I’ve not told many people this, not even my mother, and she’s my closest friend and confidant. I moved away from my boyfriend after high school, and one spring he came to visit me at my family home. We stayed in separate rooms, but one morning after everyone except me had woken up and gone downstairs, he snuck into my room. He wanted to have sex, but I was uncomfortable with it and said no. He didn’t take no as an answer, and he held me down and did it anyway. I was 18, I wasn’t on birth control, and he didn’t use protection. I didn’t cry, even though it felt wrong. I just accepted it. I guess I thought that since he was my boyfriend it was okay. It wasn’t until several years later, (even after I found out that he had been arrested for raping a woman he was seeing in college) that I realized that what he did was not normal, and was not acceptable.
I don’t know why I thought that sexual assault was okay if it was your boyfriend. Maybe because I was never taught (in school, or at home) what constituted sexual violence, so I didn’t recognize it happening to me. Even knowing what I know now, I don’t know if I would have reported it. I wouldn’t have wanted to upset his life and his future in any way. How is it that a woman can be sexually assaulted, and continue to believe that the man’s life is more valuable than her own?