I don’t know what I’m looking for here — maybe validation, maybe closure. I (30F) left my boyfriend (33M) of nearly four years because of something I never, ever imagined would destroy us: an obsession so bizarre and consuming it still feels unreal to say it out loud.

He was addicted to “gooning.”

If you don’t know what that is — it’s basically being in a trance-like state, edging for hours (sometimes days) while watching porn. At first, it was a quirky little kink. Harmless, I thought. We even joked about it. But over time, it became… everything.

He stopped working. He stopped eating regularly. He’d go days without speaking to me, just locked in the bedroom, lights off, glow of the monitor flickering on his face. I’d knock, beg him to come out, but he’d just mumble something about being “deep in the zone.” He called it "spiritual." I called it terrifying.

He stopped sleeping with me. He told me — and this broke something in me — that no real person could ever make him feel the way “the loop” did. That being in his goon trance was “purer than love.”

I cried. I yelled. I begged. I tried to be understanding, supportive, patient. I researched behavioral addictions. I offered therapy, even couples counseling. But he just went deeper. Once I found him on the floor, weak, dehydrated, surrounded by tissues, half-eaten food, and a laptop playing AI-generated moaning. He didn’t even notice me walk in.

So I left.

I packed my things while he was in the middle of a 48-hour “session.” I left a note. I couldn’t take it anymore. I wasn’t even a person to him anymore — just an interruption.

Here’s the twist.

Two weeks after I left, he showed up at my door. Clean. Sober. Crying. He told me that losing me broke the trance. That he flushed everything. That he was finally awake. That he chose me over the loop.

But now I don’t know if I can ever trust him again. I don’t know if I want to rebuild from that wreckage.

And our mutual friends? They’re calling me cruel. They say I abandoned someone with an addiction. That I “walked away instead of helping.”

So… AITA for leaving when he hit rock bottom? Or was I right to save myself before he drowned us both?