Tragic Love Short Stories & Male POV Marriage Novels

Grandma lay bedridden, her dementia taking hold as she repeated Scarlett Hayes's name over and over. Tears streamed down my face as I dialed my wife's number. When she picked up, Scarlett sounded irritated. She said she was working late tonight and would call me back when she was free. I could clearly hear the sound of a man's laughter in the background. The moment I hung up, Grandma gasped sharply. She called out my wife's name. It was her last breath. While I sat drowning in grief, Scarlett's male best friend Chase Morrison posted a video update, geotagged at a couples' hotel. In the video, their fingers were laced together. The woman's arm bore a distinctive black mole I recognized instantly. The caption read: "When two hearts become one, why care what anyone else thinks?" In that moment, my heart turned to ash. I gritted my teeth and left a comment. "Let's file for divorce tomorrow. Then you two can be together openly and legally. You'll even save on the hotel fees. Win-win, right?"

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.

My in-laws were old-fashioned. They insisted that spending New Year's in their hometown was a must for a smooth year ahead. We could not get train tickets, so we decided to drive back. When my wife’s first love heard about it, he insisted on coming with us. He even brazenly took the front passenger seat from me. “Charles, I get carsick easily. I can only sit in the front.” Evan shot me a disdainful look. "It's just a seat. Why are you being so touchy?" “If you knew how to drive, would this even be an issue?” My in-laws chimed in as well. “You’re a grown man. Why are you making such a fuss over something so small?” Outnumbered, I had no choice but to squeeze into the back seat with my in-laws. Then, when we were passing a toll booth, Yvonne spotted a stray dog and was suddenly overcome with compassion. “That poor dog. Let’s bring it home with us.” I immediately objected, “The car is already full. If we bring a dog too, we’ll be over the limit. We won’t even be allowed on the road.” Before I had even finished speaking, Evan turned on me without hesitation. “Charles, in that case, why don’t you give up your seat for the dog? You can just take a cab back!”

Ann Hartigan had been sexually unresponsive for years, but I once caught her pleasuring herself to a photo of her male protégé. That was how I knew she'd fallen for him. Later, when Craig McDermott's showboating in the operating room left my mother paralyzed, I gave Ann two choices: send him to prison, or divorce me. She spent the whole night out on the balcony in the cold, and by the next morning, she'd handed over the evidence of Craig's fatal error. After that, she became medicine's celebrated "devoted wife," and the two of us went back to being as loving as ever. One day, I slipped into an awards ceremony at Ann's hospital, hoping to surprise her. The moment I walked in, I saw the man standing at the podium, trophy in hand, giving his acceptance speech. Ice ran through every inch of me. It was Craig McDermott, the man who should have been in prison.

I'd made plans to spend New Year's Eve with my fiancee, Sophie Bennett. I'd even rushed home with a custom cake I picked up just for us. However, my smile slipped the second I walked in. A photo of Sophie and me that was hanging on the wall was being used as a dartboard. Her guy best friend, Sean Hewitt, had one arm wrapped around her waist while casually throwing darts at it. "Oh, hey, you're back?" he said with a grin. "Perfect timing. We're playing Truth or Dare." The words had barely left his mouth when another dart hit the photo—right in my face. My chest tightened as I parted my lips to call him out. Yet, Sean only laughed. "Wow, hit you again? Guess even fate thinks you two aren't meant to be." Then, he added, all fake innocence, "Don't get the wrong idea, alright? It's just a game. Sophie and I are basically bros. You're not seriously bothered by this, are you?" I stood there, completely still. As I stared at that photo completely riddled with holes, I couldn't help but think it looked a lot like my heart at that moment. Sophie gave him a half-hearted scolding. "Alright, cut it out." But Sean just put on a wounded look and kept his arm around her waist. Sophie only smiled helplessly before turning to me with clear impatience. "Sean's just messing around. Don't stand there with that look on your face and kill the mood. It's just a photo. We can print another one tomorrow. Stop being so petty."

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.

To give my wife a sense of security, I stepped back once the company was on track and took over things at home. In ten years, Adeline Hemsley had never brought me to a single company gala. When the tenth anniversary celebration was announced at a five-star hotel, I finally asked if I could come with her. She was slipping into a pair of heels, not even looking in my direction. "You're my husband. If you show up, people won't feel comfortable." Before leaving, she leaned down and gave me a quick kiss. "Be good. Once this busy stretch is over, we'll take Cole to Silver Coast." The door clicked shut. I stood there for a long moment, staring at the Legos and picture books scattered across the floor. A familiar heaviness settled in my chest. Our three-year-old came running over, holding up a black phone. "Dad! Mom forgot her phone!" I hesitated. This wasn't the one she normally used. The moment my fingers brushed the screen, a message preview popped up. [Babe, I picked out a suit for the gala. It's only 6,000. You’ll get it for me, right?]

