Is it okay to stay with my boyfriend after this accusation?

[wjc0614]

The information that I provide for this post is not concrete. My boyfriend (who I have been with for 1 year), before he was with me, had an incident with another girl that he met on Tinder. I have 3ish perspectives on the story. From this, I would like to know a few things from the kind people who take the time to read this: Is it okay to stay with him, morally? Should I feel bad for loving him? Should I have broken up with him a year ago when I first heard this story? Is it wrong for me to want to move past this? Could he be lying about his side of the story? Why did she react the way that she did? I am not concerned for my own safety. He has never given me any reason to be. The perspectives:

Her perspective: I have barely anything here. We were acquaintances before this happened. She was in my public speaking class and wrote a speech on this subject. I hardly remember any of it, as it was given before I knew about the incident. What I do remember is that she said that she was touched inappropriately on campus and she called her parents to tell them and they told her to "get over it" and wondered "what she was expecting to happen." I am kicking myself for not being able to remember more. After she realized that I was seeing my boyfriend (we were not yet dating), she knocked on my door (we lived in the same dorm building on the same floor) and told me that he came over to her room for a Netflix date and while making out, "got grabby" with her and that she tried "swatting him away" but he didn't stop. She also made me aware that her speech was about him. She told me to be careful, then left. Again, more was said, but I just can't remember what since it was so long ago. That's all I have on her perspective. I do know that she was once in an abusive relationship. This came out in casual conversation with her, and I don't know if it makes any sort of difference.

My boyfriend's perspective: When she knocked on my door, he was in the room hanging out with me. I would like to make it clear that this boy has never harmed me in any way and was always kind and respectful. I confronted him immediately (while not pressuring or scaring him) and he told the story like this: they met on Tinder, which he was on for sex (he and I also met on this platform). He assumed that she was there for the same purpose, based off of their messages. He went to her room to watch a movie, and they started kissing. He said that she seemed into it, and she was laying on top of him. He said that he may have touched her chest, but she made no move to stop him. He asked her if she wanted to take it farther and she said no, so they kept doing what they were doing. He asked her one more time if she was sure, she again said no, and they finished the movie and he went home. He said that finishing the movie felt awkward, but she didn't seem upset. He never saw her again. Upon hearing that she was hurt by the experience, he started crying. He said that he never meant to make her feel that way and that he wanted to apologize to her, but was afraid to make her uncomfortable by approaching her. So, I volunteered to ask her for him if she would be willing to talk to him. I never did, and while he kept asking me about it, I still never bothered. I will say why later. I have asked him his perspective recently, and he told me the same story. He was willing to apologize to her again. I texted him for her (because he doesn't have her number), and she said, "I have nothing to say to either of you. Please never try to contact or approach me ever again." I simply asked her if she would be willing to talk to him in a public setting. This upset me because I don't know what I personally did wrong.

Her old roommate: I recently texted her old roommate for her perspective, as I knew that she (the girl) told her roommate about the incident. This is what she said (from her perspective): "They met at Starbucks (on campus) the first time. The second time he came to the room to watch Netflix. I left the room. I checked in on her and she said that she was fine. When I came back, she was signing her out of the building and she looked really upset. When we got back to the room, she got emotional and said that he wouldn't stop kissing her when she was trying to move away, and I think she said that he put her hand up her shirt without her permission. This stuff is really hard, because I've had experiences that are more intense than that, but I would just call it things getting a little carried away. It all depends on the person."

At the time of hearing this a year ago, I kind of brushed it off. For starters, I didn't have a lot of information to base my decision off of (and I still don't). While I didn't know my boyfriend well, I knew that he wouldn't lie about not intentionally harming her, and I knew it had to be a misunderstanding, simply because he and I also had the same misunderstanding when we first met. I did not want sex and he did. When we started making out, he touched my chest, which I did not mind. However, after a while, I did pull away. He stopped immediately, asked if I was okay, and did nothing more. We sat and chatted for the rest of the evening. I am not upset by his actions at all. However, when I asked him about our first date a few weeks ago, he apologized and said that he didn't remember touching me (he didn't deny that it happened, just that he didn't remember). About a week or two after that, he said that he did remember the feeling of my bra. Is this a red flag? Could he be lying or fabricating, and is this a sign that he has been lying about this entire thing on a larger level? When I pointed out the fact that he said that he didn't remember before, he said that he could have just been remembering a different time that he's felt my bra and associated it to the first date because we had recently talked about it. Is this an excuse, or is this how the human memory actually works?

