Confused about recovery of sexual assault. (Triggers warning obviously)

[ThoughtIdbeatenit]

I've name changed for this.

Almost 20 years ago when I was 15 I was in a relationship with a 27 year old man, it lasted just over a month and was sexual in nature from the start.

I was 'asked out' by a boy who I went to school with, really liked this boy and I wanted a 'proper' relationship that I could be public with so I went to see the 27 year old to end things.

To say he didn't take this well is an understatement, he locked me in his house and subjected me to a series of sexual assaults that lasted about 2 hours, during which he repeatedly threatened to kill me and went so far as to cut me with a kitchen knife. I honestly thought he was going to kill me.

I never went to the police due to the fact that I thought my parents would go mad with me for being in a relationship with this man. I dealt with it by drinking which resulted in me putting myself in dangerous situations. As a consequence I was raped by a stranger 2 weeks after the first. I didn't go to the police about the second rape as I thought that the first rape would be exposed and I was still worried about getting into trouble. For about 2 years after that I would seek comfort in sex with strangers, about 2 or 3 different men every week.

As I say, this was nearly 20 years ago, I have been married for 15 years and have 3 children. I worked really hard to put the assaults behind me, and I thought I had succeeded.

However, the other day I was talking about it to my DH and describing what had happened in more detail than I had done before. He has known about the assaults since before we were married.

After I had finished talking to DH about it I wanted to get sexual with him, this totally freaked him out after what we'd been talking about. I can now see why this would be but I honestly never linked the assaults with what I wanted to do with DH.

Now I wonder if I ever got over the assaults or whether they have resulted in my views in sex being damaged. With me only being 15 when the assaults happened I don't know what my normal sexual preferences would have been.

I suppose what I'm asking is am I normal?

You are who you are. The impact of a horrendous sexual assault will affect different people in different ways. I'm so sorry it happened to you and I'm equally sorry that you felt you couldn't tell anyone at the time. Your DH sounds lovely but with the best will in the world, he's not a trained counsellor and this kind of information is really difficult to rationalise, especially about a loved one. Would you consider talking to Rape Crisis?

Normal, yes.

Do talk to rape crisis. Your DH needs to do that too - he can't help but be affected by hearing the detail of what happened to the woman he loves. He can't bear this burden alone.

You've lived with it a long time and survived. But you still need the chance to talk it through, maybe even take action against the criminal who did this to you. Your life isn't over, your sexual preferences have time to change and develop, if that's what you want.

The thing is I don't want to raise it all back to the surface, I honestly thought I was fine until I got that reaction from my DH. Now I just feel a bit disgusting.

That you chose to talk about it to your DH and again here suggests that it is already on the surface. You must feel secure in order to do that. However, as I said earlier, your DH probably isn't equipped to guide you. Hence why you're feeling bad now. You need a counsellor to help you take what happened and deal with it in a way that makes you feel better not worse. May or may not include prosecuting the vile person that assaulted you... but that's less important.

That is the one thing that I will accept still bothers me, the fact that I let them both get away with it and probably go on to do it to someone else.
I honestly don't think that there is any chance of getting a prosecution for the man I 'dated' and I know there's no chance of ever finding the stranger, I couldn't even tell you the colour of his hair.

Its all a long time ago. But maybe now is the time that you feel secure enough to talk about it.

You didn't bring it to the surface, it drifted up from your subconscious of its own accord.

Do think about talking to someone.

Thanks for your replies. I do see why you recommend talking to someone qualified but I don't want to take up someone's time who could be helping someone who is dealing with the immediate aftermath of an assault. The sad truth is that there will never be enough counsellors to help the many many people who are sexually assaulted and I think I am coping enough to not take that away from someone.

I guess I'll just get on with it, writing it down on here has helped actually and my DH is already undergoing counselling for a different matter so hopefully he can get any help he needs there.