Do I just need to accept that I was a Slut?

[cheekymonk]

Evening All! I am happily married with one ds now but back in my uni days I was very promiscuous and did sleep with over 100 men roughly. I used to have to get really pissed to have the confidence to approach anyone (mainly due to being fat). I was lonely and although I had made some friends, I wanted a boyfriend too and in my warped mind sleeping with someone and being wanted for all of 30 mins or if I was lucky, the whole night was the next best thing.
I lived with 6 male housemates at the time who were appalled my behaviour. I did have threesomes/forsomes (and a fivesome too I think!) which was what pushed them into really despising me. One night I brought someone back, he went then I went back out and brought someone else back. It is shocking and I was out of control but those housemates were so vile.
I ended up recently sending a message to one of them on facebook. I wanted an apology but have today come home to this
"It has been a long time - 13 years in fact, which i why suddenly recieving this from you scares me that you have gone to the lengths to find me. Obviously some deep seated resentment there that you probably need to get off your chest/deal with through professional help. Either way - yes behaviour to you may not have been entirely appropriate, but my did you deserve it. Hoping to find brother figures? WHy on earth? I cannot imagine why you, a second year, felt the need to take a room with six male 4th year students. Most 2nd years got digs with friends they made in the 1st year...!!!! To refute some of your allegations about us. 2 of us had girlfriends, neither of them cheated on them. The rest of us, me included, enjoyed a significantly lower level of "single life" than you did - as you said it's what people do at uni...mainly with students met at the Student's Union", though, not with sailors they pick up in Joanna's night club. While I am all for enjoying the single life, both for men and women - you took it to such an extreme. 2 guys in one night I recall...one at about 1030 and then you going back out to bring another one back! Another stealing my bike from the hall! I hope my thoughts about the way YOU behaved are clear. I may have been a little immature back then and yes, 13 years is a long time. But do I have any regrets/would I behave differently to such a prolific enjoyment of the single life as yours now - I doubt it. I trust that I will not hear form you again."

I feel so gutted and worthless, just like I did then. I sincerely regret raking up the past. I am trying to understand now WHY I behaved so badly and try and reconcile the past but am having trouble.
Any thoughts? Do I just need to accept that i was a total slut back then??

You misread me. I do agree that she has a responsibility for her own behaviour. However, I think it's of no help to anyone to impose a moral judgement on it.

Did she put herself in danger? Yes, undoubtable.

Did she put her flatmates in danger? Not given the evidence so far, apart from a bicycle taken that was swiftly returned.

Did her flatmates put her in danger? Difficult one to judge that, though kicking down her door is while she was asleep alone in the bed is not a particularly safe behaviour.

Did her lifestyle impact on her flatmates? Given the evidence of the flatmates own email, No. All he seems to feel is disgust.

Why is that do you think? Where is the condemnation of the sailors or the man who anally raped her?

I have, in the past, called in the mental health team and participated in starting the process which ended up with my flatmate being sectioned. I did it because she was living in a house with me and others, hundreds of miles away from her family when she was behaving in a way that put herself in danger. If we hadn't stepped in and taken responsibility, who would have? She would have ended up injuring herself or one of us. We (my flatmates and I) took that responsibility even though we were aged 18 and 19, students ourselves. We didn't look at her in disgust, kick her door down or wash our hands of the issue. We were also compassionate enough to realise that sometimes people, however hard they try, cannot help themselves.

the nub of this is self responsibility for ones actions.reflecting upon events and garnering strength and composure to move on and not get stuck or replicate undesirable situations

it is not wholly relevent what the flatmate feels.he has his subjective opinion,his lived experience of that time. what is relevent is why now now send an email 13years later getting stuck and embroiled in past events

a recurrent theme here is external need for approbation, and inability to see flatmate point of view

Been lurking on this thread. Cheekymonk the email you sent could have been worded much gentler then you would have got a better response which might have given you the closure you were seeking.

