When One Comment Breaks You

Everything was great for Mark, a 28-year-old who finally found someone he could see a future with. Anna his girlfriend for a year came rich in all things that he admired-mostly because of being smart, caring, and stable in her career. Their base seemed strong, rooted from trust and support.

“I trust her completely, and I know she loves me”

But it was just a single comment that opened the floodgates for him. A seemingly harmless joke precipitated Mark into a tailspin of overthinking and anxiety. It had begun when Mark did a lighthearted attempt at teasing Anna by sending her a GIF of a spanking joke. Her response of

“Getting spanked without sex would not be fun” blew him away.

It was the shift in his fretful thinking stream he couldn’t get away with.

He now became obsessed about whether she had done things with this ex such as spanking or could have even possibly possibly done anal. They had not gone beyond second base in all of their time together and yet Mark could not seem to stop envisaging what was Anna’s experience of her ex. His brain was now dominating with overthinking her past and started interfering in peace of mind and work

There were his conservative friends, who fueled the flames. Some of them had married virgins and started speaking out, which wasn’t helping Mark with his situation.

“I never thought it mattered before, but now it’s all I can think about,”

The relationship, which began with love and trust, started to feel fragile. Their long-distance situation, where Anna would spend a month there, did not improve matters either. Whilst Mark had been initially fine with things moving slowly, after knowing about her sexual history, he was suddenly filled with doubts.

“Maybe it’s going to get better with time as we get closer,”

or maybe I just need to sort out why this is troubling me so much.

Mark is torn between two worlds. He does know that her past will not determine their future, but in the other hand, his overthoughts have hijacked his sense of stability. He confesses that his thoughts may be resulting from anxiety or even a little bit of OCD.

“I’ve tried to read up on it, watch videos, but nothing seems to help,” he admits.

This is a great example that overthinking can even ruin the healthiest of relationships. Sometimes, we are worse enemies and create problems with no base at all. The story of Mark is not only about him and his relationship with Anna but also his relationship with himself and how he would come up from the spiral of self-doubt.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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