Bonus Post: His Fiancées’ Gross, Drug-Fueled Sex Tape Was Leaked and It's Ruining Them. What to Do?

This story is something else

On rare occasions, I like to cover posts on Reddit that are particularly fascinating and this one definitely fits the bill in more ways than one. It’s a horrific situation, the advice given to the person in it was as bad as I’ve ever seen, and so many different life lessons tied into it that this could be a four-part column, although, of course, it won’t be.

Let’s start with the post in question from a throwaway account on Reddit. It’s something to behold:

My (29M) fiancee (28F) old sextape got leaked and it ruined our relationship.(self.relationship_advice)

I love her so much and I still want to be with her. We were planing to marry, buy a house soon and start a family, but I don’t know what to do now.

She is an ex-addict. She was in active addiction from 20-23. She was mostly using coke and even meth in the end. It got to a point where she was using almost every day and willing to do bad stuff for drugs. Eventually her parents got her into rehab and she has been clean for 5+ years. She is doing great ever since, finished her degree and has an amazing job. She never relapsed and doesn’t even drink or smoke.

We are together for 4 years now and she admitted to this about a year into our relationship. It was a huge shock and I couldn’t even believe it at first. She is the sweetest person I have ever met. She was afraid I would break up with her and it wasn’t easy, but I left it in the past, because she is not that person anymore and I never knew her like that. We never really talked about that again and I never told anyone, because I know how ashamed she is about it.

I don’t know how this happened or why would somebody release a sex tape after 6 years, but unfortunately it happened. Couple weeks ago my friend send me a twitter link. It was some weird account posting drugs, junkies, guns, ghetto videos and stuff like that. The latest post was a video of my fiancée having sex with two guys in a living room floor in some nasty traphouse. There were also other men in that room laughing and watching and everyone looked high. You can’t even believe how that felt.

I confronted her about that and her reaction broke me even more. She cried for hours and kept saying how ashamed and sorry she is. She said it happened when she was 22 and couldn’t afford her fix, so she had sex with the dealers friends and they apparently secretly recorded it. I wanted to take some legal action, but she begged me not to, because it would bring even more attention. She also said she never did it again, because she felt so disgusted after.

Honestly, I believe her, because she was always honest with me, but I just can’t stop thinking about that. I watched the video hundred times over (idk why) and I don’t see her the same anymore. I can’t even kiss or touch her and it’s been weeks. She is also doing terrible. She felt into depression, she’s unable to work and lies in bed all day.

The video got eventually taken down, but most of my friends and family saw it. They never knew about her addiction, so it’s a shock for everybody. My parents always loved her, but now they are urging me to call off the wedding and break up immediately. Everyone is calling her the worst names and hates her and when I try to stand up for her or defend her they call me crazy. The pressure from everyone is just too much.

This woman is the love of my life. Addiction is a sickness and she was a sick person, but she fought and got better. I would love to move past this and spend my life with her, but I just don’t know how. We both started therapy, but it’s not doing too much. I need some advice on how to cope with all this. How to get over it and be able to fully love her again? How do I explain everything to my parents and friends so they can see her again for the angel she is?

TLDR - My fiance is an amazing person, who used to be an addict and did some really bad things during her addiction. She managed to turn her life around completely and we were happy together. Couple weeks ago somebody released her old sex tape and it ruined everything. I can’t even touch her and my friends and family hate her.

Can you imagine? You have a fiancé and the two of you are moving towards marriage and starting a family. Your family loves her, you know she had a bit of a past, but she’s turned it all around and is on the straight and narrow now.

Then, you see an old video of your little angel servicing two dirtbags for drugs in front of a laughing crowd in some nasty crack den. Although you know this happened a long time ago and she’s different now, you feel disgusted and can’t stop yourself from watching it over and over to feel the pain again each time. You’re no longer sexually attracted to her. You are so disgusted that you don’t even want to touch her. You feel like you’ve fallen out of love with her and you’re going to therapy over it, but not making much progress. Meanwhile, just to throw salt in the wound, most of your friends and family saw the video, turned on her, and are encouraging you to run for the hills.

What a nightmare.

Let me just add, the advice this poor guy got was incredibly bad. The people responding were mostly white knights, feminists, know-nothing teenagers, and weird liberals who find the dynamics of normal human relationships to be both puzzling and appalling simultaneously. Let me give you a few snippets to clue you in on how bad the responses were:

*  "The fact that you repeatedly watched footage of her experiencing coerced sexual contact is alarming and I truly believe that while some of your heart is in the right place in regards to wanting to support her, your specific behavior in terms of watching this video is extremely problematic and I don't believe an apology is anywhere near enough. You need to take very concrete, introspective steps moving forward to address your own perpetuation of the harm enacted against your girlfriend, and consider how you participated in the objectification and violation of women, which in itself is an extremely pervasive issue faced by women constantly."

* "Your fiance deserved better than this. She didn't hurt anyone making the video but herself. You and yours have CHOSEN to act this way. Freaking horrific, I hope she survives this and finds love with someone who would want to protect her kind heart from cruel people who seek to injure it."

