Reddit user heyjalapeno asked the community, "Couples who broke up because of a third person that did not involve cheating, what happened?"
Well, folks revealed that it truly doesn't take cheating on someone to end a good relationship. It can be an outsider intruding on a good thing, which personally makes my blood BOIL.
So, here are some partnerships that were destroyed by an unwelcoming third party:
1. "My dad’s girlfriend has broken up my fiancé and I twice. We used to live/work with them on and off while we were both in school. The first time we broke things off, she tried to convince my fiancé that I was some deadbeat asshole. I admit my priorities weren’t where they should've been (I was working two jobs, including one with them, and was a full-time student). After breaking things off, my fiancé and I talked about what happened, and decided we just needed a step back to reflect. We did well for a few years, but then my dad’s girlfriend convinced my fiancé that she was bipolar (possibly schizophrenic)."
"She'd go to my fiancé's doctors' appointments with her, and they prescribed her with an ever-changing cocktail of meds. It turns out it’s hard to find the right balance of meds when you’re treating a mental illness you don’t have.
My dad’s girlfriend also convinced my fiancé she could never be a mother and should get a hysterectomy (luckily the doctors refused). When the idea was discussed with me, I was confused because my fiancé always wanted kids (but my dad's girlfriend made it clear I didn’t have a say). We felt stuck.
This all culminated in my fiancé having a mental breakdown (understandably so) and asked to be brought to a mental health facility. While there, my dad's girlfriend decided that my fiancé had 'abandoned us,' and that I needed to break up with her. Emotions were high, and I knew I couldn’t let my fiancé come back, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get her out, so I reluctantly broke things off.
Narcissism is a hell of a thing."
2. "I was dating a divorced single mom, and her ex-husband was petty as all hell. Any time we had something special planned, he would decide that was the perfect time to drum up drama, discuss amending their coparenting agreement, and so on. She was a good mom, but had no boundaries where her ex was concerned. After several months, I realized that our relationship was third in line behind her kids and her ex. Kids coming first is fine, but that wasn't for me — so I kindly broke it off. We never spoke again, so I do not know if she ever enacted reasonable boundaries (or if he is still sabotaging her to this day)."
3. "My ex-boyfriend and I broke up because of his ex-wife. They were separated, moving towards divorce, when he and I met. She ran off with his best friend, so there was no chance of a reconciliation. But over the almost year and a half that he and I dated, he was never able to set boundaries with her or hold her accountable. She financially ruined him, opening cards in his name to fund her affair, but he wouldn’t report fraud. She stopped paying on her car, which was in his name, and when the license plates and tags showed up in the mail, he just handed them over to her. She took his dog in the separation, but any time she wanted to dip out of town, she would leave the dog with him for free pet sitting, regardless of his availability to accommodate. So on and so forth."
"And we fought about it all the time — I was picking up the tab during travel and dining out, and he was letting her walk all over him. But he thought if he played nice, he could protect his pension from her.
She would've only been entitled to 50% of two and a half years of retirement, which is a drop in the bucket over a 30-year career. He did all of this to protect a small fraction of his pension.
Because of this experience, I no longer date separated or newly divorced men."
4. "I’m a nurse. My ex’s grandfather made some sickening comments about me giving him a sponge bath and how I should wear the 'little nurse’s outfit.' I told my ex and his father about how he made me really uncomfortable, and they laughed, saying, 'That’s just how he is!' For Thanksgiving, he patted me on the butt, calling me his 'naughty little nurse.' I hope he rots."
5. "A family friend and his wife split up over her mother’s psychic. Her mother went to a psychic all the time and basically trusted her with every life decision, so the daughter trusted her too. At one stage, after the daughter and her husband were happily married for eight years and had two sons, the psychic told her mother that one of her children was being cheated on. The mother was convinced it was this daughter’s husband. The daughter confronted him and he told her it was nonsense, but she wouldn’t let it go. She started following him to work, checking his phone and email, and even went to his best friend’s home begging him to tell her about the affair. After a few months of this, he told her she needed therapy or he was leaving. She refused, so he left. He met someone else a few years later and they married and are very happy."
"In a random twist, during the COVID lockdown, it emerged that the husband's brother was having a 15-year affair with his neighbor.
I do wonder sometimes if the psychic was right about the affair, but wrong about which child. Anyway, it ruined a perfectly good marriage."
6. "I was in a long-distance relationship with the eldest son of a family from the South of Italy for three years. I am not Italian. (Italians reading this probably already know where this is going.) We met in Milan when I was there for work and he was visiting friends. We would try to meet once a month in my country and different cities in Italy. After some time, he invited me to meet his family, and we started to stay at his family's house. To say his mother wasn't a fan is an understatement (I loved his dad, though — great man). I didn't really speak Italian — I took lessons, but their accent made it hard to follow. She would occasionally burst into our room, screaming her head off at me in Italian (I was a deer in headlights), hide or take my stuff, and just make things difficult. Knowing that we would have to take her in later in life (him being the eldest son and traditions being what they are) made it easier for me when it ended."
