15 Emotional Breakup Stories That Will Hit You Right in the Feels

Breakups are never simple, but some cut so deep that their impact lingers long after the relationship is over. 15 individuals opened up about their most gut-wrenching breakup stories—experiences that broke their hearts and altered their lives forever. Prepare to feel the pain and heartbreak and perhaps even find a touch of healing in their words.

• “I know someone who wanted to marry a guy and gave him an ultimatum. He countered, ’On New Year’s Eve I’ll flip a coin, heads we marry, tails we break up.’ Fast forward to NYE... he just breaks up with her, no coin toss.” Fait_Divers / Reddit
• “Came back from a girls’ weekend with my sister and cousin to find the entire apartment empty. Everything was gone including most of my stuff. No note, no phone call, nothing. This was 8 months after getting married; turned out he wanted a divorce.” tashke / Reddit
• “Aunt and uncle go through fertility treatment for years. Aunt finally gets pregnant and has the baby. My uncle brings them home from the hospital to my grandparents’ house. Says ’Well I don’t want to hang around and get attached to this new baby, Bye.’ and leaves them both on the front porch. Aunt is dumbfounded. Apparently, my uncle had 3 young daughters in another state with another woman.” jdoe74 / Reddit

• “He proposed the night before he left on a 3-month work trip. Called me 2 days later from an airport to tell me he changed his mind about getting married, was extending his work contract to 7 months, and he’d never be returning to where we lived. He sent his parents to pick up all his things a week later.” SpiritualCoconut8 / Reddit
• “I was in college, and she had been my girlfriend for about 4 or 5 years. I was ’taking too long’ to get out of college. She wanted me to drop out and start making babies. Right now. And I wouldn’t do it. I insisted on graduation first.
  We went to a party after the fight. She started it up again at the party. I told her no.
  She said, ’Well, what about that guy over there?’ and pointed at the guitar player in the band. ’I’ll bet he’s ready to start a family.’ She walked over, introduced herself, married him a few months later, and had a lot of babies.” BoredBSEE / Reddit
• “I was dating this guy in high school and he dyed his hair cheetah print. Something about that dye job changed him. Not over time, instantly. He went from being a normal guy to ’I am too alternative for words’ and I wanted no part of it. At lunch, I had to sit him down and have a talk with him about it. I told him that he was kind of acting like a tool, and maybe he was letting this new look get to his head.
  He took my hand and said I needed to accept him for the new person he was, which I guess was a cheetah or something, so I told him I had to set him free. He looked at me with these knowing eyes, and that ended the most awkward 4-day relationship I have ever had.” Unknown author / Reddit

• “Didn’t happen to me but a girl I dated: she dated a dude for 5–7 years, can’t remember. She put her dude through a PhD program, paid all bills, etc... In the end, he gets a job overseas, she drops him off at the airport, and as she’s pulling out of the airport; he sends her a breakup text.” 9t3n / Reddit
• “I have 2 bad ones. First, he had his mom call me. Second one, we dated for 3 years & the whole time he told me he didn’t want kids. I finally got on board with the idea of never being a mother.
  Less than 2 months later, he called me to break up because he was marrying a woman he knocked up with whom he had been cheating on me. Skip ahead 30 years... he’s a father of 4 and divorced, and 3 of the 4 kids have gone no contact with him.” readingreddit4fun / Reddit
• “On my 40th birthday at dinner. My then-girlfriend took me out to dinner on my birthday. I was confused as to why there were no family and friends present. Then she broke it off and I understood why.” deedubfry / Reddit

• “My boyfriend and I were long-distance. I paid for him to fly down and visit me for two weeks. On the second or third day of his visit, my grandfather passed away. I was an absolute emotional wreck. The next day he broke up with me on account of being an emotional rollercoaster, then got angry when I said he couldn’t stay with me the rest of the visit. He then claimed he didn’t mean what he’d said about breaking up, then promptly broke up with me again as soon as he was back home.” here4theladies / Reddit
• “I woke up one morning and said I had plans with a friend, and my partner said he did too and would meet me back home for a movie date later. Had a goodbye kiss and everything. Came home to all his things moved out and no response to texts. I was pregnant at the time.
  A little later on, I found out he had been married the whole time. I had to move states pregnant and start over in a basement with no windows. All the while he was sending me nasty messages and then blocking me before I could respond. It was hands down the most depressing period of my life.” TopScientist9241 / Reddit
• “Suddenly he wasn’t leaving his family’s house and no one was allowed to talk to him via phone, so I showed up at their house asking to see him. Instead, his grandma sat me down at the kitchen table and broke up with me for him. He then proceeded to stop talking to all of us because his family decided we were bad for him.” lilchileah77 / Reddit

• “My girlfriend and I were doing the long-distance thing, she called me and told me we were breaking up because I was taking her for granted, and not putting any effort into the future of the relationship. That night, I thought about everything she’d said and decided she was right, and that I needed to show I didn’t take her for granted.
  The next morning, I dropped $5k on a diamond and drove 800 km in 7.5 hours to show up, kneeling, on her doorstep in the rain on a cold winter’s night...
  She said no.” Shenko-wolf / Reddit
• “Went out with her for 7.5 years, she had 3 kids, no credit, life, and health pretty much wrecked by her ex-husband. Over that time, I helped her rehabilitate her health, restored her credit scores, helped her refinance and redecorate her house, even helped her raise her kids, and helped her eldest cover a tuition overage in his freshman year.
  She walks in one night and says, ’We are incompatible’ and dumps me. Keeps everything, cuts me off from the kids, and 6 weeks after begging me to stay friends (with tears in her eyes, the quote was ’I can’t imagine you not in my life’) writes in an email that she is seeing someone new.
  Three years later, she posts an entry on her Facebook page celebrating her third anniversary dinner with the new guy... except the anniversary date is 2 weeks before she dumped me.” gjallard / Reddit
• “During a summer in between my freshman and sophomore year of college, my girlfriend called me telling me she had a ’big surprise’ for me if I came to visit her that weekend. She lived 3 hours away (we met at school), but I decided to visit her. Walked into her house with a bouquet, and was immediately broken up with. I started crying (this was back before I became the jaded bastard of today), and then her ENTIRE family came walking into the house. So here I am, standing with flowers in hand, tears pouring down my cheeks, and then my ex says ’Well I have to get going’. To top it off, for the entire drive back it was pouring rain, I was crying nonstop, and then I got lost and it ended up taking me 5 hours to get home. Looking back I can laugh at it now because it seriously felt like a scene straight out of a movie.” dcpowertool / Reddit

These stories reveal that breakups can be among the most painful chapters in our lives. Yet, they also teach us about resilience, self-discovery, and the strength it takes to move forward.