Crazy Things People's Former Spouses Did After The Divorce

Having someone there for you is all fun and games, not until your partner does something that breaks the bond between you. Because of that, trying to maintain and build a good relationship is never easy. It’s either you’ll get through everything or not.

However, these people from the Reddit Community went on the latter part. But for good! You might want to grab a snack because you’re about to dive into the stories of the craziest ex-partners.

1. Unexpected Revenge

My ex stole a car and did 18 months in state prison.

Based on what I was able to find online at the time, he approached a car dealership and showed interest in buying a vehicle. They allowed him to take it home for a 24-hour demo. 

He never returned it. 

They reported it stolen after they attempted multiple times to contact him to return it. They then contacted the state police, who put a BOLO out. They found him driving the vehicle on the other side of the state, where he thought he wouldn’t be found.

I found out when I got an unexpected phone call from the sheriff’s office. I asked why they were calling me about this. They said my ex told them I would vouch for him as a “character witness.” I told the officer over the phone that my ex was a lying sack of crap and shouldn’t be trusted. 

The officer laughed, thanked me for my time, and hung up.

NeonBird

Completely ignored our three children for the last ten years while living with a woman and her three children.

And oh, here’s another thing. Did I mention that our oldest is HIS from a previous relationship, whom I was awarded custody of, and he is her only living biological parent?!

nicunta

Mom's friend was getting divorced. The wife was staying in the house but left so the husband could gather his things without her there as he moved out.

While packing, he gave the dog a laxative and locked her in the master bedroom. 

Poor girl had explosive Malamute diarrhea EVERYWHERE. She was so upset about her accidents that she tried to dig through the door. 

That dog was such a good girl, and it broke my heart. Luckily, the wife kept the dog, and the husband was convicted of animal abuse charges, which helped the wife keep custody of the kids.

[deleted]

My ex-wife told me I could leave my stuff in our house while I found somewhere else to stay.

I assumed this was a good-will effort to keep things as amicable as possible between us.

However, when I went to get my things, she had burned them all. 

So that was rough.

TKHunsaker

She would stalk my Reddit account and angrily text me if she didn't like my posts talking about her cheating on me. I came home from seeing my grandmother on her deathbed and found she had cheated.

She also texted me, accusing me of sabotaging her attempts to get a job that requires a security clearance. Apparently, it was my fault and not the fact she had already been denied a security clearance for mental instability.

pigenshoes

Well, this one’s a total crazy girl. She removed the retaining clips for my windshield wipers but put the wipers back on the arms. 

The first storm after I got my car back from her was the driver-side wiper flying off the vehicle on Interstate 40. 

Good times.

dick_sportwood

Got the kids during their weekend visit and moved to a small town in the next state over. It took me 2 years to get them back.

I did get them back. She eventually burned all the bridges in the town she moved to and went home to her parents' house. Since her parents were not pleased with her choices and were on my side during the whole deal, they called me to let me know where she was. 

I went and got them.

This was over 20 years ago, and they have both grown up just fine. I’ve since remarried, and my 2nd wife has been a wonderful mother to them.

It took a lot of work to fix all the damage, but it’s mostly ok. The biggest scars that lasted were that my son has a distrust of women with authority (that he has worked really hard to get over), and my daughter was afraid to start her own family because she worries she would turn out just like her mom. 

She finally got over that and is expecting our first grandbaby this fall.

atypical_lemur

She called my company, talked her way up the chain to the president of the company (I still don't know how she managed that, but she's smart), and told him I was depressed and had threatened to "do something drastic" at work...

Later I learned that she thought this would be a roundabout way of getting my address which I didn't share with her after I moved out because she's crazy.

FeatureNotAFlaw

Called me and pretended he had been hit by a car while we were talking. He even tried to voice the crowd that had gathered around his "body." God-awful acting, but it's pretty funny listening to him try to mimic a woman's voice. 

Points for trying to be inclusive, I guess.

