“”Till death do us part” really doesn’t mean what it used to, but, generally, when someone gets married, they tend to think it will still be a strong commitment. But the reality is that not everyone stays the same after the vows are said and rings are exchanged.
Someone asked “People who divorced after only one year, what happened?” and netizens shared their experiences. We got in touch with the user who posed the question to the internet to learn more. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your thoughts below.
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A girl I went to school with got married while still in highschool. Her parents were d**g addicts and abusive. She and an older guy friend (18) decided to get married to get her out of her situation. He offered her parents money if they would sign for her to get married at 16.
They never acted like a married couple or slept together (he is gay) and they got divorced a little over a year later as soon as she was 18 but continued living together as roommates. Nothing went wrong, that had been the plan the whole time.
No idea where they are now.
We lasted a little over a year. The first sign happened our first night home from the honeymoon. He said he was going to sleep on the couch because he'd be more comfortable there, and that's where he slept nearly every night. He all but ignored me unless he had a work function for me to attend. Half an hour after I got home from having abdominal surgery, he asked what I was going to make for dinner. The final straw was when he yelled at me for spending $8 (yes, eight) on a pair of shoes for my grandfather's funeral, then he spent $800 on a single golf club the next day. Lots of little things on a daily basis that let me know that he was perfectly happy with me being miserable. I grew my first hints of self-respect during that year and decided I was worth more.
I call it my starter marriage.
He grossly misrepresented who he was. He was willing to move mountains for us, until we were us.
Then he turned controlling - to the point where he changed the way *my* keys were on *my* keychain. This was back when all cars and homes had keys.
He refused to mow the lawn, and would fight the tickets he got for it, by arguing that the base allowed 12”, and it was only 11.5”.
He would eat everything in the house, leaving me no food, and then complain that he couldn’t lose weight.
His gift giving went from diamond earrings before marriage, to a muffler, in the box, after marriage. The muffler is part of car maintenance, it’s not a birthday gift.
The final straw for me was when he got mad at our kitten for being a kitten, and he threw him across the room. If he does that to an animal, what will he do to a tiny human.
I left at 7 months. We didn’t even make it a year.
Bored Panda got in touch with the user who posted the question and they were kind enough to share some of their thoughts with us. Naturally, we were curious to learn what sparked their interest in this topic in the first place.
“I decided to post it after a conversation with a friend. We were both in very long term relationships that slowly declined over time but we know a number of people who were married for a year or so and then divorced. We were wondering what happens so suddenly to lead to a drastic change when you should be in the “honeymoon” phase of a relationship. So I decided to ask the internet!”
I turned into a lazy slob after she had our daughter. She felt out of love with me and didn't tell me for a year. So for a year she was in an unhappy marriage and I had no idea. She eventually cheated and we got divorced shortly after.
I have since spent the last year and a half improving myself(gym, college, therapy, etc) so I don't do the same thing to my next relationship.
I knew he had an anger problem, and by the time the wedding arrived I had considered canceling it, but my friends and family talked me out of it "he's just stressed out." So I went through with it, and he hit me for the first time right after the wedding, like I still had my dress on. My family talked me out of leaving that day. A couple months later he got pissed at me while driving and nearly [unalived] us both by driving off a cliff. I started planning my exit and left in month #5.
I came to find out that she was trying to separate me from my friends and family so she could control me like her mom controls her dad. The signs were all there and I just overlooked them.
We were divorced after six weeks.
She displayed narcissistic and abusive behavior. Glad OP realized this early on.
The thread ended up having thousands and thousands of comments, so we wanted to know how this made them feel. “I was very surprised by the response, I didn’t expect so many reactions so this definitely hit a nerve for a lot of people. I was also surprised how many were not just solely about cheating, which I assumed the majority would be.”
He cheated. He's still with her 12 years later, so now that the initial pain has long since faded I can't even hate, clearly they had something genuine and at least I didn't waste more time with a guy who wasn't meant for me.
