She Has the Dash Cam Footage of Him Calling Her a Slur
She pulled off the freeway next to a gas station and told him to get out. He did, she says — and then turned back to the window and screamed the insult that might have ended the engagement.
The night had started at a coworker's birthday party. He'd arrived three hours before she did and was already drunk by six. By the time they left, he'd yelled at everyone there, including his supervisors. She drove. He started shouting in the car — about PTSD, about nobody caring — and when she said they weren't discussing it while he was drunk, he got louder. She warned him she'd pull over and make him get out. He laughed and told her good luck getting into his house.
She got off the freeway. He got out of the car and, according to her account, called her a fucking fat bitch. The dash cam recorded it.
She writes that in the moment, she felt relief. Finally, she thought, it was over. Finally, people would understand and not call her crazy. The wedding is in six months. She loves him, she says. She also says this isn't the first angry outburst, drunk or sober.
The comments pointed out the contradictions in the post itself. She'd called him an angry drunk, then noted he's the same way sober — so the alcohol isn't the cause. She'd described his parents as good people who treat her well, then said they justify his every action and don't think he can do anything wrong — which means they don't, in several commenters' view, actually care about her. And she'd said she felt liberated, so why was she asking how to decide?
The answer that resonated most widely was the simplest: if you're using phrases like "this is my chance" and "I could finally end my relationship," you already know. Several people asked her what she'd tell a daughter in the same situation. One noted that this is how women get killed. Another pointed out that abuse statistics get worse after marriage, not better, and that alcohol is often present in domestic violence incidents — but the drinking isn't the root problem.
Multiple commenters who'd lived with PTSD, or had family members who had, said the same thing: PTSD does not make you scream insults at someone you love. It causes flashbacks to specific trauma. A birthday party is not that. Commenters who'd witnessed or experienced trauma said they'd never heard someone use it as an excuse to verbally abuse a partner.
The phrase "verbally abusive at best" appeared more than once. So did the observation that she'd seen how his father treats his mother, which means she already knows what's coming.
Almost no one made the case for staying.
A few comments suggested sending him the dash cam footage so he could see what kind of man he is — not as a path to reconciliation, but as a wake-up call he might need for his own sake. One person asked whether therapy could help him, then immediately answered their own question: who cares? He's no longer your concern.
The strongest version of the case for staying would have to argue that people can change, that a rock-bottom moment sometimes forces someone to face what they've become, and that six months is enough time to see whether he'll do the work. But that case requires her to wait and see whether the anger escalates to violence, and it requires his parents to stop enabling him, and nothing in the post suggests either is likely. His father has the same anger problems. The enabling is generational.
The other version of the case is that she loves him. She says so plainly. But love by itself has never been enough to make someone safe, and the comment section knew it.
The consensus was immediate and unambiguous: leave. Not "consider leaving," not "set boundaries and see." Leave now, while there are no kids and no legal ties. The relief she felt when she thought it was over — that was the truth talking, and everything else was the sunk cost talking back.
Several people urged her to contact a domestic violence hotline, not because she'd been hit, but because the pattern is already there and the statistics say it gets worse. One commenter noted that she shouldn't have to deal with this alone and suggested showing the footage to a friend or family member.
The wedding is in six months. The deposits are presumably paid. The guest list is presumably sent. And none of it, according to the thread, matters as much as the fact that she wrote the words "this is my chance to break free."
Would you marry someone who made you feel that getting out was your chance?