What did your ex ruin forever for you?

Porn.

The Backstory I was, at least at the time, a very nice guy who's confidence since abandoning the bogus social stipulations of high school had come on in leaps and bounds. My musical skill was at its highest, I had for the first time a good selection of friends who were actually there for me, money was coming in and college was great. Naturally at that point of complacency as a late teen, I stopped focusing on self-improvement and started to care a bit more about being selfish. This was good-I was always doing too much for other people, to the point where it stopped me helping myself. So a bit of selfishness was required.

I'd had a crush on this girl since the middle of high school, but it was never anything even remotely considered. For one, we'd chatted once. And for another, she was beyond me in compare, or so I thought. And physically, well, she was truly beyond outrageous. Beautiful wasn't even the word. And, like me, school had decimated her self-esteem (she didn't have my balls to up and leave early, her mum would have slain her). We had a great relationship for around 6 months. Then drama started-the thing I'd avoided since high school. She tells me she woke up spooning some guy when she went to visit a friend at Uni. She explained it all, and nothing happened. Not wanting drama, knowing that weird shit can happen, giving her 100% benefit of the doubt and being a strong believer myself in "everybody gets one", I told her it was okay, toned the whole thing down and tried to be the good partner. And, over the next six months, the relationship became meaningless. All she would talk to me about was her friend at college, Michael. He shared my name, but that was the extent of the weird. Until she started staying at his house not without letting me know-I mean, I wouldn't keep her posted whenever I went to see a friend, that's not cool-she would intentionally hide it though. But I just pushed it aside. I met the guy on a night out, and then a couple days later he announced he was growing a beard. On the night I'd met him, all my girlfriend talked about was my beard and how amazing it was and how good a boyfriend with a beard was. But I just pushed it aside.

You see, after years of having it hammered into you that those thoughts of distrust are paranoia and that shit like that ruins relationships, I made every effort not to be a jealous man-and trust me, that's a hell of a task for myself. Therein lay the downfall-she clearly wanted some form of dramatic alpha-reaction to what was or was not going on. Even when she told me about waking up spooning, she looked disappointed that I hadn't flipped off the handle and had a rage. Not something I want to do, I have heavy rage issues (YAY TREES FOR FIX!).

Basically, she got all up in my head because I wasn't an aggressive, jealous boyfriend. Also, this whole time her mum HATES me. And I mean that in the most raw sense of the word. The instant she saw me, the first two questions spat to her daughter were "How old is he?" (we are born in the same year, I just have facial hair) and "What in god's name is that in his face?! It's hideous.", in reference to my spiderbite lip piercings. She pushed and pushed that I was some sort of thuggish, scumbag junkie who was going to shove needles in her daughter, to the point where I couldn't stand being in that paper thin house with her pressing her ear to the walls to hear something to bitch about me for. Naturally, as we saw less and less of each other over the latter months, the relationship came to its inevitable demise. We kept in touch as fuck buddies for a few more months then it was all gone. During those months, she pretty much spent any conversational time trying to convince me there was nothing between her and the other Michael, that we broke up because she didn't want a relationship of any form, wanted to shag around and be young. I got that. Obviously bullshit, but I truly didn't care by this point, all investment in that relationship was gone now. Two months after we stop shagging, they are together. As far as I'm aware, they still are, though last I heard of them was last year.

With no girlfriend, my pornography intake had an unavoidable upsurge. And then it stopped completely. Now I don't feel safe searching for porn for fear. Fear that I will see her face. She is not (to my knowledge) a porn star. But she had such unbelievably perfect facial features that she looked better than many people with good plastic surgery. Her face is pretty much the epitome of runway model mixed with porn star. Now when anyone with a slender face and dark hair tilts their head back, I see her. She was in my head. I thought I got her out. Clearly not. I have been forever scarred. And that shit really messes with your head.

tl;dr When I seek out vanilla pornography, there's about a 69% chance the star will look like my ex.

/r/AskReddit Thread