What I Wish I Had Known the Night I Was Sexually Assaulted...

Note: During the month of April, Friend to Friend is profiling the real-life survival stories of sexual assault survivors here in Moore County. Please note that some of these stories contain accounts of sexual assault, and could be triggering. If you find yourself in need of further support, please contact Friend to Friend at 910.947.1703 or via our 24/7 Crisis Line at 910.947.3333 for free and confidential help. You can also reach the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

On the night that I was sexually assaulted, I was lying in bed reading a literature assignment. Exciting stuff for a Friday night. I don’t remember what the material was precisely, but I know it had been a long day, I was having trouble sleeping, and I was hoping to get ahead on my college homework knowing I had back-to-back work shifts over the weekend.

And I was partly through that assignment when my phone rang. It was my ex-boyfriend. We had broken up roughly a month or so prior, and that night he had apparently been out drinking. He was clearly very intoxicated, and throughout the conversation, he kept talking about driving himself home. Ex or not, drunk driving is a hard no for me, so I told him to stay put and I went to pick him up. That was the first of a series of mistakes I made that night, but I’ll talk a little more about that later.

I got to the bar, picked him up, and, for various reasons, decided it was easier to bring him back to my house for the night rather than take him back to his (again, a mistake, I know). When we got back to my place, he crawled straight into my bed without any discussion and promptly passed out. I figured he would sleep off the booze until I could take him back to his car the next day, and, with nowhere else to easily or comfortably camp out, I got into the bed as well.

I have no idea how late it was, but I feel like I had not been asleep long when I first felt his hands snaking up my shirt. I removed them and told him to stop, but soon one hand was pulling up the hem of my shirt while the second pushed its way under the waistband of my shorts. I remember repeatedly pushing his hands off of me while telling him to stop, but soon he was on top of me and limiting my ability to move. Kissing. Feeling. Forcing.

And as he continued to ignore me telling him to quit, and as his efforts gained force and intensity, I finally realized he was not going to stop. He was not going to listen. He was relentless, and he was going to make sure that he got what he wanted. So with that sense of inevitability, I resigned myself and stopped fighting him. I vividly remember thinking “I might as well get this over with so he’ll just leave me alone.”

I remember laying there afterwards, and in the days that followed, wrestling with a haze of confusion. What had happened to me didn’t seem quite like an assault – I mean, I had eventually acquiesced, correct? I had eventually stopped fighting and gone along with the sexual encounter. And yet, I felt deeply violated. I felt intruded upon, taken advantage of, and devalued. But when I got up the courage to confront my ex about these feelings, my confusion only deepened. His response was immediately dismissive. “You’re blowing this way out of proportion,” he said. And my favorite response, “You chose to be there. You always could have just slept on the couch.”

He’s not wrong. I could have slept on the couch. As I mentioned earlier, I know I made a series of mistakes that night: picking him up drunk, bringing him home with me, lying in bed next to him. But I made a series of mistakes that night that were rooted in the belief that he respected me and my boundaries, and that he would not force me beyond my limits. I take responsibility for my errors in judgement that night, and certainly adopted a different approach in the future, but by no accounting in existence do my series of mistakes add up to consent.

It took me a very long time to recognize what happened to me for what it was. And the biggest reason is I assumed that because I stopped fighting him it couldn’t possibly have been a sexual assault.

But now I know that it was a sexual assault from the moment I felt like I had to fight him at all.

I’ve had years now to process all this, and my anger towards my ex has fully dissipated. However, it’s been replaced by an anger that will not so easily vanish. Because I’m angry that we live in a society where coercive sex has become so normalized that I was sexually assaulted by an ex-boyfriend and neither I, nor he, recognized it for what it was.

Coercive sex is such a normal part of our vernacular that many people don’t even notice it.

“She’s playing hard to get.”

“He’s been chasing her for months.”

“I want you so badly I just can’t help myself.”

And while, in some contexts, these statements might not be so concerning, they reflect a reality that is deeply troublesome. An unwilling partner, a relentless pursuit, and a lack of self-control don’t reflect a relationship built on respect and mutual enjoyment. They paint a pattern of coercive control and influence that maintains an imbalance of power.

I am grateful, for lack of a better word, that my experience was not more painful than it was. I had a previous relationship with the man who assaulted me, I knew I was free from concerns about STDs, and assumed (most likely correctly) that he would not cause me any serious physical harm. I have met many others who were not so fortunate.

However, I also believe that I am probably not the only one who has experienced this version of sexual assault, and it’s important to name it for what it is. I feel quite confident that there are other women, and men too, who have also left a sexual encounter feeling violated, uncomfortable, and even traumatized, without fully understanding why. And I’m here to remind you that’s okay.

Sexual assault is not always (in fact, not usually) violence and threats and dark alleys and sinister strangers. Sexual assault is often perpetrators we know, situations we feel uncomfortable in without quite understanding why, and a myriad of confusing and unpleasant feelings afterwards. It’s time to recognize that not only does no mean no, but that only a genuine and freely given yes means yes.

I wish I had known that on the night of my sexual assault. I also wish I had known:

1. A coercive sexual encounter is not reflective of how much someone desires you. You might hear “I just want you so badly/you just look so good/I just love you so much that I can’t control myself,” which sounds nice in theory. But, unless you’re a willing partner in that scenario, what your partner is really telling you is that they don’t value or respect your boundaries or autonomy enough to consider you an equal party in that sexual relationship. Sounds a little less attractive, doesn’t it?

2. If you feel like you have to “just get this over with” when it comes to a sexual encounter, or really any romantic physical contact, then something is wrong. That’s not a relationship that you want to be a part of, even if you’ve been led to believe that you do.

3. It’s okay to want someone and willingly consent to a sexual relationship at one point in time, and then decide you no longer want to later. Consent is not a blanket agreement, it needs to be re-evaluated and confirmed on an ongoing basis.

4. Mistakes don’t equal responsibility. You can make every mistake in the book, but if you did not explicitly say yes to that sexual encounter, YOU are not the problem. The only person responsible for a rape is a rapist.

5. And finally, and I cannot say this loudly enough: coercion does not equal consent. A great partner is one that you’ll truly and freely want to say yes to, and one who will patiently wait until you do. Anything else is much less than you deserve (trust me on that).

Knowing any or all of these things might not have changed the outcome of the night of my sexual assault. But they might have helped me sort out my feelings and re-learn my value much sooner. And I hope that maybe knowing these things will help someone else before they find themselves in my shoes.

It’s long past time to change the narrative on coercion, respect, and consensual sex. Please don’t be afraid to start the conversation.

-Anonymous