Everyone knows someone who has had a “crazy ex” in their life. The narrative is pretty typical – they dated, it ended poorly and the ex acted out in an insane and outrageous fashion. Whenever we hear these stories, however, we hear it from one side of the relationship – and, we know it takes two to make a relationship blow up in someone’s face. My mom always told me there are three sides to every story – yours, mine and the truth. So, we may not get to be a fly on the wall in someone else’s breakup, but at least we can learn the truth behind the real reason people are labeled “the crazy ex.” Reddit has shared with us the very true, very real and raw stories of why they’ve been labeled “the crazy ex” and it will probably change the way you react to anyone’s crazy ex ever again.
1. yesjesshero:
He said:
He told all of his family and friends that I asked for a divorce because he was deploying to Afghanistan and that I was a crazy controlling bitch.
She said:
The real reason we were divorcing was because he was texting girls he met online and telling them he loved them and wanted to be with them. I also found his online dating site on my laptop and when I confronted him about it he said his friends made the profile as a joke. The profile used the same user name and password that he used for everything. The final straw was when I came home from a trip back home to see my family and walked into our bedroom to find another girls clothes. I asked whose they were and why they were there and he said he had gone to the bar with some people from his troop and she was too drunk and had to spend the night. He apparently slept on the couch. I asked what she left the apartment wearing and he gave her my favorite pair of sweatpants to wear home. I never got those back either.
2. itsfoine:
He said:
My roommate had a “crazy ex” who would call him 20 times and leave five voicemails a day. This had been going on for about a week or so and I asked him if he had ever listened to the voicemails or called her back and he said “fuck no she is just being crazy as shit.”
She said:
The following week I talked to her roommate and asked why she was calling him so much. It was because he had taken her virginity and she wanted it back.
Well besides that, the actual reason was that the night they broke up he apparently went to her house, took a bat, and smashed all her windows and slashed all her tires. Never knew my roommate was broken up so hard by it nor had the anger to go and actually act on
3. ambivalent_graffiti:
He said:
He tells everyone that I was a nutjob, I was clingy, I wasn’t adventurous in bed, and that I had the audacity to just move out without telling him and make him pay all the rent.
She said:
He is extraordinarily manipulative though. When we started dating he would ask me to come over every night, never wanting to not have me around. Within 2 months of dating, he asked me to move in with him. Naturally, I thought this meant that he was really serious about me, and since I didn’t really know what love was, I assumed I was in love with him.
So we moved in together and his true side came out. He would assault me on a regular basis- like he hit me a lot and he would rape me. I didn’t think it was rape then because I loved him, but he was violently and aggressively raping me. I told him that I didn’t like it when he did that and he said it was his fetish and he wouldn’t want to have sex with me otherwise. I was essentially always crying and covered in bruises.
He told me every single day that I was worthless and no one would ever love me, and I 100% believed him. He would cheat on me at our home, loudly, and then tell me it was because I wasn’t attractive enough for him. I would have random breakdowns at work, couldn’t handle social interactions, dropped out of school, and eventually tried to kill myself. I tried to cut my wrists in the bathtub, but our plumbing was always fucked and I couldn’t get a full tub of hot water – it was probably less than tepid- so I didn’t bleed out fast enough. When he came home I was unconscious but not dead, he pulled me out, slapped me awake, and told me that I was so useless I couldn’t even do that right and jsut left the house.
I don’t know why, but that hit some kind of a switch in my brain and I called a good friend of mine (who I hadn’t spoken to in months because my ex had made it impossible for me to socialize) and told him to come get me. When he showed up and saw me, he started packing all of my stuff into his car and moved me out of the apartment that night. I have never spoken to my ex again.
4. imhereforthemeta:
He said:
I was toted as a “crazy ex” once. He said I was too attached, whiny, all of that shit.
She said:
I’ve never been that way really, but he would be really distant with me and then get drunk or something and cry and tell me how much he loved me, so I was constantly getting sent mixed signals and it was honestly driving me crazy. He would also hang out with his really attractive ex a lot, who dumped him, who (as far as I know) he never really got over. But I was “fine with it” because if he was super vulnerable, it would be all “I love you, you mean so much to me”. Also the dude who took my virginity, so that was super weird. He just generally brought out a lot insecurity in me that manifested in some crappy and pathetic ways.
Turns out he was cheating on me with his ex, random girls, and one of my best friends. So yeah, I was whiny, needy, had frequent emotional outbursts…even after finding out a lot of that shit I still begged him to take me back for like, a week. Luckily, this experience taught me a lot about self respect.
I am now pretty skeptical when guys say they have a “crazy ex” unless she’s really done something crazy. Some people can really be awful, but I also see many cases of people really being driven crazy temporarily by getting manipulated.
5. AlwaysDisposable:
He said:
I’m pretty sure my ex husband’s family still thinks I am a completely insane drama queen who was just with their son ‘for his money’ and was sleeping with the whole town.
She said:
Basically it was an abusive marriage and he tried to make himself the victim by telling everyone he ‘only slept around’ because I was doing it all the time (I wasn’t) and we ‘never had money’ because I ‘spent it all on bullshit like my own vacations’ (What?! What little money we had I always felt real weird spending because I hadn’t earned it myself. I paid bills. He went out buying tattoos, going out to eat, strip clubs, video games, etc. I did legit go on a vacation once but with my own money. He bought a house then abandoned it when we split up. He told everyone I convinced him to buy the house. We were living out of state and I wanted to move back home. Why would I want to buy a house somewhere I didn’t want to live for much longer?) I was apparently so incredibly strict and awful because I didn’t want him drinking so much (bet he never told anyone how he came home drunk and tried to suffocate me with a pillow, or that he wrecked his car because he was driving drunk) or going to strip clubs (he went to ones with ‘private rooms’).
I just accepted it and never tried to stick up for myself after we got divorced. His family can think whatever they want about me and about their son. They’re delusional. I mean, like three years after we split he got busted by the cops for buying cocaine and hookers. He’s on wife #3 and he’s 31. So whatever, I’ll be the crazy problematic one lol It’s fine.