If You Thought Your Ex Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Read These Breakup Horror Stories

Breakups are hard — especially when one person in the relationship is blindsided or unforeseen circumstances ruin a seemingly happy couple. However, for some, breakups can be downright traumatizing. 

This AskReddit thread inspired users to share their best (worst?) ex-from-hell stories — and they did not disappoint. If you thought your ex was crazy, you probably won't by the time you reach the end of this article. That or you will appreciate being single a little bit more. From called-off weddings to stalker mother-in-laws, some barely survived their last relationship. 

Luckily for us, they lived to tell the tale. 

My ex bought a new phone and lost all his numbers. Asked me to text him so he can save my number again. As him and I drive home I text him “hey sexy, what’s up?” and he responds “hey can’t talk right now. I’ll text you back in 5.”

I figure he’s f--king with me and forget about it. As soon as we get home he goes to the bathroom. A moment later my phone lights up:

Ex: “So hey. What’s up?” Me: “uhm... not much, you?” Ex: “super horny. Wanna meet up tonight?” Me: “why not right now? Horny too.” Ex: “ok will try to make it ASAP. Cool?” Me: “yeah”

A moment later he comes out of the bathroom for the following conversation:

Ex: “I’m actually just gonna head home I think. Don’t feel too good. Is that ok?”

Me: “uhm ok...”

Ex: “oh but can you text me real quick so I have your number?”

Me: “sure....”

I send him a text while we stand in the same room: “Hi.”

Him: “f--k.”

I forgot what exactly happened afterwards but I vaguely remember removing him forcefully from my apartment...

A real keeper, that one.

— @germanthoughts

After we broke up she called to tell me she was pregnant and needed $600 for an abortion. I did the math and it was impossible I was the father. I told her I wanted to keep the baby and that I'd be happy to take it and she could even terminate her parental rights and not have to pay child support. I would be a single dad. A week later she "miscarried."

— @rubberseatbelt

She asked me to do a triathlon her brother was doing and she was going to watch his son. I have never done one before but she told me she really thought it would be good for me and would be proud of me if I did it. So I did. 

It was a whole weekend camping trip. It rained the whole time.... we got there on Friday, I unpacked set up, cooked, cleaned and did everything the whole trip. Her brother apparently forgot to register so it was just me doing the triathlon then, which was on Sunday. Woke up at 5 a.m., jumped in the coldest water I have ever been in to start but finished it (it was a mini triathlon so like swim half a mile, 13 mile bike ride and a 5k run but still that’s a lot for me). 

Anyway, it ended, I went back to camp. She made me pack everything up, then told me if I could put the tent in the original cardboard box it was in, not just the bag it was in. When I said she was welcome to do it herself, she told me her ex had no issue doing it (mind you I’m exhausted from, you know, the godd--n triathlon and she just watched me pack up everything alone). I put it in the box but ripped it halfway down. Didn’t give a s--t. 

Drove the 3 hours home and she broke up with me on the car ride home because “she just didn’t see any potential in me anymore.” So yea good times.

— @Bobbytom

My ex was jobless and lost his apartment so I let him stay with me temporarily to help him get back on his feet. I was a full-time student, full-time intern, and I was working part time as well. Turns out, he got a job, spent all his free time drinking his paycheck away, and I found cocaine in my apartment. I confronted him, and he finally showed his true colors and became physically abusive (in retrospect, there were plenty of signs and he was pretty psychologically abusive before that). 

I was scared of what he would do, and I had pets also, so I decided to take him on a trip to his hometown. I woke up at 5am, snuck out of the hotel room, [took] his key to my apartment, and left. That day, I moved all of his stuff into a storage unit and blocked his number. 

I heard from one of his ex co-workers that he ended up being arrested a couple months later for a couple felonies (fraud and identity theft). Haven’t heard from that a--hole since and am in the healthiest relationship of my life, thank god. 

— @smitten_mitten

My ex proposed to me publicly, at a bar, in front of all of our friends. He liked the way it went so well that he proposed to me two more times at two different bars (we were bar-hopping — LOL). In our hometown. In front of everyone we know. I said yes. Three times.

So, we set a date and I plan this whole wedding. Buy the dress, set up the hall and the catering. Flowers. Everything. The only jobs he had were to buy/rent tuxedos for himself and his groomsmen and find someone to marry us on the date we had chosen.

It was getting really close to our date and he hadn't done any of the things that he agreed to do. I finally confronted him about it, about a month before this whole event that I had planned, at which time he told me that he was not going to marry me and that he didn't think that I was going to take his proposal(s) so seriously and actually plan a wedding.

