“[My fiancé] texted me and broke it off. Yes, I said texted.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

Their family was quite wealthy and had set money aside for all of my fiancé's milestones, education, first car, wedding, etc. She told me they were happy to cover the major costs as they were the ones who wanted a big wedding, and joked I could pay her back in grandchildren. A few weeks later his mom introduced me to a 'friend' who was a florist. Next thing I know I'm looking at bouquets and discussing table arrangements. Then my fiancé starts talking about venues for our wedding, saying we need to start planning so we can find the perfect place.

By this point, I'm truly panicking...I'm just a few months into university, I haven't even fully decided what I want to do with my education, now I'm choosing venues for a wedding that's supposed to be years away — a wedding that's suddenly looking like the nuptials of a minor royal. I tried talking to my fiancé, but he just wouldn't listen. We saw a venue we liked, but they had no availability for almost two years. So we booked it and I could finally breathe again...I had two years to get ready for my big fat crazy wedding.

Then the venue had a cancellation, for less than six months away and my fiancé accepted it WITHOUT telling me. Just cancelled our future date and took the one that was now available. Then he arranged the entire wedding with the help of his mum (and mine, damn her helicopter ways!) before telling me. When he told me everything was booked, I went mental. His reaction was that he'd gone with all of my choices re: catering, venue, flowers, etc and so I should be grateful that he'd dealt with all the stressful stuff. All I had to do was turn up.

When I explained that I didn't want to get married in six months' time and that this was the third or fourth time I'd told him I wasn't ready for marriage yet, he told me I was being childish and that the invitations were at the printer, so it was too late to 'change my mind.'

I finally realized that he was manipulating me, so I gave him the engagement ring back and told him I didn't want to see him anymore.

I told my family and friends, cried a lot, changed my number because he wouldn't stop calling, etc. Two months later my mum got a call from his mother, because she hadn't been able to get in touch with me to arrange dress fittings and finalise bridesmaids.

He hadn't told them we split up. My mother explained everything to his mother and figured that was that. The following week she had the audacity to present my family with a bill for half of what they had paid out for the wedding. It came to thousands of pounds. They'd booked everything, right down to the cake and the favors, without telling me and wanted me to pay!"

"Jokes on him. He still has a job here in this city he hates so much. I have a beautiful house and he's living with his brother in a college campus apartment. Dick."

"The most awkward part for both of us was trying to think of reasons to tell friends and family when they asked what the hell happened because otherwise, we were great together."

"He then told me that everything would be fine because he was going to take me to Kentucky to live on an Army base. He also told me he wanted me to be 'barefoot and pregnant' most of the time, ha ha ha. We were going to get married and leave the day after I graduated high school.

I did some real soul-searching. I became withdrawn and quiet. I was visiting my nana one day and she asked me, 'are you in love with him or in love with the idea of a wedding?' And just like that, the bubble burst. I cried and broke it off with him...two weeks before I graduated.

Apparently, he had already booked the Justice of the Peace. But he got married anyway three weeks later...with the same ring he gave me. Poor girl. I wish I knew her so I could warn her."

"I climbed out of that hole, pushed through, and did really well that semester. Then I met another girl at college and started to fall for her. And who should try to come back into my life but the one who left me? 

She told me she couldn't believe I got over her so fast after almost five years, and that I was just using another woman to hide my pain, etc. And that I actually still loved her. Yeahhhhhhhhhhh, she was wrong. Through the gauntlet I went through I determined that I did not at all deserve to be unhappy. I treated her amazing for the entirety of our relationship and if she didn't know what she had when she had it, she didn't deserve it. So I moved on. I left her behind with no regrets.

I'm now in a relationship with the new girl I met and extremely happy — been almost two years."

"He was a (poorly controlled) diabetic as well so his healing was significantly delayed. He ended up ... [in] an electric wheelchair and since his legs were in casts from hip to ankle, his legs had to be extended straight out in front of him at all times. I really, really tried to stick by him but he made it fucking impossible. He... refused physical therapy, would not take his medication correctly, did not cooperate with wound care, and wouldn't take his insulin correctly, all the things that make for a horrible patient and an even worse person to be around. He managed to get addicted to the narcotics, sleeping pills, and Xanax, as well. Through all this, our wedding planning was still happening — mostly by his family. He was moved from the hospital to a live-in group home which he only declined. Wearing pants was difficult so he wore nothing on his bottom half for months, just happy with a bed sheet over his lap. No matter what. His moods were totally uncontrollable, he became violent and so verbally abusive. One evening he missed a final Jeopardy question and threw his open urinal at me. Even after the doctors had *insisted* that he HAD to start bending his legs, he absolutely refused. Nope, not gonna do it. 

