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When I think of sexual abuse, I tend to think of serious sexual assaults such as rape so I was quite surprised to be referred to a sexual violence service and be given an ISVA.
One of the things that confuses me about my situation is the whole pregnancy aspect. I understand that I’ve been in a coercively controlling relationship due to effectively being forced to choose between termination and a baby that I dearly wanted. However, I sometimes wonder if there is more to it. I know nothing about sexual abuse and hope someone can clarify for me.
When I met this man I was charting my cycle on an app. I was effectively using the rhythm method and told him this from the start. I said I would move onto something more reliable if it made him feel more secure and assuming the relationship would be continuing. I wasn’t on anything as I hadn’t had sex for about (detail removed by moderator)years. He laughed at me and said (detail removed by moderator). I kind of disagreed but said we would use condoms at my most fertile time. His friend later told me that he forewent the condoms only with me as he ‘wanted to feel that connection’ but had otherwise always used them even when the girl used one of the more reliable methods. I was quite shocked about this but the friend went on to make me feel guilty and said that he had trusted me. This was a reference to a conversation I’d had with him about what would happen in the event that I did become pregnant. He swears that I agreed that I would tell him but ‘deal with it’ and have an abortion without a second thought. Whilst we definitely discussed that as an option, I never said I would definitely abort as I had certain convictions that he knew about as we’d discussed it at other times in a different context. Instead, I said I that I didn’t know for certain what I would do in that situation. But he would always throw this recollection back in my face and this untrustworthy thing became a theme whereby I had to continually prove myself as I was made to feel so guilty.
In terms of actual sex, we had a strong attraction straight away. In the beginning would send me very explicit messages that I didn’t necessarily dislike but which sometimes shocked me as he was clearly very dominant and I definitely wasn’t down for some of the things he described. On one occasion he bit my breasts so hard that I had bruises for days and even had one on my face. It actually really hurt and I took a picture that I sent to him to see how he’d react to the fact he’d done it. At the time I really went along with it as I knew he would like the fact that he’d done that to me and said it was sexy as I was just looking to please him. The fact is that I didn’t really like it at all and any conversation we’d had in the past about ‘branding’ I kind of meant in a non-hurting kind of way like a love bite or something. I feel he really took it to the next level as it happened during the last time we had sex where he was very rough. I didn’t enjoy it as it hurt me so much that that I had to ask him to stop. I didn’t really know what to make of it all but, as I said, I went along with it as I didn’t want to displease him as he liked to be dominant with me. Looking back I just feel so confused by all of this. I suspect that it’s all nothing and I’m extremely embarrassed recounting it, but I just need to know if there is anything wrong with any of this or whether it’s all fine.
After this he started withholding sex and intimacy from him even though I wanted him to show me the care that he said he had for me by making love rather than having a f*** He basically told me that I’d ruined sex for him, so much so that he didn’t even do it solo anymore and he always used to tell me how much he used to do that. He and his friend said I was pressuring him so I began to feel like I was and backed off because I felt ashamed. He told me he said he was trying to get back there to wanting sex again but he associated the act with pregnancy now and just didn’t want it. I felt so guilty and he said he was trying to get there and that we would eventually. However, I felt that if I was going to have the abortion for him I needed him to demonstrate that everything was ok in our relationship, but evidently it wasn’t as him making me feel guilty about sex seemed a questionable basis for a serious loving relationship. He is a super sexual person and (detail removed by moderator) so this was quite a turn around and I felt totally responsible. I feel so bad about this last bit in particular, but I just wanted to know he still desired me. I felt so wrong.
I hope someone can help shed some light on this as I’m so confused and this was quite a big thing in our relationship and I feel completely to blame about it all.
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I just wanted to add that he had always told me that he found pregnancy sexy and would love to have sex with a pregnant woman so when I was actually pregnant it confused and hurt me that actually I’d just messed up sex for him. It really hurt because I loved him and just wanted him to show me a bit of love and care back. Instead I just felt guilty and made to feel like I was the one who was forcing or pressuring him into sex. I do feel so ashamed about it all. Was I in the wrong?
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One last thing that he said in relation to the pregnancy is that he was quite satisfied that he managed to get me pregnant in such a short time as he was worried that his lifestyle had maybe affected his ability to have children. It hurt me as the implication was always that this would be with someone else rather than me and he accused me of tainting his idealised vision of family and fatherhood. He had said (detail removed by moderator). It just kills me to think that I was just some kind of experiment for his future life that he had no intention of me being in. Instead he just told me I’d ruined his life, would be worse than dead to him and he compared me telling him to being told he had aids. He also used to discuss with his friend (detail removed by moderator). I found it humiliating and hurtful, first that he was discussing our sex life so openly with his female friend and secondly because he knew I wanted more children in the future as we discussed it so it was a sensitive topic for me further compounded by the implication I was a dried up old maid. It just crushed me from a man that I loved.
I’m sorry about the multiple posts but it’s all been flooding back and it’s so hard to deal with let alone make sense of. I keep holding onto the fact that he didn’t mean all this, that he was just scared and hurt.
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Firstly please stop blaming yourself for this man’s behaviour. If he had sex with you without using a condom and you had asked him to use one he raped you. You did not consent to sex in the manner he behaved. Witholding sex is an abusive tactic. Again this is not your fault. This man is deliberately sending you confusing messages to make you doubt your reality so he can behave as he pleases. It is a control tactic. You will find lots of references here about gaslighting, a method used to destroy your reality and make you feel as though you are going mad.
