husband while she was married to me. Ironically, he was also married to someone else at the time."
—ConcentrateMore6131
9."I just got divorced after 30 years. We had no intimacy, and I'm not just talking about sex, although he didn't have much interest in that, either. I tried to get him to understand that I needed more than he would give. More energy, more emotion. He wasn't willing to even try. So I left him and dated someone else for a while, who gave me what I was looking for. Now that I know it exists, I will keep looking for the real thing. Even if I never find it, I can try now."
—SpiffyMonteeth
10."During COVID, I stayed home, trying to facilitate 'e-learning' for elementary-age kids. I only left the house twice a month to go grocery shopping. I was trying to minimize exposure since my at-the-time husband's job still 'required' him to travel. In reality, he was just checking into the nicest hotels in our large city and paying for sex. And online shopping for expensive art, which was shipped to and decorated his office. As it turns out, leisurely lunch hour sex is also frowned upon by employers. He was fired from his job and earned himself a divorce! While wallowing in self-pity, one of his sexcapades was an undercover police officer in a sting operation, which is a felony in my state. He currently uses his MBA to deliver sandwiches."
—olddarby
11."Because of my insecurities, I became very controlling. After 17 years, she left me for a better guy. I can't blame her one bit. I told her not to blame herself. She did what she had to do to stay sane. I've spent years improving myself. I'm going to try not to make the same mistake twice. I've been in my second marriage for over 20 years, and we're still going strong because of the work I put into myself. Plus, my second wife is so very patient and understanding. It takes two."
—DangerInTheArea
12."He wouldn't do his part. He wouldn't contribute to household expenses. He wouldn't do any household chores. He just...wouldn't. If I'm doing everything alone, I might as well live alone. So I did."
—OldSchoolPrinceFan
13."It was when my ex-husband admitted his favorite thing about me was: 'You take care of everything.' I didn't want to be taking care of everything for the rest of my life."
—Lost-Contribution702
14."I found out he took out second and third mortgages on our house and took out multiple credit cards in my name without my knowledge. Our cars were repossessed (two different cars within eight years), and our house went into foreclosure twice before his sister rescued him and brought the mortgage payments and taxes up to date. I auto-deposited my paycheck from my $80k job, and he said he was making payments on my student loan. He wasn't. He hadn't paid my loan in over a year. The final straw was when he borrowed money from our 80-year-old neighbor, gave him the runaround for months, and did not pay him back. The neighbor called me, begging me for his money back. The wall of cards started to tumble, and I discovered that our neighbor wasn't the only one he was borrowing from. I divorced him soon afterward."
"He didn't gamble, didn't drink, or do drugs, and earned over $100k a year in the early '90s, but he never had money. Nobody could figure out where he was spending his money, just that it was typically already gone two days after payday. I suspect he was playing the stock market (or it was playing him?). He died of a cardiac arrest, and there were no records, receipts, or evidence of where hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent."
—LoosenGoosen
15."I got married at 24 and was married for 18 years before I called it quits. We had four kids, and I worked a full-time job at night, plus did the daytime activities my kids were involved in on my own. Oh, and I was a full-time nursing school student. He spent more and more time out of the house. He said it was necessary to work on the rental properties we owned. Turned out that he had a side piece. The last straw was the fact that our 2-year-old drowned in our pool while he was supposed to be watching her. I've been divorced for 20 years now, and the kids are all grown and doing their own thing. Leaving with the kids was the best thing I could do."
—lbethsalander
16."We got married really young and as members of a church. Over the 10+ years of marriage, we left the church and realized we weren't really compatible anymore as partners. We simply grew as people and went in different directions, and we fell out of romantic love with one another. We are better at co-parenting as friends. We took too long to face this, which hurt our relationship in many ways. It was hard to accept and scary to face change, as we had been together since high school. We've been divorced for about six years and are happier than ever."
—Personal-Spend512
17."He got mad when I found his burner phone and girlfriend."
—Far-Power-1692
18."I was home alone with a small child because his job was heavy on traveling to fun places around the world. He slept off the jet lag when he was home. He was not into having conversations about either simple or complex things. I was lonelier being married than actually being alone. It was the right decision."
—Ok_Draft665
19."We got married and had kids really young. After 20 years, the kids were grown and gone, and we realized we had nothing in common. It was a very amicable divorce. We still do things with the kids on holidays and birthdays. We just found out we were better friends than marriage partners."
—LakeVivid
20."My spouse changed after 15 years. He became angrier. Then, Fox News rotted his brain, and he became even angrier. I'm glad we divorced before Trump took office. Also, he was a terrible roommate. Love is one thing, but if your partner refuses to do their part around the house, it just makes the other person tired and resentful."
—MoonieNine
21.And: "We met in college. He was honorable, incredibly smart, and a lot of fun, but he was also ambitious to the point where nothing he achieved ever satisfied him. He came from a lower-class background and was constantly afraid of sliding down the socioeconomic ladder. Even though we both had good jobs, no kids, and lived well within our means, he couldn't let himself enjoy anything. After achieving each goal, he would immediately start fixating on some new goal that he thought would make him happy, but nothing ever did. He gradually became a very angry, critical guy who hated everything, including (it felt like) me. Eventually, I stopped trying and focused more on my career and life outside of our relationship. My tolerance level for his constant negativity reached its max. I felt like I had no choice but to leave for my sanity."
"Now that we're divorced, we're on really good terms. He doesn't blow up at me anymore, and we were able to salvage our friendship, but I'm totally done with relationships. I love living alone. No one is yelling or raging. It's peaceful. I'm relieved I'm out."
—CashTall8657
Did you divorce your spouse after 10 or more years of marriage? What was the final straw? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.
If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 (4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.

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