possibly accidental consent issue ... any advice?

[mauveminion]

Hello! This post is going to be super long, but its quite the long situation, so bear with me please!
I'm struggling with an incident (or rather a few) regarding consent in my (20) relationship, and I could use some advice.
Lemme begin by saying that honestly my boyfriend (20) is my favorite person on earth, my best friend, and he's truly a blessing to my life. Before we started dating, we were best friends for a few months and it always felt like he was the one who really understood me. We always got along super well, and had fun whenever we spent time with each other. He is kind and supportive, and ever so patient with me, even as I navigate my anxiety and ROCD-related thoughts. He's always caring towards me, and in short, I love him so much, and I want our relationship to really work out.
However in April, around our 5 month anniversary, we had what I call “the incident”. My boyfriend and I had been getting into a sexy mood: we had showered together, and were making out, and I had been dancing on him sexually while he was sitting on the bed. I was very in the mood to do even more, and he was too.
Lets backtrack a second though. Sometime around november or december, very shortly after we had started dating, I explained to him that before he touches my boobs or my butt or my vulva area, I want him to ask if he can touch me. I want him to ask every time. I explained that this helps me feel safe, and also more in control of any sexual situations. When I explained it to him, he seemed to understand.
However between November and April, there were a few instances where he forgot about that boundary, and instead of asking me explicitly if he could touch me in those places, he just went off of body language/context clues and touched me anyways. He always apologized after I pointed it out to him, and seemed remorseful. Sometimes I got mad at him after pointing it out, which ended up with me being (I admit) mean to him about it. A few times I was able to catch him before he touched me, and remind him of the boundary, but during the incident in april, I snapped completely. I had been in the mood, sure, so I wasn’t mad that he touched me, but I became furious that he had forgotten to ask me so many times in the past few months, and this was the straw that broke the camels back. After the april incident happened, I told him that I needed my space, and I basically took a week to myself to think about everything without talking to him at all. I realize that maybe isolating myself from him and ignoring him for a week weren’t the best strategies, but let’s keep going.
In that week, I contemplated whether or not this counts as sexual assault at this point, and I was heavily contemplating breaking up with him. This encounter showed me that even though he seemed sorry after each time he accidentally crossed my boundary, he crossed it more than just twice. His words and apologies now meant nothing (or very little) to me, and if he couldn’t respect me now when it came to this kind of boundary, then maybe even bigger respect issues would come up later in the relationship too, even though he showed no other signs of that for now except for crossing that one boundary.
I sought some council in my friend, and she said that the situation did seem bad, but she also told me to think of it this way: if I was in his position, and I accidentally forgot about a boundary he set a few times, would I want him to be forgiving and patient with me? I told her yes, because I know that being forgetful happens. My boyfriend has ADHD, and I don't want that to sound like me making an excuse for his forgetfulness about my boundaries, but I have ADHD too, so I understand to a certain level. Additionally, from what I know, his (only one other) past relationship was rather toxic, and consent between them wasn't really great either (and had never been a conversation at all), so its possible that he didn't have the best understanding of consent and possibly had some bad sexual experiences from that relationship? Ultimately, my friend told me that it’s my decision to make, and whatever decision I make is valid and understandable. But if i continue my relationship with him, then I have to make it very clear that if this happens even one more time, that I should leave the relationship immediately.
Once I met back up with him again after that week, we had a deep conversation. I conveyed to him that my trust in him was terribly broken, and that when he forgets about my boundaries, it makes me feel used and unsafe in our relationship. I told him that I had very little hope for our relationship left, and that it may take me a very long time to heal from this, but I was willing to give our relationship one last chance, even though I felt like he didn't deserve it at all. I told him that if he ever broke the boundary again, I would break up with him. He apologized heavily that night, and was remorseful to (literal) tears, because he was upset with himself that he had hurt me this much. He told me that he is willing to work for however long is necessary to rebuild the trust between us.
That night, I also set a new boundary that he now had to ask me if he wanted to touch me anywhere at all. That boundary lasted about a few days before I decided to remove it, but he had respected it with no problem for the time being.
He also told me a bit of his side of the story that night. I’ll try to convey it to the best of my ability, but also my misunderstanding of his POV (and his sexual opinions/ boundaries/ preferences in general) could have honestly gotten us in this situation to begin with maybe? But anyways: he told me that that night, when I had been dancing on him, he saw that as me seducing him, and according to him, if I seduce him, then it should clearly mean that I want more (aka sex) right? Because why would you act seductively and initiate something like that if you didn't want more? Basically, he said that he didn’t mean to hurt me, and that he was going more off bodily clues/ the mood/ body language rather than words. He said he was sorry for not asking me explicitly, and said that he doesn’t want his explanation to sound like an excuse, but it honestly did very much sound like an excuse to me (and still kind of does). I feel like my boundary was clear, and he shouldn't have assumed.
Since then, we have had a few more conversations regarding sex, boundaries, what we want from sex, and so on. Slowly, I have been gaining my trust in him back, but the situation still hovers in the back of my mind, especially whenever he upsets me in some other (usually very very minor) way. I think that the incident has very much clouded my judgement about him, so now every single little flaw about him, or little wrong thing he does seems like a bigger problem that it actually is. I’ve been trying to remind myself that I chose to forgive him for the slip ups and that I should look forward to a better future, especially since he has been trying to prove to me that he can respect me and love me the way I want to be loved.
Fast forward now to august, and I’ve kept the boundary of “he has to ask before touching my boobs, butt or vulva” in effect, and he has not once crossed it since april. We also kind of began a new system, where usually I give him permission to touch all of me for a certain amount of time, for example "the next 2 hours". We both really like this system.
I feel like I do feel my trust in him coming back, but I can’t fully shake the event from my head just yet. Sometimes I question if I made the right decision forgiving him for that incident, even though we have been better so far, and he has also been giving me a lot of reassurance whenever I ask him about his sexual motives with me, and when I ask him if he remembers my boundary.
Recently though, we had a conversation about sex and touching boundaries, and he confessed to me that now, he feels scared to touch me at all because he feels like I might snap at him for it, and he doesn’t want to make me mad. I do admit that in the past I have snapped at him, and I told him that its something I want to work on now. We’ve both been trying to be better in our own ways in this relationship since april, and I think its working. Im kind of afraid though that he might one day slip up again (even if its many years down the road), and I’ll just end up forgiving him again or something because I just love him so much and want this relationship to work so bad, even though I have so many times wondered if I should leave.
All in all, I’m coming to a few conclusions, and I feel like maybe with time, I’ll figure things out better too, but for now I would appreciate some advice on the situation, as well as maybe some answers to the following questions:
Was this sexual assault? Did I do the right thing in giving him a second chance even though it was kind of more like a tenth chance? Could it be that this was a miscommunication issue even though I feel like “dont touch me here and here without asking” is pretty clear on its own? Will there ever come a day where I can trust him fully again? I wonder if maybe we didn’t communicate our boundaries/ expectations well enough when we began the relationship? What kind of conversations/ solutions can help us move forward into a better relationship? What else can I do to trust him (and myself) more?
Thank you for reading all of this, and I look forward to any advice!!!

