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And it ain't pretty.
By Rebecca Jane Stokes — Written on Sep 13, 2022
When you're young, marriage is a distant scary, and romantic thing that grownups do. When you become a grownup yourself, it seems like the next logical step in any romantic relationship that seems to be relatively free of strife.
When two people get married they usually expect to be happily in love or at least by each other's side forever until death does them part. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way. Whatever our good intentions may be when we climb into that massive white gown, the road of life is full of twists and turns.
It's inevitable that we change and that our relationships change with us. Divorce is a rough thing, but it is often a necessary thing to start the next chapter of your life.
There are plenty of causes of divorce, and making the decision to divorce in a reasonable and rational way is one thing, but sometimes it doesn't quite go that way. In fact, for some people, their marriages don't quietly dissolve. Instead, they totally implode after one fight or another, a fight to go down in the record books.
I asked a group of anonymous people to share with me the final fight that ended their marriage for good. Every single person who wrote had a unique story, but they all agreed: it's never one fight that ends a marriage, it's a series of deeper issues that are brought to the surface.
Here, 15 divorced people reveal the final fight that ended their marriages:
1. I was drinking too much.
"It was over my drinking. I quit after I realized I was an alcoholic. She said that without alcohol, I just wasn't fun anymore."
2. She had real estate woes.
"We were fighting constantly over whether or not we should buy a house. Eventually, I realized that she was holding back because she wasn't sure she wanted to be in the marriage any longer."
3. I cheated on her.
"I couldn't stay faithful when she was pregnant. She caught me over and over. We tried to make it work, or at least she did. I was not a good person back then."
4. She didn't want kids.
"I was really ready to have kids, which she knew going in. But she kept putting it off and putting it off. That's finally what did it."
5. Our relationship became violent.
"When our fights escalated from words to physical pain, that's when I knew something had to change. We were attacking each other with words... and our fists."
6. I didn't feel attractive to her anymore.
"We fought all the time about having sex. I felt like she just wasn't into me. Turns out I was right!"
7. He sabotaged my childbirth.
"I went into labor at 4 AM and not only did he refuse to take me to the hospital, but he also blocked my car in so I couldn't get there. I had to call my family to come to get me. The baby ended up in NICU because of problems with the labor."
8. She went bananas.
"We were grocery shopping, and I pick up a bunch of bananas and she immediately started in with 'Why are you getting bananas?! You're not going to eat them, put them back! Right now!' Literally yelling at me and berated me in public for bananas. When we got back to the house, I told her I was done. One too many crazy episodes for me."
9. I was gambling.
"Gambling, plain and simple. She had a real problem and wouldn't admit it. When we lost the house I ended things."
10. She was a lesbian.
"Her sexuality. I always suspected that she might be a lesbian but she really struggled with it. Eventually, I felt like I had to let her go or she was going to be miserable forever. She's out now and married happily for three years. I'm still single."
11. We never discussed our problems.
"We didn't fight much. We never did like fighting with each other, and I feel both of us just kind of gave up on things we would normally have cared about, and just started accepting things. I know acceptance is important, and you can't do much to change someone, but communication is important too. Not only were we not fighting, but we weren't really discussing our problems either."
12. Grief came between us.
"Sometimes people get divorced because two really good people go through something so horrible, they don't know what to do, and so they turn on each other instead of turning to each other. Then the tragedy is compounded and life becomes infinitely suckier because your best friend let grief betray you and your family."
13. She wouldn't stop talking about divorce.
"My wife knew I was dead set against divorce, so she started using it as a rhetorical device to change the subject any time she didn't like where a conversation/fight was going. She must have brought up divorce 6 times in 3 months. Worked, too. The D-word would instantly change the subject. I finally got tired of it and told her the next time she said we needed to get divorced, she would be right. She did it again. I left that night."
14. He ruined my relationship with my son.
"My ex-husband kicked my 19-year-old son out of our house because he had quit his job and hadn't found another one. He said he wouldn't support an adult child who wouldn't work. Nearly destroyed my relationship with my son, who went to live with his dad. A month later, Ex's son graduated from college and demanded a hefty monthly allowance to live on while he 'figured out what he was going to do for the next year or so'. Ex agreed to pay the allowance. After years of this double standard, that was the last straw. I left and my son came to live with me and got his dream job the same month."
15. She chose the wrong team.
"Well, lots of things caused my marriage to ultimately fail. But the final straw was when she told me she wanted someone like Edward from that vampire movie. I just laughed and walked right out the door."
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Rebecca Jane Stokes is a sex, humor, and lifestyle writer.