Trillian my understanding of whoring is someone who has sex for money. OP didn't

Totally agree with SGB about society still seeing a womans value higher the more sex she has been able to say no to. No wonder women feel worthless if they have a high number of partners because society deems them to be damaged goods. Women are made to feel guilty for having a varied sex life against the 'ideal' of monogomy, when clearly, shock horror, they may actually enjoy it. It's often accepted that women have to say no to even be respected.

I expect there were lots of young girls sleeping with numerous partners who now reflect back and wish they hadn't, certainly now they are in a 'normal' relationship. They want to explain it away as low self esteem. Maybe it's true in some cases but in many they did it because they could and they wanted to. Not all girls behaved in this way, some where inhibited or thinking about their mothers words that if they did, no man would want to marry them.

It is possible to grow older and wiser and still have uncomplicated sex with a stranger when one single. No excuse then to blame it on not knowing any better but to realise that this part of your make up is still alive and well and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

"Did her lifestyle impact on her flatmates? Given the evidence of the flatmates own email, No."

I don't see where you're getting that from? simply because it is not affecting him anymore 13 years later. I fail to see how it wouldn't have affected him and the others at the time,I mean surely coming home to a housemate having sex in the middle of the living room would have some form of negative impact on your enjoyment of your own home. Add to that a constant stream of strangers and having your possessions stolen. Simply because he no longer agonises over these things 13 years later does not mean her actions didn't impact on her housemates.
And just to be clear my post earlier was not intednded to be a "you deserved what you got" in respect of the negative things which happened to the OP back then such as the questionable consent in regards to sexual encounters or having her door kicked in. It was with regards to her present day e-mail to someone from her past to tell them they were a bastard and then expect an apology from him, when it was quite clear they both acted poorly towards each other and things should have been left lie.

hell i fell out with a flatmate when she ate my food.she tried to rationalise it as
"hey maaaaan chill it was only a sausage"
"yes my fucking sausage.so cough up you thieving boot"

never mind the stuff op described

The only thing stolen was the bike. It was returned.

gosh well that makes it all ok then.silly them

Well it doesn't say returned, it says it turned up which could easily mean it was found abandoned by the guy himself rather than by any efforts on the part of the OP to rectify the negatives her actions caused to her housemate, but that's semantics.
And my point was simply that your conclusion that based on the evidence her lifestyle had no impact on her housemates is baseless and wrong imho. The fact that the bike was stolen in the first place after the op brought a stranger into their home is a negative impact on their lifes. The fact that the op by her own admission had a near constant stream of strangers through the home would be a sign of a negative impact on her housemates enjoyment of their home to me.
So to me the evidence would quite clearly point to her lifestyle having a negative impact on her housemates and I have seen nothing that would refute that as conclusively as you seem to have.

ScottishMummy - No that's not okay as such but the Bike was found later, unharmed. Why so bitter about it after 13 years? Lots of students have things stolen, but they don't behave this way because of it.

My best friend moved in with me in the last year of uni. He didn't want to go back into student accomadtion because his laptop was stolen and never returned. It could only have been someone who had been let into the house by one of his flatmates as no locks were broken/nothing else was stolen. He never treat any of his flatmates in this way. He accpeted that these things happen and claimed on his insurance for a new one.

He then spotted me in town. A friend of a friend in town and asked could he move into my house in his last year, so that this didn't happen again.

But he's not "so bitter" 13 years later. He got an e-mail out of the blue calling him a bastard and that his behaviour atrocious and had negatively impacted on the OP. He responded in kind and reminded her of some of her own out of line behaviour and how it impacted on him. He didn't seek her out and make contact with her complaining about his bike. He brought up the bike thing basically to say that she was also a nightmare to live with and cited an example of how her behaviour had affected him.