Moved temporarily to earn my masters so I could help us make a better life for ourselves. A few months later and out of the blue, she sends me a Facebook message informing me that it’s over. Never did get a straight answer for why (probably another person), but if your spouse thinks Facebook Messenger is an appropriate vehicle for ending a marriage, why doesn’t really matter. Good riddance.
Unless the relationship was abusive ending a marriage over facebook must be like adding insult to injury. (Did i say that right?)
Not me, but my friend…
He pulled the plug after ten months. She was crazy pants. Kept her place and never moved in with him. Brought her kid on their honeymoon to Disney World and did everything with the kid, leaving him behind. Screaming at him constantly.
This is why you don’t get engaged to someone you only dated for a month.
“In a way it made me sad, about the damage we can do to each other when emotional wounds don’t heal and the generational trauma it can create. It reminds me of an expression “if you never heal what hurt you, you will bleed on people who didn’t cut you.” I think overall it gave me a lot of sympathy for others and was a good reminder that you never know what’s going on behind closed doors.”
My ex was abusive, mentally, and verbally abusive. He was also very controlling and tried to cut me off from my family. The final straw was when he told me to my face that he was abusing me and trying to push me over the edge so that I would unalive myself. He didn't want to actually do the [unaliving], but he told me that he was excited to find my body. That was Christmas day 2002. I left him that day and never looked back.
I found out everything I knew about my husband was a lie. I thought he had a job, he did not. I thought he was paying the rent, because he forced me to quit my job and said that he would handle it as long as I stayed home handling the kids. No job so he was paying no rent, and I found this out when I opened the door one day to an eviction notice. Then other things slowly came to light. Like cheating. Literally every single thing he ever told me was a lie and I found out way too late.
He lost his job and became paranoid that I, who was working, was cheating. My job was about a 20 min drive away but if there was traffic and it took me 30 mins, I was interrogated about my whereabouts. All of this took place maybe 3 months after we got married. We weren’t married much longer after that. More s**t went down but yeah.
They also shared some parting thoughts on the whole topic. “Social media makes us believe everyone is happy and in these pictures perfect relationships which isn’t always the case. It was a good reminder we need to be kind to each other and true to ourselves.”
We got pregnant on our honeymoon because my husband accidentally threw my birth control away. my Dr appt was two weeks away and he wouldn’t use protection.
Fast forward several months and he was screwing our neighbor because I “got fat.”.
He went on deployment and either had fun himself, or saw the fun other men were having and decided he wanted to use his two weeks of leave to see what it was like to be single. I told him he could go on leave single if he wanted to, but he wouldn’t be coming back married if that was his choice. So we ended things.
I caught him drinking and driving with my kids in the car after he’d already had a few DUIs and was supposedly getting sober. I came home early and saw him toss something in the trash a few houses down as he pulled up so I stopped to check and it was a beer can. Walked inside and tossed him right out.
Good for you! I hope you and your children have gone on to a much better life.
4 months. It was the only time I ever cheated on someone and I still regret it whole-heartedly. I could have just ended it, but I was so immature.
I grew up uber religious, and my mom wouldn't let us just move in to try it out because then we'd be "living in sin." So we got married, and I moved across the country to live with him.
He would work 10-12 hour days, come home, watch Top Gear for 2 hours, go straight to bed. Saturdays were spent with his friends. Sundays were spent with his family. We never had one-on-one time. Sex was spare and terrible.
Left on my own for 5 days a week essentially, I started playing League with friends from back home. Got introduced to one of their buddies. We would play and talk for hours, and really hit it off.
Husband found my chats one day while I slept. I didn't even deny it. Just bought a ticket to fly home. I ended up paying for the divorce, which is fair. We didn't share any assets so I was able to write my own divorce decree in a couple hours.
My mom was going on a cruise to Alaska with her bestie, so I flew with them because the port was in WA and so was my then husband. Met with him to get his signature in front of a notary. Sent it to the court from there.
He and I went to get lunch together after that. Admitted we both weren't ready and were glad to end on amicable terms.
Now I'm with the love of my life, and he went on to have a more open dating life.
