Melodramatic Short Stories & Male POV Marriage Novels

On our seventh anniversary, an event planner called, already hyping up my wife, Talia. "Ms. Sweeney, we're putting a family photo of you four in the main hall. And some shots of your little princess. That okay? Also, can you confirm your son carrying his sister onstage?" I froze. There were only two people in our house—Talia and me. A family of four? Two kids? I called Talia, the hotel's general manager. She brushed it off. "Probably a client. Wrong number on a contract. I hand out cards all day." I stared at the balloons and flowers I'd set up in the private room—then swiped them all to the floor. Gone. I turned and called my sister, the Director of the Business Compliance Bureau. "Naomi, Talia's cheating. She's got two kids. Get me the best divorce lawyer. I want her out—and out of my hotel."

The OB-GYN clinic is almost closed for the day when Isaac Howard gets a male patient. He's young and handsome and looks to be in his early 20s. He seems to be a college student. Thinking he's here to start trouble, Isaac frowns. "This is the OB-GYN clinic. What's a college student doing here?" Out of breath, the young man replies, "Doctor, please wait a minute. My wife is on her way. She'll be here soon." "Is that so?" As a professional doctor, Isaac doesn't overthink it. He just asks, "So, what seems to be the problem with the pregnant patient? What's bothering her?" "We kind of went overboard this morning… Picked things up a notch. I was in class this afternoon when she suddenly texted me saying she wasn't feeling well. I was worried, so I skipped class to grab a spot for her." "What's the patient's name?" Isaac looks down to check the intake form. His fingers freeze the second his eyes hit the family section. In the patient name column, it reads, "Julia Gordon." What a coincidence. That's his wife's name, too.

On the day of our wedding, all the guests take their seats, and the photographers and lighting crew are ready to go. The emcee announces, "Please welcome the bride, Lana Bowen!" Even though he has repeated himself three times, Lana is still nowhere to be seen. I call Lana, and she only picks up on my fifth try. I can hear the noisy bustle of a mall in the background. "Mark, Nick says he wants to be your groomsman. He's picking out a suit right now. Give me an hour. Once Nick gets changed and gets his hair done, we'll head over." My palms are getting clammy as I softly say, "Lana, this is our wedding day, not some casual get-together." She clicks her tongue. "Mark Waters, it's not like I said I wasn't going. Nick's going to be your groomsman. I can't exactly have him showing up in a T-shirt and shorts, can I?" My good friend Robert Decker is so mad that he's ready to give her a piece of his mind, but she hangs up the moment Nicholas Sampson calls her name. The emcee comes over and asks if we should postpone the ceremony. I turn to my parents, who are waiting expectantly, then to my future in-laws, who have looks of disdain on their faces. "Start on schedule, but change the bride's name." I tap Robert on the shoulder. "Get your sister to help me out and go through the wedding with me instead."

After three years away on business, I finally came home. My five-year-old daughter hid behind my wife, peeking out timidly as she asked, “Mommy, who’s that man?” I stood in the doorway, still holding the princess dress and puzzle I had bought for her. My wife, Heather Whitfield, had just come out of the kitchen. She had not even had time to take off her apron. The moment she saw me, she instinctively pulled our daughter, Nicole Lowe, behind her. “Desmond, why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?” My throat tightened. “The project wrapped up early. I can stay home from now on.” Nicole peeked out from behind her mother, revealing half of her little face. “Mommy, I don’t want him. I want Daddy.”

I woke up in the middle of the night to find my wife crying and begging me to let her see that young man one last time. "I’ll come right back after seeing him one last time. Please, I’m begging you." In our seven years of marriage, this was only the second time she’d spoken to me in such a pleading, ingratiating tone. The last time was when I caught the kid running out of her office, his clothes in disarray. Afraid I’d make a scene, she grabbed my hand and pleaded, "Honey, I promise I’ll cut him off. Please don’t divorce me. I’ll die without you." So, I gave her another chance. Just as she promised, she devoted herself to our family, becoming the perfect wife everyone admired. Until today. I turned on the bedside lamp, looked into her eyes, and told her seriously, "Go. Don’t leave yourself with any regrets." I had no regrets left. I hoped the same for you.

On the day my wife, Adele Bellamy, rang the opening bell on Merrow Street to take her company public, my daughter and I sat in the audience. When my daughter was invited onstage to speak, she took the microphone and asked me in her small, childish voice, "Daddy, did you really get Mommy by being a homewrecker?" The hushed hall erupted as if a boulder had crashed into still water, and countless camera flashes swung toward my pale face. "Mr. Linwood, is what your daughter said true?" "If his own daughter said it, it has to be true! That's a juicy high-society secret. Bet he never expected his own kid to be the one to spill it." "Haven't you heard? Ms. Bellamy used to have a childhood sweetheart, and then they split up out of nowhere. Maybe he broke them up so that he could take that guy's place!" Amid the uproar, I rushed onto the stage in a panic to explain myself, but the moment I opened my mouth, Adele pressed her hand down on the back of mine. "Yes. He was the homewrecker."

