For some background, I’ve grown up being over sexualised, stalked, and assaulted many times. I’ve previously put up with a lot of situations I shouldn’t have, but the one I mention now is different.
Once I started college, I felt so low. I had no friends, although I did have my wonderful boyfriend, he had his friends and I knew I needed my own. There was only 5 people on my college course, including myself. One guy began talking to me and I realised we shared a lot of interests and we hit it off. We shared numbers, as I did with some other people on my course, too. I didn’t text him anymore than I text other people in the beginning. My boyfriend was cool with this, but just warned me to be careful as I was 18 and he was nearly 30, so there was a bit of a weird age difference.
Things got weird when, on a college trip, he had asked me to sit next to him on the way home. I did, as we could have more time chatting, but he started putting him hand on my leg. I froze, and didn’t know how to react due to this happening so many times with other people in the past.
For some reason, after this incident I carried on talking to him. We spoke a bit more regularly now and he knew I was very much in love with my partner. I told him I loved him platonically and he was my best friend.
For my birthday, he said he would take me out for a meal, I said yes as long as he knew it wasn’t a date and that it was just a friendly thing. I went to the toilet and when I came back to my table and had a drink, I began feeling very ill. I said I wanted to leave, his house was around the corner so he took me back there until my dad could fetch me. At this point I could hardly stand up and he said we had to have sex because he had paid for my meal and I owe it to him. I joked it off, and said haha you wish. My dad fetched me at this point.
He began talking to me about sex, and how much he wanted to have sex with me, and I didn’t shut him down, I just joked along or said something like “omg don’t say that” “my boyfriend wouldn’t like that” or sometimes, after a lot of pressuring, I’d say “don’t tempt me” even though there was no romantic or sexual feelings for him at all, I was just scared to say no and maybe a littl grateful to have someone who thought so highly of me. He asked if I’d had sexual dreams about him and I said “maybe ;)” even though I hadn’t, I was just scared to shut him down. I started speaking to him about girls, and saying I wish he would get a girlfriend so he would get the picture, as well as how happy me and my boyfriend were (although he told me I couldn’t tell him about that).
After this, what followed was a series of instances of rape/ sexual abuse interspersed with overwhelming love, affection and gifts. As well as him telling me how bad my boyfriend was for me.
I spoke to him almost constantly even around my boyfriend and for some reason couldn’t see what was wrong. I really liked him as a friend (NO feelings at all) and allowed him to push boundaries with me, and only just realised how disrespectful I was being to my relationship.
As soon as I realised how wrong this was, I left the college and blocked his number. Now, two years later I’m more obsessed with how I think I’ve cheated on my partner than the actual abuse, and I need help understanding what this situation was. Grooming? Abuse? Manipulation? Or just me being unfaithful?