He stopped working, doing anything in or around the house, refused counseling or doctor, then started to get mean calling me horrible names. Was mad I didn't do everything just right, when he was doing nothing. I left when I realized he was becoming abusive and knew if I stayed he would start hitting me. Then the day I left found out about all the affairs going on. Including sleeping with my boss at the time.
Wow, I thought I worked for some scumbags, but OP's boss managed to outdo them!
I found messages from her to two different men she knew trying to convince them to come to where we lived and [unalive] me. Also found out that she was cheating on me as well with someone local.
My Spanish cousin married a woman from the US and she moved in with him to a town outside of Barcelona.
She made no effort to integrate or learn the language and generally ended up isolated. My cousins family tried hard to help, inviting her to go out to things all the time but she always refused.
One day my cousin goes to work, comes home to an empty house. She got moving vans to come and collect all her stuff and furniture and she went back to America. Told him they were done from the airport. Was brutal.
His controlling side came out as well as did his " Only what I want sexually matters" side and I had to pull a knife out one evening to get him to stop. He also threatened to stab my friends who were playing the role of my security guards when I was on campus after I had left him.
Not me, but my husband’s first marriage.
To be fair, they got married after only knowing each other for 6 months which isn’t nearly enough time to get to know someone before marrying them. They were young - about 22 years old - and impulsive. Luckily no children came of that situation.
Within 6 months of marriage, she quit her job without discussing it first with her husband. She spent the last of her savings on a full arm tattoo (also without discussing with her husband first - not that she needs permission, but if she wants to spend the last of her savings on something dumb, there should be a discussion). She then managed to drain their joint savings account (like $3k) while he was away at a training school. That was the last straw.
We had been together 8 years by the time we got married and I realized I had been pushing for an engagement I didn’t even really want. His mom dictated our whole wedding, and once we were married I realized he was never going to grow up into a real partner, so I divorced him within a year. It was a hard lesson in the sunk cost fallacy, but really glad I made that decision.
She went out for girls' night and met a new friend named Nicole at a bar. She started texting her a lot and then going to hang out now and then. We had a baby at home, and she kept trying to hang out with this girl from another town over with no last name, whom I was not allowed to meet. His real name was Wesley.
We dated for 3 years before getting married. After getting married, every thing changed and became more real, we were both 20 yrs old and very naïve about our future and didn't really think it out.
It was gradual in our marriage but at some point, I realized that we wanted very different things in life. Although we were compatible, we would hold each other back for our future plans. It's been 30+ years. I talk to him, well as much you do on social media. I would never be able to live the life he leads now and be happy. He would never be able to live my life the way I live it now and be happy. It was inevitable that we would divorce. I have never held on to any resentment towards him just the sober awareness that we didn't think things out in a realistic way so I took the blame. He married the right person the second time around and I married the right person the second time around.
Second marriages always seem to be the best. I'm on my second. I married literally, my other half. We just clicked from the minute we met and married 3 weeks later. I got married first at 18 to an older man who was lovely but just wasn't ready for marriage, we lasted 10 years. You just need to hold out for the one. The one could be just someone you respect and who respects you and someone who is your friend and who's head you can imagine on your pillow for the rest of time. Love and lust does come and it's just as all engulfing and exciting as some people get when first meeting.
He got addicted to opioids after a back surgery. He became mean and cold and stopped physical contact. He had no job and took my whole salary to manage himself. He was controlling and lazy. I’m glad I left after just 5 months of living together.
I was 19 and she was 18. She became pregnant and her family was very conservative. It was basically a shotgun wedding. Neither of us had much in the way of life skills. We barely knew each other. I also had some undiagnosed mental, neurological and physical problems.
Long story short I could never hold a job and she wanted to stay home with the baby. We were living below poverty and I was too proud to ask for "handouts". While I was never abusive I was definitely negligent of her emotions and needs. I was too in my own head trying to figure out what was wrong with me.
One day I came home, a lot of stuff was gone and there were divorce papers on the coffee table.
