Just told DP about being raped in the past and he's flipped the fuck out, please somebody help me I don't know what to do :(

[theworldisoutthere]

I just told DP about this: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/relationships/1513761-Didnt-know-where-else-to-ask-this-difficult-question-just-wanted-thoughts-I-guess-May-be-triggering

I went into more detail about how it was repeated over years than I did on here. I did it because I felt braver for finally asking my doctor today to refer me for therapy, which he has as well as increasing my AD dosage. I didn't want to still hae this secret. We've been together 5 years but I've never spoken about it to anyone before.

He flipped the fuck out, says he "doesn't know what to do or think any more" that he "still loves me but can't touch me" and "this change everything", he "doesn't know how to think about me anymore"...

I moved from the bedroom where we were talking to te spare room because I was really upset and hurt, he got angry at me for doing that. The last thing he said to me was to hand in notice on our house tomorrow and that he hopes I have a nice life :(

So now he's gone downstairs and I'm up here on my phone and I'm a total mess, please somebody tell me what to do :( I don't know what to do :(

ok so turns out italics don't work if there is a space before the words. Good to know.

World, obviously you and he are trying to incorporate this into your new history.
I won't get into the debate about what sort of a man he is, but I will tell you this ONE red flag:

If in the future, during a conflict/time of hurt, he EVER throws this hurt and vulnerability in your face, even once ...

leave.

HermioneE you pretty much just typed out the conversation we had last night!

Offred he's working today but called me on his lunch break to check I was ok I'm feeling much better and quite confident about moving forward, and a little relieved that it's 'out there' now and not a secret any more.

Off, if you cant think of anything other than negatives then maybe read other peoples views presented here. Not everyone reacts the same way to things and not everyone fits into the cookie cutters you seem to assign them.

World doesnt believe her man is selfish immature, or a scumbag, so maybe she would be a better judge of his character

world i wish i had been able to advise you about disclosure before you took the plunge. my DH had a similar reaction to your DP, though it actually took much much longer for him to come to terms with the whole thing. i would say years rather than days.

thing is, even if your DP did think badly of you momentarily after you told him, IMO men deserve just as much sympathy for the bullshit they've been fed by society re: rape. both sexes have been propagangized when it comes to sexual violence. both sexes believe and perpetuate rape myths. both sexes sometimes need re-educating.

when a man (even a non-violent man) comes face to face with a woman who smashes his illusions about rape etc., all those comforting lies (consent is implied, some women ask for it, blah blah blah) fall away and it is a MASSIVE shock.

the lies (even if they are things he would never admit to believing) are comforting because they create an illusion that a man's loved ones are safe from rape because they're "not like that". now he has to deal with the cold hard reality that ANY woman, even a woman who he loves and wants to protect, is a potential victim. and there's NOTHING he can do about that, besides not rape women (which he was probably not planning on doing in any case!).

my DH has said to me "before i met you it had never occurred to me that "normal" girls could have suffered like that" (bear in mind he was barely in his 20s when we met, with v sheltered religious upbringing in v conservative country). telling him what happened to me i think literally killed something inside him. he didn't want it to be true, he didn't want to have to accept the injustice and the helplessness. it took him such a long time to come to terms with this horrible reality.

now almost 10 years on, he still apologises to me every now and again about how he responded at first. he's now fully educated on sexual violence issues and will be the first one to call out his peers for misogyny and so on. it's just that he had never had to face that stuff before. it was outside his frame of reference and it totally panicked him.

(he's now the most supportive person in my life by far. but then, he's not a 20-year-old anymore. he's had time to get educated and moderate his own emotions about the whole thing.)

people are not perfect. disclosure is really a loaded thing to do. i always advise people to lay the groundwork first, and to prepare themselves for a very upsetting reaction, because you can't ever tell what shock will do to a person.

i just wanted you to know i understand your feelings as well as your DP's. i wish you both the best.

Good point from Wobbly. Give it a chance for the communication to grow but don't let this become something that is turned on you. Fact is, he is probably going to find this hard to understand. He presumably has very deep feelings for you, you are five years together. He has not only heard how much you have been hurt, he has heard how hooked you were on this boy - that is a really hard thing to hear as well - and he might be asking himself if you have ever felt that sex with him was experienced as forced. It could be really hard for him to interpret and understand why you kept going back to this guy when he kept hurting you - after all, as you said, you are a long way from understanding it yourself and he may have questions for you that you cannot answer yourself.

Oikopolis, I think that was a very insightful post about how men view rape and rapists and rape victims.

I still think that this particular man needs to apologise in a really, really heartfelt and meaningful way for his reaction and he needs to accept that each and every word had an impact. The insult added to the injury demands nothing less. He also needs to reassure World that this will never, ever happen again, and that she will never have to wonder how some revelation linked to the rape will be greeted by him. She needs him to be at the top of his game. He needs to reassure her that when it comes to her recovery from rape none of it is about him and all of it is about her. He needs to be her rock. She does not need to have to wonder how all of it will affect him.

She is going to go to therapy -- lots of stuff will come up to the surface. She may or may not be able to relate to him as a man, as a sexual partner, etc., as her therapy progresses. She may feel the need to share with him or to have periods of 'radio silence'. He needs to put her first and learn to bite his tongue.

I find it concerning that his immediate reaction was all about himself. It would seem normal and reasonable to me that if someone tells you something about him/herself that happened and made him/her sad and angry and afraid, your immediate reaction should be to comfort and reassure that person, not have a big squawky tantrum about your own feelings when it wasn't you that was hurt.