It's interesting you;re going back 13 years and seem to be looking for closure/forgiveness/whatever you might call it for what you did then.
Forget whether men and women are judged differently. It's not about that. It's about putting the past behind you.
Maybe you need to understand what was driving you back then. Why did you feel so worthless and and need to fill the emptiness with the wrng things?
No doubt you didn;t really find it satisfying and no doubt none of these guys were doing you any favours
A dig into it with a counsellor might not be a bad thing.
It's great you have a good relationship and a family and find fulfillment and love there.
The poast doesn't need to haunt you. But sometimes you have to look it square in the eye before you bury it. I wouldn't go digging up other people. They;re not going to have the answer for you.
You;ll feel gutted and worthless because you;ve gone back 13 years to be in that room again and have the same negative reaction from the same people.
Maybe talking to your husband about it might help you place it firmly behind you?
If you;ve got a loving trusting relationship it may help put it to bed. If you excuse the choice of phrase.
Either way, confess it (to him, to God, to yourself, whatever) and walk on.
Enjoy your wonderful life and your wonderful child. Count your blessings.!!

The autobiography idea was not meant/intended to be read by anyone other than me. I gave up on it as I said because it didn't help. I was thinking too that back then I also kept a notebook and wrote down anything really nice that people said to me. How SAD was that?! I am saddened that I felt that unworthy.
I think my lack of seeing my housemates point of view comes from just our bad our communication was in any case. When i moved in I had been allocated the box bedroom at the top which said alot I thought. I was the latecome who had to fit in. They were a tight knit buch. The house was the pits. Imagine going in a shower after 6 blokes? Yuck! I remember making a pasta dish then one of the guys wanting that exact bowl and expecting me to turf out my dinner so he could cook. As I said my food was always getting nicked. I used to answer the phone asking for them from random women. One had a long term girlfriend at another uni and he DEF cheated on her. He would be in a foul mood for days after because he felt so badly about himself. I remember one being in a dressing gown and I stupidly asked if he had been in the shower only to get the reply 'no I have been making lurve' . I remember one moaning about how his girlfriends big boobs annoyed him when they had sex. I found it all pretty contemptuous of women to be fair. One housemate did try to talk to me and said he was concerned but it was clearly fake as he was the one calling me a slag in the Union. In the 1st year i also lived with 2 guys and that was fine, no problems or judgements at all. One smoked dope constantly and the other was always with his girlfriend so it worked out fine.
I had, before this been feeling really good about myself, very strong and I think ready to take on the issues of then. I am not sure I had dealt with all the damage caused by that time in my life so hence wanting to confront it and the aggression of the email. As I said, all of these comments have made me reconsider things and perhaps I am guilty of the hard done by act without considering the impact of my actions on them but I do feel that they were certainly able to cope with it. I do feel if the behaviour was weighed up one against the other, I am the one who comes off worse. To the thoughts of I should apologise to him, well hell will freeze over first. No way!
As for the bike, I can barely remember the incident in all honesty. I think it did just turn up 2 days later.

Btw I don't expect to be excused for all my behaviour but maybe I am looking for some reasons as to why I did it. I don't really know myself. Was it purely self destructive behaviour or was I just doing what men do but not getting away with it? Like people have said I think its easy to think you are being all liberated when actually you are causing yourself harm.
The idea of me having no concept of boundaries interets me. I think people are too bound by boundaries if you excuse the bad grammar! Now, at this stage of my life I have fully come to terms with the concept of responsibility and consequences. I think you have to as a Mum but then yes, I din't have much concept of them.

I think having her door kicked in while she was lying peacefully in her bed is still a significant memory 13 years later because it was an instance of the outside/ other people intruding on Cheekymonk rather than CM doing her thing in a way that may have been experienced as intrusive by others, something that is hard for a person with boundary issues to process. It's the same kind of shock that she felt when she got the e-mail reply to the one she sent. Here again, someone else's reality came smackdab up against hers, and she is having a hard time accepting it.

I think moral judgement or anything smacking of misogyny ('slut') is out of place here.

what do you mean "you are looking for reasons why you did it"?

you have said why you did it - you had low self esteem and enjoyed the feeling if intimacy and being desired that you got from casual sex, to what sounds like an almost addictive degree.

what more do you need to know?

you sound like you are looking for other people to tell you why they think you did it? is this because they might be able to justify something that you are unable to?

