50 Unhappy Couples Share How Their Partner Completely Changed After Marriage

50 Unhappy Couples Share How Their Partner Completely Changed After Marriage

According to these unhappy couples from Ask Reddit, some people do change after marriage.

1. Whatever intimacy issues that come up are always understated. They get 10x worse. If you have any intimacy issues when dating, don’t make the mistake of expecting it to get better with time. It will only get worse.

2. When I met her parents and all they did was yell at each other.

Turns out that’s how she thought couples should communicate.

It didn’t end well.

3. Looking back, her friends acting surprised when she wanted to do anything should’ve been a red flag. Turns out all she ever really wanted to do was watch movies. She was brilliant at faking an entirely different persona, though, and nobody said anything to me about it until after the wedding.

4. Literally zero communication. At first I thought it was because his ex used to yell and fight at the drop of a hat, but then when I tried to be understanding and calm, he still shut down. When we were planning our wedding, he said he was sure his parents would give us the same amount they gave to his brother, but he refused to sit down and ask them and we ended up with debt from paying for things with a credit card at the last minute.

5. That he had never been in a serious relationship before. Turns out, there’s a reason for that.

6. I was talking to a girl for about two weeks and she went thru my phone. Usually, I would immediately walk away because that’s insane. She found nothing and I decided it was OK because she was the first girl I’ve liked in awhile and I was tired of fucking around and having one night stands.

Fast forward 8 months and I find out she had hacked into my Instagram, Facebook and snapchat. And guess what, again found nothing. The relationship became toxic when I changed all my passwords and she was constantly questioning what I was doing and where I was.

I should’ve walked away the very first time she went through my phone.

7. When she said marriage changes people I should have listened. Although it wasn’t really marriage that changed her, it was becoming a mother at 42. She stopped being a wife as soon as the kid arrived. Now I wouldn’t change a thing about my daughter but as soon as she’s off on her own I am out of this marriage that is for sure.

8. She was mad. All the time. Funny thing is I thought I was responsible for her happiness. Oops.

9. My then-girlfriend (now wife) was super clingy. I could not go anywhere or do anything without her (we lived together) or it would be the end of the goddamn world. We were together for around 5 years before we got married last summer and it’s only gotten worse. It’s almost as if she assumes I cheat on her every chance I get. It’s exhausting to say the least and now there’s a child in the mix and I’m not sure where this is going to go.

10. Freaked out because I had female friends. When we got married wouldn’t get a joint account.

Suddenly every thing I did was wrong, dishes, laundry, vacuuming, etc.

I was 30 years old, former military and kept my place clean. Had 2 cats and a dog, but you’d never smell any litter, and wouldn’t find a hair on my clothes.

All that went to shit 5 years into the marriage. No physical contact after 11 years, so I bailed.

11. When I asked about any sexual stuff I should know about he said, “Eh I watched x & y porn a couple of times.”

It wasn’t a couple of times. It was all the time, was a full blown dysfunction, and it brought us to the brink of divorce.

Ask the right questions folks. Also make sure you understand how family history may have affected your spouse’s attitude towards the big things in life.

12. There were a million red flags, but I ignored all of them. How they treat literally everyone else will be how they treat you. If they lied to everyone, you can bet they do it to you too. I am an idiot, but now hopefully a wiser idiot. Probably not though. Keep walking into the same brand of rake.

13. A friend of mine got married to a girl and right after they got married she quit her job and started smoking weed constantly, ruined the relationship pretty quick.

14. The sex was bad before marriage. I thought it would improve after marriage. It has not.

15. Started dating my wife when I was 19 and she was 16. Thought her getting extremely angry over small or uncontrollable things was just an immature thing she’d grow out of. I was her first boyfriend, after all.

Needless to say, she didn’t grow out of it. And it got worse.

16. Had an American girlfriend who completely respected my boundaries, and I did the same. We were equals and we respected each other, our limits. We were actually kind of a functional relationship.

After marriage, she completely changed. Insisted on ‘reforming’ me. Had a major superiority complex that I didn’t know until we got married. Insisted on being right. She also forgot to mention that she was an antivaxxer, Trump supporter and a hardcore Christian. She’s like those people you’d find on r/iamverysmart except she was very much in the wrong.

She went in my room. Messed with my things. IT TOOK DAYS TO ORGANIZE IT AGAIN. I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS. I HAVE MULTIPLE SIGNS ON THAT DOOR FOR A REASON.

…safe to say, we are now very much exes.

17. He has a rather funny story about a time he fucked over someone who tried to fuck him over. It is a funny story, but it does highlight some underlying issues.

18. If she has no self-control over eating, she WILL blimp out once she is married and will give no fucks about changing it.

19. Not married, but my previous (longest) relationship. If they’re willing to talk shit about anyone no in the room, it’s a safe bet they do the same about you. Add to that if you’re expected to change everything about yourself, while they change nothing, you’re doomed to fail.

She was also a shitty lay.

20. I did ignore a lot of red flags early on in the relationship.

  • He didn’t have one nice thing to say about any of his exes… and there were quite a few of them.

