Scarleteen

I was in a relationship for over two years with someone who I trusted very much. When I was 17, he raped me. It wasn't at all the picture I had of rape. It wasn't violent or brutal. He had asked me to have sex many times but I was tired so I said I wanted to go to bed. He decided to spend the night, as he did often, and I fell asleep, but he woke me up in the middle of the night fingering me. It took me a long time to even accept it was rape and then I finally ended the relationship, which was unhealthy for a whole lot of other reasons as well. It's hard because we went to the same high school and have many of the same friends and he's still in my life. I don't exactly know how to deal with the situation. I chose not to report it, but it's very hard to be surrounded my people who see him regularly and bring him up and even to see him around. it's been about four months since it happened, but It still lives with me in my memories and dreams. What is the best way to navigate a situation like this?

Hi Sprouts, and welcome to Scarleteen.

I'm so sorry that he chose to do that to you. However, Jedi high five for ending a relationship that was toxic. That can be really hard to do. Is there anyone in your friend group who you've told about what he did, or have you been dealing with this on your own?

There's not going to be one correct way to navigate this. And even if you're thoughtful about your actions, you may still get some negative push-back from people. That being said, how do you feel about asking mutual friends to not bring him up in conversation with you as much as possible? You don't have to give the full details of why, but if that's a boundary you feel might help we could talk about how to address it with people. When you say you still see him around, is that in situations like where you've both gone to a mutual friend's party or is it more seeing him randomly when you're out and about?

Have you had the opportunity to check out local rape survivor's resources to see if there's a counselor you could talk to about some of the aftermath?

I've told my therapist about this rape (I see her every few months just to check in), but I have a hard time communicating everything that's been going on to her. A few of our mutual friends know about it, and that's one of the reasons the situation is so awkward for me. I understand that they have their own relationship with him but it bothers me that they don't care that he would do something like that. I've never told them though because I feel like that's not my place. I see him sometimes at mutual friends parties and also just around because we're still in the same community.

I don't think it would be inappropriate to discuss your concerns with mutual friends: they're your friends too, and if they're good friends they'll care about your wellbeing and want to be respectful of your feelings and needs. (And if you find that they're not, unfortunately you may just have to let them go as friends, as hard as that is; it's incredibly unfair that you should have to deal with the possibility of losing friends because someone else chose to assault you, but sadly that's sometimes how it goes.) It's also perfectly reasonable to ask ahead of time if you're going to a party whether or not he might show up.

It may also be beneficial to schedule more frequent appointments with your therapist, if that's doable, or contact a local rape crisis service as Sam suggested: if you have a hard time talking about it, you may find it useful to write things down and take them in to appointments (and keep in mind that plenty of people have a really tough time talking about trauma, even with a trained professional, and therapists are aware of that and know how to work with that difficulty).

Okay I will try that. Writing it down would probably work really well for me. Thank you so much for your help.