7. "My ex's mom hated me. I'd just turned 18 and never had a relationship before. He was my first everything. I shyly told his mom that he was my first boyfriend when I met her over dinner three months into our relationship. I had a cut on my lip that night because it was winter, and my lips had gotten dry. She pulled my ex aside to ask if we were using protection because she assumed it was a herpes sore."
"Another time at dinner, we had chips and salsa. I dipped a chip, took a bite off it, and then gestured with the chip while I spoke. She interrupted me to say, 'Don't you dare double-dip that chip' out of nowhere.
She and her husband owned a $1 million home in the rich neighborhood of a major city. My parents made $20,000 a year combined. She didn't think much of my prospects, clearly.
But the joke's on her. My ex is now 40 and still works as a waiter, and I make six figures."
8. "My goddaughter, who I cared for since she was one and who is like my own child. Her family situation is a bit difficult, so things are not always very reliable or planable. My ex was mostly annoyed by this and we had endless discussions, but it's just not in my hand to change my goddaughter's family situation, nor was it an option for me to care less for her. Eventually I broke up with her because of all the arguments, I'm still sorry for it because apart from that we got along great. I still don't understand why this was such a huge deal to him. I see my goddaughter maybe twice a week, so it's not that I'm away because of her all the time. For context, we're both in our late forties, and I still don't get why we hadn't been able to handle this better. Some things don't get easier with age."
9. "I was in a relationship about two years ago — my ex was in a cult. They had a methodology of putting the young members in touch with older women who would act as mother figures. They'd try to tell them good from bad, and how to practice it. My ex was brainwashed so bad by this group that all aspects of his life were being affected, and he was oblivious to it. I tried raising my concerns against this 'woman,' and he got so fucking defensive that she was like a mother to him. We broke up after that for a variety of reasons, but him being spineless was the majority of it. Later when I shared the entire story of this with my friend, she sent me a link about the cult."
"I basically realized that this was modus operandi of the cult members to try and break the relationships of people in the cult. They'd do this so they could push cult members to form families and thus 'grow.'
There was even a specific special term for kids born in the cult to two practicing members. Dodged that bullet big time, and I thank GOD every day for it!"
10. "The girl best friend acted more like a toxic mother-in-law than a friend of a grown man. I only met her briefly once, so she had no reason to dislike me. But she threw a fit when he gave me a key (a big romantic moment for us), and she planted doubt in his head that he was moving too fast. We got pregnant, and she told him I wasn’t actually pregnant, and it wasn’t his baby if I was. She also planted doubt and made him extremely distant for the first three months of our first pregnancy. Later, we were dealing with postpartum during our third child, and she convinced him I was controlling and ruined all of his friendships. All of his friendships were ruined by three infants/toddlers??? I didn’t care if he hung out with friends. She never came to visit, never brought gifts for the kids, never tried to know me, but she had weird overly affectionate pet names for my kids because she 'loved anything that was part of him.'"
"Anyway, she eventually convinced him to leave me, and he says stuff like, 'I can’t just choose my loyalty between my friend of several decades and you.'
I had never urged him to choose — she did. Also, she never wanted to date him, never attempted anything — very strange."
11. "His grandma was racist and just a hateful woman. He wouldn’t consider a life where he didn’t live with her. Turns out she bankrolled his whole life, and he spent her money while telling me it was his. I asked him to consider moving in with me, and he said any future we have together is going to be us living with her. Nope."
12. "At a party, I asked a couple, 'How's it going living together?' The guy responded, 'Fine — it's not my first time living with someone, so we're doing great.' However, when he said that, the girl gave him a death stare. They had a fight and left the party. The next day, the girl came to the party venue and told us that she had broken up with him. She revealed that the guy had a son with another girl, but he had lied to her, claiming he didn't live with the child's mother."
"Additionally, someone made a joke that I live alone with my cats, and the girl (whom I just met at the party) asked if she could live with me sometime. I promptly said no."
13. "My ex and I met online, and her mom in particular didn't trust me whatsoever because of her meeting me online. This was after we had already met and hung out a number of times. Her dad was cool with me and would talk with me all the time, but her mom wouldn't let me inside ever. One night my ex and her dad convinced her mom to let me come over for dinner. Her mom would not let me out of her sight for even a second, and kept asking me questions almost like she was trying to catch me in a lie or something. Her dad offered me to sleep on the couch, but her mom refused and made me sleep out in the back. Never went back there even when her dad invited me back."
14. "This was back in 2016 when I still had a leftover private Twitter account from high school. Someone I didn’t recognize followed me, and I accepted. A couple of weeks later, some new and random Instagram account messaged my boyfriend screenshots from my private Twitter. Nothing out of the ordinary — just venting about young relationship stuff. But, the ONLY person that the account was following was his roommate. Roomie tried to create a wedge, and maybe it did influence my ex, 'cause he dumped me a month or two later. But it was interesting that my ex wasn’t convinced it was the roommate. The roommate wasn’t popular on Insta or anything, so to me, there was no other person it could be. Plus, the roomie hated me! But joke's on them because that breakup was the best thing to ever happen to me 😏."
