A fitness fanatic has sparked fury online after venting his anger at his girlfriend of nearly three years for using his expensive home gym equipment without his permission.

In a post that has earned over 19,000 upvotes on Reddit, including many in the comments, the man, writing as Heythereuvicecity, also revealed his less-than–sympathetic response when his partner explained she did so partly because she is worried about being harassed at her normal gym.

While gyms should represent a safe space for all to exercise in peace, the internet is littered with stories of women experiencing intimidation, embarrassment and even sexual harassment at the hands of male gym-goers.

Gym-timidation, as it has been coined, is a real and damaging thing with a survey of 1,000 female gym-goers conducted by personal training company Origym finding as many as 2 in 5 women avoid exercising at the gym because of men making them feel uncomfortable.

So you can imagine that the girlfriend of the man penning this particular social media post probably thought she had lucked out when her other half decided to shell out $4,500 on a home gym.

An avid gym goer who visits "4 times a week" but was growing tired of having to drive to the gym and share equipment, the couple have been together for two-and-a-half years.

Though they don't live together, he supplied her with a key to his apartment "for emergencies."

However, he was left livid earlier this week after learning she had let herself in to use his gym "without even checking" if he was OK with it. "I wasn't okay with this," he wrote. "The whole point was that I didn't want to share a gym with anyone else."

His girlfriend was angered at his response and, when Redditors dug deeper into the comments, the boyfriend revealed that she told him she "partially" chose to use his gym over fears she would be harassed at her normal gym.

Unfortunately, he was entirely unsympathetic. The man wrote: "It sucks that we live in that kind of culture but ultimately she can find a non coed gym or talk to the gym staff about that."

He added: "I'm not saying it's acceptable/ok or that the staff shouldn't do something about it, I'm just saying that it doesn't mean she should use my gym when 10s of millions of women use public gyms every day and potentially face similar treatment."

His initial refusal and subsequent response won him few fans online. Remarkable-Code-3237 commented: "She has been his girlfriend for over 2 years. I bet he does not mind sharing his bed with her. But, she better not touch his gym equipment."

Salisburywitch was stunned at the fact the boyfriend's behavior was shocking since he knew "she gets harassed at the gym but he still doesn't want to share." They added: "Yes, she should have asked, but he's selfish."

Junroku asked: "What is the mental malfunction of this guy to not allow his long term girlfriend to not share his space? I hope she leaves him for a better dude with a better gym or she gets a hella raise and buys her own personal gym."

"The relationship is going nowhere," Too_Tired_Too_Old surmised. "It's been two and a half years, her key is only for emergencies and he can't even share a part of his space to help her feel safe from harassment that apparently she should just put up with."

Penny_Girl was similarly scathing, writing: "She shouldn't have asked, because he should have offered the instant he knew she was being harassed."

Newsweek has contacted Heythereuvicecity for comment.

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