I also know that she can be a bit dramatic. I figured she was blowing the situation up, simply because she might have regretted meeting with him (I have had many friends do this). I didn't know her roommate's perspective at the time and the fact that she was upset about the situation immediately after it happened. I figured she felt the way she did after taking some time to think about it. That's why I never talked to her for my boyfriend. I don't feel good about this choice, and it was entirely the wrong one to make. I completely forgot about this situation until recently, because of the Kavanagh case. Many people have taken to Facebook and other forms of social media to post about it. It all reminded me about this incident, and it's been bothering me ever since. I talked to my boyfriend a couple of weeks ago (I mentioned him touching me in the same discussion). We discussed consent and how he should have asked her what she was comfortable with instead of making assumptions. He fully agreed and understood where he went wrong. I also asked him about his previous relationships (sexual and romantic). There has never been another opportunity for him to have another incident like this one. Finally, I seriously asked him if he was lying about his side of the story. His answer was a look of hurt. He said no, and that he honestly had no idea that she felt this way. He said that she never verbally said no to him. She never mentioned any verbal cues to me, and her roommate said that she didn't remember if the girl mentioned verbally saying no to her when she was telling her story. Honestly, I don't know what to do. I can't get this off of my mind, and I constantly make up worst case scenarios. It has taken over my whole life. She gives me very hostile stares every time she sees me on campus (this has been going on for a year), and I don't know what I've done wrong. I don't know if I can use her responses to the situation (the speech, the knocking on the door, the mean text message) as proof that the situation was worse than it actually was. I say this because if I were in her situation and it happened like I think it did, I would not have been nearly as upset as she was. I would have called it a bad date and left it at that. Of course, different people react differently to different situations, and I am in no way invalidating her experience. I am simply stating what I would have done.

[Mo]

Hi wjc0614, and welcome to Scarleteen.

When it comes to this woman's perspective of the situation vs. your boyfriend's memory of it, I think the most important thing to keep in mind is that overwhelmingly, people who talk about their experiences of assault aren't lying. They may react in a different way than someone else might have, but that doesn't change the reality of their experience. It was likely really hard for her to get up the courage to talk to you about your boyfriend, but the sort of warning she gave you just isn't the sort of thing someone is likely to do if they're trying to lie to themselves about a past experience or make something up; it's what someone does when they want to try and keep someone else from experiencing what they've experienced.

In terms of your boyfriend's memory of the situation, it's often going to be a lot more likely that someone who was assaulted will remember what happened, and carry that trauma with them, than it will be for the other person to remember a lot of details. Maybe they didn't think or care that much about consent to think too much about what they were doing. Maybe they weren't considering the other person's feelings enough to think about the impact their actions would have. Maybe they felt bad and tried to ignore or minimise it, and either actually forgot or "forgot" at some point. You mention the Kavanagh case, and I noticed that coming up in a lot of conversations about him; he could say "I don't recall" as much as he wanted but ultimately he had the privilege of not remembering - or claiming to not remember - because he wasn't impacted daily by what he'd done.
I honestly don't think there's a way we can know whether your boyfriend is saying he doesn't remember things because he doesn't, or if he's uncomfortable with his behavior and trying to hide it, or something else. It could be that he doesn't remember, for real! But it's important to point out that being a victim of assault is much, much harder to "forget" than being a perpetrator can be.