I think he was trying to get me to re-live my trauma of being on the phone with a friend who actually HAD been hit by a car while we were talking. Too bad he didn't realize that hearing the real thing is worlds different than hearing a dummy try to act it out.

[deleted]

While we were still married, she got pregnant with the guy she was cheating on me with, who was also married to someone else. She has the idea that he will leave his wife and they will get married. She got a lawyer and filed for divorce. I got a lawyer, too.

The only thing is that he works for his wife’s father, who is setting him up to take over when Daddy retires. He realizes that getting a divorce means his cushy career is over, so he confesses everything to his wife and begs for her forgiveness. His wife takes him back, and he cuts off my wife.

Seeing that her dreams of living with her bf are over, she claims that I’m the father, which is impossible because, by that time, we hadn’t slept together for more than a year before conception. 

This does not stop her from telling everyone who will listen that it’s my kid. She has her lawyer drop the divorce proceedings. I told my lawyer to start them with me as the plaintiff and that I wanted to dispute paternity.

I move out. She starts stalking me. Shows up at my job and tries to get in. I work as a civilian in R&D at a military base. The MPs do not take any of her crap and wind up detaining her when she tries to run past the gate.

She calls me at work to bail her out or something, and I tell her that whatever she’s done, it’s not my problem and hang up. I also was able to get a restraining order, which she violated repeatedly.  

She asked for everything: both cars, the entire house and contents, savings, my retirement account, etc. Plus 7 years of spousal support. I offered no support and half of the assets. If she wanted to house, she’d have to buy me out and refinance in her name only.

When the kid was born, she tried to put my name on the birth certificate anyway, but I’d already successfully disputed paternity, so that didn’t go over well. She had to go after her lover boy, who was definitely less than happy to see her.

In the end, we split the assets 50/50. She sold the house, and she got no spousal support. I don’t know if she could get money for the kid from Lover Boy or not.

She called me a few times after the divorce, wanting to get together and talk. The calls violated the restraining order, but I never reported it.

About 6 months after the divorce was final, I was offered a new job on the other side of the country. I took it and never told anyone outside of my family where I was going. Almost all of our “friends” believed her when she claimed the baby was mine and made me out to be the jerk, so I didn’t really feel the need to tell them anything.

Life is better now.

bearlee55

My mom went out and got braces put on my teeth that I didn't really need, knowing my dad would have to pay half for them and wanting to cause him financial heartache. 

She then proceeded to not take me to the Ortho for routine care because he wasn't paying his half, and I ended up having to pull the braces off my own teeth at age 14 because they were falling off on their own.   

Ended up rotting several of my adult molars too. 

It's cost me thousands of dollars and serious self-conscious issues over my smile/lack of teeth as an adult.

Bmorehon

My ex-husband started dating his stepmom, who has been in his life since he was 11. His stepmom and he are still together almost 5 years later. 

His stepmom confessed her love for my ex to his dad a few years ago, and they have since divorced. 

The dad is now dating a 21-year-old.

I know all of this because I’m still close friends with my ex-husband's sister. It’s so messed up, and I’m so grateful I left him when I did.

LiquidSummerHaze

Stalked me for 5 years. Would make fake social media profiles to try to follow me (which I would block endlessly) and would try to find where I worked so she could talk to me.

This lady cheated on me with 7 different men 2 months after we were married. I kicked her ass to the curb and made her sign the court papers.   

When we had our day in court, she cried in the judge's office while I just wanted to get this done.

After, my dad was with me, and he threw 50 dollars at her and told her to "change your freaking last name." Good guy, Pops.

I haven't seen or heard from her in about 5 years, thank goodness.

Letharos

My ex cheated on me the week my mom died in the hospital. She spent a year and a half trying to get in touch with me. She would call my old work and make fake accounts, trying to message me on FB. 

It was insane. 

She later sent a certified letter explaining she was sorry that she did what she did and that she aborted our child.

Wanted me to meet her somewhere so she could apologize face to face.

She already married some other guy she had children with and was still trying to contact me. 

I never understood her.

orstius

Killed or Euthanized our dog, then lied that he died of natural causes.

