TW SA rape. Male rape survivor AMA

[Imaginative1]

Hi

maybe I need this, and hopefully someone may take something from it who is trying to support someone.

I am a 32 year old gay male and I was raped in November last year and it has completely derailed my life, caused a chain of events in my head that have honestly resulted in it feeling like life before and after . Ask me anything

You're incredibly brave. Did you report the attack? Are the police handling it?
Sending you strength and love ❤️❤️❤️

Was it someone you knew?

No questions but I'm so sorry this happened to you. I hope you've been able to get support and counselling

Thank you!

no I didn’t report it for lots of different reasons.

straight after the event I was both in shock, and also relieved I was safe. I went into trauma response and I managed to come out of it somehow and I actually got him to stop.

I don’t think I saw it as rape. I knew it was not okay, and I knew it was trauma. Im pretty sure In the immediate aftermath I was focusing on the fact that I thought it had the potential to be a lot worse, and more violent and when this didn’t happen I was relieved.

If I had been able to intellectualise it at the time I may have come to the conclusion that it was someone ‘attempting’ to rape me- ultimately because he didn’t achieve orgasm, and I got him to stop. I know what the definition of rape is and I knew on some level it was but I didn’t‘feel’ like I had been raped if that makes sense

i was viewing the event as something traumatic that should not have happened that had upset me and left me in shock.

as time went on and my feelings and understanding changed, I realised I could repot it but didn’t feel like I had evidence, I thought I was okay and I was going to be okay, and I maybe felt like reporting it would make it feel real and I just wanted to get on with my life

there have been times since when I have fleetingly felt like I have wanted to , and times where that has felt like something I ‘could’ do if I wanted to, but ultimately I’m working really hard to slowly rebuild my life and confidence, and reporting it giving time and energy to something so negative will not get me the life I want

also the possibility of me committing to that and it going nowhere is something I am too vulnerable for at the moment

It was someone who I had met online for a casual encounter . I had met him once previously and had a positive experience.
I know his full name where he works where he lives etc as we live in the same area. I don’t think you could say it’s someone I know but not a complete stranger either . I have more casual sex than the average person, but I’m very picky and careful about who with and what for - this has never been particularly from a safety point of view but more of wanting to make sure I feel comfortable with the person. (Not that I look down on people who aren’t picky because I think everyone should be able to do what they want)

as I had been with him previously it didn’t occur to me at all that I was unsafe , further more I communicated what I did and didn’t want to do beforehand , and I took the reassurance he gave me, because based on our previous encounter I felt I could trust this person

Thank you.

i started having therapy in January , and I was pretty much in the middle of a PTSD induced mental breakdown and still in shock when it started

it was such a relief to connect with the organisation who provided it and my therapist after 2 months of feeling very alone and not understanding things going on in my own head

PTSD needs very specific therapy, and I am glad you are now receiving this.
You sound incredibly strong and intelligent. I am so sorry that you have been through this.

thank you.
my therapy has actually finished, I feel a bit like I started the therapy thinking I would be ‘ok’ at the end, and it’s taken me a long time to realise I can’t use ‘before’ as a bench mark.

I do feel like it’s a bit like - the event happens , you have therapy that lasts a certain amount of time, you take what you take from it then have to just go and live your life -but you’re not the same person as before

Just want to say... hugs. So sorry this has happened.

Thank you for sharing your story and on your recovery so far.

I'm aware it's an AMA thread but please only share if it's not damaging to do so.

Can you tell me what kind of therapy you had and what it was like/ if you feel it helped? Do you still suffer from any of the PTSD symptoms you were feeling when you started therapy.

Sorry to read this I went through the same 2 years ago from my surpose straight brother in-law am as so a gay male I never reported ether

To be honest I actually don’t know.

I contacted a local RASA organisation In January because I started to experience PTSD at the end of December which was about 4/5 weeks after the event

it’s a little bit difficult to remember what it felt like exactly , but I think at first it was just like generalised anxiety, some physical symptoms of anxiety, and I was waking up most mornings thinking about the event ( I had not thought about it at all for about 4 weeks or if I did think about it I just felt kind of numb ) so it was really strange to all of a sudden be thinking about it a month later, when I thought I had been ok.

It felt very similar to when I have had depression and anxiety in the past almost like the same ingredients but different quantities or a different flavour of the same thing.

i was also unsure if it was PTSD or if I was just having a period of bad mental health and I was looking back consciously at what had happened a month earlier and signposting that as the reason

I had had a good few weeks of just trying to function while my mental health was slowly declining,

I can’t remember what exactly triggered me to seek therapy other than I felt like my mental state was slowly starting to have more of an affect on my day to day life and I was scared of it getting worse

I contacted RASA at the beginning of January thinking because the event had happened 5 or 6 weeks ago that I was having a ‘delayed’ reaction only to find out that someone experiencing PTSD a month or so later is actually quite quick- an the same can be said for someone actually having therapy

by the time I started engaging with them I had so much stuff built up, I had sort of gone back into shock , and in a lot of ways I was questioning my reaction and mental state - so the one hour of therapy a week barely touched the sides at times so I didn’t have the time to find out about what type of therapy it was.