It sounds like it was upsetting to you that this person didn't want to talk about having a public meeting with your boyfriend, but it might help to think about the situation from her perspective. To her, it probably looked something like this: she was upset enough by being assaulted on a date that she'd talked about the experience in a public speaking class. She hadn't gotten support from her parents when she talked to them about it. She noticed you getting close to this guy, so she warned you that he had sexually assaulted her. You went on to date him, and whether or not you intended this, it probably felt hurtful to her to see that response; going on to date someone and asking about a meeting/public apology probably feels pretty rough to someone who's confided that experience in someone else. She may have felt that you didn't believe her, or that you did but didn't think it was important enough to keep you from dating him.

I think it's a good idea to re-examine the idea that women might make up or embellish a story after a "bad date," because it feeds into some of the ideas that are behind the minimization of a lot of common date rape scenarios; we have an article about this based on the concept of "gray rape" that was going around a few years back, that I think might be helpful to read. It's also important to keep in mind, when thinking about sex and consent, that "absence of a verbal no" isn't the same as consent, which is an active, uncoerced, informed yes to what's happening.

As for what you should do right now: I don't know that any of the questions you ask at the start of your post are ones we can definitively answer for you, but we can talk through some of this with you. How are you feeling about all of this right now?

[wjc0614]

I feel fine for the most part. He never denied what happened, he just said that he didn’t know that he hurt her at all. This case reminds me a bit of Aziz Ansari’s if you are familiar with that. Non verbal cues were misread, and communication was lacking. It was a misunderstanding. I firmly believe that he did not hurt her on purpose. This belief is based off of how he has treated me, both during our first date and to this day one year later. He has had no reason to treat me any differently than her. No reason at all. I see why she wouldn’t want to talk, and I shouldn’t have made him apologize. I guess where I am right now is that I know that nothing is going to change what happened and I’ll never know the whole story. Breaking up won’t fix anything. I need to move on from what happened. I’m kicking myself for not asking for more details a year ago, but I can’t go back to the past.

[Sam W]

I think accepting that you can't go back and get more information is a sound choice. When you say you need to move forward from this, what do you envision that looking like? What would need to happen?

I do want to circle back to something you mentioned in your first post, because in your most recent one you framed this is being a misunderstanding between your partner and this other person. But, you also say that in her account she said she swatted his hands away when he tried to do certain things. That's a gesture that is actually very hard to misread; if you go to touch something and someone whacks your hand away from it, it's clear they mean "don't touch that thing." So while he may not have intended to hurt her, he did make a choice to ignore at least one of her signals to him (as Mo mentioned, he has the privilege of not remembering all the details, which is why I'm assuming her recollection of him touching her may be a bit more accurate). That may not change you overall feeling about the situation, but I did want to note it because it jumped out at me when reading your account.

It may also help to remember that intent is not magic; even if he never intended to hurt her or upset her, he did. It sucks to find out after the fact that you hurt someone without meaning to, but how you incorporate that information into your life makes a big difference. I mention this because "I hurt someone but I never meant to and also they weren't clear so how could I have known" and "I hurt someone, I didn't mean to but I need to accept that I did" are two very different stories for him to tell himself and for you to tell yourself about him. One tries to excuse the harm in some way, the other accepts responsibility for it, full stop. When someone genuinely accepts responsibility for something they did, it makes it more likely they won't do those same things again and that they've actually learned from the mistake, you know?

[Heather]

I'm just jumping in here for a very brief comment, my two cents on something basic with this kind of thing if you're interested.

Personally, if someone tells me someone I am seeing has been abusive to them in any way, knowing what I know about who says what about abuse (and that it's so rare for people who have been victimized to be dishonest, but so common for those who have abused to be), and as someone who has already had to do a lot of work to heal from abuse, and doesn't want abuse or abusers as any part of my personal life when I can control it, I'm going to do what I can to get gone.

Even in the event I personally didn't feel at risk of harm (by all means, we can be with someone who targets/has targeted one kind of person and not another, but I am also too knowledgeable about and have too much experience with abuse to harbor any illusions about my safety), I just don't want to be with someone who absolutely or most likely abused someone else. I have a whole bunch of reasons why. If you're curious about them or think they would be useful to you, I'm glad to share.

