I have been very foolish

[Simbathecat]

I have just returned from a week abroad to attend my mums wedding to her partner, I went without my husband as he is working away.

I've had a lovely week with my mum and all of their friends and on my last night I was jokingly saying I'd been in bed by 10pm each night when the barman offered to take me to a club if I wanted. Mums partner has been coming to the island for 15+years and the general consensus was he was a "good guy". However I had had a lot to drink and no one thought it was a good idea for me to go. I was taken back to my room and made to promise to stay in. However very drunk and in the party mood all reason and common sense went out the window and I went anyway. I was not interested in this man whatsoever and naively thought he was my friend (him knowing my mums partner etc).

The inevitable happened and he had sex with me that wasn't consensual. I repeatedly said no, asked him to leave but he would not listen. I eventually left myself and got help from friends staying in the same building.

I have told my husband and he is devastated and very angry with me. He says that regardless of whether the rape happened or not my very act of meeting the man showed disrespect to myself, him and our marriage. He is of course correct.

He isn't home for another week and a half and I don't know how to fix this.

I can't believe I've been so foolish and naive to have put myself so obviously in danger and jeopardised my relationship.

Although there was evidence he had used protection I have taken emergency contraception and I will need to lie to work on Monday to make a humiliating visit to the health clinic.

I'd be fine with it too.

Going out with a friend of his stepmother is not something I would think twice about.

Especially not if he came home having been assaulted.

Saying that her husband is not neccesarily a total twat and is allowed a real life reaction (just reminding Mumsnetters that people that post on here live in the real world) is not being unsupportive.

OP if you are reading, EVERYONE on here believes you were raped, and we all know this was not your fault. Rape is the fault of the rapist and the rapist only. We are all hoping you are getting the support you need and deserve from your husband .

Ironically some posters are implying other agendas. We are all on your side.

This is the problem with victim blaming

This isn't victim blaming. It is relationship boundary crossing blaming. And that is why her husband might be upset.

Nobody has blamed her for the rape.

Again, ironic that the posters saying Op is not being supported are the ones derailing it.

NO-ONE thinks it is OP's fault. The only thing some people are saying is that the husband does not deserve to be demonised.

Exactly FBR

Her husband has blamed her for the rape.

And your position is to support him.

So you are not on her side.

I too cannot see where anyone has blamed the OP, saying that the husband is allowed a real life reaction is in no way blaming the OP.

No one has blamed her Tyzer, you are right.

I am actually very angry at the posters saying anyone is blaming her as she will read those and feel blamed!

The DH might have feelings about the incident, but he needs to suck them up when it comes to talking to the OP about it, because she has just been raped. She's having to talk to rape centres, get std tested and decide whether she wants to involve the police. He has some hurt feelings. His needs should take a back seat to hers at this moment in time because she has been raped.

If he needs emotional support, then he needs to find someone else to talk to about it, not the rape victim, she has enough on her plate.

Discussions about appropriate behaviour within the marriage can certainly wait until the dust settles.

Saying that a "real life reaction" to your wife being raped is to ask her whether she was wearing her wedding ring when it happened, is to excuse pretty monstrous victim blaming.

She didn't cheat on her husband.

She didn't intend to cheat on her husband.

But his jealousy that she went out with a man she thought she could trust due to mutual long-standing social connections who them raped her is so show totally fine?

I can't believe this is Mumsnet. Fucking shameful.

Oh for God's sake Funkster - keep banging on and on without actually reading, processing or understanding what some posters are saying. Really helpful to OP.

Of course the OP deserves and needs to believed and to get support and love from her husband. I hope to God she is getting that. Everyone on here hopes that!

The OP has not been 'foolish'.
The husband is being an unhelpful arse. I agree with noble he needs to sort out his feelings about it without dumping them on her.
The rape was not inevitable.

OP, I hope you get plenty of support and I also hope you feel able to report this.

Even if she'd come home safely, the very most her behaviour warranted was

"Eh, really? You went out on your own clubbing with your SF's barman? Nice. Would you be OK with me going out late in the sole company of a woman I just met?"

To be bringing it up with so much vitriol after a rape shows a very skewed sense of what (or in reality who) really matters.

I am reading, processing, and understanding.

I'm just disgusted by what is being said.

I also commented on it because OP was concerned about DH's response. Not only does he need desperately to separate the issues but so does she.

It's ok as a married person to feel remorse if you drunkenly do something that would upset your partner, but in this instance she and her DH need to put that issue to one side, because it's not important. The fact she was raped is what's important.

OP I'm so sorry to hear what happened to you. It is utterly heart breaking to hear you implicitly blaming yourself. You were raped, and you were not in any way to blame. All that happened was that you were unlucky enough to run into a rapist. If you hadn't, you wouldn't have been raped.