but it was a therapist who specialised in PTSD and rape and sexual assault that’s all I know really

Sorry to hear this . The man who raped me also did not identify as anything other than straight publicly

about experiencing symptoms now - I can but just nowhere near as viceral,

I have different symptoms now which are what I would describe as depression even though I’m really doing my best to look after myself

just feeling numb and a bit like I’ve woken up after a nightmare or a cat crash that has been the last 5 months , but because it’s brought about by this event and the PTSD , and I still have some PTSD symptoms- mostly flashbacks and being triggered by certain things , I still consider myself to have PTSD even though I probably wouldn’t score very highly on an ‘impact of events scale’ at the moment

also I had some traits of autism / ADHD which seem to have become quite a bit more extreme since I’ve finished therapy and kind of taken stock of what the last few months has done to me

Just realised I hadn’t answered if the therapy helped

i need to point out I was in shock and very scared at the point in time I started having therapy

it was very helpful to talk to someone who was an expert in this sort of thing obviously, because I felt understood and reassured

I was really confused by my reaction and I needed some validation and almost to have someone ‘confirm’ that what I was experiencing was ptsd and was because of that event

I also needed to be reassured that my reaction was normal

it helped me to grasp the seriousness of what had happened which is ultimately what I needed to do to have the full on break down I needed to have in order to start to heal process and move on

having the therapy made things worse at the beginning- which is ultimately what from an objective point of view I needed for things to move along

my life would have maybe been a bit smoother and from the outside I may have been able to function possibly even until now had I just not told anyone and not had therapy - which turned it into a ‘big thing’ when I had previously wanted it to not be a big thing. I was trying to have control over the situation and control the rate at which I was processing it and ultimately having therapy took that from me a bit. It’s not the actual event that has had the big impact but basically everything that happened after in terms of what I was experiencing but I don’t know what the consequences of just ignoring it would have been In the future for my mind and body and ultimately my life

I could not read without writing something, I am so sorry that this happened to you and glad that you got some therapy. Please double up on the self care and if you have support in the form of friends or family that you can trust, please remember to use it

Thank you! I have the support of a few close friends

sometimes I need it, sometimes I actually need it but won’t ask for it and want to self destruct a little bit by NOT looking after myself,

sometimes I want to be on my own and it feels positive, and I can be very good at looking after myself

i Actually moved in with my best friend for 2 months who has been and continues to be an amazing support to me but I am trying to balance being around people when I need and want to be with also being okay on my own - I will often say ‘no I won’t hang out today because we have seen each other a lot this week and I need to just be ok on my own

or sometimes I will say - Hey im actually NOT going to come over as planned , because im feeling really good and I want to just make the most of being in a good mood while im at home on my own

also I have not reported to the police because the man would obviously deny it

i communicated very clearly what I was and was not happy to do over text beforehand,
I also checked more than once before he came over that he knew what was ‘off the table’
i reminded him of that conversation when things started to go a way that made me uncomfortable, I said no verbally in numerous ways beforehand and during. There is no gray area

I haven’t known what was going on in his mind or how he views the situation and in many ways I don’t want to know - my experience has been my experience it has been very real. I don’t want someone else’s version of events because that would only minimise what I have gone through since if that makes sense.

there are lots of possible explanations / lies some one who does this can give and I am not comfortable with the thought of the anger and whatever else that would trigger within me .

I think our understanding of rape, and how it’s depicted have a massive impact on victims processing of things . I felt a bit like I didn’t have the right to put the label of rape on it , or to see or portray myself as a rape victim because I wasn’t attacked by a stranger, followed by a visit to A and E, and involving the police , but now I know that most people are raped by someone who isn’t a total stranger, most people don’t report these incidents. I felt like I was kind of embarrassed that I had completely misjudged someone who I had allowed in, I didn’t blame myself I don’t think, but I did think others may see it that way. My therapist said something really helpful quite early on I said I felt really self-conscious about the fact that this had happened to me because I had essentially misjudged somebody and she said the thing is we know that people get raped. We know this is something that happens people are raped every day, so you don’t need to feel self-conscious about that, because Miss judging people must be something that happens all the time

No questions but I'm in awe of your strength and am so sorry this has happened to you x

She actually used the words ‘if nobody ever misjudged anybody, nobody would ever get raped… and we know that people do get raped’ and that helped me let go of a lot of things that were holding me back from basically surrendering to whatever was going on in my head in terms of the process

If you ever want to chat send me a message am 38 it's weird how people don't think these things happen

While I’m not a gay male, I have been raped before. On multiple occasions, I just want to say that it gets easier. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but it does. Sadly it never goes away but you learn to cope and adapt.

you should be so proud of yourself, it’s a horrific thing to go through and to still be standing at the end of it and months later? A truly incredible feet of strength.

Would you report to the police now?
Are you likely to see this man again / bump into him?
I am sorry you have been through this.

I doubt it very much there are other things that I’m focusing on that feel more important to me that I see as positive steps to getting my life back and for all the reasons above reporting it isn’t one of those things