Love is pain, no matter what, but there are few love experiences that sound more painful than being left at the altar on your wedding day. After weeks, months, often years of planning, being ghosted by your partner in front of hundreds of your closest friends and family members is a veritable nightmare. And yet, people somehow live to tell the story.
In a recent Reddit thread, men left at the altar shared their stories, and they truly all deserve hugs.
1. dannylopuz helped his friend cope with memes and booze.
"My friend was left at the altar by this woman because her mom opposed the marriage (the dude doesn't make a lot of money) and she ended up letting him know the night before, leaving him to cancel everything and letting everyone know."
"There was no way of letting EVERYONE KNOW that the wedding was canceled so I printed out a most interesting man meme that read "I don't always cancel weddings, but when I do, I do it with a meme" and glued it to the door of the place where the reception was supposed to take place."
"I ended up just spending the night with him and another friend with some beer and a bottle of tequila.
EDIT: to everyone asking it's worse than you think, they got married a year later and right now are going through a divorce. Unexpected I know."
2. Mahalobitch experienced a relationship 180.
"My then fiancée started to work in the city, and being from a small town really enjoyed the city life. Drinking with colleagues after work, coming home late, etc.... I grew up near the city so it was no big deal for me."
"One week I started to notice that she was always talking about going out, or drinking with friends, or work related stuff. For her birthday, I got us a weekend in a small B&B a couple hours away, and when I picked her up on Friday night from the Friday night drinks with her work friends, she was disappointed that she had to leave early."
"After the second couples therapy session, she came home and ended things. I packed up, took my dog, and never saw her again. In two weeks I went from planning a wedding with someone I loved, to complete rejection and near-suicidal thoughts. We were 3 months to the wedding, dating for 4 years."
3. Thesladenator97's step dad got ditched by a gold digger.
"So my step dad was left at the altar. Turns out his first finance was a gold digger. She left him at the altar for someone richer and then tried to claim my step dads house (even though she didn't own it). My step dad told her if she persued it,he would burn the house down with himself inside. She apparently had kept trying to milk him of money for one thing or another and that was the final straw."
4. MrCoolCol rebounded the pain away.
"We’d been together six years, we met the first week of college. I enlisted in the military senior year, and she stayed behind to finish her masters. After two years apart I suppose we started to drift apart. Anyways, I propose, she says yes - everything went according to plan; until the wedding day. I was of course humiliated and devestated. My groomsmen took me out to a strip club, I went on the honeymoon and frankly fucked like a bitch in heat. I’d more or less put her out of my mind within a week."
"Anyways, here we are 9 months, and a couple failed relationships later and I realize that I definitely have some baggage. So now my dating life is essentially a string of disappointing first dates and empty one night stands. Cheers"
5. GrenadeBlaster is sad for his teacher.
" I heard my Spanish teacher got left at the altar, I wish I knew the story. Super sad, because hes the kind of guy that you would root for if it was a high school movie. Smiley, dorky, and plays the guitar."
6. Glldinkiering wish they had paid attention to the signs.
"I wish I would have left my ex at the alter. I knew it wasn’t going to work out when I came home early one afternoon and he was snorting coke off our kitchen counter. Still went through with the marriage because he insisted it was a one time thing and it was a few days before our wedding date."
"I quickly learned if you ask “are you addicted to cocaine” the following answers tell you all you need to know:"
“Yes” means “yes”.
“I can stop anytime I want to” means “yes”.
“I only do it when someone else has it” means “yes”.
“No” means “probably”.
7. j0hnd0 was unpleasantly surprised.
"I wasn't literally left at the alter, but my then-girlfriend and I discussed getting married, and we agreed to do it, but the actual, official proposal was left to me to surprise her with (ie. we were engaged to be engaged.)."
"When I decided the time came to propose, she was supposed to take the train up to visit me, and I'd take her out on a romantic date, and I'd pop the question then. A couple of times, some legitimate emergency happened with her, and she couldn't make it. Our friends, who had become emotionally invested in our pending engagement got frustrated with her, and made her feel guilty for "standing me up" (mind you, they never told her I was going to propose)."