Fast forward to my wedding day. The staff at the group home went balls-to-the-wall to decorate the backyard and make this day so special for everyone, it really was lovely. Our families were gathered and seated and the pianist was playing and my dad was by my side. They opened the door for us to start down the aisle and there he sat..with his legs straight out and hospital socks sticking out from under a blanket. I froze. Told my dad I needed to go back in the house. Once we were out of earshot of everyone, I told my dad I couldn't do this, I'm so sorry. My dad simply smiled and said, 'Thank God.' He signaled for my kids to come to the side, loaded them and me up in his car and we drove off. We ended up moving a state away, closer to my family and thriving. The groom did end up in and out of several facilities and has never left the wheelchair. 

I realize fully that he was suffering from the type of physical, emotional, and mental pain that I will never comprehend, but I knew that I could not raise my kids in that type of environment and my first commitment was to them. I went on to finish my own degree and my kids are now adults. No one has thrown urine at me since."

"He became crazy jealous and possessive and would threaten to kill himself if I ever tried to leave him because he loved me so much. I realized that I was absolutely trapped in this relationship because so many people would constantly tell me how much my fiancé NEEDED me and how much he loved me. And there was the massive guilt I had, because how do you break up with a sick man? I had to always play the part of the happy and loving fiancé when all I wanted to do was escape. The thought of having to go through with marrying him gave me an ulcer. I had nobody to talk to about this, either. My family and friends all just adored him and I would have been this evil heartless person if I broke up with him. 

He did pass away a few months later from complications from his illness and it took me years before I could tell anyone that the main emotion I felt at his death was relief that I was free."

"About a month later he went to a work event and purposefully made it difficult for me to attend, to the point of saying 'I dont really want you to go'. She posted a status on Facebook and tagged him in it and I went ballistic. Called him and demanded he come home. We talked, and he admitted that he's in love with her and doesn't want to be with me anymore. Eight months before the wedding. Three years engaged. I moved out three weeks later. Took the dog and cat. He tries to text me every so often. I don't respond."

"Came back to our apartment four days later and I don't remember all the details, but he moved some of his things out that day. Found out, one of the girls he was cheating on me with had just gotten an apartment at the complex I lived at. He moved in with her and their apartment kitchen window faced my kitchen window; it was great. Eventually, his best friend laid it all out and told me how long this had been going on and with how many girls — really heartbreaking, honestly. His best friend and I became good friends after this and one night he admitted that he had feelings for me the moment we met and knew my ex would leave me at some point because I was the third girl he had done this to. So... long story short, ... we've been together for seven years and we're getting married next spring."

"As things moved along, I made it clear that I wasn't ready to get married at my age and wanted to spend more time with him before we went through with it. He sort of threw a fit and accused me of cheating on him because there was no other reason in his mind I could possibly want to wait to marry. Things started to get really toxic and I eventually left him for good. I gave him the ring back and parted civilly, but he wasn't about to let it go so easily. He was calling and texting me constantly for weeks. Accused me of being obsessed with him and following him around and I started to realize that he was not in a normal state of mind. I was scared, but it calmed down after a while and things started to get back to normal. Unfortunately, he started spreading all kinds of nasty rumors about me of how I accused him of rape and was abusive towards him. His entire family turned sour towards me because of it and it was difficult because we shared most of our friends.

He ruined my reputation and my self-esteem but it made me realize that I really dodged one hell of a bullet by refusing to marry him. Every so often he messages me on social media asking to get back together. I either don't reply or give him a polite but very firm no.

This doesn't really matter but it's another funny little detail. He gave my engagement ring to his mother as a mother's day gift and now she wears it all the time. She has to know that it used to belong to me but still finds it to be a sweet gift from her bonkers son."

"TLDR; Don't expect someone to change no matter how much you love them. If you need something to change, give them a few months. If it doesn't change, move on. Your future self will thank you."