My wife was eight months pregnant when she indulged her first love for the ninety-eighth time and let him run our child down with his car. My lawyer wife had promised me she'd bring him to justice, but in court, she suddenly changed her statement. "Mr. Quinn has a serious history of mental illness. His family will discipline him verbally, but he shouldn't be held criminally responsible." After the hearing, she shielded Caleb Quinn as he sobbed in public, then leaned close to my ear and said softly, "I promised you I'd only indulge him one hundred times. Let's just use up one chance. I can't watch him go to prison, can I?" I looked at my wife's flat stomach and felt calmer than I'd ever felt before. Then I nodded. She'd relied on that bet for six years, certain she could do anything. She'd forgotten there was only one chance left.

As Nicole Thatcher gave her speech at the kidney disease charity gala, I was backstage on my knees, sorting cables. She stood at the podium and said, "As a former kidney disease patient, I'm grateful every single day to the donor who gave me half their life." When she stepped offstage, she looked down and saw me. Without a second of hesitation, she unscrewed a water bottle and poured it over my head. "You treated me like dead weight and divorced me. Now you're here, volunteering like you actually care?" I wiped my face and looked up at her with a quiet laugh. "Perfect timing. You're all better now, so how about we get remarried?" Her hand stiffened around the empty bottle, then shook. She spat, "Shameless!" before storming off. Nicole would never know that the donor she had just praised on that stage, the one who gave her half of his life, was me.

Ever since my wife, Delia Sutcliffe, and Jensen Pike become an on-screen couple, accidents keep finding me. The first time, funeral wreaths line our front door, and someone swaps our Home Sweet Home sign for a funeral notice. The second time, someone douses me with a bucket of pig's blood outside my office building. The third time, a car hits me while I'm walking down the street, and I spend three months stuck in bed. Every time I fight with Delia about it, she brushes it off. "Those people just get a little carried away. If you'd listened to me and stayed home, none of this would've happened." Then, the tenth time comes. A fire breaks out in our house for no apparent reason, I end up with burns all over my body, and the doctors fight for seven days in the ICU to save my life. The day I wake up in the hospital, Delia hands me a set of divorce papers. "Jensen and I still have to work together for a while, and we need to get married to keep the buzz going. Let's divorce first, and we'll remarry once it's over. "You know it's just for publicity." This time, I don't explode. I calmly sign my name.

To repay me for saving her life, Tiana Sabell lets me marry into her family. In the eighth year after I marry into the Sabell family with a monetary wedding gift worth billions, her long-lost first love, Hayden Brown, returns with a child. Because of a nightmare he has, he claims my daughter, Sabrina Zeller, is cursed and will bring harm to his son. Tiana locks Sabrina in an abandoned chapel deep in the mountains, forcing her to fast for seven days and nights to purify herself. I kneel before Tiana and beg, "Sabrina has a heart condition. If she does not eat or drink for seven days, she will die!" Tiana focuses only on preparing nutritious meals for Hayden. "She will not die from going hungry for a few days. If she cannot endure even this, how is she fit to be my daughter?" I am locked in the basement for seven days. By the time I find Sabrina, she has already starved to death. I carry her body, which is covered in livor mortis, back home. Holding Hayden in her arms, Tiana kicks me away. "What have you been teaching our daughter? How dare she fake her death to fool me? If you cannot raise our child properly, then I will give her a new father!" I call my sister and say, "Pull the investment. Let Sabell Group go bankrupt!"

On our seventh wedding anniversary, my wife, Faith Richmond, slapped me in front of everyone. "It's Bridger's birthday. Who do you think you are, showing up here and ruining the mood?" The mockery in her eyes told me she had deliberately invited me here just to humiliate me. Inside the lively karaoke room, I was treated like a servant, ordered around to queue up songs and open bottles while I watched my own wife make out passionately with Bridger right in front of me. After everyone left, a drunk Faith waited for me downstairs. "Who gave you permission to disappear for seven days? This is your punishment. If you ever do it again, get the hell out of the Richmond family! Be careful. After serving me for seven years, you might not get a single penny for it!" The farewell I'd been about to say caught in my throat. I clenched the critical-condition notice in my hand. After a moment's thought, I decided not to take it out after all.

