According to a report from the Pew Research Center:
"After decades of declining marriage rates and changes in family structure, the share of American adults who have never been married hit an historic high."
"In 1960, only about one-in-ten adults (9%) had never been married."
The United States Census Bureau reported in 2022, almost 35% of American adults had never been married.
While some people had never intended to marry, others found their initial plans of marriage changed.
Reddit user Caulorblind asked:
"What was the reason you didn’t marry the person you thought you were going to?"
Too Real Became Too Late
"We had been together for a short while when 'things got too real' and he broke it off. Flash forward 6 years and I go on a blind date only to find out it’s him."
"That night started a series of very long conversations where we cleared the air and all the skeletons were taken out of the closet. And we decided to give it a go again."
"After being together for a few months, he popped the question. I said yes and we started making plans."
"About a week later I received a call from his sister. He had died. He was a long haul trucker and had developed phlebitis—blood clots in his legs."
"One of the clots broke loose and caused a massive heart attack."
"Thankfully it was in his sleep so he didn’t suffer. I think about him every day and miss him terribly."
~ nhblkbear
Poly Meets Mono
"He wanted an open marriage—we were engaged. I am monogamous, and he knew how I felt about anything open."
"Then I found out he was in a relationship with a coworker. On top of that, I found out that If I did marry him, I would be wife number five!"
"He only told me about his first marriage and said that was it. His daughter told me everything."
"His other exes divorced him because he just didn't understand that being married and having a chick on the side wasn't an option."
"Just threw the whole dude away."
~ Sunnyandbright007
Secret Spouse
"He ended up having a wife I did not know about."
~ Good-Temperature-262
Infidelity At Work
"She was openly celebrating how her suggestions at work were well received, and she moved up the company ladder twice in a span of a couple of months. Then I discovered she was in a sexual relationship with the head of the division and ended it."
"Apparently she was actively gunning to go past being just a sexual partner. She even managed to break up his engagement and move in with him."
"But they ended up breaking up soon after as it seems she projected quite a different air about herself at work than who she was in private."
~ DespairTraveler
Addiction
"My ex fiance was an alcoholic and it changed her entire personality. She wouldn't open up about it, would lie about drinking all the time, and chose drinking over our relationship."
"We were together for over a decade. I was on my knees crying begging for her to get help but she just ignored me because she was trying to sleep because she was drunk."
"She started neglecting me and our relationship even more until I couldn't stand to be with her. We were engaged, but I was scared to break up with her as we had a nice condo and two dogs together as well as possessions."
"She ended up breaking up with me and TAKING both dogs. Saying I could visit them. Yeah, nope. Never got to visit them. Still haven't and it's been over two years."
"I'm in a really good relationship now with an amazing woman and looking forward to the future. Losing my dogs and selling the condo really sucked, though."
"And losing a person to alcohol. They eventually got help, she gave me thee worst half-a**ed apology I've ever heard. That's all I ever got."
~ Loukoal117
Those Apps...
"My friend found her on Tinder. No, my friend didn’t match with her, just sent me the screenshot.
"I installed Tinder and found her profile to double-check. Her profile picture was a picture that I took after we got engaged, so it wasn’t her old profile."
"On the upside, I kept the Tinder profile that I created to find her profile and eventually ended up meeting my future wife there, so there’s that."
"The way I approached Tinder ex about the whole thing was creating a profile with my real name and photos and leaving a 'super like' or whatever it’s called now so that if it was her she’d definitely see it."
"She did and she messaged me about it, apologizing and trying to explain herself. So no, it wasn’t a catfish, my ex just didn’t think I’d find out because I never used Tinder before."
~ ApatheticWonderer
Don't Know Shat You Got Until It's Gone
"Because I was an idiot and didn't appreciate what I had."
~ LainieCat
"Same. I broke up with the most interesting, funny, loving, selfless girl ever because I wanted to screw around."
"I didn't know what I had and thought there'd be other girls like her."
"Haven't been in love since."
~ NoOpinionsAllowedOnR
LDR Led To...
"I tried a long distance relationship in college."
"We were only an hour away from each other."
"Turned out she also likes girls, especially her roommate."
~ Caulorblind
Dear John,
"I joined the military after 3 years of a perfect relationship. After 2 months away from home, she cheated on me while I was working my a** off so I could get home ASAP."
"I'll never forget how miserable I felt being away from home and knowing that the most important person in my life did that."
~ Chance_Dress_9790
🎵 Not Sayin' She's A Gold Digger...🎶
"We were decent together and it seemed like the next logical step. I bought a ring and we flew to California for her to meet my parents. I was going to propose to her."
