Because you’d be surprised to see how many of us wait years to make that final call! Here, take a look:  

1. “I had a chapter for a book due to an editor. I was 1-month postpartum and was supposed to have Sunday to write it. He had worked Monday through Saturday and was supposed to be off Sunday to take the baby. He would be working again Monday, and I was leaving town for a wedding on Thursday, so it was my last chance to get the chapter done for weeks. Sunday after church he starts getting ready to leave. I ask what he’s doing and remind him I need to finish my chapter. He says he has to go in to work ‘for an hour’ and he’ll be right back. He was gone the rest of the day. The baby was awake and fussing the entire time. I got nothing done. When he got home, his lame excuse? ‘I started making calls at the office and lost track of time.’ He later admitted he did not lose track of time, he just didn’t think me having time to myself was that important. I believe he was with another woman. When I left for the wedding on Thursday, I left behind a letter asking for a divorce.”

– Ms_Rarity

2. “When he threatened to throw our 3 month (was born 2.5 months early) twins into the wall because ‘he didn’t sign up for this.'”

– Marma85

3. “I ate a cookie. He is vegan, I’m not. He said he didn’t care what other people chose to do, but for him it was important. I respected that, I tried some vegan food, I didn’t hate it, in fact I liked most of it. Whenever we went out it was a vegan friendly place. Fast forward 6 weeks into us dating. He comes over, my sister/roommate is making cookies, using Nestle pre-made cookie dough. The kind you just put in the oven. He comes in, the 3 of us are talking and I take a cookie off the baking sheet and eat it. He explodes talking about how dare I eat that in front of him and animal cruelty, etc. I was shook, my sister was shook, and I just kept eating the cookie. Apparently, this was the last straw for him because he broke things off right there. He left and my sister and I just kept eating the cookies.”

– Philosophical_S

4. “When a friend sent me a link to an ad my then-boyfriend had put on the internet, advertising us a couple looking for another couple or man to join us in bed. I did not have any prior knowledge of this ad, nor did he have permission to include a photo of me in the ad.”

– rubythebean

5. “He gave me the silent treatment for two months straight. Didn’t break up with me. Just stopped answering my texts after I did something minuscule he didn’t like. It was during the lockdown. Should have left him years before, but that finally gave me the strength to leave him. I realized I could live without him, even though that was a miserable lesson.”

– comingupghosts

6. “When he became suspicious I might be trying to leave him (I was). But I was making nice until I sorted things out, so he wouldn’t be suspicious. I think he may have found an apartment guide in my work bag. So one night, he took the condom off during sex, or faked putting it on in the first place, not sure. We were using condoms because there was a ‘gap’. When it became obvious immediately post-sex what he’d done, he stood at the end of the bed and laughed, ‘Now you can’t leave, stupid b*tch.’ Abortion. Divorce. Never spoke to him again. That was in 1994.”

– Sheila_Monarch

7. “My ex wouldn’t cook. And if I didn’t cook, he wouldn’t eat. He would just starve like some helpless baby bird waiting for its mother to feed it. I went weeks of no cooking to press him to finally feed himself. When we finally ran out of snacks to graze (because – shocker – I also bought all the groceries) he finally got around to cooking. He made soup and a panini – and only made it for himself. It didn’t even occur to him to cook for both of us as I had done for seven years. Just a clueless, helpless person who couldn’t see past his own wants and needs.”

– sandyeggo89

8. “I complained about something he kept doing, and even though he said he understood how I felt, that he would do better, he literally never did. I ended up telling him it would be best that we break up. I offered friendship because we were friends before we started dating and he kept pressing for another way for us to fix the relationship. I explained that I have already cried about the problems, and they never get fixed. He switched up on me when he realized that I had already made up my mind and blamed the relationship’s downfall on my illness (I was really sick at the time), which basically made me very aware of how this dude doesn’t actually care about me and my well-being. I stood up and left mid conversation, never spoke to him again.”

– Kayzavar

9. “I had so many reasons to leave him but he was the one who left me in the end. He would ignore me for hours to play video games. I have nothing against video games but he was so addicted that he would sit in college classes playing and then he started failing classes. I helped him study as much as possible. On our first anniversary, he messaged (we were both in different towns that night) saying ‘Happy anniversary. I’m going to play now. Bye! Goodnight.’ 

I had been waiting the whole day for him to talk when he was busy playing. Even when I was really upset and trying to vent to him, he would reply every 20 mins (between games). He even made comments about my body, said that my breasts were small or my toes were ugly and I played it off as him just being honest. My self confidence was so low at that point because I cared about his opinion a lot. He would put only minimal effort when I would spend months planning surprises for him. My friends weren’t fond of him, that should have been a sign. I didn’t like the person I was when I was with him. I was miserable and insecure. I can’t say that he was the one entirely responsible for that but a lot of it was a reaction to his behaviour. After we moved away and had to do long distance for a while, he stopped talking to me and was being very distant. And then he just ended it and he said ‘It feels like I’m finally free.’ It hurt so much to hear that after 4 and half years of being together, after putting so much effort and time into the relationship.”

– Dull_Skin_4474

10. “The last straw was when he went into another angry rage, but this time he trashed the whole house, while I was crying and begging him to stop. He continued trashing our home, I packed my bags and left in the middle of the night. Broke up with him the next day when I realized there had been a progressive trend of him smashing things, from smaller to larger objects, and I knew I would be next.”

– No-Jellyfish6389

11. “I realized he thought he didn’t have to put in any effort anymore. Kind of that ‘Well I’ve got her, so I can stop trying,’ mentality. When I met him he could have me in tears laughing, and he was a lot nicer. As soon as we started dating, most of it came to a screeching halt. He wouldn’t even go on a date with me (I tried initiating dates, suggesting different ideas and places to go, and offering to pay) but he was only interested in hanging out in his mom’s basement (no, we were not teenagers, we had vehicles at our disposal and jobs to pay for dates). I stopped initiating our conversations, and there was radio silence for 2 weeks, despite the fact we lived on the same street. I met up with him to ask him how he felt about that and he just shrugged. I broke up with him that day, because I’ve had better conversations with a rock. This was on top of the fact I found out he was in debt up to his eyeballs because of a gambling problem he didn’t tell me about.”

– a-ghost-girl-2

12. “In my last relationship, it was the lack of consistency or feeling like I wasn’t worth committing to. What started out as a beautiful relationship turned into a constant on-and-off-again status and poor communication and tons of ‘What did I do to deserve this’ vibes. So the last time he disappeared, I just let him go. Unfortunately, you can’t make someone fix something just because you want them to.”

– GrandSaltQueen

13. “He had been abusive to me for over a year, during which I was pregnant with our third baby. He had never done it front of the kids but it was getting worse. One Sunday morning he demanded the keys to my car and I refused because he had lost his license and had been drinking. He told my oldest (3 at the time) that he would take her to get ice-cream. I refused to give him my keys again and was aware he was using my daughter against me. He turned to her and said, ‘Well looks like we can’t get ice-cream after all because your mother is a fucking bitch.’ After all the abuse he had directed at me, it paled in comparison to him speaking to my baby girl that way and using her against me. I told her that Daddy was in time-out for being very rude and I would take her and her sisters for ice-cream instead. While my toddlers sat in the sun eating ice-cream, I sat on the grass, breastfed my newborn and texted him to pack his shit and GTFO of my house. I will never forget that day.”

– Scroll_Queeen

It’s usually years and years of abuse before a person cracks and decides to leave a relationship. But I wish we were taught to leave the first time we see signs of a person being abusive, not the 100th or the 1000th.