* "This guy, his family and friend group is toxic and frankly, pathetic. If you follow their lead on this you’re not any better. Your poor fiancé deserves support and admiration for overcoming her addiction, not a bunch of scumbags gleefully judging a horrible moment."

Men, especially men in love, tend to idealize and romanticize the women they’re with, which makes something like this an incredible shock to the system. Contrary to what these braindead idiots think, this man is not a bad guy because he’s horrified to see the woman he wants to be the mother of his children having sex with meth-heads she doesn’t know for drugs while a crowd of degenerates hoots and titters in the background. That’s just human nature. Some of these people just don’t know any better, but liberals always tend to think you can rewrite human nature on the fly. “Oh, you’re straight? Well, that’s fine, but you need to start liking ‘women’ with penises or they’ll feel bad about themselves, and we can’t have that. Also, here’s a 32-point consent document for your partner to sign every time the two of you have sex because normal sexual interactions frighten and confuse us. I’m sure that won’t spoil the mood.”  

So, before we start getting into what this poor b@stard should do, let’s just point a few things out.

First of all, if anyone thinks it’s unusual that this video spread around, even to this guy’s family and friends, then they probably haven’t been on social media in the last few years. Videos of some Karen shouting at people, trash beating on each other in a McDonald’s, or cops billy-clubbing a suspect are staples of places like Twitter. Yet, all we’re really getting is a pinprick view into their world. Did we get their side of the story? Did we miss some exculpating footage that was left off? Is this how they are all the time or the worst day of their life? This video is already a horrible, life-altering experience for this woman, but this kind of thing happens on a daily basis these days, and yes, many of us participate in it by sharing those videos. I doubt any of us feel bad about it, but maybe we should feel a little bad about the role we played in getting what may have been the worst day of some regular person’s life out to a wider audience.  

From there, it’s also worth noting that there’s literally a chapter in my book, 101 Things All Young Adults Should Know called, “27. Avoid the Big Mistake.” In the book, it says:

“Yes, there are a few people that are genuinely blindsided when they screw their lives up, but 95% of the time, the person who blows it knew they were doing that had the potential to take a Jaws-sized bite out of their behinds….people do incredibly stupid things that have the potential to set them back for decades all the time and they keep getting away with it – until they don’t.”

In her case, she knew it was a really bad idea to take cocaine and meth. There’s probably not a person in this entire country who hasn’t heard horror stories about both drugs. She did it anyway. It’s also highly likely that by the time that drug dealer was handing her off to his friends in public for a laugh, she’d probably slept with him in order to get drugs more than a few times. She would have known that was a bad idea and chances are, she knew going in there without any money that she’d be expected to have sex to get high. She did it anyway. When she heard the offer, it would have probably been a hard choice to make, but she could have declined and left. She knew what she’d be doing was going to be humiliating and disgusting and she did it anyway. So, she may not have known she was going to be filmed by one of the people in the room, but she should have been aware that was a possibility. A bunch of junkies and drug dealers in a trap house might do just about anything. Point being, you’d need a heart of stone not to feel any pity for her in a situation like this, where she’s cleaned up her life and had this come back to haunt her, but she’s not entirely an innocent victim. She knowingly made a long-running series of really bad decisions that got her into that position.  

It's also worth pondering how many OnlyFans girls, cam girls, and sugar babies are going to have an experience like this down the line. They soft sell or don’t mention the time in their lives when they were selling themselves, find some nice guy, are ready to settle down, and… their video comes out and blows everything up. With the big push to legalize drugs in America, we also should be wondering how many young women are going to have experiences like this with the tacit approval of the state. If meth or cocaine are illegal and you do it anyway, that’s on you, but when it’s legal like it is in Oregon, the government is complicit in this kind of thing to a degree. They’re essentially giving everyone the thumbs-up to use highly dangerous, highly addictive, mind-altering substances and it’s practically guaranteed to turn out badly for an awful lot of people.

We could go on from there, but this is getting a bit long, so let’s wrap this up with the central question. What should this guy do from there?

Under the best of circumstances, he could tell his family and friends that he’s still going to marry her, he doesn’t ever want to hear about it again, and if they cross that line, he won’t stand for it. Ideally, the two of them would still move elsewhere to reduce the chances that their kids are going to see those videos one day. However, pretty clearly, this IS NOT the “best of circumstances.” Seeing that tape has done major damage. He says he’s seeing a psychologist and wants to move past it but doesn’t know how. This line is… bad, very bad as well. “I watched the video a hundred times over (idk why) and I don’t see her the same anymore. I can’t even kiss or touch her and it’s been weeks.” He’s also wondering how to turn his friends and family around on her and notes that he wants to, “fully love her again.”

It may seem, even to him, that it’s unfair that he feels that way. After all, she’s a different person now and she didn’t know that video was being shot, but there are primal reactions people have to things like this that aren’t so easy to change. Once that love switch in someone’s head flips from “on” to “off,” it’s extraordinarily difficult to get it back to “on” again. As a practical matter, that means they are probably done. Hopefully, both of them will go on to something better.

---