Given the dog was old and blind, she pleaded that she wanted a weekend with him, and then the next night, she sent me a fake text that he passed away during the night at 3 am because he coughed and then just stopped breathing.

That wasn't true, and I found out later, after finding and calling the vet she brought him to, that she bad-mouthed me and that he was suffering and needed to be put to sleep because he was in agony, and I was supposedly letting him suffer. 

She had him out to rest like the day she took him home, like 3 hours afterward.

I never got to say goodbye due to that witch.

Flaky_Plastic_3407

Not me, but my grandparents got divorced when my mom was about 17. In their legal battle, they worked out that they would each get 50/50 of the sale of specific shared assets. 

There was an old junky car and a fairly new RV. My grandpa sold the RV and the car for $1 each. 

He handed my grandma a buck in court.

corth_

She got custody of our three kids and got 70% of my take-home pay for child support, requiring me to move into the barracks (I was in the USAF). She immediately moved out of state without telling me--despite the divorce decree requiring my consent--all but guaranteeing I would have no contact with my kids.

That's not the crazy part.

The crazy part is just a few years later, she decided she didn't want to be a mother anymore, so she signed up with a carnival (I think she had the hots for one of the ride operators) and left the girls on their own--without telling the girls or me beforehand. 

She called my oldest daughter a few days after leaving to tell her to call me. They hadn't called me before that because they had apparently grown accustomed to their mother disappearing for days at a time.

keenly_disinterested

My ex was this level crazy. So freaking abusive. It was so far beyond absurd that our mutual friends thought I was making things up. It was crazy-making how mental she had become. 

She finally got arrested when she assaulted me for the 3rd time, but a friend was a witness and called the police.   

DA dropped the charges the next day. I was the third lover she'd been arrested for assaulting in her life. 

She shamelessly lied and won custody of our son, then moved 2 states away. Like EVERYTHING she did was specifically to cause as much emotional damage as she could.

Killemojoy

Kidnapped my 3 boys from my house when I went on my first post-divorce date. Our loved and trusted babysitter was with them. I left dinner ready, and the kids bathed and were already in their jammies. 

I left for the movie theater when I got a text from my babysitter that she was sorry for not doing the dishes after dinner. So I texted back, “That's ok. I can do the dishes later, but you also have a couple of hours. The movie hasn’t started yet.” 

She was at home as my ex-husband had shown up, lied, and said he was supposed to have the boys that night and that I had said it was ok. I was livid. I knew he was a bit crazy, but I had no idea he could do this.

I stepped out of the theater, called him, and he said, “If you are going to be dating strangers and endangering the lives of MY kids, I will take them.” Wtf. So I called the police, and they did a report. 

We went to court, and he was found in contempt for violating our parenting plan.

ronsinblush

We were living in a different state, and she wanted to move back to her home state a year into our marriage. I had nothing tying me down in that state, so I was down for moving if that's what she wanted.

It had been about 6 months into the move, and she cheated on me with a co-worker while I was working full-time and trying to finish up my bachelor's degree.

She tells me that she didn't feel the same way about me and needed to move out to do some thinking. It's driving me insane trying to think about what could have gone wrong. I suspected that co-worker, but I didn't have any proof.

I checked our phone account online, and sure enough, they were talking every night after work while I was out working. I followed her one time, and sure enough, she was going to this guy's house. 

I confronted her about it, and she finally fessed up.

So they continued dating after we finally divorced, and I was able to move on with my life. She ends up getting pregnant by this guy, and he disappears before their baby is even born. Karma definitely came back to bite her after the hell she put me through all alone in a new state with no friends/family around.

hajimenogio92

My ex bought an apartment (in central London, insanely expensive) across the road from where I worked so she could spy on me. She also never wanted to live or work in London.

I had no idea this had happened, and fortuitously, I happened to leave that position soon after we split, so it didn't really work.