Three times. SMH.

I am happily married to someone else now.

— @aubrey_25_99

Literally just happened an hour ago. My boyfriend says he’s going to get a pizza, comes home four hours later and tells me he f--ked another woman. I’ve been helping his raise his son and have gotten very close to his family. 

My parents died when I was young and this is the first family I’ve had. And now I’m losing who I thought I would marry, his family, and have to move out. He never had the normal red flags. Devil in sheep's clothing. It’s pretty hellish.

— @Burritobabyy

I dated this guy for about a year. Despite the fact that he was a fairly good looking guy, he had some major insecurities. He would constantly try to “catch” me in some sort of elaborate lie because he thought I was cheating. He went as far as creating a Tinder account with my name, wrong year of my date of birth. The city was the city he listed as the city he currently lived in and a very obscure picture of me that I wouldn’t (or any other girl for that matter) would use as a profile pic. He said some co-worker found it and he wanted to see if I’d fess up.

He also said that an ex of mine sent him a message on Facebook telling him that we had recently slept together. He wouldn’t say who it was or show me the actual message.

If I let go of his hand while handholding in public, he would accuse me of not wanting to be affectionate because I like some else. Or some other guy might see and I’d lose that opportunity to be with that person.

He also told me I was using him for his money because he took me out for dinner twice and he paid both times even though I offered to split it.

After we broke up, he created an IG account with a picture of him and this woman wearing wedding rings a few months later (they showed them off in the picture). I received this message from his “wife” asking who I was and how I knew him. According to all the posts she was pregnant with his baby and they went on a lot of really great adventures. I still don’t know if the message was from an actual woman, if it was him or if she was just roped into some elaborate scheme to try to keep in contact with me. The “woman” tried to add me on Snapchat and IG and still looks at my stories because my profile is public due to the fact that I use it for work.

Crazy.

— @Therewasroomfortwo

Met my ex in high school. We dated for a while then he moved pretty far away for college and we did long distance for a bit. Wasn’t bad at first — I even visited a few times. Then it became too much and we couldn’t handle the LDR anymore so we cut ties. I kept him on all social media bc things didn’t really end on bad terms, but when I started seeing someone else, he would beg for me to take him back and would write me these long beautiful texts about how much he loved me. Then he would start saying he was suicidal so I obviously was guilted back into the relationship. 

Four months later, I go back and visit, spent $500 of MY money on the entire trip and a week later he breaks up with me. Says he’s not ready for commitment.

Me being petty, I logged into his Instagram and saw that almost immediately after he dumped me he was talking to a girl I suspected he always liked and told her that he hadn’t loved me for a while and he just needed someone there for him because he was lonely. BOY did I rip him a new one over text. I wasn’t even sad. I was PISSED.

— @somethingmysteriouss

Simple but an almost daily event was him having screaming fits about me having male friends and that people of the opposite sex couldn’t be "just friends." This was extended to my gay male friends too. All this while, he was living with two female co-workers. When I would throw his logic back in his face, he would screenshot it and make statuses saying how crazy, insecure and nasty I was. 

Broke it off with him and a year later he proposed to his new gf on my birthday. Made me chuckle knowing he was most likely thinking of me most of that day, thinking he was getting some sort of revenge.

— @ChristIsWatching

I was out with friends and current boyfriend and they pointed out that my ex was in the same bar. Quite unusual since he lived five hours away. I shrug, haven’t talked to him in two years (I kicked him out when I found incriminating texts that he invited a girl over to MY PLACE for sex while I was at work, “she gets home in two hours, get here quickly,” etc.)

Back story: a year after the initial break up, one of his friends and I almost hooked up. I stopped the action when he laughed at me for asking about a condom. He strangled me, I got out, several trips to the hospital for my neck and court cases later, guy is kicked out of the country with aggravated assault charges.

A year after that, at original said bar, a bottle was thrown at me and shattered my elbow. I pressed charges.

Come to find it was the ex's NEW GF who threw the bottle. I’ve never met her and had no idea who she was.

She spent the Fourth of July weekend in jail.

— @FlowerInYourCasket

My very first girlfriend was a couple years older, very pretty, and constantly praised my "kind and sweet spirit". We met in a writing group and I was fresh out of the closet, so I was (understandably, I think) pretty stoked a girl like her was into me.