[mikky]

Hey Mauveminion, welcome to the boards <3
I apologize as my reply is going to be quite short tonight, but I wanted to make sure you knew your post is seen and read!
What I am hearing from you is that your boyfriend had been inconsiderate around very clear, well articulated, well defined boundaries. Repeatedly. Though snapping at someone and isolating after certainly isn’t the most grounded incredible communication strategy, it WAS communication coming from a place of frustration and hurt.

It seems to me like your boyfriend has a lot to learn and internalize (!!!) about consent. Some of the ideas he communicated to you are things I hear a lot from other guys, like “seducing” is consent, or mood and body language are. While that can be true in some situations, it certainly isn’t when your partner has very clearly communicated that they want to be asked before intimate touch Every. Single. Time. And from what you describe, it sounds like he IS trying to better understand and change. This idea he shared about being afraid to touch you- how did you respond to that? Have things felt different since he shared this?

Being hurt, including deep hurt or hurt that causes mistrust, doesn’t mean a relationship needs to be over. I don’t think it is wrong to continue to be with him, and hold some forgiveness while also being aware that the situation was really difficult for you. I can’t tell you whether something will happen again, or if you will ever feel “full” forgiveness. Do you feel that he also cares to this degree about your relationship, your comfort and safety, and how you communicate with one another?

[mauveminion]

Hello! Thank you for your response!

My boyfriend is definitely trying to be better and to change, and I can see proof and progress of it I think. Both of our love languages are touch (his more than mine), so when he told me that he is afraid to touch me, it kind of made me sad. For me touch can be reassuring, like a hand on my shoulder, or a hug, but some touch (like what I outlined) I want him to ask about. So for him to not feel comfortable touching me at all felt... very confusing. I want him to touch me, just within the boundaries that I set. Touch is important to both of us, so I don't want us to go completely without it. For us to get comfortable with each other again will probably require a lot of work. I told him that I'll work on my reactions to touch/situations that trigger me, and hopefully it helps him feel less fearful. I'm willing to work on this issue, but maybe I would appreciate some conversation pointers/advice if anyone has any!

I do definitely also feel that my boyfriend cares a lot about this relationship, probably as much as I do (if not even more, nowadays). He cares about my comfort and safety, and since the incident has definitely been 200x more receptive to my opinions, and the things that I share with him, even if its just about my thoughts on feminism and the current state of the world, for example.

Since we haven't been dating too too long, I think we are still figuring out the best ways to communicate. We are long distance right now, which makes it especially hard, but we've improved when it comes to asking for reassurance or asking questions, and we've promised to communicate better (and right away) about anything that bothers us. Long distance is also giving us a break from sexual situations, which might be pretty good.

[Straif]

Hi mauveminion,
I see that the hurt there is really deep. It sucks to have someone we love and care about repeatedly cross boundaries. It seems like both of you are living in a space of tension where you're BOTH worried he's going to touch you without asking. Only time and consistency will help that become less of a worry. I think you can afford to be patient as long as you're both finding the relationship to be supportive and fulfilling in the meantime. However, if it feels like your understandable anger and anxiety is getting in your way of empathizing with him or is causing you to lash out about unrelated issues, it might be worth considering ending the relationship. There is nothing that says you have to forgive him, and it would be a kindness to both of you to end the relationship if you don't feel like there can be repair. Either way, if this is a relationship that you really feel like you're invested in for the long haul, you may want to consider couple's counseling. There are a lot of misconceptions about couple's counseling, particularly that it is an indictment of your relationship or should only be sought as a last resort. This leads to a lot of couples waiting too long to get help-- when there is so much damage that repair feels deeply daunting. I like to think of it as preventative care for your relationship's health. To find a couple's counselor near you, you can use resources like psychology today or check out the AASECT referral directory, which can be found here: https://www.aasect.org/referral-directory.