Woman Shares How Her Husband Ruined Their Wedding Day & Why We Should 'Normalize' Admitting A Marriage Was A Mistake
Her story is a valuable lesson for us all.
Ljupco Smokovski | Shutterstock Ask most people who've ended a marriage and they'll usually tell you there was a moment, long before the divorce occurred, when they knew the relationship was already over. For one woman on TikTok, that moment came on her wedding day, and her story contains important lessons for us all.
The woman shared the cruel way her husband ruined their wedding day.
"My husband ruined our wedding day and this story has haunted me for like 11 years. I just want to tell it," TikToker @noiwontthanks said in her video.
She'd never wanted a big wedding, so their ceremony was a small affair at the local magistrate. They also got married very quickly — just four months into the relationship. But as low-key as the wedding was, it contained within it a deeply hurtful moment, one that was a major sign of things to come.
In the middle of their ceremony, her husband mocked her appearance and criticized her weight.
The moment came during a point in their ceremony that should have been one of the best memories of the day. "We had been married about 60 seconds," she said, "and the judge said I love doing these ceremonies."
The judge then said he'd be thrilled if the couple came back in 10 years to say hello so they could celebrate their tenth anniversary together. She said they'd do so, and joked that "hopefully I fit in the same dress" so she could wear it to their little reunion.
The moment quickly became a record-scratch, however. "My husband of about 70 seconds did not miss a beat, and he said 'or smaller,'" implying that he was unhappy with her appearance and weight.
Andrey Sayfutdinov | Shutterstock
The TikToker said she was instantly flooded with physical reactions. "Talk about 'fight, flight, freeze, fawn.' I just felt like I couldn't even breathe," she said. She started looking for "context clues" for what she was experiencing and he found them in the judge.
"I looked at the judge, the magistrate, and he was, like, floored," she said. "He said, 'Son you just got married,' and that's when I was like oh I'm not crazy — my intuition is correct. I am not crazy."
She said we need to 'normalize' admitting when a marriage is a mistake.
Despite that horrifying moment, she ended up married to her husband for 10 years in a relationship rife with psychological abuse and gaslighting. She indicated that the fact she knew so little about these concepts at the start of the relationship is part of why she didn't immediately break it off right at that moment at the wedding.
However, what she did is also simply human nature. It's precisely the kind of situation where psychological concepts like the "sunk cost fallacy" kick in — the idea that we must continue on the path we're on because of how much we've already invested in it. When you've already completed a wedding and you are officially husband and wife, it's far more complicated to walk away than it was just moments before.
That's before even taking into account the myriad cultural mores about marriage and divorce. Those beliefs, @noiwontthanks said, are why she wanted to share her story.
"The amount of comments that I've seen on TikTok videos about women actually realizing the day they got married that they made a mistake is, like, staggering," she said. "We just need to maybe normalize [it] a little bit."
Hear, hear. It can put us in difficult situations, there's no doubt about that. But among our intuition's primary functions is to alert us and protect us. Leaving a man at the altar is likely to result in blowback, sure. But it's nothing compared to the pain of ending up in a negative or abusive relationship. We all deserve so much better than that.
If you or someone you know is suffering from domestic abuse or violence, there are resources to get help. For more information, resources, legal advice, and relevant links visit the National Domestic Violence Hotline. For anyone struggling with domestic abuse, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). If you’re unable to speak safely, text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474 or log onto thehotline.org.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.