10 Exes Who Turned Ordinary Dating Into Full-Blown Plot Twists

Relationships can bring out the best in people — but sometimes, they reveal drama you couldn’t dream up even if you binge-watched soap operas for a living. From secret lives and wild hobbies to lies so elaborate they deserve an award, some exes turn everyday dating into chaotic, plot-twisted episodes.
Here are stories from people who thought they were in normal relationships — until their exes proved otherwise.

• She was in contact with my ex-wife and plotting to help her get custody of my two sons. I had full custody and a permanent restraining order against my ex-wife. She was taking photos of us and sending them to my ex-wife.
  I ended up hiring a private investigator to ensure this woman left the state and went back to her mom’s house halfway across the country. Come to find out, she was married and hiding from her husband. She had even been going to court to change her last name to stay hidden from her ex-husbands. © airbornedoc1 / Reddit

• I had been dating this woman for two years, and everything about her felt stable—routine even. She worked as a nurse, did long shifts, and always complained about hospital drama. She’d call me during breaks, exhausted, talking about patients, coworkers, the usual stuff.
  One night, she didn’t come home. I panicked, thinking something had happened at work. I called the hospital. They told me they had no record of anyone by her name ever being employed there.
  Turns out she’d been spending those “12-hour shifts” at her other fiancé’s house. And the wildest part? They’d been engaged longer than she had been with me.

• He lied about being in another country, sending me old pictures and videos to keep up the lie, so he could invite his ex to live with him not ten minutes from my house. She had apparently been told they were soon going to get engaged. © ThrowRA-olivesgrow / Reddit

• My ex was thrilled when I told him I might be pregnant. He immediately started acting overly devoted — bringing me snacks, rubbing my feet, talking about how our lives were about to “change forever.” I thought it was sweet. Then I took the test. Negative. I told him, expecting relief or at least a normal reaction. But he just... stared at me. Then he quietly said, “Could you... take one more? Maybe a different brand?” That’s when I found out he wasn’t excited about our baby at all —
  He wanted a child because he thought it would finally convince his parents to let him move back home and “start his adult life properly.” Apparently, in his mind, having a baby was the shortcut to proving he’d “grown up.”

• He took a girl I shouldn’t have been worried about on a trip to Europe! Then, when I left him, he still had her visit him. A few months later, he was mad and asking why I was overreacting and cutting contact with him—lol.
  Years later, he reached out and asked to do business with my dad (who is a very successful businessman). I told him I’d let my dad know. That was three years ago—lol. © Sepined / Reddit

• She knew we were tight on money after she moved in with me and needed to find a job urgently. She claimed to be applying for jobs all the time, but didn’t want me to look over her resume or application letters.
  Months later, I discovered she had never applied to any jobs because she was afraid of rejection. © Th3_Accountant / Reddit

• My ex told me she traveled for work every other week. Marketing conferences, brand workshops, client meetings — you name it. She always posted blurry airport photos and pictures of hotel hallways. I thought she was just busy and exhausted. One weekend, her “flight was delayed” so she stayed at her place. I passed by to drop off groceries and heard something weird through the door. It sounded weird. Turns out she wasn’t traveling at all. She had a massive green screen setup, beach soundtracks, and stock footage playing so she could pretend she was abroad. She said it “helped her manifest success.”

• She lied about her age. It was college. I was 24, and she said she was 26 (we weren’t dating at the time). We started dating, and a couple of weird things happened that, in hindsight, were clues I ignored:
  Her senior pictures had a pretty outdated ’90s vibe.
  She never let me see her ID.
  Eventually, I googled her out of curiosity. Turns out she was 31. While her age wasn’t inherently a problem, lying about it certainly was. © Easy-Wish-2143 / Reddit

• She was talking to a guy in another state and decided she liked him better. He was coming to see her, and that’s when I found out about him. She basically told me he wouldn’t be happy to see me around and to go away.
  Well, the joke was on her because he came to tell her he had found someone at home and was breaking up with her. After he left, she decided to come crawling back to me, and as much as I wanted to get back with her, I just couldn’t trust her. © TraditionalTackle1 / Reddit

• He was the type who adored grand gestures — flowers at work, surprise dates, random gifts. It felt sweet. Almost too sweet. My friends joked he was either a soulmate or a walking red flag. One day, he told me to get dressed for a “life-changing surprise.” We drove for an hour, and he made me close my eyes before we walked inside somewhere. When I opened them, I froze as I saw his entire family waiting, and a minister. He claimed he “felt my energy saying yes.” Meanwhile, I didn’t even know his middle name yet.

• She didn’t pay the rent. I got upset with her and asked if she could pay it (I had already given her my portion to send to the landlord). She said she had.
  A few days later, I got a message from the landlord asking for the rest of the rent. She still hadn’t paid it all. I finally spoke to the landlord myself and had to take money out of my savings to cover the rent.
  After getting the exact amount from the landlord and doing the math, I found out she not only didn’t pay the rent and lied about it, then paid only part of it and lied again, but she also pocketed $50 of the rent money I had given her to send to the landlord.
  By that point, I already had one foot out the door of the relationship, but this was what made me actively start looking for other places to live. © Keeshberger16 / Reddit

• The first girlfriend I had wanted us to run each other’s credit to make sure we were financially compatible. I said, “Sure.” So, she signed up for her credit report, and I signed up for mine. She gave me a PDF copy of her Experian report, and it looked good. It ticked the box of being “fiscally responsible.”
  A few weeks later, I overheard her talking to two different collection agencies. I wondered why she would be doing that if her credit score was over 780. I confronted her about it, and she admitted that she had doctored the credit report because she liked me and actually had horrible credit.
  I told her I would have stayed with her if she had been making an effort to clean up her financial past, but I couldn’t overlook the lying. © Unknown author / Reddit

Looking back, these stories feel unbelievable. Whether these exes were master manipulators, professional liars, or just plain bizarre, each one left behind a lesson wrapped in chaos.
If nothing else, they remind us that sometimes the biggest red flags aren’t the ones waving — they’re the ones we don’t notice until the credits roll.