I think I was raped. Was I? And can I talk to you about it?

[JustALittleConfusedAndNumb]

I am a regular. I've NCd for this largely because I don't want it linked to my usual name.

I had an emotionally and physically abusive childhood/teenage years. I'm now NC with my mother because of it, and ongoing issues into adulthood. My dad died a couple of years ago. My mother was the EA one, my dad PA.

I have terribly low self esteem and confidence. Well, I had, it's got a lot better recently through counselling. I'm intelligent and professionally qualified. I've always had a sense of not being worthy. It's influenced all the relationship decisions I've ever made. When I was in my late teens and early 20s I ended up dating Big Issue vendors with drug and alcohol problems after dropping out of university because I didn't think I deserved any better. You wouldn't think it now, I live in a very nice area, I have a good job, my children go to good schools, all my friends are very respectable...

When I was 17, I went out with a friend of mine and a man tried to rape me. He was someone I'd been sitting with and talking to in the pub (I know, I know, I was underage and shouldn't have been in there anyway) but I wasn't 'drinking' because I didn't really. I had one pint and then drank coke. My memory of the whole evening is very clear and it happened nearly 23 years ago. I didn't fancy him and I KNOW I wasn't flirting with him. My friend had disappeared with the man she was talking to and I was on my own. Anyway, I left the pub to go home (no bus and a 15 minute safe walk) and this man came out with me. I was young, I didn't know what to do so I carried on.

As we walked around the side of the pub, he pulled me off the street and into this little alcove type thing around the back of the pub and tried to rape me. I managed to get away and he caught up with me. He said he "admired" my "strength" and insisted on walking me home. So I let him. I just wanted to get home and didn't know what else to do. I didn't tell anyone because I knew my mother would blame me. She was very clear that men only rape women because of the signals women send out, i.e. by what they're wearing, by being out, by drinking...

Until about 6 months later when out of nowhere I was supposed to be going to my boyfriend's house and I couldn't leave the house. I was 'fine' but physically couldn't get through the front door, started crying and broke down. My mother wasn't especially sympathetic and so, out of desperation, I told her what had happened. She reacted as I expected and told me "that's what men are like" and if I want to go out I have to "expect that sort of thing to happen". I shouldn't have been in the pub in the first place and that's what happens to girls who talk to men in pubs - "what did you expect?". It wasn't initial anger/panic talking. After my 'telling off' it never got mentioned again.

FFW a few years - "dropped out" of university for unrelated reasons (although related to my mother), dated a range of unsuitable men I had no expectations of whatsoever (as detailed above), yet, was treated kindly and respectfully by all of them (of course, it's relative).

Then I met my son's father. He was my best friend's brother. I'd not known her very long (6 months) when she went on holiday with her mum and they asked me to go and visit her brother to 'keep him company' while they were away. I was 22 he was 24. So I did. And he had a friend there. We watched a couple of rubbish horror films, had dinner, played on the guitars for a bit and messed around on the computer. Nothing more. Then, and I'm not sure how it happened, but he was coming onto me. I resisted and told him I wasn't interested. I was very clear it was a No. Then he asked me why exactly I'd gone round there if I wasn't prepared to have sex with either of them. And so I told him his mum/sister had asked me to go round there to keep him company and he persisted. I kept saying no. By now, he was on top of me on the bed while his friend was on the computer in the corner. And he gave me the choice of him or his friend. But it was clear that it was Hobson's Choice. Not having sex with either of them wasn't an option. So I 'let' him - or rather, I stopped resisting. He didn't even take my knickers off.

My self worth was so fucked up that about 6 months later we ended up getting together for a couple of years and my son was the result. He dumped me when I was 8 months pregnant partly because I embarrassed him by being 'fat' and partly because he'd met someone else.

I then married someone I didn't love and who didn't love me, but did care about me, because I didn't think I was worthy of being loved and I didn't know what a proper relationship looked like.

I don't know what I want from this. I've never told anyone. I just feel very ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I had such low self worth that I allowed it to happen. Ashamed that my boundaries were so fucked up that I couldn't see that it was 'wrong' at the time. Ashamed that I had a relationship with this man afterwards!

I'm a very different person now but I feel so guilty for how I let the me I was be treated. I'm still having counselling, but I'm too ashamed to bring this up.

Sorry that was long.

I think I'm thinking of telling my boyfriend.

I need to change my attitude towards sex, really, and I suppose I think he might be someone who is fully functioning enough to be there with me for it.