  • He belittled me when we argued.

  • He was never wrong.

  • He was cruel when he was angry, often using my worst insecurities as ammunition to hurt me.

  • He was jealous of his friends’ accomplishments rather than happy for them.

And so on and so forth… there were so many red flags, and I just trucked on, because I had incredibly low self esteem and self worth, and he didn’t help that.

Last I heard from a friend, the ex is in therapy… which is great. I truly hope that he can work through the anger and depression that caused him to act out so abusively, and that he can find peace. I wish him the best.

As for me, I’m finally happy, and in a strong, healthy relationship for the first time in my life. I don’t regret my marriage, because I learned a lot from those years, and like with all my experiences, I use the tools I acquired during that time to forge ahead.

21. It took quite a while but she morphed into her Mom. So “recon” the Mom to see what you may be dealing with as time goes on.

22. Just general laziness. Like we all get a little lazy most days It increased so much more after marriage. Fuck I worked full time and went to school full time. I cooked I cleaned than I just stopped. I wasn’t happy.

23. His family had fucked up boundaries. And he had no opinions of his own when it came to them.

24. What his ex wife said about him as a parent. He told me that she was lying and that he did all of the work when they were together, she was lazy and wouldn’t clean the house, and that she only cared about partying with her friends. Once I had a baby with him, I realized she was completely honest and I was on my own.

25. Before marriage: sex weekly, sometimes daily.

After marriage: Literally the weekend after our wedding, she said that she was depressed and the wedding planning had distracted her, so now that the wedding was over she was back to being depressed. Her legs snapped shut immediately and after ten years of marriage we maybe have sex once every six months.

So, there’s that.

26. Had an ex tell me “women look for a guy like their dad”. Seemed odd she’d ever say that to me considering she always told me her dad was abusive. She would refuse to hang out with me for days-weeks without any context or explanation, and when I’d try to talk to her about things, she’d turn it back on me saying I didn’t trust her. We finally broke up after a few months, turned out she cheated on me for some crack head from high school, and when we broke up she told her friends and other people back at home that I was abusive. Luckily we both grew up in the same general neighborhoods and people didn’t believe her. God she was nuckin futs now that I look back on it.

27. She quit her job to “stay home and clean.” Work was “stressful.” But, the house was never any more clean. I usually did the cleaning. I was fully supporting her, and worked extra hours to do so. Rarely home, for her sake. Then I started to notice how one of my friends was overly nice to her, and she to him.

On my birthday, I discovered that she had been fucking him in my home for months. Fairly certain their relationship began BEFORE her and I were married. I filed for divorce, and she got a bunch of free stuff out of it. No fault divorce is bullshit.

She’s one of the most selfish people I’ve ever met – I just hoped that it was different with us.

28. I was in a relationship with a woman a decade older than me and she had a big personality. It was charming at first, until it wasn’t. I was pretty young then (like 20ish) and reallllly naive. I just followed her every word because I thought she must be right. After all, she was a decade older than me. She would constantly put me down and make fun of the things that I liked. She would talk poorly about me in public, and the sad thing was my self esteem was so low, I just agreed with her. It didn’t help that everyone around us called her “authentic” and “real,” meaning that she was supposedly straight-forward and honest. Turns out; she was just very, very bitter and a bully.

A lot of her friends and coworkers, came forward about her manipulative and awful behavior. A couple of mentors and friends had to step in for me because they saw the emotional abuse happening. It took me a long time to realize what actually was going on and all the ways it affected, and sometimes still affects me. I’ve definitely got trust issues because of that.

29. “Never marry a perfectionist.”

I heard this several times and figured they were wrong. They were not wrong.

30. The most obvious red flag that I ignored was the pre-wedding planning. Prior to being engaged my desires were acknowledged and provided for or promised.

As we began planning the wedding, my opinion was not relevant unless it was to say “Yes, I agree with you”. I was either being difficult, I was ignored, or we were made for each other!

This behavior continued through the marriage. She would ask my advice, if I didn’t care I was an asshole and she would do what she wanted. If I said no, I was an asshole and she would do what she wanted. If I said Yes – I at least wasn’t an asshole.

Compromise needs to work both ways.

31. They kept saying they would change and would work on it, but after a week to a month they would completely give up. It got ten times worse after marriage. They actually did say at one point “Why should I try, you’re already going to be with me forever”

In other news divorce realllllly sucks.

32. He turned into whoever he was hanging out with. It was like he didn’t have an identity of his own.

33. Her mother. Abusive partners learn that behavior is normal because it was modeled for them. I should’ve seen how abusive her mother was and realized she would become her after the wedding.