She got upset with me for not texting her while I was at church, going so far as to tell me that she was real and God wasn't. I wasn't terribly religious and was there so my friend's mom could drop me off after a sleepover, so it wasn't all that effective, but our relationship soured pretty quickly after that, with her becoming quicker and quicker to anger over small things. She broke up with me on my birthday.

Our last contact was when she showed my nudes to a guy she was trying to hook up with and then texted me that he was down for a threesome — a year after she broke up with me.

— @send_me_ur_waifu

This girl I knew asked me out and we seemed to get along quite well so I thought, why not? I knew her mother wasn't a fan of me so we kept it quiet for a while, hoping that maybe her mum would warm up to me. Well her mum found out and s--t hit the fan. I thought maybe my gf would try and calm her down, but boy was I wrong. 

A couple of days after her mum found out, my gf suddenly sided with her mum and they both really started abusing me. I noped out, but then they both started stalking me everywhere I went. I couldn't get away from them. Neither of them drove so they would catch public transport from their side of the city to mine just to abuse me. They would wait at places they knew I frequented. I thought that they may have gotten tired and over it but it kept going for a couple of months. 

Every time I came across them all I got was screaming and shouting absolute bulls--t from the both of them. I finally decided to take action and get a restraining order. They tried a couple of more times but they eventually gave up. I had very little trust in women (and people in general) for a long time after that. It was one of the most traumatic things I have been through.

Oh, and I don't think we were dating for even three whole weeks before her mum found out.

— @Skadoodledoo

He told me when my dad was dying that it this wasn't happening to me — so I shouldn't be upset. He would lie to me about very small things then pretend he never said it. I would put the pieces together eventually that he was gaslighting me. 

A lot of my things got smashed / shredded after we broke up and I left our home. I didn't even know he was aggressive. It started with weird freeze-outs and then he would "reward" me with attention if I behaved how he wanted. "What did you do to deserve a hug today?" 

I haven't seriously dated anyone since. It's been four years.

— @durtpie

Dated a guy my freshman year of college. I was 17, he was 24. Had gotten kicked out of school and readmitted. After we broke up, he used to text me random pictures of myself around campus. House mother didn’t believe he was stalking me, told me I should be flattered by the attention. One night he texted a picture he had taken through our dorm room window. Title IX said it was a “gray area” and that since I was out in public, he could conceivably take pictures of me legally. The dorm photo they said wasn’t clearly my room so didn’t count as evidence. So I stopped leaving my dorm.

After a couple weeks the campus police rolled in for a welfare check, saw everything, reported it to the appropriate officials. Nothing changed, pictures still happened for about 15-16 months after that, then he graduated.

I still sometimes privately flip out because I think I see him in a public place, far away from anywhere he would ever be.

— @tsisdead

Gave away my new pup because I asked him to get her vaccinated. 

— @fairypants

We were driving from L.A. to Vegas where we were going to hang out with her sister and brother-in-law for the weekend. We were over halfway there when she asked me if I had brought the confirmation number for our hotel reservation. (Side note here: In the previous sentence, when I typed "brought the," Gboard suggested "confirmation" and "number.")

Anyway, I thought she was joking so I just laughed. But she asked me again, and I said "No. We don't need it anyway.". OMFG the s--tstorm that followed! "We needed to go back and get it!" "What if they can't find our reservation?" On and on. I gave reasonable answers to all of her concerns. I assured her that I had never needed a confirmation number. Despite this, she is DEMANDING that I turn around and go back. Or if I won't go back, to let her out so she could walk or hitchhike home. I didn't, and she just kept leveling more threats at me. How she was going to say I was abusing her. A lot more, too. When we got there, she sulked in the car while I checked us in with no problem. It would take her until the next day to speak to me again.

Plot twist! The real psycho in this story is me. Not only did I stay with her 15 years after that, I moved halfway across the country for her, and had 4 kids with her... before she packed up and moved to Vegas to be close to a truck driver she had met on the internet. (Her story is that I kicked her out. Not even her sisters believe her, though.)

Anyway, there is a happy ending to this story. After I moved back home, I got custody of my kids, met an amazing woman who has been the best mom my kids could have ever hoped for, and got a good job, and a house. The best revenge is indeed a life lived well.

— @SonOfDadOfSam

I didn't have a cell phone at the time because I was 16. If I wasn't at home he would call all of my friend's phones to try and find me, even if we didn't have plans. I would tell him what time I'd be back and everything. Also if I didn't answer my (parent's) house phone, he would call over and over again. Once 20 times in a row.

— @hahahannah9

I literally have an ex from Hell... Hell, Michigan. 

— @summerfel

Your ex doesn't sound too bad now, right?