In fact, my boyfriend's attitude really suprised me. The first time I went to his house we were kissing on the sofa and he asked if I wanted to go upstairs and I said, "no". His response was, "ok" and that was it. No coersion or persuasion. Just, "ok" and a smile.

I think it made me realise that's the first time that's ever happened!

I was going to NC for this, but I am trying not to feel ashamed anymore, so sod it.

Yes, you were raped. I am so sorry that happened to you, and that you didnt receive any support at the time.

I find myself in a similar situation. Married, kids, loving husband and good career. But I am just embarking on psychotherapy to try to unravel and make sense of the things that happened to me in my teens and 20s. I thought I had buried them long ago, but in the last year or two, I have started to have a lot of flashbacks and really begin to relate a lot of my relationship problems (find it very hard to show emotions and affection) and self esteem issues to past events.

It is a horrible thing to have to face up to and I still havent said it out loud to anyone, but I was probably raped and definitely coerced into sex many times in my teens and early 20s. I was raped when I was 14 and lost my virginity. I have only really realised that it was rape lately. I was seeing the boy, we had been kissing and fooling around, and I willingly went to his house with the intention of being alone together, kissing and touching etc. But he overpowered me, pinned me against a wall and had rough, unprotected sex with me despite me saying 'No' and 'I dont want to'. Because I didnt fight him off and he wasnt violent, I didnt think of it as rape at the time. I carried on seeing him (and had sex with him a couple of times afterwards), despite the fact that on the day he raped me I went home in physical pain and cried myself to sleep, and for weeks afterwards was in deep shock and absolutely terrified that I was pregnant (I wasnt).

After that I had an older boyfriend for 18 mths who apparently 'loved' me - bought me expensive gifts and said all the right things. But he constantly put me in sexual situations that I was uncomfortable with, forced me into sex acts I didnt want to do and even filmed me . I was an outgoing, outspoken girl with friends and family, but I didnt feel able to stand up to him. I was scared of him.

I then had another boyfriend for 2 years who was 'the boy next door' and everyone thought we were such a sweet, lovely couple. But he was insanely controlling and jealous and the sex between us was awful. I used to say that I didnt feel like it or didnt want to sometimes and he would go into terrible moods, tell me that if I loved him I would do it and basically wear me down until I agreed to just lie there while he had sex with me. Sometimes I would literally be lying still and crying and he would carry on until he had finished.

I then had another older boyfriend for 2 years who was violent and raped me several times towards the end of our relationship, as a way of punishing me when I worked up the guts to say I wanted to end the relationship. He raped me at knifepoint once, and I still didnt tell a soul. Unbelievable. I look back at my young self and feel so sad that I did not feel able to speak up.

There have been other times, but don't want to completely hijack your thread. Have you spoken to your counsellor about this? I intend to tell my therapist soon. Even just writing it down has helped a lot x

Wow grass That's horrendous Don't even think of it as hijacking! I started the thread because I have been thinking more and more about it recently and whether/to what extent it has a role in how I feel about myself (I too find it hard to show emotions - I'm not even sure I 'feel' a lot of them). If you've been thinking about it too, then that's a 'good' (clumsy word for it) thing.

I haven't spoken to my counsellor about it, no. I hadn't really realised it might have had a role until the last week or so. More because my boyfriend has some 'funny' ideas as far as sex is concerned. Like he thinks it's an expression of love and is something lovely between us... And through having general relationship conversations with my friend and her husband and some of my other male friends.

Thank you x

I relate with the emotions thing. I dont (cant?) equate love with sex. I M only just really, properly realising this in the last year or two.

My DH is a very loving man and wants to kiss and say sweet things to me and be affectionate during sex. I find it overwhelming and it makes me feel suffocated, like I cant breathe. He is and has always been gentle and would never want to be physical with me if I wasnt feeling it, which makes me feel even worse.

I havent raised it with my therapist yet as it is early days and there is SO much to say. I also feel ashamed and almost as if it sounds made up, that I have had SO many bad experiences with men. It has all been 'behind closed doors', too, and to the outside world I am confident, functional, 'normal', which makes me feel like a fraud.

I have alluded to some of the things that happened to me with my DH, but never told him in detail. I dont want to lay some 'poor me' tale on him, which I know is the wrong way to look at it, but it is how I feel right now. I think ultimately though, it does need to be out in the open. So maybe talking to your partner would be helpful?

