I really liked this girl in early high school. She was pretty, geeky and she lived around the corner from me. We walked the same route to and from school everyday. One day towards the end of the school year we started talking and day by day we started spending more time together until I asked her out on a date. The date was really nice and I could tell that she really me to liked me too. We were texting each other all the time and I was feeling excited about the prospect of having a girlfriend. But then I watched The Excorcist at a sleepover...

At this point you're probably rightly wondering what the two have to do with each other, but bear with me, this shit gets funny.

Having watched the movie, I became terrified about the concept of being possessed by the devil. I would lay awake at night thinking about it/building up the fear in my head. This progressed until one evening I was thinking about how much I liked this girl to calm myself down. Suddenly the thought popped into my head that I liked her so much that I might consider selling my soul to be with her. Immediately I freaked out and was like, 'no of course I wouldn't and what a stupid thought.' I'm not particularly religious, but still the thought persisted in my head. By this point it was the summer holidays and I had way too much time on my hands to overthink what should have been a cute little moment in my mind.

I eventually reached two possible conclusions for the issue that would allow me to move forward with my life. The first was just acknowledging that I was being crazy and that the sane thing would be to just let the whole thing go. The second was ensuring that I never got with this girl as, even though I didn't believe in hell, on the off chance I was wrong and it existed I didn't want to end up there by achieving the devil's end of the bargain.

So being a sane and rational human being I decided to go with option B. I promptly completely cut contact with the girl and to this day I'm pretty sure that she hates me. I find the whole thing really cringy and funny to think about now, but at the time it was heartbreaking haha.

So women of Reddit, don't feel bad about the men who cut contact with you - it's quite possible that, like me, they had simply become terrified about the hypothetical safety of their theoretical soul and decided to preserve it through non-action.