Kris Humphries pens emotional letter about his marriage and divorce from Kim Kardashian

Before Kim Kardashian met her ultimate match, Kanye West, she was married to former professional basketball player, Kris Humphries. The whirlwind marriage and divorce incited quite the furore, with the tabloid circuit almost universally denouncing the marriage as a sham, and a means to promote the Kardashian brand and their eponymous reality television show.

Of course, the reason why this caused such a reaction was because the marriage lasted for a total of 72 days. To clarify: Kris and Kim started dating in October of that year, got engaged in May 2011, had a $10 million wedding - filmed as a "special" for the aforementioned television show - and then Kim filed for divorce exactly a year after going public with the relationship.

Kris, who last played for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, has now branded the ordeal as "brutal" in an essay titled I Never Wanted to Be That Guy, which he penned for The Players' Tribune.

"I met a girl who happened to be really famous, and I got married, and.…. Damn," the 34-year-old began. "I was definitely naive about how much my life was going to change. But the one thing that really bothers me is whenever people say that my marriage was fake. There’s definitely a lot about that world that is not entirely real. But our actual relationship was 100 percent real. When it was clear that it wasn’t working…what can I say? It sucked."

He then went onto address the divorce proceedings, which took 16-months to finalise, and promptly became prime fodder for the media circus;

"It’s never easy to go through the embarrassment of something like that — with your friends, with your family…. But when it plays out so publicly, in front of the world, it’s a whole other level. It was brutal. I didn’t know how to handle it, because I never thought I was going to be famous in that way.

Nothing can prepare you for the feeling of walking down the street, or being anywhere, really — the grocery store, the gas station — and having people literally running up on you and trying to film you, trying to grab you, saying God knows what."

Kris says that the backlash affected his mental health, reportedly giving him "a lot of anxiety, especially in crowds." At one point, it got so bad that he didn't want to leave his home, "You feel like…I don’t know…the whole world hates you, but they don’t even know why. They don’t even know you at all. They just recognize your face, and they’re on you," he asserted.

"And I didn’t even want to say anything to defend myself, because it felt like I couldn’t win. You can’t go up against the tabloids. You can’t go up against that machine. There’s no point."

Ultimately, what Kris wants to be remembered for is not his failed marriage, but his long, and successful career, as a basketball player;

"I know that most people will always see me as That F****** Guy from TV.  And I get it. I signed up for it. I don’t want any pity at all. But I hope that true fans of basketball remember me as a grinder, as a guy who transformed into a heck of a rebounder, and as a guy who always tried to put the game in the best light," he concluded.