I agree SGB. I think the words he used have to be taken at face value and judged at face value, with no allowances made. If he doesn't accept responsibility for each and every one of them and make amends every day they are together in word and deed, then I think he will hinder World's recovery. He has to repudiate every one of them and understand why.

Jeez, math, what you expect the guy to do? Wear sackcloth and ashes and self-flagellate on a daily basis for the rest of his days because you are of the opinion that his reaction to what was understandably a shock to him wasn't appropriate?

Far too many judgements have been made on the face value of the written word which is open to misinterpretation at the best of times, and especially when set down in the heat of the moment with the bare minimum of detail.

Only world heard the words her dp used and only she can make a judgement call about them . It may be that if others heard the words they'd render a different judgement, but it is how it is.

In a parallel universe there may be a planet perfect where all of the inhabitants are saints paragons of concern for others, but gravity confines us to planet earth where our species is fallible and we're all making our own individual progress through the various learning curves and challenges that life presents us with.

I don't think it was an understandable reaction except as the reaction of someone whose primary concern is himself.

The heat of the moment 'in vino veritas' whatever way you like to put it -- what you say off the top of your head and in an unguarded moment tells volumes about you.

The OP was seriously affected by her perception of those words. Telling her it was understandable seriously undermines her perceptions and her feelings.

I don't think you need to be a paragon of virtue to say 'What can I do to help?' Or you could keep your big mouth shut for one minute while you considered what might be the best way to respond. A person who did neither is self centered to an alarming degree, and a person who came out with the sentiments he uttered has a very strange view of women and the relationship. There is a nasty whiff of ownership and entitlement there. There is also a strong odour of him having a view of the OP in his head that was contradicted by reality and instead of seeing his perception as wrong he lashed out at her for being wrong.

Just to refresh our memory here:
'He flipped the fuck out, says he doesn't know what to do or think any more that he still loves me but can't touch me and this changes everything, he doesn't know how to think about me anymore...

I moved from the bedroom where we were talking to te spare room because I was really upset and hurt, he got angry at me for doing that. The last thing he said to me was to hand in notice on our house tomorrow and that he hopes I have a nice life'

She was put in the position of having to deal with his anger and whatever else he may have been feeling when she had reached out to him for support.

In what parallel universe does a woman need to soothe the feelings of a man post disclosure, or focus on the feelings of a man, when she are the one who needed support because she was raped? By a man..

If a parent flipped like this and essentially tried to kick out a woman who disclosed that she had been raped, or gave notice that they couldn't handle any further relationship with her, there would be cries of 'toxic parent'. This is a toxic man.

world

Is everything OK now?

Has he appologised?

sashh yes, we talked about it more yesterday when he got home from work. I detailed out previous conversation up thread. He knows how wrong his reaction was and I did explain why it was, and he couldn't be more sorry.

I honestly think he's going to be exactly the support people are wprrie about him not being wow, that was a convoluted sentence

*worried

Why are people still flogging the dp here and referring to him as toxic. Op has moved on. I don't see how it's helpful.

It would seem that there's no room for Hermione's interpretation of his words as alleged by world or of lessons being learned from oikupoliss insightful account of her experience in your one-dimensional universe, math.

If you practise what you preach I must confess to being a tad sorry for those who encounter your uncompromising stance at times of turmoil and stress when all concerned may be in need of understanding and, dare I say it, compassion.

FWIW I have encountered a few persons who, IMO, are beyond redemption but I see no reason to suppose that world's dp is one of them.

You've made some quantum leaps in order to render such a harsh judgement. Why not cut him some slack and cut yourself some too by recognising that a crime perpetrated against one individual rarely results in one victim?

I can appreciate that the current, non-abusive partner of a woman who has been raped may have some messy, angry, unhappy, conflicting feelings. But it's his responsibility to sort those out; it's not fair of him to dump them on her.

By that token, world has already started dumping hers on him, sgb.

Albeit to a lesser degree, he's a victim of world's rapist too and, unless he's a trained therapist/analyst, he may well struggle with his feelings in a similar manner to that which world has struggled to make sense of what happened to her.

Hopefully, they'll work through this together and their relationship will be stronger for it.

OP when I finally plucked up the courage to tell my husband about my past abuse he laughed. He actually laughed. I was totally devasted and thought our marriage was over. But over the next few weeks I realised that his instant reaction was not what he really felt or thought, it was more like an automated response to something his brain couldn't process.

In the years since (and those before) he has been more supportive than I could ever have imagined and I know he still feels terrible to this day about how he reacted. I've learnt that in that instant of being told something terrible, you cannot always control how you react and that isn't really an indicator of how that person feels. What is important is how they act once they've had time to let it sink it.

Please Symfem really, I haven't put anyone into any "cookie cutters" if you read my posts instead of reading into them, I'm not sure why you are on such a mission against me?!

World - that's very good, early days, hope it continues, you might be a bit up and down but that's ok and to be expected. Don't feel like you have be fine about it now.

The reason house is that some use mn as a dumping ground for their own toxic views on men. Sadly rather than help or give advice they rather tar every man with the one brush.

Really symfem? I've never seen that here.

You scored a spectacular own goal with this particular misreading of the written word, yr telling someone to have a nice life in reaction to being told they were raped is a pretty extreme reaction.

Do you want to go for the treble or go to Specsavers?

Op men have trouble with rape/abuse my DH talks to his step-mum and my male cousin but wont talk to me about it as he knows I am struggling, in the beginning when I disclosed the abuse I heard him on the phone to my cousin saying I dont know how to help dotty she needs professional help and he's known for over 20 years.

Because you can find nothing positive to say. Its all lambast lambast lambast. You have only offered negative possible reasons for his behavior. Unless i misread, you used the word scumbag. Im sorry thats needless and provocative