Your actions, and where you were, and who you were with, and what you were wearing, and how much you had drunk, are totally irrelevant. Women are raped drunk and stone cold sober, while wearing party dresses and while wearing school uniforms, in the night time and in broad daylight, at home, at work, at friends' houses, on public transport, in hospital, on the streets, in the countryside. It's terrifying and hard to admit that there is literally no way to protect yourself against being raped, ever, anywhere, apart from not being in the presence of a rapist. It could have happened to you anywhere.

I strongly recommend talking to Rape Crisis.

Now for your husband. Your husband is currently failing you very badly as a partner by responding in the way that he is. If you can't rely on your partner to support you in a crisis like this, then can I gently suggest that the partnership is not as strong as you think it is. When the chips are down is the time when you need to step up, support your partner and put your own initial feelings to the side. This is probably one of the worst events of your life. If you can't rely on a partner to support you through one of the worst times in your life then they are not much cop. The whole point of having a partner is that you don't have to face things like this alone.

It's not asking too much of your husband, or of any man in this situation, to expect him to react with love, gentleness and concern for you. He should not be reacting with blame and anger towards you. If he had gone out with a barman who had turned round and raped him, I doubt that you would be responding with anything less than love. In fact I bet you'd drop everything to look after him.

I would like to echo a poster above by saying that you should absolutely not permit your husband to work through this by treating it as if he has been cheated on, or act as if his feelings are the most important here, because they are not. If he continues to behave as if he has been cheated on, or insists on forensically examining your behaviour on the night, it will be very psychologically and emotionally damaging for you. If he can't stop doing that, it would be better for you that he stays away from home.

Well I would not be happy with my husband going out alone, with a barrmaid he'd just met, for a night out.

But that's fine, we can all have different boundaries in our own relationships. Just because someone posting onehere woild be ok with it, doesn't mean anyone else has to be.

If OP had come on here just to ask about the rape, the posts would have been very different. But she was saying "I don't know how to fix this" and worrying about jeopardising her relationship.

Personally, I am not supporting him blaming her for the rape (which he quite clearly did - the ring bit in particular is distressing - and OP he is wrong) I was saying that his reaction is probably quite complex, and that he's conflating the two, and that while that is obviously wrong, hopefully given time he will come to his senses and give her the support she clearly needs. Trying to support OP really in understanding that the two issues are separate. And yes, it's the rape that he needs to be dealing with.

FairPhylis post says it all.

Perhaps he was asking whether she had her wedding ring on when she went out for the evening with a man she'd only just met rather than if she was wearing her wedding ring when she was raped...

I think he's entitled to understand her intentions and motivations for going out clubbing with a man she'd just met. Obviously, he wouldn't be entitled to 'confuse' rape with sexual infidelity.

FolkGirl Not one? Plenty of posters here have picked apart her decision for going out with the guy.

Why? Why pull focus on that...because it gives them an opportunity to say they wouldn't have done it, therefore they wouldn't have been raped.

Reading between the lines, yes, people ARE blaming the op. They are blaming her for being married & going to a club with the rapist, they are blaming her for being drunk.

This, in my mind, is saying that she is to blame for what happened to her.

You can say they are not. But they are.

Simbathecat how are you doing today I have been ploughing through the thread and wondering why do many people are worrying how your husband is feeling. If you are reading all these posts, please, please remember to look after you first. Please get some help in real life.

elfo29 so sorry for your experience too.

Pandora37 it is so ingrained in our society to in some way blame women for the evil done to them that al of our society seems to want to put the blame on women and control them so they do not need to face up to the reality that violence is the fault of the purpotrator! That is why, I think, alcohol is mentioned so much. Maybe some rapists are also drunk! I have never once heard men told not to drink in case they rape someone!

To posters who are saying no one is implying it is OP's fault, various posters have implied that a married woman should not go out with a man who is not her husband, should not be drunk, should not go to a club in a party dress. Even that she has disrespected the marriage etc. These views are reflected by the OP in her comments and by her husband in his.

'In a party dress'!!!! WTF! If this is not being taken into consideration why are people mentioning it! What should she wear to a night club. A bee keepers outfit! Are we going to next say she should have been wearing a long dress, a house coat!!!

FunkyBoldRibena you listed the things that donot matter from a previous poster (how much she drunk and what she was wearing etc!), then said I imagine to her husband, that yes that all does matter. I am sure these things may well matter to her husband but really in light of what has happened would he not be able to put his petty jealousy to one side? If my husband was beaten up would my main concern be if how much he drunk and what he was wearing etc!!! NO.