I only found out, however, when I was having drinks with a mate, and he happened to mention that my ex's apartment was just over there (we were by my old work)

Leotardleotard

After years of telling me she wanted a child, that she wanted to be a mom, that her life's dream was to be a SAHM, she got pregnant with the first guy she slept with while we were getting divorced. 

The worst thing is she put the kid up for adoption even before it was born. This was a long-standing thing with her; she always wanted something (car, house, dog, cat, marriage, etc.) and immediately hated it the second she got it.

amalgamas

I had a 1969 Dodge Power Wagon Pickup. No power steering, no power brakes, 4-speed manual transmission 4x4. A beast of a truck & a beast to drive. When we divorced, she took my truck! 

Judge said since she was giving me custody of our 3 kids & I would need the family car, it seemed only right she got my truck! 3 weeks after finalizing, she was going down a muddy road & ditched it.

Damaged some of the front suspension. She called the local guy w/ a tow truck & he towed it back to where she was living. Since she needed a car, she told her he would trade her a Chevy Citation for the broken-down truck, which she agreed to. 

He then called me & sold me the truck for the low price he originally had on the Citation! I loved it. I had to spend a couple hundred on repairs, but she was freaked & pissed when she learned I got my truck back.

tez_zer55

The divorce was fairly amicable, but he met a woman on the internet and moved her into his apartment a month later. She hated seeing me because “I had hurt him” but was also apparently “still in love with him.” (spoiler: I was emphatically NOT.) 

She decided that getting my son removed from my custody would solve all her problems, so she called my work and made ridiculously false allegations to my administrator about my conduct with students. 

Still, she sounded drunk/high and wouldn’t leave a name or contact information. 

Admin pulled her number from the caller ID, and ex confirmed that it was Heifer’s Oregon phone number. I had to get a temporary protective order for her, so my ex had her move out. 

Then she slashed my tires on Mother’s Day. (He confirmed that one after they broke up.) Y’all, HE KEPT DATING HER FOR ANOTHER YEAR EVEN THOUGH HE KNEW ABOUT EVERYTHING! My therapist at the time told me that my ex probably found her behavior FLATTERING.

geekchicdemdownsouth

Two years after our divorce was final (we still had to be in regular contact because of our 5-year-old son), he asked me if I’d give him a 5 am wake-up call the next day because he had an early flight for a business trip. 

I said, of course, I wouldn’t do that. We aren’t married anymore, he should buy a damn alarm clock.

He overslept, missed his flight, thought he would get fired, and called me to berate me for not calling to wake him up. 

He was an absolute delight!

ArtemisCoco

Continuously texted at all hours, threatening to end his life, I would rush over to do a welfare check, and he'd open the door with a smile, "Hey, since you're here, want to come in for a beer/bang?"

Hard pass.

Started upping it and I rushed over. He's nowhere to be found. I'm calling his parents friends... It turns out he was just at a bar. Another time, he left a funeral playlist and a note, disappeared off the face of the earth for almost a day, and reappeared so drunk he almost ran into the house.

After that, I just couldn't take it anymore, so the next time he started texting, I warned him that I would call the police if he was being serious, but I wasn't coming to check. He went 0-100 real quick about how he'd be dead before they got here, etc. 

So I called them, and he ended up getting 5150ed for the night, VERY upset with me the next day, demanding a ride, and so on. I hung up, called his mom, and said not my mess anymore. Here's the address.

So then he just found new ways to torture me for a few years, but that one stands out the most.

Tralfamadorians_go

I had forgotten to move the electricity bill over to his name (I moved out). 

He tried to make me pay for it until I threatened him with paying the bill and asking the power company to shut off the power. 

It would have cost him three times more to get it turned on again. 

Idiot.

Miridana

I was sending 600 dollars a month to support my daughter because she’s the only thing I give a crap about. 

My ex texts me and tells me I need to be sending 1200 a month because she’s broke and can’t pay her bills, and I should feel guilty about it.   

She left me for another guy while I was on deployment.

I told her to go screw herself and call my lawyer.

WeldingShellback

During the whole process of divorcing, she insistent she wanted to be single and hadn’t cheated on me. 