My daughter’s kindergarten held a family event, and I rushed there, only to see her holding hands with my wife’s male secretary. “Daddy,” she said, “I wish our family could stay like this forever.” I watched as the three of them hugged, radiant with happiness. Suddenly, exhaustion washed over me. Later, I filed for divorce. Then I left to teach in rural villages for thirty years. If I couldn’t light the lamp in my own home, I’d at least illuminate the path for others.

I was accompanying my mother-in-law to our family-owned hospital for a follow-up appointment. She had developed a lifelong gynecological condition from complications during my wife's birth. A muscular man passed by, recoiled in disgust, and shuffled to the other side of the aisle before shouting for a nurse. "What kind of hospital is this? You just let any filthy person sit in the waiting area? This old hag reeks. Is nobody going to do anything about it?" The nurse hurried over and recognized my mother-in-law. She held up her hands. "Sir, this patient is here for a scheduled follow-up. We can't turn her away." The man lost it. "What part of that don't you understand? Take this old hag and get out! My wife is Giselle Bedford, the CEO of Bedford Medical! You think people who sell themselves for a living can afford to cross her? "One word from me, and she'll have every last one of you blacklisted. That old hag can rot from her filthy disease, screaming in agony, and not a single doctor in this city will dare touch her!" I stood frozen. Giselle Bedford? The same woman who had texted me half an hour ago? Giselle: [Does Mom need me to send a driver for her appointment?] When did she become this man's wife?

My wife, Natasha Simpson, cheated on me while she was pregnant, but she ended the affair immediately. Her entire family stood up for her. "She's changed. She knows she was wrong. She's pregnant, and that's your child." Pressure came at me from every direction. Everyone expected me to forgive her and be a devoted husband. However, the disgust I felt after her betrayal drove me into depression. Because she was pregnant, I had to keep my temper under control. I endured the racing heart and sleepless nights and forced myself to suffer in silence. The only outlet I had left was an increasingly obsessive fixation on cleanliness. She always spoke to me gently. "It's okay. I'll follow your rules. Once the baby is born, we'll put all this behind us and live a good life together." From then on, she disinfected everything she touched. She had to wear gloves whenever she touched me, and we slept in separate rooms. Yet she never complained. "It's okay. I'm the one who wronged you..." Then, one day, I complained about a strand of hair on the floor. She finally snapped and tore off the protective clothing she had been wearing. "Enough! I cheated, but I ended it. Do you really have to punish me like this? Look at yourself. Do you even look normal anymore? Am I really that disgusting?" She deliberately trashed the house. She smashed plates and kicked over trash cans, all to punish me for my obsession with cleanliness. With her entire family behind her, she took advantage of the fact that I would compromise for the sake of our child and pressured me once again to forgive her betrayal. Something inside me finally broke. I started vomiting blood and was rushed to the hospital. Strangely enough, I felt relieved. "Let's get a divorce, Natasha."

It was my and my wife Camille’s ninth wedding anniversary. I had rushed home with a fertility specialist in tow, hoping to surprise her. However, when I pushed the front door open, the house was already full of laughter. I walked in, heart pounding, to find Camille holding a little boy by the hand. Her voice was soft and warm. "Today is Miles's first day of school celebration. I want nothing but the best for my baby." Camille heard me come in and turned around. She walked toward me, snatched a pot of hot soup off the table, and flung it straight at me. "How many times do I have to tell you? I'm married! I have a family! Stop trying to get me to have your kids, you freak!" I fought through the pain in my arm and grabbed her, desperate for an explanation. She wrenched free and slapped me hard across the face, then grabbed everything within reach and hurled it all at me. "If you don't get out of here, I'm calling the cops, you psycho!" Then she winked at me, took the boy by the hand, and walked over to the elderly couple nearby. "Mom, Dad, don't worry about him. He's nobody." I stood there, watching the happy family in front of me. I looked down and forced the ring off my finger, the one I had worn for nine years, and tossed the blood-streaked band at Camille. "Camille, deception always comes at a cost."