My wife, Karen Quinn, pretended to be trapped in a fire and called me for help. Without a thought for my own life, I charged into the flames to save her and came out so blackened by smoke that I looked like a lump of charcoal. Just as I was grieving, convinced something terrible had happened to her, I found her standing in the safe zone with her male best friend, Cade Morrow, neither of them with a scratch on them. She held up her phone and burst out laughing. "Todd, are you out of your mind? You've been fooled ninety-nine times, and you still fall for it like an idiot." Some of the others couldn't stand it anymore and warned her, "Aren't you afraid he'll divorce you if you keep going this far?" My wife shot me a sideways glance and said with contempt, "My first love died because of him. A little suffering like this is letting him off easy. "Besides, he's a pathetic nobody that no one wants. I'm the only one who'd ever feed him. Where else could he go without me?" What she didn't know was that I was dying. This time, I was really going to leave her for good.

On the day Serena's company went public, she announced her engagement to her assistant, Hugo Snow. Meanwhile, I, her husband who had quietly stayed by her side for four years, watched as Hugo walked up to the press conference stage. "None of this would have been possible without Hugo's support," Serena stated. "I thank you all for trusting Serena. From now on, the two of us will be completing this project together, hand in hand," Hugo added. As I listened to the crowd shower them with congratulations, my clenched fist slowly loosened. It was finally time for me to let go of this four-year marriage.

My wife has a severe sex addiction. But in the seven years we've been married, she never lets me touch her. To suppress her urges, she spends all day submerged in ice-cold water, and her arms are covered in needle marks. Several times, I try to initiate intimacy out of concern for her, but her reaction is terrifying. She even threatens to kill herself. "I told you, I only want a Platonic relationship in this lifetime. Can you stop being so selfish? If you insist on making me do that, I'd rather die!" she exclaims. She maintains this unusual obsession for seven years. Even after ending up in the hospital multiple times from suppressing her desires, she refuses to cross that line. Then, on our wedding anniversary, a man comes in for a pre-check of his phalloplasty enlargement for the ninth time. After the anesthesia takes effect, he begins rambling incoherently. "Honey, I love you so much." Looking at the surgical scars, I shake my head, thinking this guy is really willing to go to extreme lengths for his wife. Then, I hear his final murmur. "Tasha, aren't I so much better compared to your useless husband?" My hand jerks, and I nearly drop the scalpel. It is because my wife's name is Tasha Snyder.

I've been married to my wife, Shannon Ruppert, for ten years, but we've slept in separate beds the entire time. The day our house catches fire, the flames are so intense that no one dares to approach. Still, I rush inside, knowing the ceiling could collapse at any moment. Ignoring the pain as my skin burns, I strain to lift the wardrobe pinning her down. The firefighter who rushes in tells us that, given the severity of the fire, they can only get one of us out. Without hesitation, Shannon points to Charles Rice, her first love. "I want him to live!" I feel no anger or resentment. I just ask the question I've never dared to ask. "For the past ten years, you wouldn't let me touch you. Was it because of him?" Shannon lowers her head and won't look at me. Finally, she lets out a quiet sigh. "I'm sorry. If there is a next life, I'll be a good wife to you." I smile. Only after hearing the answer from her own lips can I finally let go. If I can't win her heart in this life, I won't want it in the next. As Shannon stares at me in shock, I hold on to her and jump from the sixth-floor window, positioning myself beneath her to break her fall. When I open my eyes, I'm back on my way to college for my freshman year. Without a second thought, I use my dad's connections to transfer to a college as far away from Shannon as possible. But as I board the high-speed train to Belham University, a girl's voice suddenly rings out from outside the train. "Matthew, our story isn't over! It never will be!" I turn and look out the window. Shannon is driving a sports car alongside the speeding train.

On the day of our fifth wedding ceremony, the bride, Natalie Knight, was late yet again. A notification suddenly popped up on my phone: a trending post on the local city forum. [What's the most thrilling thing you've done after finally winning over the person you'd secretly loved for years?] The original poster answered his own question: [Becoming her husband, obviously. Then stealing her away from my childhood best friend at his weddings five times and going at it with her backstage at the ceremony until we couldn't see straight.] Amid a flood of angry comments, the poster went ahead and shared a photo taken afterward, both of them drenched in sweat. No faces were visible, but it was easy to tell the poster was wearing a groomsman's suit. The woman, shown only in profile, was wearing a wedding dress. A strange sense of familiarity turned me cold from head to toe. The next moment, the doors to the wedding venue finally swung open, and two figures appeared before me. They matched the people in the photo exactly. It felt like I'd plunged into ice water. One was my childhood best friend, who'd been inseparable from me for thirteen years. The other was Natalie, the wife I'd married at the courthouse five years ago.