15. "My soon-to-be ex-husband wouldn't stop accusing me of cheating on him with my best friend. We are both female and have never done anything to cause him to think that. He seems to think I'm divorcing him because he was right and I must have cheated. Absolutely delusional."
16. "He was a regular at her bar, would help her out when it got busy, and sat and chatted constantly. He would be 'buddy-buddy' when I was there to help out or visit, and have a beer when it was slow. But, as soon as I left, he would badmouth me. When you hear it every day, constantly, you start to believe it. Long story short, the relationship ended, he was the 'good guy' and I wasn't. She 'gave him a chance' but found out he was a slug, and apologized to me profusely for everything. She reached out and tried to clear my name to those mutuals she badmouthed me to, and moved closer to her parents to 'restart.' The guy ended up marrying one of his friend's girlfriends."
17. "I dated a guy for three years who, despite graduating first in his class, double bachelor's in Business and Accounting from a private college, and holding down a full-time job, lived on a farm with his parents and younger brother. He was 42 when we met. I was an idiot in love with a guy who put me near the top of his priorities, right beneath god, his specific Catholic church, his mom, his dad, his brother, and the farm. Unless, of course, he wanted to mess around, then most of that was abandoned..."
18. "Her nine-year-old son was a brat and would bully other kids. We went to a birthday party, and he punched another kid — I got mad at him and made him sit with me for the rest of the party. Well, his mom lost her shit and told me I wasn't allowed to discipline her son because I wasn't his father. I broke up with her right there, and I'm glad I did — her kid ended up in juvie for stabbing someone."
19. "My ex and I recently broke up because I had a problem with her texting a friend from work from morning to night. She would text him all the time and I said it made me uncomfortable and we would get into huge fights over it. I explained to her that I wanted to work on our texting and connecting months prior. She choose to do it with somebody from work. So, three years down the drain because of a friend from work."
20. "A toxic friend who openly prided herself on ruining 'relationships that shouldn't work out'. Really, she just took my ex-fiancé out and spewed toxic nonsense in her ear about how I'm 'not doing enough for her' and she 'should look elsewhere.'"
21. "I had a boyfriend who was extremely insecure. His bros kept telling him he could do better than me because I was not 'conventionally attractive.' He dropped me because of their advice. I guess he found out he was not the 'chick magnet' he thought he was. He begged me to take him back, but I said I didn't want anyone who was so easily led and flakey (this was a 35-year-old man)."
22. "My 30-year-old partner of eight years joined a band with some 20-year-olds. They convinced him that they will never get 'big' if they have long-term partners holding them back. Twenty years later, they're still not big, and he never made it as a musician."
23. "Single coworkers ruined us. We married young and had two kids by the time we were 23. I was working 55–60 hours a week, and her only friends were her four coworkers who were single and in their early twenties. A once-a-week girls night out became two nights, then happy hours added, then a girls weekend. It became a toxic pattern. She stopped talking to her parents who saw it developing as well. She left when our kids were four and six years old, packed her stuff, and moved in with one of her coworkers. Once the kids got into high school, she suddenly wanted to be involved with them."
24. "Her roommate was jealous that my girlfriend was in a relationship and she wasn't. She undermined everything for months until they were away together for a couple days. As soon as my girlfriend was back in town, she called me to end it. Everything she said in the breakup didn't make sense because it was all from the perspective of the roommate."
25. "This was my girlfriend back when I was a teenager. She would constantly talk about her best friend and how great he was. She was genuinely in love with him, but wouldn't admit it. So I asked him what he thought about her, and he was also in love with my girlfriend. So, I went to my girlfriend the next day and broke up, and had a little fight over it. I told her all about how I knew she was in love with her best friend, but was too afraid to ask him out because she feared he didn't reciprocate and didn't want to ruin the friendship. Then I told her that he was also in love with her and feared the same thing. That was 15 years ago, and I know they're still together. I'm happy for them."
26. And finally, "Not just a third person, but a whole friend group. They knew everything about me (even though I didn't share much about myself). If my partner and I had an argument, they knew. If I was out with friends? They knew. I was on my period? They knew. I had a bad day at work? They knew. Sex life, or lack of (we had only dated a few weeks) — they knew. They would start showing up at my usual hangouts to 'keep an eye on things' because they didn't like that my friend group was co-ed. I would be downtown and happen to 'run into them.' I would be at work and see them walking by multiple times a day. I understand sharing things with your friends, but there's a line. When your friends are just as involved in the relationship as your S.O., it causes issues fast. Take a clingy boyfriend, multiply that by six, and it's terrifying."
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.