"She understandably felt bad for standing me up so many times, so I just decided that I'd go to her. So, I was to take the train to Springfield, Massachusetts; and she'd meet me at the station, and we'd go to the Berkshires or whatever. After so many false starts, she was resolved to see me."
"Well, surprise, surprise, her grandmother had fallen gravely ill, and she couldn't come get me, nor call ahead (no mobile service where she was)."
"So, I was in a no-good situation-standing on the platform of a train station in downtown Springfield after dark, with a ring in my pocket; and she couldn't follow through once again; because our friends had meddled, she must have thought that I was livid, and that shed used up all of her chances, and I guess she decided to cut her losses, and ghost me."
"Honestly, I wasn't angry with her. The situation just sucked all-around, and it was something we could have worked through, but looking back, I don't marry quitters, so mistake averted."
8. mylittlejabroni1 has a friend in Chuck.
"Was going to marry my highschool sweet heart. We were the friends who started dating in grade 9 and then would be seen in the halls hugging and kissing all the time (vomit inducing now that I think of it). We did everything with eachother in highschool and to be honest, looking back, I feel like I lost my best years because I spent them with one person. We created a life completely around eachother which made it that much harder when she did what she did as I didn't have much ground to recover from. We never really fought which is kind of weird. We were just existing and living life and just both okay with it. Our relationship was honestly like "perfect". But I guess in reality she was tired and bored with me and left me standing at the altar like a complete idiot. I didn't see it coming. Luckily, my best man, got on one knee and proposed to me right there at the altar. Love you, Chuck."
9. Brian_Lawrence01's sister had an important realization.
"My sister left a dude at the alter.
She had a moment of clarity the day of that she probably shouldn’t marry her drug dealer."
10. rdeincognito saved herself a world of pain.
"Not my history but my grandmother did this to the man who was gonna to marry, the reason is the night before the wedding the husband mother had a heated argument with my grandma about giving all her income to the husband and letting him control all the economic."
"My grandma was a proud woman, one of the very few females who worked in spain by that time and did not consent to give away his money. So she just did not go to the wedding."
11. Mamou_Kaans hopes to see their friend's ex in jail.
"Not mine but a friend got left at the altar, bride ran away to Italy. Later we found she was into 'dating' young boys. I hope some day she get put behind bars."
12. Maddiemoiselle's professor in college told the whole class about it.
"My communications professor from my freshman year of college did this. She had put in the syllabus that there would be no class on one Thursday because she was getting married. On Tuesday she told us she had called the wedding off over the weekend. It was then that I realized how immature and unprofessional she actually was (she took away points from me for missing class for a family emergency and told her I should have told her sooner that I was going to miss class, like I could have planned an emergency)."
13. Bkrugby78 knew a priest who was left at the altar.
"My theology teacher told us he became a priest because he got left at the altar. I’m not sure if he was serious or not, but any movie he showed always had some guy saying something like “you’re as stupid as a woman.”
Funny teacher though."
14. TheGoldenKnight left their betrothed at the altar after a big fight.
"For the opposite side, I left my bride to be “at the altar”.
Very long and detailed story short...we had a blow up fight the night before during/after the rehearsal dinner. Lots of off putting information about her came up and I knew it wasn’t meant to be. I sent her home with a friend that night and told her that I wouldn’t be at the church the next day."
"Passed on that information to friends and family and my groomsman took me out to get obliterated drunk. My family let the guests know the wedding wasn’t happening. The next day we came back to town past time for the wedding. My ex apparently went to the church and waited to see if anyone or myself showed up. The catered food and cakes were delicious...Overall, one of the best decisions of my life."
15. AngryMobe had a really rough go.
"Ugh, I’ve been holding off on bringing this up on Reddit for some time now, but here we go. It will be better to get out then to hold in.
Me(27M) and my Fiancée(27F) dated for 8 years, and talked about getting married in 2019. In September I had purchased the ring she always described she wanted, I had I custom made and had my Mom, Sister and Aunt help me find a great place. We had just got over a family death and I really wanted to include everyone in picking out a ring to bring up everyone’s spirits."