In the last six months, I have been away for work. But when I come home, I find out that my wife, Vanessa Hudson, is now three months pregnant. She insists that she hasn't been cheating on me. But her ex-boyfriend's post online tells a different story. Harold Quinton writes, "Thank you, Vanessa, for fulfilling my dream of becoming a father. You've worked so hard through ovulation, egg retrieval, and implantation, mother of my child." Harold has a very severe case of erectile dysfunction. The moment I find out my wife has gotten pregnant with another man's test tube baby, I feel bitter inside. I dial my boss' number and say to her, "I'm willing to take on the overseas general manager position that you offered me previously." Then, I turn to Vanessa and say, "Let's get a divorce."

The first time I found out that Jessica Blake was cheating on me was in our own bedroom. I was young and hot-headed, and I wanted a divorce on the spot. She cried and said she'd gotten drunk and mistaken the guy for me. She fell to her knees, begging me to forgive her. "If you divorce me, I'll jump from this window right now." That one line softened my heart for the next five years. During those years, she was gentle and caring, as if that night had never happened. Everyone could see it—Jessica loved me so much she was willing to die for me. But then came her mother's 60th birthday party. Out of nowhere, my mother-in-law, Linda, asked her, "Jess, where's my grandson? Why didn't he come?" I was confused. I thought she was just having a moment, so I smiled and said, "Mom, you forgot—Jess's due date is still two months away." Linda glanced at me calmly and murmured, "Oh… so you still don't know." My heart sank. I looked over at Jessica instinctively. She quietly put down her fork, as if she were talking about something as ordinary as the weather. "Actually, I have a son. He's five years old."

As I casually opened the online forum, a trending post at the top caught my eye. [Share the wildest thing you’ve ever done.] I clicked on the second comment, which seemed to contain just one line. [Without a doubt, it was the night before my buddy’s wedding when I had his wife come over for a “quality check.”] However, the poster kept adding to the thread. [That night, the woman tricked that idiot into thinking it was a bachelorette party, but she actually spent the whole night at my place. [She said she didn’t want to sleep with just one man forever and needed one last wild night before tying the knot. [By the end of the night, her throat was nearly raw from all the screaming. [We kept going until sunrise, right there in the wedding car her husband was supposed to pick her up later that day.] [Not only that, but even after they got married, this fool kept bringing his wife over to my place for dinner. [He’d help me in the kitchen while I pinned his wife against the fridge and kissed her. [He’d be glued to the game in the living room while his wife knelt in the bathroom and took care of me. [One time, when he passed out drunk on my couch, his wife and I had our own fun on the carpet beside him. [Every time he rolled over, we’d both jump. It was the thrill of knowing we could get caught at any moment.] The image loaded, revealing the familiar interior of the wedding car. The lucky charm I had given my wife dangled from the rearview mirror. My fingers momentarily stiffened, and I nearly dropped my phone. A wave of nausea rolled in my stomach as a chill crept up my spine. Just then, a hand appeared in my field of vision, waving in front of me. “Calvin, what are you zoning out for? You’re at my place, and you’re still on your phone. Come on. Dig in while it’s hot.” Wyatt Preston, my friend, grinned at me. Yet, his eyes kept straying toward my wife, Queenie Jennings, who was sitting beside me.

My wife and I were both messed up in our own ways. I was possessive, while she liked seeing me get angry. She said emotions were proof of love. If you loved someone, you would get angry. Just to see me lose my temper, she deliberately went against me at every turn. I hated her staying in contact with her first love, Chris, yet she arranged for him to work under her. I repeatedly warned her not to meet him in private, but she still went on dates with him and even made a point of telling me about them. I hated the smell of cigarette smoke on Chris, so she brought him home to stay for a week and made me smell cigarette smoke every single day. I completely lost my temper and, for the first time, threatened to leave home. Nicole panicked. To win me back, she stood outside in the pouring rain all night. She probably apologized to me ten thousand times, and only then did I forgive her. I warned her that she wasn't allowed to pull anything like that again, or I would never forgive her. But on the day of the family gathering, she still brought Chris with her. She introduced him to my parents without the slightest hesitation. "This is my ex-boyfriend, Chris. From now on, the three of us are going to live together. Honey, isn't that right?" Nicole looked at me expectantly. She was waiting for me to get angry and lose my temper again. She wanted the intensity of my reaction to prove just how deeply I loved her. But this time, I saw my parents' faces turn red with anger. I also saw my in-laws smiling from ear to ear. Suddenly, I felt neither anger nor affection toward her. Right there and then, I scheduled a divorce appointment and calmly told her, "That won't be necessary. Three people in one relationship is too restrictive. Let's get divorced. You can be with him."