My story of a man being raped by a woman

I guess you could say it all started with a blow job. I was 20 at the time. I had two female friends. Friend 1 and Friend 2. Both were solidly in my friendzone. Friend 1 was the instigator and Friend 2 and I would just do whatever she said. Like Friend 1 would say “let’s go to the park and play on the merry go round.” And the three of us would do it and we’d all have fun. So one day, we’re hanging out, and Friend 1 says “my roommates are out of town. Let’s have a sleepover. But no monkey business!” She literally said “no monkey business.” So we grabbed some pillows and blankets and built a sleeping area in her living room. And we slept. Like actually slept. And in case you’re wondering, no, there wasn’t a lot of alcohol involved. We just did it because it was stupid and we did stupid stuff just for the fun of it. And then in the middle of the night, I woke up to someone giving me oral sex. Funny thing is, I just assumed it was Friend 1. But they had very different hair (Friend 2 with long bushy hair and Friend 1 with short thin hair). And so it didn’t take me long to figure out that it was actually Friend 2. And I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought. I mean, if Friend 2 had asked, I probably would have said yes. Backing up, I was pretty choosy about who I had sexual intercourse with. At that time, I’d had sex with two women, and both I had dated for three months before having sex. And I’d turned down at least four women. But I had a lower bar for oral sex. And Friend 2 and I never really talked about it. I mean, the next day all three of us were hanging out and I was giddy and Friend 2 was flirty and Friend 1 said “what is with you two today!” and we were like “oh, nothing….” (Reminds me of the time in the second Harry Potter movie when Malfoy says to Crabbe & Goyle/Harry & Ron after they’d drank the polyjuice potion “What’s the matter with you two? You’re acting very … odd!”.) OK so fast-forward about six months. Nothing sexual had happened since then. I mean, at this point we’d never even kissed. We were at my apartment and Friend 2 pushed me down on my bed. It was daytime and I remember the light streaming through my curtains. And we started kissing and she told me to get under the covers. I was lying on my back. We were both fully clothed and she scooted to the foot of the bed, under the covers, and began to take off my pants and underwear. And if I had consulted my magic 8-ball, it literally would have said “All signs point to blow job.” And although no words were spoken, I consented to oral sex. And I remember thinking that she was at the foot of the bed for longer than I was expecting, but I didn’t think much of it. She came up and started kissing me on the mouth. And before I knew what was happening, I was inside of her and she was having sex with me, cowgirl style. She had secretly taken off her pants and underwear while she was under the covers. And if she had asked, I would have said no. And while she was having sex with me, she took off her shirt and bra. Quite frankly, I was never attracted to Friend 2. But holy shit did she have nice breasts. And although I didn’t want her to start having sex with me, once she started I didn’t want her to stop. Afterwards she apologized for “tricking me.” I really didn’t give it much thought. I just figured “what’s done is done.” And I certainly didn’t consider it rape. I mean, if I could have rated it on TripAdvisor, I’d have given her five stars. “The most pleasurable sexual experience I never asked for or wanted!” A couple months later, something happened that I never could have predicted. But I think anyone who is familiar with these kinds of situations could easily have predicted it. The same thing happened again. Almost an exact replay of before. I incremented my body count from 2 to 3 and moved on with my life. Except I didn’t. Move on with my life, that is. A little part of me has been stuck in that moment for 30 years. A few weeks ago this thing about Friend 2 kept coming up. And I kept pushing it away. “I should have set a boundary.” “It wasn’t that big of a deal.” “Shit happens.” “Nobody got hurt.” “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … you can’t get fooled again.” “I could have physically resisted.” “I should have known better than to put myself in that situation.” And as I began processing my emotions, there were a few that were easy for me to understand. Sadness, shame, regret, emptiness, anger. To really get in touch with my emotions I imagined myself in that moment again. And I wasn’t trying to do this, but as I imagined myself in that moment I sometimes got turned on. It was like this giant emotional soup that I’d never explored or processed before. There were two more emotions that took me a while to place. The first was a whole-body sensation. I thought to myself “When have I felt this way before?” And I said to myself that it almost feels like when I have to give a big presentation. But that wouldn’t make sense. Because that would mean …oh shit… that myself as a relatively inexperienced college-age kid was nervous and scared. The second was an ache over my heart and/or behind my sternum. After a while I realized it was a sense of dread. But what could I possibly be afraid of? It happened long ago and Friend 2 is no danger to me now. But my sense of safety had been shattered. And my inner college-age kid and I have been carrying all that around for the past 30 years. And I was finally ready to process it and let it go. And so I did a lot of journaling (you’re reading parts of that now) and reflecting. And lots of long walks listening to the “Remember When” cover by Carrie Underwood: Remember when I was young and so were you And time stood still and love was all we knew You were the first, so was I We made love and then you cried Remember when And over the next couple weeks I made a ton of progress. Letting those emotions go and integrating the experience into my psyche. I still occasionally felt sadness and