General background:
I've named my ex-boyfriend X. We were together for about 11 months, from spring 2004 to spring 2005. For most of that time, we were also living together. I was 18 years old when we met, through the BDSM community. He was a few years older than me, and a tiny bit more experienced... Or at least more confident. I'd played with one guy before, a little bit, but nothing like what I did with X.
I knew all along that I was a switch, but I chose to explore my sub side first because I didn't feel experienced enough to take on the responsibility of a dom. X is a dom. We had some wonderful sessions together, I grew as both a sub and a person. He was harsh, but loving. Creative. Sadistic. Playful. Kind. I was deeply in love with him, and I think he was in love with me too.
He was also a fetishist, having a thing for feet and for tickling. When we met, he was ashamed of his desires, but he grew more and more confident and much less ashamed. He also had a thing for the "goth" aesthetics. Especially girls that were short, slim and young-looking. I wasn't fat back then (even though I though it was), but I definitely wasn't short and slim.
I tried to conform to his choice of aesthetics, dying my hair black and wearing lots of eyeliner and such.. But it didn't really satisfy him. For the last couple of months we were together, I permitted him to date others and have sex with others. He eventually dumped me, to be with a girl he'd met that way. In a way, he was my first foray into poly.. And it didn't really end well.
First issue - background:
X also had anger management issues. We had terrible fights that kept happening more and more frequently, and with an increasing intensity. In the end, it was almost every day. He would scream at me. I'd never experienced people displaying anger that way. It scared me. I'd cry. He'd keep yelling, calling me things. I'd start hyperventilating, lying down on the couch, still crying. He'd yell at me that I didn't even know how to fight properly. I wasn't able to answer, even if I wanted to. He'd move within an inch of my face, or within an inch of my ear, and scream to me.
He was really, really jealous. I'd started chatting with T in spring 2005 and we quickly grew a connection. I didn't feel like I could confide in anyone close to me how X was treating me.. Too proud, I guess.. But T lived far away, and didn't know anyone I knew, so he felt like a safe choice. I left the apartment sometimes, when X was raging, and hid in the post room of the apartment complex. Because it was both heated, and had light and power outlets, so I could charge my phone and talk to T. It wasn't romantic, then. He was just someone I could confide in.
I didn't hide anything from X, and yet he'd get angry about T. Called him "the bearded monkey" and other nasty things.
The last few weeks we were living together were the worst. He'd dumped me by then, but neither of us were able to move out immediately. I was talking a lot with T, growing closer to him. And X didn't have much emotion left for me, so there was nothing holding his anger back. At his worst, he punched a hole through a plaster wall, right next to my head. He also blocked me when I tried to leave once, and shoved me so I fell. And he tore down a book shelf in front of me, right next to where I was sitting. I had a bag packed, so I could run out of there on a moment's notice, should it be needed.
Second issue - background:
We always had some element of BDSM when we had sex. The last time we had sex (I though of it as sex then, and still struggle not to), he was angry. We didn't typically play or have sex when he was angry, we both agreed that it wasn't safe or nice. This time, he handcuffed my hands above my head to the bed. He then lifted my legs straight up in the air, and fucked me. No foreplay, no nothing. I don't think I explicitly said no (or "red", the stop word), but my body language certainly expressed that I didn't want this. I was crying the entire time. He was rough, and finished fast. He didn't ask how I was doing, neither while he was fucking me or afterwards. Just unlocked me and left the room.
I realized, many years later, that this "sex" in fact was rape. It hadn't really occurred to me back then, that someone could rape their partner. We were together, after all. I don't think it occurred to me to say "no" either. I was his girlfriend. What did it matter if I didn't want to have sex?
It does matter, though. I didn't want it. There were clear signals that I didn't want it, even though I didn't say "no". He shouldn't have had sex with me when angry, he shouldn't have gone ahead without checking with me, and he should certainly have checked afterwards. It's not enough to get him convicted of rape in the Norwegian justice system, but it was still rape.
However, I didn't think I had been traumatized in any way. The almost daily fights and screaming and feeling terrified was SO much worse, the "sex" seemed insignificant in comparison. But I don't think I got away from it all as easily as I first thought...
This thread of thoughts continues in my next post.
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