Rape Crisis is brilliant. You may be able to get specific trauma counselling either through them or through Women’s Aid. Your ISVA should be able to guide you through the possibilities and will hold your hand through all the police work.
He is humiliating you in public and denying your reality. Again these are methods used by abusers. How terrifying for you. Please remember that everyone here believes you. You have an ISVA on side. You are on the way to rumbling through some terrible experiences. It is so easy to doubt ourselves especially when our reality has been distorted by abuse. Well done for posting. You’re on a journey to recovery now.
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Yes this was abuse. Spotting was most likely due to him being too rough; our tissues are delicate!
He spun you a pretty tale with fine words and you loved the picture he created and imagining yourself in it – who wouldn’t?
But it was all lies. His behaviour revealed the truth and you were betrayed by him. He took risks with your health and laughed about it. He hurt you and boasted about it. He invented a promise you hadn’t made and messed with your mind until you were the one apologising for breaking it.
And what sort of partner brings a third person into a relationship like that, without consent or discussion? He showed you no compassion, no love and no respect throughout.
It was brutal abuse and you’re well out of it.
One reason I do think abortion is sometimes right (and I know you bravely refused that choice) is that it can protect a woman from an abuser who would otherwise torment and bully her for 18 years plus!
I’m glad for your sake he can’t do that.
Give it some space, darling. You have lots of healing to do: body, mind and spirit.
Try to put him and his motivation out of your mind – you’ll never make any sense of something so twisted – and focus instead in the important person here: yourself
What do you want for yourself? What are your needs, ambitions, priorities? Get yourself ready for your own future and don’t let thinking about him interfere with your studies!
Just a thought: does he have a degree and a profession? There are a lot of inadequate men out there who feel threatened by intelligent, successful, confident women and want to ‘put them in their place’ (detail removed by moderator) he sounds as if he might be someone who set out to degrade an intellectual woman to bolster his own ego. The disparaging things he couldn’t even say, he had his female ‘friend’ say for him so he could report it to you.
In time I think you will be disgusted by him. That’s the healthy response to someone like him. Right now you’re busily blaming yourself, just as he intended, but that will die away, I think, for you to see him clearly.
Hang in there and don’t be tempted to contact him or respond if he pulls your strings. In fact, cut the strings!
Flower x
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Hi there,
I just want to echo the other ladies on here and say this was not your fault. If he wasn’t happy with you using an app, he could have put on a condom. Sex is an act where the parties are equally responsible for what protection to use bearing in mind no protection is 100% safe, not even the pill. There is always a chance of pregnancy when you have sex, sometimes you can greatly reduce that chance but it’s a chance nonetheless. And he was a willing participant in that. Even if you somehow had tried to rope him in (which is what him and his friend are desperately trying to make it sound like – all b***s***), he could still have put on a condom himself. It is not your fault.
No matter what conversations the two of you might have had about hypothetical outcomes should you become pregnant in the future, it still wouldn’t matter. You cannot always know how you will handle a situation until you are in it, so even if you had promised an abortion (something I seriously doubt reading your story), you cannot be expected to keep that promise because your situation has changed. And I can read from your story that you felt really pressured into terminating and no one should have to feel that way, no one. How dare they make you feel that way! I’m really sorry for the loss of your baby. If you read other threads on here, you will find mothers who are going above and beyond in trying to protect their babies and children from their abusive fathers. The things they have to go up against at times… how they find their strength, I truly don’t know, but I admire them the more for it. It’s a very small consolation, but indeed these are battles neither you nor your little one will ever have to go through. You deserve motherhood and you deserve it with someone who won’t pressure you into things you aren’t willing to do, things that hurt. You deserve it with someone who will love you.
It sounds like you are starting to make sense of how you were manipulated not just by him but by his friend, too. The web they’ve made where you’ve been made at fault for everything, where conversations have been made up or altered.. it’s all falling apart now that they aren’t there to reinforce the web anymore. This is a good thing. Keep holding on to YOUR truth – nevermind what they’ve said in the past or what you worry they might be saying or thinking now. You can’t change that. Hold onto what you know happened to you. You don’t need to worry about what webs they might be spinning. I know you think he is scared and hurt – but what about you? You are scared, you are hurt – and you need to try and let go of what you think he might be feeling, or hoping that he might be feeling. He abused you, sweetheart. Keep writing out the many ways in which he abused you, either on here or in a journal. Then read it back to yourself. Try and read it back as if this was something happening to a friend of yours, a family member, someone you know.
Sending you lots of soothing and peaceful thoughts
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this is something to consider and i find this quite hard to get to grips with but abusive men of a certain kind (is say borderline sadistic) dehumanise us – that is why hes using the friend to talk through if he sees you then your real. he is living in another reality to you to be honest. trying to understand his thinking isnt possible. some of the worst men in time dehumanised sometimes entire races! they were thoughtless and callous. you deserve so much more xxxx i know in time youll recover from this and youll come out off the other side even stronger and be able to shape a really good future – you will have the world at your feet – get on your journey to recovery and show them what your capable off – i hope you can continue to study xxxx much love diymum
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