dread, but it was manageable. Like, rather than feel that way for most of the day, I’d feel that way for only a minute or two at a time. And it was getting better day by day. Shorter and less intense. One of the last healing steps I took was to decrement my body count. To remove Friend 2 from the list of women I’ve had sex with. She may have had sex with me. But I did not have sex with her. Not consensually anyway. Or, at least I thought that was one of my last healing steps. Something happened that radically changed how I viewed the rape and its toll on me. I woke up at 3 am with insomnia. I was stressed of course. I’d had insomnia due to stress for most of my adult life. I had a high pressure job and five kids and of course I was stressed. ‘Cause that’s what causes insomnia. Stress. Everybody knows that. For most of my adult life I’d coped with the insomnia by masturbating. That was pretty much the only way I could relieve my stress and get back to sleep. If it didn’t work the first time, I’d try again and repeat until I finally fell asleep. Unfortunately the shame would kick in the next day and I’d hate myself all day and then repeat the cycle the next night. The cycle would repeat each night until I had sex with my wife. And for some reason, having sex with my wife would break the cycle. Over the past year, though, I’d been trying to analyze and cope with my stress. When I had insomnia, I’d do progressive muscle relaxation and deep breathing to calm my body. And if I was thinking of something I’d jot it down to empty and calm my mind. And most importantly I learned to let go of the shame, not only stopping the cycle from continuing, but surprisingly to me, preventing the cycle from even starting. But I still had insomnia and couldn’t figure out the source of my stress. I hadn’t been working at a job. Most of my kids were grown and out of the house. There wasn’t much in my life that was particularly stressful. And then it hit me. It wasn’t stress. And it never was stress. It was dread. Feeling the dread about being raped by Friend 2 helped me recognize that what I was experiencing all those years was actually not stress but dread. But dread about what? It was subtly different than the dread I felt about being raped those two times by Friend 2. The dread from my rapes was related to my sense of safety out interacting with the world. It’s hard to describe, but I just knew the dread I felt during insomnia was a bit different. And here I was, safe, and sleeping in my bed. I think my subconscious was saying, “Hey, I know you think you’re safely sleeping, but I’m not so sure about that.” And so it’d wake me up. And then when I masturbated my subconscious would say “See, I told you so! You weren’t safe after all! This is just like when Friend 2 gave you oral sex in your sleep all those years ago. You’re welcome!” Maybe, like Schrodinger’s cat, my subconscious didn’t quite know how to classify the time that Friend 2 had given me oral sex in my sleep. Was it sexual assault or just a stupid thing done by a college-age kid? Or both? Maybe, my subconscious originally classified it as a benign thing that wasn’t going to hurt me, but later, after I was raped, maybe my subconscious changed the classification to a threat. I’ll never know, not that it really matters. I began to realize that the rape didn’t just cause a little part of me to get stuck. The rape changed me in a way deeper than I could have imagined. Sure, I was carrying around those unprocessed feelings. But in addition to that, I had learned to cope with the rape by using sex to try in vain to meet my non-sexual need of feeling safe. And I really wanted to wallow in sadness. To mourn all the sleepless nights and shame-ridden days. To mourn my loss of safety. To blame Friend 2 for everything. Woe is me. And yet I know that won’t help. I can take solace in knowing that I have led a charmed life and overcoming my sexual assault and rape will only help me to grow into the person I want to be. I can rise up. I can heal from my pain. I can face my dread. I can forgive Friend 2. And I can forgive myself. I so desperately wanted that to be the end of my story. Forgiving Friend 2 and forgiving myself. What a beautiful ending! So why the fuck am I still writing? I began to realize that the rape affected me in one other way. I have another weird, shame-ridden dynamic in my life. (Yeah, I know. No need to beat myself up by calling it “weird”.) I compulsively check out women. Compulsively checking out women and compulsive masturbation have been the hardest struggles of my life. Ok and I know this is all twisted up and it doesn't make logical sense. But somehow, staring at Friend 2’s breasts while she was raping me feels just like staring at a random woman on the street. Comforting and nonconsensual and loving and safe. I had not expected to type the word "safe." And yet somehow my fingers knew what my conscious brain did not. My sense of safety was being temporarily restored by staring at a random woman. Fuck. What the hell is wrong with me? I know. I know. I am perfectly imperfect. Hurt people hurt people. It’s a perfectly understandable response to what I experienced. Yada yada yada. When I began thinking about Friend 2 a few weeks ago, it was my time to grieve what had been done to me. Until it became my time to be remorseful for the choices I made and the things I did. I am so very sorry. To every woman and, if I'm being honest, every teenage girl I’ve stared at. I shudder to think of just how many women I’ve stared at. Even if only 1% of them noticed, it’s a staggering number that I’ve made feel uncomfortable. I am truly sorry. You didn't deserve to be ogled. I thought it was going to be easy to forgive myself. I thought it was going to be easy to fully heal from what happened and learn to stop my maladaptive behaviors. But this is going to take some time. And yes, Therapist Name(my therapist and mentor), I will have plenty of compassion and empathy for that college-age boy who didn’t deserve what happened to him.