confused/overreacting?

[hera]

i dont rlly know how to talk abt this stuff bc it's basically something ive almost never spoken abt but im gonna try? so im 18 now, and when i was a freshman in high school, my friend and i used to hang around with this senior guy who she was friends with. i thought he was cool but i didnt know him that well. he kind of acted flirty and i thought he might end up dating my friend, but at the time i was in a ldr with another girl and he had mentioned having a gf as well. one day we were hanging out alone after school in the auditorium and we started like, poking each other and somehow that turned into him feeling me up. he sort of groped & squeezed my breasts and touched other parts of my body like between my legs but didnt go underneath the clothes. at the time i didnt really know what to do- i knew it wasnt good but i was super shy & i didnt want to appear uncool or ruin my or my friend's relationship w this guy. so i let him do it but as soon as he stopped i said i had to leave and went and hid somewhere else in the school. i told my friend what happened and she said he also did it to her, and she had stopped hanging out with him. after that i just avoided him basically forever but it stuck with me a lot. i never saw him again but he occasionally reached out to me on tumblr and other accounts ( i dont know how he got my username) and i felt rlly uncomfortable but jst tried to ignore him.

since then ive found that i have a rlly difficult relationship w my body and sex. ive had one other sexual experience that wasnt assault or anything but was just kind of bad. i find that when im in sexual situations i just sort of shut down- i dont feel anything physically , even with people i really like or want to have sex with, and am jst kind of always anxious and uncomfortable. i dont know if i'd really be capable of enjoying sex with another person.

this has been coming back up bc recently, my friend and i confided in another girl that this had happened and she shared a rumor that this boy had raped someone at a party. i dont really know whether to believe it because i know i'm biased, and i dont have any info. i've been thinking abt it a lot lately and feel like the experience probably had a big effect on my relationship w sex. i dont rlly think i can consider it assault? because basically nothing happened, and i think most of the issues is bc i built it up in my head. i dont even rlly know if i shld b upset with him or blame him, bc he was only like 17 or 18 and honestly idk if he thought it was wrong or if it was a big deal for him. i feel like he wouldnt even remember that it happened.

my current gf is a survivor of cocsa and i rlly want to be cautious abt starting a sexual relationship w her, bc her abuser was another girl. but i also feel worried that im going to have a difficult time having sex with her because of what i said before. i dont know how to begin that conversation with her. like how do i describe it? i wasnt abused or anything, im jst messed up bc a guy touched me once and i overreacted? idk

[Karyn]

Welcome to Scarleteen, hera.

I don't think you're overreacting at all: what this guy did was indeed assault, and being assaulted can have a big impact on how you feel about sex and on your mental health and wellbeing generally.

There's a lot to address in your post, but I want to check in with you and see if you have any preference in terms of what you want to talk about first?

[Mo]

Hi there hera, welcome to Scarleteen.

What you're describing here doesn't sound like a situation in which you're overreacting at all. This person was assaulting you, by touching you sexually without your consent. Sometimes when people are sexually assaulted they might think "well I wasn't raped so it wasn't that bad" but any instance of sexual assault can be extremely traumatizing and there's no need to discount or minimize your experience.

In terms of hearing that he's raped someone, a person with a track record of sexual assault of any kind is likely to continue assaulting people, so I don't think that's at all unlikely. I don't see you as biased, here - I see you as having relevant experience with this person that tells you he doesn't care about consent when it comes to anything sexual.

I do encourage you to talk to your girlfriend about this, to some extent at least, if you start being sexual together. Maybe you can say something like "I was sexually assaulted (you can describe this in as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable with) and I find that I shut down during sex with other people." And maybe from there you can give her some signs of what that looks like for you, or talk about checking in during sex pretty often, so that if you do have a moment like that you can just stop and step back from sex altogether. Any time you feel like you're dissociating or shutting down during sex, or worry it's about to happen, it's absolutely ok to take a break from that sexual activity - and I think a good partner will thank you for doing so, because they wouldn't want to be having sex with someone who's not fully present or not enjoying it.

I think taking things pretty slowly, communicating a lot, and being really consistent with consent check-ins will help you and your girlfriend build a healthy sexual relationship, if that's something you both decide to do. And if you are really getting stuck in that headspace during sex, or find yourself upset about this incident a lot, it might be worth checking in with a therapist or counselor who's experienced in handling sexual assault issues to talk some of this over with them. If you do want to go that route, often rape crisis centers will have recommendations for counselors in the area, or even host sessions through the center, so you could do a search online to see if you have one in your area.