Could this possibly be the messiest break-up of all time?
A man has taken to Reddit to share his horrifying break-up story, which involves accusations of cheating and public outings.
Posting in the popular “Am I the Asshole” sub-Reddit, the Reddit-user wrote: “I know the title sounds absolutely terrible.”
“My ex and I were together for five years. I decided to propose, but she rejected me. The next day, we had a talk. She realized that she was gay, since ‘I’ve been trying to [sic] hard to please myself from men.’ We broke up.”
But the next day, the man was awoken to a stream of text messages from friends linking him to a Facebook post in which his ex-girlfriend accused him of cheating.
Gay girlfriend hit out at him in a Facebook post and claimed they broke up because of his cheating.
“She said that’s why we broke up,” he wrote. “Now I am usually not evil, but this pissed me off. She was destroying my reputation, for god knows why. I simply commented that the real reason we broke up was because she is gay.
“People didn’t believe me, until my ex literally screamed at me for outing her. Then a lot of people started to call her out for her lies.”
The guy acknowledged that he is “probably a huge a**hole,” but added: “I feel like she deserves it.”
He denied that he had cheated on his girlfriend but said that he did have sex with somebody shortly after they broke up.
Reddit users were largely of the same opinion in their comments on the post – that he was “not the asshole.”
Reddit users generally felt that his girlfriend was in the wrong.
One Reddit user said he had not “outed” his ex as gay for revenge.
She was telling lies about why you two broke up, you simply corrected them. Your reputation was being destroyed; just denying it wouldn’t have been convincing so outing her was necessary.”
Somebody else pointed out that it is “really messed up to out someone” – but said the guy was left with no choice.
“It’s her own lies that led to her being outed.”
Somebody else agreed with that, writing: “How someone decides to come out should be a very personal decision, made by nobody but the person coming out.
“That’s why someone still in the closet shouldn’t slander someone and leave them the choice of accepting it or outing you.”
While the situation certainly sounds complicated, outing a person as LGBT+ is generally considered an extremely harmful practice that in some circumstances can place sexual and gender minorities in danger of retaliation or harm.