But personally, someone going out of their way -- and making themselves vulnerable -- to warn me like this is something I'm always going to take very seriously and heed.

[wjc0614]

Heather, I would like to hear your reasons why, thank you. He is taking responsibility and is no way blaming her for not being clear. He is simply stating that he did not know that she was uncomfortable by his behavior in any way. For me, moving on would be just that. Accepting that he made a mistake and did something that neither of us are proud of. Not holding his past against him is another step. He’s sorry for what he’s done, he’s tried to reach out to apologize, and unfortunately there isn’t much else to be done.

[Heather]

I have some feelings about what else you've added on here, but since that's not really about the reasons I personally wouldn't stay with someone that another person told me had abused them, I'm going to stick to what you've asked me for. The only thing I think is important for me to say with those additions and what I'm about to is that I don't think anyone is entitled to intimate relationships. In other words, to me, refusing an intimate relationship with someone isn't keeping them from something they're entitled to or about punishing them.

I have a few main reasons that I'd decline an intimate relationship with someone accused of abuse, or stop being part of an existing relationship.

1) I don't think that any of us are safe from abuse from someone who has engaged in it before (and in this case, I should be clear, I think touching someone's body while they are swatting you away with their hands is an abuse unless a person lacked the social or intellectual capacity to know that things like pushing away or swatting hands are ways people try to physically say no), so one big thing for me is that I'd be knowing I was always going to be at a much higher risk than I would be with anyone who hadn't engaged in abuse before. Maybe they wouldn't abuse me like they did someone else, or the same way they did, but I'd much rather play it safe with someone I don't know to have done someone harm before. As a survivor, I'm just really never going to be able to feel safe with someone who has engaged in abuse.

2) One thing I know as a survivor and as an advocate for survivors is that being believed is really everything. I want to have the back of any and every survivor as much as I can, and believing them, and standing with them, is really important to me. I think it is hard to feel believed (and anyone can obviously have a range of feelings about this) when you tell someone that a person did you harm and they choose to remain vulnerable with that person. It's just kind of hard to figure they believe you, because it seems like if they did, they wouldn't want to be with that person because they know they've abused someone. Do you know what I mean?

3) I don't want to risk being someone who makes someone unsafe seem safe and risk effectively making it easier for that person to abuse others. I know that by being with me as a close partner or friend, people who know me and trust my judgment will assume that person is safe, especially if I'm not just with them, but bringing them into their lives.

4) Rolling back around to number one there, if and when I have a choice -- and I pretty much always do and hopefully always will -- between being with someone who has done someone else sexual harm (or other kinds) and someone who hasn't, I want to be with people who haven't.

I will say, if I wasn't already a survivor of multiple kinds of abuse, I can imagine I'd feel somewhat differently about this. I might even be willing to consider being/staying involved with someone like that, but knowing myself, I would guess that would not only depend on the kind of abuse, but on there being a lot of time in between it and the present day, and that person having done some actual dedicated work -- like taking part in counseling -- around their past behaviour. That all said, that's me guessing: obviously I can't know how I'd feel for certain with radically different life experience.

Having said all that, this is 100% for you to decide, based on who YOU are and not just what you can live with, but what you want, in a relationship, for your life as a whole.

One thing I want to add, having read this whole thread so far, is that I do think it was misstep for you to text her on his behalf. I have no doubt you had good intentions, but not only was that really for him to do, especially since you STILL probably don't know the whole story from anyone, some of the looks she's been giving you may be about that in the context of what you don't know. For instance, maybe he never tried before -- including at the time. Or maybe something about the dynamic of the thing was so humiliating for her that this (unintentionally on your part, obviously) added more humiliation: it could have felt like he was rubbing it in her face that he could do that to her and you could even warn her but you were still with him, you know? Again, that's not to say I think you did a bad thing to her, I don't. I'm just trying to shed a little light on that for you since you sound pretty confused by her reaction.