"My Fiancé has been looking forward to being engaged for a while, she always talked about our life together and she had just recently bought a condo and we had been furnishing the place together for months before I proposed, we even bought a cat together. Things were really starting to feel like they were moving well and we were both excited to spend the rest of our lives together. But her parents were strict, even after being together for 8 years, being 27 and engaged to one another, living together in her condo wasn’t an option. I would stay over every weekend behind her parents back just not to cause friction. I would sometimes have to park my car in another visitor parking lot because if they saw my car there they would assume I slept over and people would talk."
"I work in Graphic Design, and she is a Teacher. My career has not been the best and it was hard to even find a local job outside of a major city. But I did land a job that payed fair but caused a lot of stress. My Fiancee on the other had found her job almost immediately after finishing teachers college. Her parents are teachers and she has had every advantage there was in finding her job. Unfortunately this caused a lot of fights in our relationships. My Fiancee would see me stressed out a lot but instead of giving me the space I needed she would argue that I go and look for new employment. I would constantly be putting out resumes every week to places without any responses, it made the stress even worse but I always looked forward to our time together and never let it get in the way of the relationship. To her she just thought because I cannot land a job a love, I do not love myself."
"Fast forward to the beginning of this year. Her parents had been driving around her condo and saw my car parked there, they flipped and this was the last straw for me. I told her that I was uncomfortable staying at her place and risking confrontation from her parents. I told her I wanted more time to workout (slim down for wedding) and that I was upset that a 27F who owns her own place cannot tell her parents to STOP. She brings up the usual I don’t love myself enough fight and that I just want an excuse to stay at home and be lazy. I assure her that it’s ludicrous, I have a full time job and that I don’t want to tackle on the stress of her parents as well before our wedding."
"I go to visit her the first night after I told her I was feeling uncomfortable staying over. She tells me she doesn’t want to get married anymore because I don’t want to be with her as much, I tell her that’s not what I meant at all and clarified why I was uncomfortable. She then hands me a list of things she has had doubts about, a lot of them are fixable but she keeps insisting that she doesn’t want to get married. After hours of trying to talk to her about things I decided to leave and give her time to think about what she is doing. Not even a day goes by and she tells me she doesn’t want to get married anymore. I am absolutely gutted."
"In terms of the wedding, her grandfather passed away years ago and theft her some money, but it was always distributed to her by her parents. It’s how she was able to afford her condo alone. She also had money to put towards the wedding. The arrangement was her parents would pay half and I would pay half. Up until she called things off I had already payed half on all the deposits we put down. I e-transferred all the amounts to her parents who booked and payed. I trusted them and thought nothing of it."
"Fast forward to this day, I have been trying to get my portion of the deposits back from her family that has ghosted me. It’s hurts me everyday that the person who called things off is treating me this way. My ex-fiancée has only given me back half of the costs I made for the condo in terms of furniture and other things. I am thinking of turning to seek legal action against her very soon. I don’t know why everyone just decided this was the best option to take and not be accountable for their daughters actions."
"The worst part of all of this is my life has deteriorated ever since we broke up. I went into 2019 being so hopeful of life. It has not been easy at all to come to terms with everything. Recently my mother has been hospitalized for a brain tumor that had been growing since the beginning of the year. I am typing this out as we await the news of her biopsy. Life has taken such a hard turn and I feel like I have no sense of control of what is going on in it anymore."
"I have not even considered the idea of dating again and I cannot imagine the amount of baggage this year holds to me on a mental health level. I just need to take each day in one at a time and learn to move forward."
16. Mckyhodge left the altar for both their sakes.
"I am a woman. I left someone at the alter. Except the alter was a courthouse.I was 20, he was 19. We we're both military. I had just graduated basic training and he took leave and flew into my graduation ceremony with plans to marry me in the courthouse afterwards."
"Once we got to the courthouse it all became so real. He signed his name, and j just stood there with the pen. I couldn't do it. I was two seconds away from being his legal wife and I just couldn't do it."
"Our relationship was far from perfect, and if you really knew what all he had put me through you wouldn't pity him. He truly did some awful things. However, I was shit too. I can admit that."
"We both grew up, years have passed. (This happened in 2010) He's about to marry someone and I am married as well. He deserved happiness, and so did I."
17.