"Not long after our 4-year anniversary, she got the news her father had passed away. On Valentine's Day, no less.

In our fifth year of being together and after a fairly large argument, I left work and grabbed a bottle of wine with flowers to try to signify a new beginning for us, but when I got home she had taken my son and all his things, and moved all of her belongings out of the house. She had left the engagement ring on the bed for me to find.

I never did get an explanation, only that she didn't feel love between us anymore. I never felt that way, but perhaps I missed something that she was trying to tell me... Who knows.

Now I see my son 3–4 days a week, have a friendly relationship with my ex, and have moved on as best I can.

I still love her — a part of me always will — but I'm fairly certain we will never reconnect, as much as I would love to try again. Sometimes you just have to accept what happened and push on."

"Summer was coming shortly after and he wanted me to move in with him for the summer. I was living in NY at the time and he was living in Maryland (he had been in NY visiting his parents and staying with them till his new job started as a used car salesman). So I got in his white pickup truck and drove with him to Maryland for the summer. When I got there it was a tiny little apartment. ... He took his truck to work every day and I had no transportation. ... He wanted to have sex every day the second he got home from work and would want me to be waiting in the bedroom for him. I hated it and would close my eyes till it was over. 

After five days, I was in the apartment while he was at work and I opened the silverware drawer and a big cockroach crawled across the utensils. I don’t know exactly why that was the turning point for me but I just said out loud, 'FUCK THIS.' I packed my suitcase and sat on the couch with the suitcase on my lap until he got home from work. The second I saw, him I said, 'Take me home.' He said a lot of shit [and] was angry, [but] I said nothing besides that I wanted to go home. Somehow he agreed to drive me back to NY and we left that night. The whole way home he talked about how this doesn’t change anything and that we’ll still be together. I stayed silent. When we pulled in the driveway I took off the ring and set it on the console. I didn’t say anything and booked it into the house and locked the door. He didn’t come after me but proceeded to call constantly for weeks. I refused to answer. I never saw him again. 

I’m 41 now and have four children. My oldest is 18. Only as an adult have I been able to see how disgusting and terrifying what I went through was. For years I was embarrassed to tell that story but now I realize I was a child and it’s him and my parents that should be embarrassed."

"One day, I got fed up with something she wanted me to do and told her no. She said that she couldn't marry me if I wasn't willing to do what she asked. She broke off the engagement a few days later. A few months later, she called me to try to get back together with me. She didn't think that the breakup would be permanent. She just thought that I would be so unhappy without her that I would go crawling back to her. We had broken up a couple of times before our engagement, and this was apparently her strategy those times as well. By this time, I recognized this as the manipulative tactic it was, so I refused to get back together with her. Looking back on it, I would have been miserable with her, so it was the best decision I could have made."

"He wanted to just keep us being engaged, but he was going to be moving to the next base in a few months and would be deploying regularly. In order to stay together without being married and see him, I would have had to literally drop everything, call out of work, and drive six hours whenever he would happen to be stateside for a few days between missions. It would have been impossible. We had been together for five years at this point, and I figured if he still 'wasn't ready' to marry me by then, he never would be, so I gave him the ring back. I had hoped it would scare him and that he would not want to lose me, but he didn't care much. When we broke up I was visiting him halfway across the country, and had two days left until my flight home. It suuuccckkkeeedddd. He didn't tell anyone what happened, any of our friends who asked, he would just ghost. He didn't cancel the DJ or anything like that, he made me do everything. I have never had anyone want to buy my old dress so we're stuck with that, too.

Two years later he (a 30-year-old man) was engaged to a 17-year-old he met through his church at his next base. Bullet dodged.

All these years later I realized he never loved me. He loved the attention, love, and support I gave him. He needed a constant ego strike and I gave it to him. The man I wound up marrying is 10,000% more of a real man."

"My mom called off a wedding just weeks before the ceremony date because she found out her fiancé had lied to her about his whereabouts and was partying at a hotel with friends and other women. She caught him in a hot tub at 1 a.m. with twin sisters.

Fast forward about three years later. She starts dating and later marries the man who is my biological father.

She said meeting the family was especially awkward when she discovered my father had three sisters...two of which were the twins she caught her ex-fiancé with in the hot tub."