Personal Experiences with Rape Culture

About 4 years ago my marriage was seriously on the rocks.  My partner was working on an off-shore oil rig and he was only home 19 days at a time, gone for 22 days at a time.  It was horrible and he’d been doing it for three years.  I had a really hard time with the loneliness and resultant depression.  We had a roommate.  A good friend of mine who’d I’d known for years.  He was poor and we were helping him out by letting him live with us for free while he was helping us because he gave me some company that I desperately needed.  

I’m demisexual.  All my life the only people I’ve ever been sexually attracted to are people with whom I share intense emotional and mental connections.  By that same token, though, I’ve essentially been sexually attracted to every single person I’ve shared intense intimacies with.  Every really close friend I’ve ever had I’ve been sexually attracted to at some point.  Since my husband and I were monogamous and I didn’t want to cheat on him I basically got to the point where I just couldn’t have close friends because dealing with the sexual attraction on top of all the loneliness was more than I could bear and that lack of close friends obviously lead to further depression and misery.  

So the roommate and I got closer and closer as my husband and I grew further apart and I ended up sexually attracted to him.  I wanted him all the time and I was at a loss of how to deal.  I discussed this with my husband and he eventually agreed that he’d be fine with me and the roommate sleeping together.  We did, for about a month.  It was terrible (he was very bad at it and I was very tense because I felt horribly guilty since I felt like I was cheating despite the fact that I had permission).  So I eventually decided that I wanted to stop, that I couldn’t carry on with it anymore.  While I was trying to decide how best to handle that he and I were still living together and he still wanted to fuck.  I was afraid to say no because he and I were friends and I needed him since he was essentially my only close friend, my only source of support/intimacy with my husband gone all the time and my having given up on close friendships with people for the sake of my marriage (big mistake, obviously, wish I knew that then).  I didn’t know what to do and I was so scared of telling him no.  I felt like since I’d already given consent I couldn’t withdraw it, like I wasn’t allowed to, and I was afraid of losing him as a friend if I told him no.  I was in such a bad place mentally and emotionally that I was really easy to take advantage of and that’s exactly what happened.

He kept pushing for sex and I kept making excuses.  I never said no because I was still trying to figure out how to do that in a way that wouldn’t hurt his feelings.  So I kept lying and coming up with reasons we couldn’t and then one night he crawled into bed with me after I’d gone to sleep and he just started going down on me.  I woke up with his mouth on my vulva and I had no idea what to do.  I freaked out and just laid there frozen, terrified.  It was so unexpected, this had never happened before and wasn’t something we’d discussed.  He then fucked me. I continued to lay there frozen and terrified.  I felt like since I’d already consented in the past that I wasn’t allowed to withdraw that consent in the middle of sex.  I honestly didn’t know/believe that it was ok for me to do that.  I felt like hurting his feelings was the worst possible thing I could do so I just let it happen.  He spent the night in my bed that night, with me still laying there frozen and terrified.

After that I told him that my partner had decided he wasn’t comfortable with the arrangement anymore and we had to stop.  I still cared more about hurting his feelings than I did about anything else.  And I still blame myself for just letting it happen…  If I had just spoken up sooner I would have been safe.  If I had just stood up for myself none of that would have happened.  If I hadn’t been so weak none of that would have happened… I’m still dealing with it…  And I have a hard time calling it rape because I feel like he didn’t “intend” to violate me but at the same time he fucked me while I lay there completely unresponsive (when in the past I’d been enthusiastically involved).  Consent should be enthusiastic, not the absence of a no, and it should have been obvious to him that something was wrong which means he just didn’t care…