34. Not respecting boundaries and then blamed me for being upset.

35. This happened after we got engaged and realized a month before marriage. I realized my fiance was selfish and only cared about herself. I finally had enough and broke it off with her and ate the cost of the wedding and it was the best decision I ever made. It was her second failed engagement and 10 years later she is still single and looking to rope another schmuck into her web. Saw her on a dating app and noticed she cut off 5 years off her age just a few months back, had a good laugh. The biggest red flag I missed was early on we brought photo albums to a coffee date to share stories about our families etc. She brought two whole albums of photos of just herself in different outfits. I thought it was weird, but thought perhaps she wasn’t comfortable sharing photos of her family yet. Turns out she only cares about herself and that I was right to be concerned and should’ve gone with my gut instincts early on.

36. Ex wife that embezzled 700k from my business and was an abusive drug user… she was fired from 3 jobs in 4 months when we started dating. my bank accounts were drained while we dated and I did not pay attention then. I wish I had.

Her father gave her 30k for the wedding and when we were presented the bill, she handed the bill to me and said ‘it’s your bill now.’ She spent the money on drugs.

I was blind to it.

37. She was on the rebound from an engagement with a guy by the same name and had only been in town for a couple hours before we met. She always wanted me around, which I found flattering, and believed it was because she really cared and liked the things I did. As it turned out, she was pathologically unable to spend time alone, and just adapted her personality to whoever she was around. I needed to work, and was gone 8-12 hrs/day, so I moved us back near her family and friends where she grew up so she wouldn’t be lonely. She became a different person because of that and we divorced. Same thing happened to the next guy. And the one after, I presume; I lost track.

38. How they treat their parents can be very telling, too.

Some will explain away this bad behavior by saying that particular parent was horrible to them. In this case, you go no contact or reduce contact to the bare civil minimum. Ideally, you also get some therapy because there is obviously issues.

But if he’s abusive to his mother while treating her like an ATM machine? Yeah, you’re next.

39. While we were dating, I was talking about how I liked the Beatles and he for whatever reason thought that was stupid. So he threw my laptop across the room. He ended up being abusive while we were married. Marriage lasted about 8 months.

40. I was very sick, puking, shaking, sweating, and feeling like I was close to passing out on the bathroom floor.

He was playing on his phone the entire time. Not scared of puke, just completely uninterested in my well-being.

41. During our 15 year marriage he’d go through phases of being an absolute fucktard for no reason. I’m talking going from the nicest guy on the planet who couldn’t do enough for you to an absolute monster who would use anything good he did as ammunition. I didn’t understand it but it was only a few times a year and people have ups and downs so no biggie. My mum and sister are the same so I was used to it and conditioned from childhood to just deal with it.

It started happening more regularly towards the end – so much so that I used to joke that he must have taken on PMS because I didn’t suffer from it.

Fast forward to divorce and the guy I saw during those phases is the guy I now see all of the time.

I realized that the nice guy persona was all an act and it was a lot of hard work to keep up. This extreme up/down is now a major red flag for me. I’ll take an even level of good/bad over extreme shifts both ways.

42. We didn’t drink too often when it was just the two of us but when we went out with friends she got way more drunk than everybody else. I just assumed she like to get loose when we were out partying. Turns out she was an alcoholic.

43. He screamed at me on our wedding night because one time (for him, not me. The only person who had any funsies that night was him) wasn’t good enough. I was so tired and couldn’t give him a second go. I apologized profusely but he was livid. He stormed out of our hotel room and slept in his car. I spent the night alone and sobbing. Next day he explained how it was may fault and I caused myself the grief. It went downhill quickly from there.

44. That his mom was a damn lunatic. She could be your best friend or worst enemy, sometimes in the same day.

45. Weird thing, but she couldn’t be wrong.

Where I didn’t pick up on the red flag was she could not be WRONG. She wasn’t a know it all. She would admit if she was unsure. But if she put forth anything, a belief, a memory, she treated it like gospel truth. She could be ignorant, undecided, but not WRONG.

This lead to horrible arguments where she would refuse to believe how she remembered something, even if 3 other people were backing me up, happened.

46. Oh yes, many red flags. I guess he wasn’t ‘completely’ different after marriage.. He cheated on me a bunch, I forgave it all, then 2 months after the wedding he told me he was polyamorous. TOLD me, didn’t ask if it’s something we could try, whatever. So he started dating and sleeping with other women.

I was a total dumbass. He figured I was such a doormat before the wedding, that after it, he could really get away with whatever he wanted.

We are divorced, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been with a new man who has eyes only for me.

47. My ex fiance after I asked her to marry me became clingy. She would call me and text through my entire work day and then if I didn’t respond quick enough I’d get a passive aggressive text, voicemail, or email about how she feels like I’m cheating on her. Eventually I was tired of the accusation and the apologies I had given even though I did nothing wrong.

48. She was a liar for attention. She tried telling me she was a twin, she wasn’t. It was just minor things that to me just seemed stupid. She would lie about how she used to train dogs (she used to be a groomers assistant). She talked about everything she had plans for and seemed relatively put together.

Once we got married her lying didn’t stop. Mainly when I asked “are you on tinder?”

49. “I’m so glad we are finally married so I don’t have to have sex with you anymore.”

50. I got sick for a few years and she told me “I didn’t sign up for this.” Should have broken up then. Thought Catalog Logo Mark

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.