I'm only just realising that there might be a connection too.

All that about feeling suffocated by the affection is exactly how I feel. I don't have any desire for it to go on for hours and, yes, get very overwhelmed if it starts to look like something more than just fulfilling a physical need.

I also feel ashamed that I'm not more sexually confident than I am. I want it to be fun and all that, I'm not put off by it, but when I look back and think about just how dysfunctional all of my sexual 'relationships'/encounters have been, it's not really surprising.

I don't think it sounds made up - so I don't think your therapist would either. I think that if you've had positive experiences, you're more likely to have more positive experiences because you will recognise and reject negative ones. Where as, if once you've had negative ones, particularly when it wasn't as clear cut as being dragged off the street kicking and screaming by a stranger and ending up in hospital battered and bruised (as it is always portrayed on TV) it's not so obvious and you're more likely to accept similar experiences in future. Does that make sense? It certainly explains my situation I think.

Yes, I think I will speak with him about it.

He has picked up that there is 'something'. It will just feel strange telling someone something that predates my marriage, but that I didn't ever even tell my husband about!

So many similarities - really relate to what you've said.

The thing about negative experiences is so true. I didnt have a 'loving' sexual experience with a man that had respect for my feelings until I met my DH at 24. So that was aprevious 10 years of really quite off-key sex and a lot of damage done.

That really struck me when I thought it about it like that.

I hope your conversation with your husband goes well x

Lots of identification here.
I was 22 at the time by the way, and I was really lucky that the man I was with disappeared from my life after a few months. Otherwise I could have been trapped in a terrifying abusive relationship for years, or even ended up married with children together like some of you have said.
And yes I should have been grateful he was gone but I felt rejected .

I am also an outwardly very confident person and I think this is partly why I went into complete denial. I hated to admit to myself that I was actually vulnerable and had become a victim.

Boyfriend - husband is long gone But thanks.

I didn't have sex until I was nearly 20 as it was. After what happened when I was 17 I decided I was never going to have sex or let a man do that to me.

Apologies, Just!

I think I went the other way. I ended up going from one short, abusive relationship to another. Sad, really.

Namechange - yes, I think my denial was also because I wasoutwardly strong, confident, together. I still feel like this now. More ashamed than ever because what happened in my sex life/relationships wasnt how I saw myself or others saw me outside of that.

You were, but don't let it define you.

I suffered a similar drunken assault but refuse to dwell on it and see myself as a victim. You have achieved so much and should enjoy your good life and see yourself as a survivor of some shitty parenting and rough times.

That incident occupies a miniscule fraction of your life that should be left in the past.

I think experiences like these are scarily common, I can certainly relate to a lot here, especially when I was in my teens, thankfully have had a couple of fairly ok LTR's since early twenties where none of this 'abuse' has happened.
Sorry nothing useful to add apart from I totally believe and understand the warped rationalisation of it at the time.

Well after the 'attempted' situation when I was 17, I made that decision. Then I got to nearly 20, decided I was going to have sex after all because I didn't want to get any older and not know what I was doing and went the other way.

I lost my virginity with a man I didn't fancy or even particularly like who was 20 years older than me. And then after that I had a lot of short term 'relationships' with either decent men with whom I didn't ever have sex or homeless drunks and drug addicts who lived in squats with whom I had lots of sex. I didn't value myself enough either to have a proper relationship with the decent men, or to not have sex with the scummy ones.

That's a bit of a shitty realisation

That took place over the space of about 2 years between being nearly 20 and about 22, which is when the incident happened with the man I then went onto have my son with.

I've never actually had a 'proper' sexual relationship.

vichill I agree with that, but I think it's been affecting/defining me all these years without me even realising it!

I think it's more a case of now, I want to put a stop to it all.

vichill There's a lot of other stuff that went on that I've talked about extensively on MN so I don't want to say too much, but I didn't value myself very much anyway. I think I've just spent the first 40 years of my life feeling worthless for one reason or another, and I'm damned if I'm going to feel that way for the next 40!

I feel the same. I have let it define me, subconsciously, perhaps, but define me all the same and I am sick of it coming between me and a healthy sexual relationship with my husband. I REALLY want to put it to rest, but I need help to do that, hence starting the therapy.

Just - my relationships before DH were all with shitty guys, too. A couple of drug addicts and then a couple of drug dealers/criminal types. The realisation now of exactly how low my self worth was makes me feel really angry at myself, to be honest.

