To wonder if it haunts abusers the way it haunts survivors? Trigger warning S.A

[thinkingOutLoud5]

As per my name I'm just thinking out loud after yet another bad dream about my r*pist and physically abusive ex partner.

It has been almost 6 years since I left him and almost 3 years since he last tried to contact me, i moved 300 miles away and have a family now. He's in prison at the moment so I'm the safest I have ever been.

I've had EMDR and counselling but the horrible little man still haunts me.

Do you think their crimes eat away at these men the way it does us?

I don't think I could live with myself if I done something so revolting to another person.

I want to hope it's not just survivors losing sleep. What do you think?

Sadly, I think not as they rarely think they've done something wrong, or if they do, they think there are all sorts of mitigating circumstances and they're the good guys really. Very few people think they're the bad guy and those who do are often comfortable with that.

It's probably best not to pin your recovery on hoping he reforms. I hope you do heal and that he stays locked up.

I'm so sorry for what you went through, OP. I was groomed/raped when I was 18 and I also wonder whether the rapist ever feels remorse or wonders what happened to me. I couldn't live with myself if I were him... Sending much love, OP.

OP I hope this doesn't sound patronising but things will get better. It takes time but I sadly know what you're going through.

And no I don't believe it does. I think these men are too far gone for that. I used to wonder if my abuser felt guilt but 15 years on I have accepted that he will always be the victim and spin what happened to make him look better.

Thank you for the replies, apologies for such a morbid thread first thing in the morning but I had to write it down somewhere. It bugs me to no end that I still unwillingly give that 'man' my headspace all of these years later.

I believe it would provide a degree of comfort if I knew it haunted him too, because I don't want to be the only one suffering when I'm the blameless party.

Ali, I'm so sorry for what you have suffered too. I was 19-20 when it happened to me so a similar age. I hope you find healing and peace x

@moita

OP I hope this doesn't sound patronising but things will get better. It takes time but I sadly know what you're going through.

And no I don't believe it does. I think these men are too far gone for that. I used to wonder if my abuser felt guilt but 15 years on I have accepted that he will always be the victim and spin what happened to make him look better.

You haven't come across as patronising at all, quite the opposite actually. Thank you.

I'm truly sorry that you can relate too on such a personal level.

I'm willing the day to come when I'm no longer affected by what he did to me, I feel a bit weak actually as though the time passed and considerable distance should have meant I'm no longer defined by it.

You aren't defined by it, thinking. There is more to you than a traumatic past. You affected by it though. We reflect our experiences, and time helps because you have more experiences to reflect! You survived, moved away, and are rebuilding. Everything you do adds to who you are, and makes that trauma a less significant part of your life.

So the best revenge is to get on with life, as best you are able, and fill it with different experiences.

My abusive partner always blamed his actions on me - physically and emotionally abusive, cheating etc. He was such a narcissist then I doubt he has changed his mindset. The only time he showed any sort of remorse was when I finally kicked him out (after 9 years) and even then it was only because he couldn’t quite believe he had been dumped. When I met my now DH he tried all the tricks in the book - threatened suicide, said I promised I would always love him and look after him, even said he would tell my DH’a employee that he was a child abuser (what the fuck?!) But the little man did disappear after a time of ignoring him. I doubt he has the mental capacity for guilt but I really hope there are times that he bitterly regrets what he put me through.

*DH’s employer

Absolutely not, no. Sorry.
You're thinking about this from the viewpoint of being a good, decent person. That's why you can't relate, and why you wouldn't be able to live with yourself if you'd hurt another human so much.
On the 'upside', this man won't be enjoying his time in prison one bit and probably feels incredibly bitter and wronged about being there. And people like him can never be truly happy or satisfied in life, living inside their own foul minds permanently. They aren't normal.

Totally agree that they feel they were the victim. In their heads, you did something to provoke them, they responded in an understandable way and you then went off crying and made them look bad. And it's a weird woman-favouring world that agreed with you instead of seeing their perspective.

And when I say you did something to provoke them, just existing counts.

You aren't defined by it, trauma is just really tough and likes to overstay its welcome. Blame trauma not yourself.

I was SA by my cousin as a child and raped when I was 11, I got too 'old' for him, so he moved on to two younger girls and sexually assaulted a woman (also a family member). The police investigated it but CPS decided not to prosecute as his age when he srarted this was 12 and they said he couldn't have criminal responsibility. I am pretty sure he thinks he has done nothing wrong because our justice system has told him. There are 4 of us out there struggling with his actions. He is now married to a primary school teacher with daughters of his own. The truth will come out, I know deep down but it is a shame someone else will get hurt in the process. It is very hard to live with OP

No one sees themselves as the villain in their story.

I am sorry your still feeling it, my history affects me more as I get older. It’s like now I’m safe it’s there haunting me more. I don’t know what the answer is but I wish you peace with it

Hi OP,

Sorry for what has happened to you. I too have been raped and attacked.
A therapist pointed out my language around what happened Ed was very telling and I noticed you did, what I previous did by stating:

bad dream about my r*pist and physically abusive ex partner.

By referring to the person as ‘my rapist’ it’s holding onto the fact, for yourself and it’s owning it as a part of yourself, and your identity.

