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Survivor story

Tricked into a relationship

Original story

Message to a Survivor

I got out of this physically abusive relationship, and therapy helped me recognise that it was the emotional abuse from my parents that let me get suckered by him. Therapy can help you identify patterns to change them while healing your thoughts and memories.

Message of Healing

Healing for me means being able to break the cycle. Forgetting the bad memories and stopping the avoidance behaviours that keep me from letting my true personality out.

It started in high school, NAME was a friend of friends, so I had met him and seen him around school. But we didn't interact much but I discovered he lived on the same street. It's complicated at this point, but I was bullied a lot for 'being weird'. I was told by classmates I was pretty, but it was weird that I didn't date. Honestly, I wasn't attracted to anyone. One night, my house got egged; my much younger little sister was terrified because it made such loud bangs. I ran outside and but didn't catch anyone. I thought NAME was involved, and I knew his number, so I called him and yelled at him then hung up. I found out later who was involved and it wasn't NAME (but it was his friends), so I offered to take NAME to the movies as an apology. While we were watching the movie, he tried to kiss me, but I moved my head away and said 'no'. A few months later, he rang me asking me out (we hadn't spoken much since the movie), I said I'm not interested in dating, I want to finish school'. A few months more and I graduated high school, he left me letters at my house, I ignored them. Then he rang me asking if we could go for a walk that night as he was in hospital. He had tried to commit suicide and wanted someone to talk to... I didn't want to be the person that turned my back on someone needing help so I said yes. He met me at my house at night and we went for that walk, he had bandages on his wrists, I can't remember what we talked about exactly... Him being sad, lonely, ugly, etc and before I went home he asked me out again. I didn't want to make him rip open his stitches again to kill himself so I said 'ok'. I don't know what my eventual plan was, I just couldn't be responsible for someone's life. We started dating, and eventually it felt nice, I didn't get a lot of attention from my parents and looked after my sister a lot, so I was surprised that someone actually seemed to love me. We moved in together and I left my parents house. We were together for five years and got engaged in the last year. During those years I would cook, clean; worked full time and went to uni full time. He barely worked. He would vent his frustrations about me and at worst hit me. He would ask for sex, and wouldn't stop until I said yes. When I was too tired, and refused to let him pester me into having sex, he would say things like 'you can sleep through it' and I would let him have sex with me. A few times, I woke up with him having sex with me. The worst time I have spent the last 13 years trying to forget. It was about halfway in our relationship. I was on the phone to my mother, sitting on the bed, and he started trying to grope me, I pushed his hand away and walked into the walk-in-wardrobe and sat down. I was still on the phone He followed me, and pushed me flat, then pulled my underwear down and began touching me. I kicked at him and slapped him with my free hand, but I felt ashamed and didn't want my mother to hear, so I wasn't very strong and kept listening to her like nothing was happening. He had sex with me on the wardrobe floor, and I just continued on the phone as normal. I said goodbye to my mother, hung up and just couldn't move. I remember he said, "admit it, you liked that". About three years ago, after therapy, I've wanted to tell someone about this time. I've thought about telling my mother, but I don't know what to say... she was on the phone with me and never noticed anything was wrong. Happily I got out of that relationship, but he stalked and harassed me. I got the police involved, but it took months for him to stop because I didn't have evidence and his stalking 'wasn't that bad'. I didn't tell them about the sex stuff, because if I didn't have enough proof that he was stalking me, I had absolutely no proof that he touched me.

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