5 days before we sold our house, she posted on Facebook that she was in a relationship with the guy I had asked about her cheating on me.   

A year later, they were engaged, and a year after the engagement, they were married.

RedditAtWork2021

Left me in the middle of the night. Just packed all his things and disappeared. Absolutely nothing led up to this. We didn’t have the best relationship, but we had a pretty good few weeks and a really good day that day.

He shows up hours later for something he forgot and asks if he could take my iPhone charger.

Are you kidding me? Get the fudge out of here.

I still have abandonment issues to this very day, and it has negatively impacted every relationship I’ve had since then because I haven’t been able to really let my guard completely down with anyone for fear of being suddenly left again - romantic and platonic.

Plus, I now get extreme anxiety and start to freak out if I haven’t heard from them for a while.

The icing on the cake? While cleaning out the rest of his crap weeks later, I found a list of all the things he was planning to take with him. On that list was my freaking turtle. 

MY pet turtle. Not ours. Mine. That’s been with me since high school. Freaking psycho.

[deleted]

Told everyone I was physically abusive (at the time, and now... I am not intimidating in any way). It didn't come out until 2 years later when she needed to change something in our agreement but couldn't unless I agreed. 

I made her tell her family it was something she said when she was mad. Her mom apologized to me for saying things at the time. We are friends now (we have a son together, so it's best), but I hated her guts for 5 years.

[deleted]

During the divorce, after separating, my friend's ex tried to claim fewer assets than he really had. Still, she was dropping the kids off one day and found retirement fund statements sitting on the kitchen table. 

Despite claiming that they had been using his income for living expenses and hers was going into savings, somehow, he managed to tuck away over a million dollars into those 2 funds under his name only. 

When she brought it up with the lawyer, he claimed that he had just "forgotten" to put those on the list.

PossiblyTrueInfo

Called me the night before his wedding to his second wife, and asked me if it was really over.

He said, “This was our last chance to be together. Are you sure it’s over?” The night before, he got remarried.   

Let that just marinate a little.

I guess he didn’t think me asking for the divorce, paying for it, and filing the paperwork wasn’t the clue it was over.

BMT_Nurse

My ex-husband messages/calls me every November. Our divorce was finalized in November 2015. Last time, I decided not to answer because I’m in a committed relationship. 

But every year, like clockwork. Our divorce was messy, to say the least, and after our final court hearing, we stood outside for like an hour talking about his girlfriend's problems. 

I guess he just needed a friend, but I don’t need one anymore. 

At least, I don’t need him as a friend.

Splenda212

We were still in divorce proceedings when my ex moved in with a woman and her 2 kids—he’d only known them for 2 months.

Then, her mom moved in shortly thereafter with her 2 dogs.

The house was pure chaos, and my daughter slept in a closet when she went there because the girlfriend’s kids got to take over the big bedroom.

And surprise, surprise, the relationship crashed and burned within a year. Good riddance.

nordicflava

He threatened to kill me, so I took out a Victim protective order. He violated it (on a Friday before a holiday), went to jail, and then spent his one phone call asking me to drop the charges. 

Nope; if he frightened me enough to take out the VPO and then felt confident enough to violate it, why would I drop it? They let him out Tuesday, after the holiday...and he had the nerve to call me and ask me to drive him home. Nope, again.

My crazy thing was I had a panic attack in the grocery store (the only one I've ever had; it was pretty scary). The manager was really kind, though.

Dang_It_All_to_Heck

My coworker finally got divorced after 2 years of trying to work it out with her hubby. She had a disabled child that her ex refused to help with and pay child support for. 

She decided to sell her engagement ring, diamond wedding band, and several pieces of jewelry her ex gave her over the year that she was able to keep after the divorce. 

EVERY GEM WAS FAKE. 

Her jeweler told her that gems had been recently swapped out for fakes. So, during the two years she was working it out with her ex, he replaced all her jewelry with fakes.