"We partied too hard last night and forgot to use protection—don't forget to buy morning-after pills for your wife." Looking at the woman's smooth bare back and the red mole on her neck in the photo, I felt absolutely nothing. Again. Five years of marriage, and this wasn't the first time. Kathy liked to test me this way. She called it her "little experiment." The first time, she "accidentally" left a receipt for condoms on the nightstand. I got angry and confronted her, but she just smiled with contempt. "Why are you so petty? My girlfriends and I bought that on purpose just to see how you'd react." The second time was on our wedding anniversary. A guy showed up at our door with a bouquet of roses, ready to propose to her right then and there. I got into a fistfight with him, fell down a flight of stairs, and broke three ribs. That's when she finally strolled out and told me the guy was an actor, and the whole thing was supposed to be a surprise for me. Five years. Her games kept getting more extreme. From flirty texts to explicit photos, she kept pushing my limits. And I'd gone from furious to completely numb. Since she loved testing me so much, fine—I'd give her exactly what she wanted.

On our wedding night, my wife, Corinne, suddenly said, "Emmett, let Silas take your place with me tonight." I froze, sure I'd heard her wrong. Then she said, "I don't want this either, but Silas is dying. The only thing he wants before he dies is to find out what it's like to be with a woman. "You two are twins anyway. You look exactly alike. Just let him stand in for you tonight. "Don't worry. I'll be thinking of you the whole time." My parents were standing at the bedroom door too, their eyes full of tears as they begged me. "Emmett, just say yes! It's Silas's last wish!" In that moment, a flood of memories came rushing back.

In the third year of Alex Shaw and Eva Laurent's marriage, her sister-in-law dies in an accident. After her younger brother, Hugh Laurent, returns to the country with his son, Eva decides to name the child her heir. Alex assumes Eva did it out of concern for Hugh, so he goes to her office to discuss the arrangements. Unexpectedly, he overhears her arguing with her best friend, Celia Inman. Celia says, "Eva, you're already married! It's one thing to bring Hugh and his son home without considering Alex's feelings, but now you want to make that child your heir? Have you ever thought about Alex at all? "Hugh is an adopted son of the Laurent family. He's not even your biological younger brother. You really don't have to go this far for him." Eva glances at the little boy sleeping peacefully in her arms. In a gentle voice, she says, "This is Hugh's only son. I have to give him the best so Hugh can feel at ease. Besides, this is my son, too." Hearing those words, Alex freezes in the doorway. It feels as though someone has struck him hard over the head, leaving him with an excruciating headache. The boy everyone thinks is Eva's nephew is actually her son!

On the day of the World Racing Championship, my race car spins out of control and plunges off a cliff. I use every ounce of my strength to call my wife, Giselle Stewart, for help, but she chooses to ignore me. All I hear through my headset is her icy voice. "I told you that you'd regret this, Craig Dorsey." She then turns her back to me, walking away to celebrate her "nephew", Dennis Turner, who wins the championship in the end. Meanwhile, I plummet down the cliff, shatter my spine, and am left paralyzed from the waist down. I'm then reduced to a wretched existence in a wheelchair. Six years later, Giselle finds me just as debt collectors are pinning me to the ground and beating me into a pulp. Her eyes well up with tears. "I spent six years searching for you everywhere! Why didn't you come home if you were alive?" I don't answer her. The truth is that every last bit of love I had for her vanishes completely on that day.

Everyone in Aurelium says Stella Budzyn is a rose with thorns, ruthless toward everyone except her husband. What they don't know is that being Stella's husband means putting up with an endless parade of other men. I watch numbly as she brings home one lover after another. Then she becomes infatuated with Gatlin Hewton, her prized new house manager, and gives him free rein to set the rules for the entire Budzyn household. Gatlin freezes my cards, throws out my clothes and car keys, limits me to just ten dollars a day, and forbids me from leaving the house after 8:00 pm. So when I receive an emergency call from the hospital at 8:01 pm, the bodyguards refuse to let me leave. "My mother is having a heart attack. I need to get to the hospital. Now." Gatlin doesn't budge. "Those are the rules, Mr. Hawke. No one leaves after eight—not even if your mother is dying." Shaking with fury, I turn to Stella and beg her to let me go. Stella barely looks at me. "As long as you're my husband, you follow Gatlin's rules." I stare at the woman I've loved for a decade and realize I hardly recognize her anymore. Fine. If this is what being her husband means, then I don't want to be her husband anymore.