It took a long time but I've been able to make my apologies to her and we're not what I would call amazing friends but we get along.
While I was dealing with a lot of s**t and eventually went on disability, I don't consider it an excuse though. I was an a*****e.
Sounds like my parents except they're still together because neither of them will acknowledge they need help... I'm 37 now and they're that couple that constantly "jokes" about hating each other.
I really suspect he only married me to go on the honeymoon. Shortly after we got married, he developed an allergy. To what, I don't know, but I know it was real. He was unable to work due to his allergy. He had to take medicine. Then he was diagnosed with COPD. He started taking medicine for that and was feeling better. I started talking about him going back to work and suddenly he was sick again. He confessed, right before Christmas, that he had stopped taking the medicine due to finances.
His mother was a huge issue in our relationship. Prior to marriage, I thought we were on the same page. Whenever his mom treated me badly, he would acknowledge that her behavior was wrong. After we were married, right around Christmas time, he actually said to me, we're married now. There is nothing you can do about it, so just get used to it and deal with it.
He was lazy. I would work all day, come home and no household chores would be done. He would leave as soon as I got home, to go to the store to get food for dinner.
The final straw was one night I got up to use the bathroom and when I came back to bed, I saw his phone was lit up. Thinking someone was trying to call him, I looked at his phone. I found out he had been texting and messaging other women. I confronted him about it and he said they were his online friends from some of the games he played on his phone. I told him if he can't talk to his "friends" in front of me, something is wrong. I told him I wanted to go to marriage counseling in November of that year. I brought it up again in December and he said he wasn't going and he wasn't doing anything wrong. I looked at his phone and he was talking bad about me to his female friends that he was texting. I waited until after Christmas to tell him I wanted a divorce. His parents and brother came over to our place for Christmas and would only speak to me if I spoke to them.
We were divorced almost a year to the day we were married. He moved back in with his parents, one of his "friends" moved into their house to be with him and I met a great guy right after my divorce was finalized. I don't have any contact with my ex husband and I'm not sorry.
I realized I deserved better. He was so angry all the time, and I was constantly walking on eggshells. I definitely settled when I married him. I had a kid before meeting him and thought no one else would ever want to date me.
He expected me return to work almost immediately after a medically necessary breast reduction and put his marijuana addiction over helping me with bills for a month so I could heal properly. He spent $650 on MJ that month instead of helping his wife. He complained as soon as I got home from the hospital about how he’s “not okay” with having to take care of me.
I was in the ER one day and they had to keep me overnight for observation (and possible blood patch) after a lumbar puncture caused some complications, and he came to see me for not even 10 minutes! He left cause the chair was uncomfortable and he wanted to go sleep in our cozy bed that I bought (just like I bought almost everything else to turn our apartment into a home).
He also stopped going to therapy and returned to his porn addiction while arguing that lust is “in his blood.” He would always trade one addiction for another and drove under the influence. I was not okay with that.
I’m much happier knowing I’ll never have to deal with that kind of behavior again. I believe that most of it was due to him being blinded by addiction (which he denied) but you can’t help someone who refuses to help themselves and I gave WAY too many chances. I even became a licensed peer support specialist to try and help him. Instead, I used what I learned to build up myself and develop the confidence to leave.
Not me, but a cousin. She found out that he had a girlfriend the whole time she was dating him and then she stayed his girlfriend after the marriage. She found out that he was sending her stuff to the girlfriend. He’d also ask for money from her paycheck, which went to the girlfriend. She found out and immediately started the divorce. She then had to leave town because he started stalking her.
We were both really young and didn’t even have our drivers license. I was pregnant which is why we were allowed to marry without parents permission.
I quickly matured and was working 3 jobs. He laid on his a*s and acted like a 16 yo who wasn’t married with a kid. I was younger then him and working so hard to support us on our own and ultimately I began to look at him as just another mouth to feed. I told him that me and the baby were going to visit my my mom, he took me to the bus stop and I never looked back and filed for divorce.
A tiny bit longer than that.