Move on woman for God's sake!

Perhaps you did it because it was exciting? Perhaps you did it because for those sexual encounters you felt loved?

I don't think it's rocket science. I wasn't too promiscuous because I didn't like my body(Gawd knows why I was a size 6 and pretty attractive) and I lived with a bunch of girls who would grab any man, 10 minutes before they left a club. Perhaps I didn't sleep around because I got chatted up a lot and so had constant affirmation that I was beautiful....the other girls I lived with were not and so perhaps they needed to have sex to find their self worth.

Is it all so important to know why? It won't change anything, it won't stop you doing it again because you're not going to.

I think you need to accept that it was over a decade ago and fairly bog standard student behaviour on both sides.

You're grown up with a family now, enjoy that and leave the embarrassing past behind you. God knows we all made arses of ourselves at uni, or in our shagging days. I did, anyway.

It's part of becoming an adult for most people.

Exactly. So you don't remember an incident which was your fault involving his bike being stolen (which if it did just turn up 2 days later means you made no effort to rectify the situation and it's only down to pure dumb luck that it reappeared) yet you remember numerous petty arguments over food and other things which aren't even bad but somehow you are still the wronged party(such as getting the box room when you were the last to move in,did you expect one of them to move out of their room?it just seems like common sense that the last person to move in would get the last available room.or how answering the phone to random women was somehow a negative for you when you were bringing home a load of strangers)
You found them contemptuos and they found you contemtuos, yet you somehow feel within your rights to track one of them down and call him a bastard and expect an apology when you wouldn't even consider ever apologising yourself and seem happy to play down your part in the whole nightmare living arrangments as "I was no angel but you.." which is the kind of thing people say about their children when they're trying to abdicate them from any guilt or responsibility for their actions.

Totally agree MQ.

I think it's worth noting that most people find a person with BPD extremely annoying if not downright crazy-making to live with. And again, that the relative moral rights and wrongs of situations they have caused or contributed to don't really apply.

It's a condition that expresses itself in interpersonal relations in ways that provoke extreme reactions, and usually someone with this problem, even a slight touch of it, has a lot of alienated ex-friends or flatmates or former intimates in their wake. Part of the irritation stems from the inability of the person who has this disorder to see the picture that others see, to put themselves in others' shoes, to see themselves as others see them.

I don't know if you intended to link the idea of boundaries with the idea of responsibilities and consequences, CM. They are not the same thing. Boundaries has to do with your concept of where you end and where other people begin, to put it in very folksy terms. Responsibility and consequences are to do with the superego, the 'conscience' if you like. They are aspects of personality and behaviour that develop from outside influences.

op,i think you are playing games with posters and flatmates.all the chin stroking and cod psychology.are people responses of interest to you or do you like the attention of a thread that you drip,drip information to

you are playing this many ways

victim of harsh judgements.belittled by cruel flatmates
yet passive coolly reflecting on convept of what boundaries means
but expecting contrition from flatmates but not so keen to see their point of view
the salacious narratives.and poor widdle you

have to say i think even the most ardent liberal would find you hard to fathom

i think you know exactly what titbit to reveal on this thread and the triggers that will evoke responses

all very odd

now go and grow up.mooooooooove on,take stock of your current life stop exhuming the detritus of your life.13 years ago woman

a life lived as he said/i said isnt a life its a circus

methink you like drama

To answer the question in thread title: Yes, you need to accept that you were a slut. Then you need to move on.

The real issue here is that you can't move on, because you are having trouble coming to terms with that period in your life. I feel that this is why you needed to talk about it with your ex-flatmate, and that is why you are talking about it now.

However, we can't really help you - we don't really know you and we are just faceless strangers on the internet. You need to talk with a professional who can properly help you analyse your actions and your feelings about them.