"She knew my parents had money—but not to what extent—even though I didn’t have money. I was having a hard time making the mortgage on my 75k house's utilities and basic upkeep."
"We spent a week living outside anything we could ever afford. Borrowed my parent’s cars, spent time at their house in Lake Tahoe, nice dinners."
"Before I actually proposed, she started talking about my trust—which never existed—how much they’d give us for a wedding gift, how much I’d be making when I took over my dad’s business—never going to happen, never even worked for him. I decided to wait on proposing."
"Within 2 months of us getting back home, she traded in her car for an SUV she couldn’t afford, bought silly items she couldn’t afford, stopped paying her portion of household bills. She was a completely different person."
"Even when we talked about it, she said she could see that my current lifestyle was just to make sure she wasn’t with me for the money. I could never convince her otherwise and we broke up a few months after our visit to California."
"I’m married to a woman now who I’m obsessed with. We have a strong and loving marriage. We’ve supported each other through our career growth and are doing OK financially."
"I never dreamt I could be this happy. Luckily for me, everything worked out great."
~ srcorvettez06
Familiarity Breeds Contempt
"COVID lockdown. Just being at home, stuck together, stressed about bills and life."
"The things we used to love about one another, we quickly grew to hate."
"We went through the most toxic breakup I’ve ever been through in my life, 10 months of manipulation on both our parts."
"We had one last dinner together, a nice Italian place. We people watched a little, watched an awkward couple on their first date. Laughed some. Went back to her place and played Scattergories.
"But we were both emotionally drained, trying to make something work. I could sense the emotional fatigue in her and she knew i was there too."
"That was the last time I saw her. We ended up mutually blocking each other on everything you could think of. We didn’t talk for about two years."
"But dammit, I still thought of her everyday and still loved her, even if she was bad for me. I liked to believe she was the one, at one point."
"She passed away last year. That was a tough phone call I got."
"From my understanding, it was a diabetes related issue. We’re both type 1 diabetics—that’s how we met."
Mr. Right Now
"We were discussing former partners and somehow she got to the point where she told me she didn't expect me to be her last partner. And not in the sense of 'after you die, I'll go on with my life'."
"She sincerely didn't expect us to stay together forever. Now I can respect some realism in a relationship, but I decided right there and then that we weren't going to make it."
"We broke up that same week."
~ notyourvader
All Me
"She's a nice girl and I was a sh*tty boyfriend."
"Didn't cheat on her or anything. I wasn't where I wanted to be in life and wasn't pleasant to be around."
"As a result, not much effort was spent on nurturing the relationship."
~ betboi
She's Just Not That Into You
"Oh man. We'll call her 'A'."
"In the early days 'A' was such a delight. I knew it was her when I started to have actual dreams about what our children would look like, which was something I've never experienced before or since."
"For a long, long time, I was blind to all others but her."
"'A' did not feel the same."
"The emotional distance that she kept between us eventually came to a head when my mom had a severe stroke. It nearly killed my mom, took months for her to recover to a minimal level, and simply stripped away much of who she was."
"Far from offering support and encouragement during what was, at the time, the worst point in my life—not to mention my mom's—I began to realize that 'A' seemed to view the whole thing as an inconvenience."
"The realization that my life, and my family, didn't really matter to 'A' at all broke me in ways that I'm still recovering from. Before this revelation, I saw what I wanted to, of course."
"In hindsight 'A's relationships were always about projecting an outward appearance of high-value normality in order to boost her own fragile ego, and little more. My mom's stroke—and my resulting mental state—were not relevant to her because neither added value to her."
"To this day I'm not sure if she's really capable of treating people as anything more than set props."
~ Stardrive_1
Marriage License? We Don't Need No Stinking Marriage License
"We had been together for 3 years when I proposed. We held a big engagement party at my parents' place in the country, and invited both of our families."
"Not only did our families not really get along, we didn’t even get along with our own families."
"We had a long talk about dropping 5 figures on a glorified party for people we don’t like. That led to a conversation about whether we really believed in marriage."
"Together, we privately called off our engagement at that party—but we didn’t tell people for months."
"This year will mark 19 happily unmarried years we’ve been together."
"In Canada, you get many benefits from a common law partnership."
"You can also register as a domestic partnership at any Service Canada centre, which we’ve done. Only took a few minutes."
~ The_Town_of_Canada
I'm one of those never married folks.
I didn't swear off marriage, but I turned down four proposals for varying reasons. Mostly compatibility and the reasons they had for wanting to marry me.
I knew I definitely didn't want children, so finding a husband I was compatible with never became a priority.
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