We had been dating for a while. It was good. Both our families were pressuring us to make it official. So eventually we caved.
She is lovely. But she wasn’t MY partner. A fantastic partner for someone else. I did find my person later on and we’ve been happy for over two decades.
We would likely have broken up anyway, again we were good to each other just not really for each other. But we had extra steps thanks to family pressure.
why were both your families in your relationship? they have no say. at all. only you two do.
We got married in June, she filed for divorce in December.
We got married due to us having a surprise child. We were not compatible and I didn’t fight it. I was working three jobs while she was going to school and I was expected to completely take care of the household (dishes, cooking, cleaning, laundry). I was averaging 3-4 hours of sleep (mostly on lunch breaks) and wasn’t there for my kid.
That was 16 years ago. One of the best days of my life was getting divorced.
There were red flags prior, but I agreed to get married so I could get onto his health insurance. I wanted to leave my toxic job. He quit his job within 2 weeks of marrying. He stayed unemployed for a couple of months and wrote fanfiction. He started amping up his paranoia about me cheating. He stopped letting me go with him to see our friends. One incident that sticks out is him yelling at me because I referred to him as Big Brother in a text to a friend. Another was him driving dangerously because he was upset that someone liked the new Star Wars movies. I tried talking to my mom and a few mutual friends about the abuse, but they told me that I was overreacting.
I told him that I wanted a divorce about 6 months in. I had no other place to go. He kept me from sleeping for 2 days until I relented. He threatened to ruin my life. At that point, a switch flipped. I decided that I could pretend to be happy for a few months while making an escape plan. I still lost a lot of friends over it all.
The kicker is that my mom knew that my ex-husband was letting a "friend" try to talk him into moving across the country with her and her boyfriend. It started around the time we got married. Mom didn't tell me. She, as a conservative Southern woman, also realized before he did that he was walking into a polyamorous sugar mama situation.
driving dangerously with you in the car, I don't care if you're male or female or who the other person is, that should always be a dealbreaker for everybody. I had a guy I was casually dating that I knew was never gonna be real serious but kind of seeing where it went. and the day he did that, slammed on the gas started weaving out of traffic saying he was having some kind of amnestic episode because he was so upset with whatever I said..... It was literally zero contact the second I got out of the car. Ladies, gentlemen, and all others, do not ever let somebody put your life in danger and then keep them in your life so they have a chance to do it again. Period.
Prescription D**g Addict..! No one knew and all she did was open credit cards in my name and stocked up on Prescription pain pills...! Didn't even fight or go to a lawyer, just signed off on papers...
I got shotgun married to a woman who had some mental health issues. I got custody of our kid if that tells you anything.
Mental health issues are hard for both sides. Its a sad situation
My ex-wife's family was extremely controlling and didn't want her to be outside of their influence. She was increasingly miserable because of her family's influence on her, had an affair, and didn't want to get marriage counseling to see if we could save the marriage, so I filed for divorce.
She pressured me to open up the relationship so she could date women. I did the work of wrapping my head and heart around being in a one-sided poly relationship and actually got to the point of being happy for her.
Then she caught feels for one of them and decided she didn't want to be married to a man anymore. It was especially horrible because the relationship was very happy up to that point, and she pulled this s**t at a time when we happened to be working very closely on a project I couldn't bow out of.
Married for 6 months. I married the wrong person. I knew it during the engagement but I felt like I was in so deep with all of the wedding arrangements that it was too late. Ive struggled with self esteem for most of my life and I felt that I needed to settle just because he wasn’t a total a*****e like the exes I’d had in the past. He was a nice enough guy, had been friends since high school. We were together romantically for 4 years and had been together since I was 22. I felt at the time that getting married was what I was “supposed” to do at that point. Live and learn. I have no feelings about it or about him. It was essentially like having a glorified roommate. No passion, no spark at all at any point really. The way I see it is half of my peers I’m watching get married will be divorcing in their 40s and I just beat them to the punch giving myself a better shot at long term happiness than they’ve got. I’m glad I divorced after 6 months rather than forcing it for 20 years. To be honest I suspect he felt the same considering his only “fight” against the idea was “please don’t” and 1 couples therapy appointment. I guess I wasn’t moving it along fast enough because although I requested the divorce he ended up filing the paper work.