I can really relate to much of what you are saying also. I am I think further on with therapy than you, and am amazed at how much similarity there seems to be across different people's experiences. When you go through experiences like this you imagine you are the only one and it can be so isolating.

I relate to what you are saying about finding it hard to articulate emotion, and sometimes not really feeling emotion yourself either. I have had this a lot too, either I am overwhelmed with feelings or I feel numb and can't seem to feel emotions properly. I have learnt that this is common where you have had very low self esteem and been in abusive relationships. Therapy is making it easier to deal with. Good luck with working on it all.

Just to say, I'm very sorry with all you went through.

You are less of a victim each day you live your life happy and richly.

Here's a very un-mumsnet hug

I think your mother's attitude instilled in you the feeling that you had 'brought on' the first attempted rape. No wonder you lost all your confidence. You seem to understand now why you had the relationship with the second guy. I would say - you are looking at it from a longer perspective now. You have moved on. Forgive your younger self, who acted out of a place of low self-esteem. Be kind to that person that you were and stop blaming yourself.

It was not your fault - keep repeating that. If you trust your bf, tell him.

OP, survivors of rape and sexual abuse blame themselves because we they can then try to regain some control over events that ultimately took control away from them, if that makes sense. However, that only works for a short-time and then the self-worth takes a battering, thus dangerously drifting into similar territory in the form of toxic relationship/risky situations...and so the cycle continues. Your mothers attitude obviously reinforced that, so it's no wonder you feel the way you do. However you now need to know that you were never to blame. You will get a lot of support on here and there are also various organisations that can help and support you. I wish you the very best going forward, be kind to yourself, I think you need to be. PM me if you need anything.

Thank you so much for all your support.

It feels a bit strange, to be honest, reading it about myself. I think I need to go and digest now.

I think intellectually, I now know I wasn't to 'blame', but I still feel - well something. I'm aware I've put myself in risky situations and I know I don't/haven't really 'respect/ed' myself because I think I've always subconciously thought that that would have been affording myself something greater than I deserved; I didn't think enough of myself to think I was worth protecting. I've also rarely said, "no" if I've been in the situation because I've not really expected that to make any difference - I've just switched off and let it happen. So I'm aware that a sense of ensuring the inevitable happens with as little attention as possible being drawn to it underpins pretty much all my decisions when it comes to men and sex. I don't like it if sex includes affection. I find it overwhelming and have a sense of just wanting to say, "yes, yes, yes, just get on with it. I don't need you to do all this." As someone else said, it's really suffocating and also 'unnecessary'.

So the feelings of lack of self worth are still there and I'm not sure how to think differently to make different choices. I no longer trust my own judgement.

But thank you.

Just and Grass, my heart goes out to you. I am so sorry that you, and so many other young women have suffered rape in such awful situations, which seem to have been almost the norm for us in the 70s, 80s. I look back at my young self and feel so sad that I did not feel able to speak up. Yy to that. I think we need to see that young woman who is our past, to know that it wasn't her fault, and to forgive her for any mistakes she made afterwards as a result. Yes, it is very very normal for a girl to enter into a relationship with her rapist and to see herself as being in a relationship with him, to try to normalise what he did, and to go onto other unhealthy relationships afterwards.

But this thread is also positive. Just you are clearly on a journey and have made some important statements through this thread. It's heartening that you have both found new partners who are sympathetic, who respect you and with whom you can talk. You have both started counselling and although talking will bring back painful memories, it can also be empowering, a stepping stone to a new way of seeing yourself and other people, a turning point to realising that you can and now will say no, if ever you want to, and that - if only on MN - you will speak out to and for any young woman who is in doubt, that her body can belong to her, and she does not have to do anything with anyone unless she chooses to say yes - and that when she does say yes, it's because she is choosing to, in a healthy positive relationship.

Just you are also a mother of a young man, to whom you may be able to talk in general terms about how to respect women, and what a healthy relationship involves. It doesn't have to be anything heavy but just a reminder or two, perhaps when things come up on telly, about how some men just don't understand that a girl is allowed to say no, whenever she wants to, even at the very last minute, and that a real man will still love her, like her and respect her wishes.

Thinking of you both. Be kind to your past selves. And here's hoping that your understanding leads you to feel stronger and more empowered in the future.

Thank you so much for that post, Sally.

My son and I are able to talk quite freely about things and he's quite clear about that. He's horrified that some men behave differently.