Borgqueen-

Not a divorcee, but when my parents were getting divorced (mum walked out on my dad with zero warning to anybody in the family), they actually had a really amicable divorce.

To the point that my dad even still teased my mum by sending her a card on their 22nd wedding anniversary, a few weeks before the divorce absolute was official just so he could claim he'd never forgotten their anniversary.

Sending her cards on her birthday, Valentine's Day, and even anniversary for the first several years after their divorce, just because he knew it made her new partner nervous that they might get back together. 

The two guys actually got along okay. My dad just liked teasing him occasionally (and had already moved on from the idea of ever reconciling).

It was genuinely just a prank on the poor guy - my dad even kinda hoped they'd get married and fully close that chapter. Still, now her partner is in the advancing stages of dementia, and that ship has pretty much sailed.

Yet_One_More_Idiot

We were nearly homeless because he was out of a job. I began to build a business out of desperation. He would belittle me and the business concept, berate me, get in my face, and scream at me that I had no idea what I was doing, etc. 

If you've ever built a business, you know how imperative support is...

I had a couple hundred in the bank when I left what had become an abusive household. My business made $100,000 in its first year - the same year we were divorced - and continues to thrive. 

The best revenge is a success!

magicseafoam

Part of our agreement during separation was that he would drive the paid-for car, and I would drive the car we were making payments on. The payments went through his account, they would post, and he would send me screenshots.

Even though they would post, he specifically told his bank to not let them go through. One day as I was getting ready to go to work a crappy serving job to make ends meet, I walked outside, and the car was gone. 

At first, I thought it was stolen, and I called the cops. Nope. It had been repossessed.

I called him, and he basically said that’s what I deserved. The paid-for car was in my name, though, so I scooped that up under police surveillance (so he wouldn’t do any other nefarious crap), and now he drives a POS car that can barely make it through red lights. 

I have 2 very nice cars with my new spouse.

OneWildLlamaMama

Two years later, I got an email asking, “When are we finalizing this?” I sent him a copy of the papers and moved on.

Turned out that when he signed away his rights to a two-year separation (a requirement in my state at the time before divorce), he must’ve thought he was actually signing a consent to a separation. 

So somehow, he had no idea that 30 days later, I was granted the divorce, and we had been divorced for 2 years.

artemis1860

During my divorce, he broke into my house, planted illegal things, and then called DCS. Luckily, his best friend told me this was WAY over the line. I scrambled to find and dispose of it and was ready when DCS showed up. 

She was very nice, and it was a closed case very quickly. 

I had to have her come and talk to my kids and walk through my house for a couple of months, but she was very pleasant, and I had nothing to hide.

When it was over, he had the nerve to tell me I owed him the money he was out for the illegal stuff…

snowbunny37061

Fleeing the state so she didn't have to pay a court-ordered amount of money owed to me. Got married 30 days later to the "friend" she told everyone, her parents included, not to worry about.

There's probably more, but the crazy part is her folks still take me to dinner every couple of months and just ask me not to post about it on FB or IG.   

They constantly apologize for everything when I see them, but I've been after them to stop. 

Their daughter made her own choices. I am/was closer to them than my own folks, and I don't worry that they don't believe everything I've told them now, so that's nice.

Pawn01

Contacted me 6 years after we had split up (due to her cheating).

Towards the start of COVID, she whined about how she couldn't make money as a small-town stripper with the pandemic going on and asked me for money.

Also, it's been 7 years now, and she still hasn't changed her freaking name back.

HaCo111

We weren't married, but we'd been engaged for two years. We broke up because she was controlling, and aggressive and she took everything I owned.

I didn't want to oversee her collecting her things due to previous issues, so being young and naive, I told her to grab her stuff and drop the flat keys through my parent's letterbox. 

When I got back home in the evening, she and her family had loaded up every piece of furniture, pots and pans, bedding, white goods, food, and even personal items and taken them away. I found out later that she had driven most of it straight to the local tip and dumped it.

It was no surprise that she worked me over when it came to custody and visitation, but that's a whole other story.

bai1000