Yup, low self esteem is a killer. Flattered that someone takes an interest in you and you talk yourself into it. You later realise that you’ve wasted 10 years of your life. Never settle just because you think there is no other option. Voice of experience!
We were an anxious-avoidant attachment pair. By the time we fully understood the gravity of differences in love styles, the hurt between us was already too far gone to repair. We both learned a lot from our relationship and helped each other to grow into better adults. But I think it was a bond to grow as better individuals, so we can be better partners for someone else in the future.
Mine was: I married a 42yo when I was 23. Within a year discovered he didn't have dentures because he had a genetic dental problem..it was because he was a meth addict. I got into medical school, already pregnant. We had to move to a big city (Seattle), where meth is hard to get (if you don't know, you can smell that sh*t cooking a mile away which only works in rural areas). But crack is plentiful (big city, lots of "traffic"). He didn't handle his crack like he managed to handle his meth. there's so many stories I could tell about how that all ended but it won't fit in a comment. The nice thing was Montana is a no-fault divorce state, I got divorced over the phone from Seattle in five minutes. i'm now going on 18 years marriage with a man who is not perfect. But the real difference is that we were both people who decided we want to be married forever regardless of what happened. If that's what you want out of marriage, you have to find someone with the same prerogative.
forgot to mention, I married a 42-year-old who was six months out of prison when I was 23. Ladies, I do not recommend, he might be nice, but past behavior predicts future behavior.
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In so many of these, at least one of the partners knew they shouldn't get married to that person but did anyway, frequently because money and planning had already been expended as if that would make the marriage happy. Listen to your gut people and be honest with yourself and your family. Don't go through with a wedding because others might be disappointed/angry/sad if it were called on.
Part of the challenge is that it's very normal to be nervous and have second thoughts about something as major, life changing, and "permanent" as marriage. It's very hard to figure out if it's normal nerves or a true gut feeling.
Load More Replies... Okay what's with all the weird commentary now between the list items. It's useless blabber and really pisses me off. Partly because it's terribly written but mostly because it's pointless and not what anyone is here for. It was annoying enough bored panda now has ads. Stop it.
Mine was: I married a 42yo when I was 23. Within a year discovered he didn't have dentures because he had a genetic dental problem..it was because he was a meth addict. I got into medical school, already pregnant. We had to move to a big city (Seattle), where meth is hard to get (if you don't know, you can smell that sh*t cooking a mile away which only works in rural areas). But crack is plentiful (big city, lots of "traffic"). He didn't handle his crack like he managed to handle his meth. there's so many stories I could tell about how that all ended but it won't fit in a comment. The nice thing was Montana is a no-fault divorce state, I got divorced over the phone from Seattle in five minutes. i'm now going on 18 years marriage with a man who is not perfect. But the real difference is that we were both people who decided we want to be married forever regardless of what happened. If that's what you want out of marriage, you have to find someone with the same prerogative.
forgot to mention, I married a 42-year-old who was six months out of prison when I was 23. Ladies, I do not recommend, he might be nice, but past behavior predicts future behavior.
Load More Replies... In so many of these, at least one of the partners knew they shouldn't get married to that person but did anyway, frequently because money and planning had already been expended as if that would make the marriage happy. Listen to your gut people and be honest with yourself and your family. Don't go through with a wedding because others might be disappointed/angry/sad if it were called on.
Part of the challenge is that it's very normal to be nervous and have second thoughts about something as major, life changing, and "permanent" as marriage. It's very hard to figure out if it's normal nerves or a true gut feeling.
Load More Replies... Okay what's with all the weird commentary now between the list items. It's useless blabber and really pisses me off. Partly because it's terribly written but mostly because it's pointless and not what anyone is here for. It was annoying enough bored panda now has ads. Stop it.