Whereas removing the event and person to a more neutral ground can really help re align our internal and mental picture, this should help heal the trauma.
So ‘I was raped, or ex raped me’ etc - just not ‘my rapist / my rape’.

You do move on, but it takes a lot of time, energy and healing.

Sorry but no I don’t think it does

I'm sorry you are feeling this way OP.

I have a narcissist ex and I know what it feels like to still be giving them headspace years after the event. You feel like they don't deserve it but you can't help it. You are hanging onto feelings of hurt and hope they are suffering in some way, but the truth is, you will just never know. You can't look inside someone else's head.

It feels like you would get a degree of comfort if you just knew that they were still thinking about what they did to you, that they care on some level or feel guilty or feel something. That's because you are still feeling the hurt and you are still emotionally invested in what happened, even though it's a long time ago now.

You have to find your own way to make peace with that. I find that as time goes on it does get a little bit less. Therapy can help if you can afford it or find it cheaply, but otherwise just let your thoughts and feelings happen as they happen. Try not to beat yourself up about it, but recognise your thoughts for what they are, and acknowledge that you will never really know the answer.

It's good that you are a long way away now and you have your own family and a full life by the sound of it. I know it's not easy to just focus on that but just acknowledge that they are there and he is not, and that's good. You will never know what's happening inside his head so worrying about it is a futile activity, although I know it's very, very difficult not to, because the pain is still raw sometimes.

Like with grief, these thoughts don't necessarily completely go away. But I do hope you find some peace and that the worrying and overthinking becomes less as time goes on.

I don't think they do.

My ex partner acknowledges that he maybe wasn't the "best" boyfriend but outright denies that he sexually assaulted me a year after we broke up. Still had the cheek to turn up at events I was at with my friends, knowing full well I would be there. I hated seeing him - it made me feel ill to my stomach. If he felt similarly I think he would of tried to avoid me. Like someone else said, we are looking at it from a normal, kind, respectful human point of view. People who behave like yours and my ex's are not those things.

My ex-husband tells everyone I abused him, we share a DD so I still have to see him. He has told any one who will listen I abused him, I gaslit him etc. He even told a social worker and the courts, not sure if they believed him, I sometimes think they did.

Meanwhile it's been almost 4 years since I left him and I still wake up in a cold sweat at least 3 times a week.

Onlyis they are genuinely remorseful.

I think most probably still get off on the power or believe they did nothing wrong because they've rationalised it.

No, I do not think they are. There is a high correlation between boys who were victims of CSA going on to become sex offenders as adults. This permanently affects their mental state, in my opinion, such that while they intellectually may know that SA is technically “wrong” they do not feel or have the emotions associated with it being “wrong”. It was their normal growing up and so they think it’s not that bad to do the same to an adult woman and so on.

Prisons made the mistake of thinking that most sex offenders feel what they did was wrong and had remorse. Because their rehabilitation was to have group therapy where the convicts relate in great detail to each other their crimes. The idea was that they’d all feel horror and remorse by talking about what they put their victims through. Instead, what actually happened is many prisoners had a salacious appetite to hear these stories, literally enjoying the telling and hearing of them and the “rehabilitation” completely backfired and actually made them more likely to re-offend than before they had this program.

I used to think about this sometimes, I was abused as a child by a teenager, and on the one hand it would be great if he suffered even a tiny amount of the pain and difficulties he's caused me and it would be so fucking offensive to have that effect on someone's life and feel no remorse... but on the other I think in some ways I might prefer it if he never thought about me at all.

Anyway, counselling helped me a lot, so these days I don't really think about impossible questions like that very often.

No. No, I don't think it does. I have known people left absolutely haunted by their crimes, but only ever gang related; things they felt forced in to.

I think they just don't think about it, or if they do, don't feel guilt. I don't think you could choose to do such things freely, to have that little morality or humanity, and yet feel guilty after. Sit thinking about it for hours years on, feeling frozen and sobbing, unable to move.

Two of the three men who have attacked me are dead now. Those thoughts I find it much easier to dismiss, than thinking about the alive one. Processing is strange.

I think a very small number must do, if it's been a one off heat of the moment thing, never to be repeated. It's a law of averages thing and cold hearted logic. I genuinely don't give a shit if they regret it, boo hoo. Some will regret it because of a genuine concern and remorse, some will regret it as to only feeling sorry for themselves, as maybe they were caught.

My ex wholeheartedly regretted it and was sorry, every single time... so no, not reeeeally sorry, not enough to actually stop, but enough to feel shit about it when hungover. Fucking arsehole.

@thinkingOutLoud5, sadly the answer to your question is NO. It does not haunt abusers the way it haunts survivors.

In the legal system, people with experience in such cases will tell you admitting to a sex crime is very very very (insert more) very rare. Typically the men who do this don't see what they have done wrong. Even the small number of ones convicted, when interviewed later show no or little remorse, no understanding, etc. There are some well known research papers that interview these rapists, and it's very dark stuff indeed (they share these stories, replay them as masturbation aids themselves, etc.). This might be worth a read www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/interv/sanchez.html

Of course there will be exceptions ... Delighted that EMDR and counselling have happened, and it sounds like you are on a journey.

Finally, it is not a morbid thread. In fact this question has been asked a few times on MN. It is a very natural question to ask