Dakota Voss said we were going to live a minimalist life. No gifts. No special occasions. No grand gestures. "Real love doesn't need material proof." My buddy, Harrison Drake, backed her up. "Exactly. Your wife gets it. Unlike my ex, who kept buying me watches." I nodded. I lived that way for four years. Throughout it all, I never received a single gift or surprise. On my birthday, Dakota posted a photo of the two of us on social media. "Minimalist living. The best gift is having each other." The post had more than 200 likes. I left a heart in the comments. Then, I came across Harrison's private account. A limited-edition watch. Custom cuff links. A room filled with roses. "Someone said real love doesn't need material proof. But she insists on proving it to me." The photo was taken on my birthday at a presidential suite in a five-star hotel. I scrolled through his posts from the past four years. Every single one had been posted on one of my important dates, and every gift reflected Dakota's taste. I closed the account and removed my comment from Dakota's post, putting our relationship to an end too.

On the day of his fifth wedding anniversary with Hazel Fresco, Jack Brook was the only one dining in the restaurant. He was about to get up and leave when a waiter, Kai Wallace, walked in carrying his favorite dessert. He was puzzled. “Didn’t you say this was sold out?” Kai panicked. “I’m sorry, Mr. Brook. This is for the room next door. I saw the reservation was under Mrs. Brook’s name, so I figured you two had booked the same room. My mistake.” Jack was stunned. “Wait, so you’re telling me the people in the room next door are with my wife?” That was impossible. Hazel had just texted him, saying that she was still on a business trip abroad and would not be back until the next day. To make it up to him, she had even sent him an anniversary gift in advance. He knew she loved him. There was no way she would lie to him. Kai realized he had misspoken and hurriedly turned to leave. Jack instinctively followed him to the room next door. The second he walked in, he saw a room packed with people he knew all too well. Besides a handful of Hazel’s childhood friends, his best friend from high school, Alex Clare, was there too. After Hazel stood him up, Jack had called Alex right away. At the time, Alex had told him he had a patient that night and would be occupied. Even so, there he was. Just as Jack was almost convinced it was a surprise Hazel had set up for him, he spotted her sitting at the head of the table.

On our wedding anniversary, my wife, Maeve Anderson, took out a scratch lottery ticket. “We’ve won two and a half million dollars!” Before I could exclaim with joy, she added, “Ethan wants to study overseas. I’ll use this money to pay for his school fees.” The mortgage repayment letter fell from my hand. I was stunned. “But we’re late on our mortgage repayment, and my mother needs five hundred thousand dollars for her surgery. “If you give all the money to him, what will happen to our house and my mother’s illness?” She frowned. “We can still delay the mortgage for a little, and we can borrow some money for your mother’s surgery. “Ethan’s been depressed after I divorced him. He’s finally gotten back on his feet, and I must support him.” I fell silent. Five years after we got married, she still talked about her ex-husband, Ethan Reid, all the time. She would go to any lengths to fulfil his wishes, yet she ignored me. When she won the lottery, the first person she thought of was Ethan. I took a deep breath and nodded. “Give the money to him as you wish. “But I no longer want to take care of your ex-husband with you.”

Nathaniel Scott has been married to Jessica Sullivan for three years, but they still have no children. Worried that Jessica might be feeling too much pressure, Nathaniel goes to the hospital to get himself checked first. The doctor studies the test results for a long moment before saying in surprise, "Mr. Scott, you've had a vasectomy!" Nathaniel immediately denies it. "How could I possibly have had a vasectomy? My wife and I both love children. We've been trying for a baby ever since we got married. That's absolutely impossible!" The doctor checks his medical records on the computer and tells him, "You had a vasectomy three months ago." A vasectomy? Nathaniel immediately shakes his head. "No! I had my appendix removed three months ago!" "The surgical records clearly state that it was a vasectomy. Your wife even signed the consent form." Unwilling to accept this, Nathaniel begs the doctor to retrieve the consent form from that day. Patient: Nathaniel Scott Procedure: Vasectomy The family member's signature is in Jessica's elegant, graceful hand. It is unmistakably hers. Nathaniel is still reeling from the shock when the doctor suddenly notices something else on the computer. "Your wife's name is Jessica Sullivan, correct?" "Yes." "It seems she just came in for a prenatal checkup. Another family member accompanied her. His name is York Lawrence. Do you know him?" He does. A year ago, when Jessica was in a car accident, York was the one who saved her.