My #MeToo Story

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I was in a relationship with a man to cover up the pain of a previous heartbreak. I didn’t love this new man, yet. I just wanted to see where it would go and help pick up the pieces of my life again after a heartbreak. No expectations. Just being my true authentic self. It was as if this relationship was a reset button for me to start over with myself and learn from the previous mistakes of my previous relationship. He was a cute, funny, overall good guy…. at least so I thought.

Perfect Didn’t Seem Real

In the beginning, I kept going back and forth on deciding if I wanted any relations with him. My main goal was to work on myself. Better myself. Love myself. However, this man just seemed like a great catch. I didn’t want to wonder what-if for the rest of my life. I spent weeks getting to know him and he got to know me. The real me. I never once for a second over-sold or under-sold myself. I tried to be as authentic as possible because I wanted to be transparent with the realities of dating. One night, I gave in and let him spend time with me in person. He brought me a box of chocolates since he knew I’d been feeling down lately since I lost my cousin to a rare disease. We stayed up watching Deadpool and Thor and drinking some horrible red wine with Thai food.

Weeks went on and we got closer and closer emotionally. One night, I finally asked him if he wanted me to commit to him. I was transparent with him in the beginning and told him I was keeping my options open since I was newly single and wanted to explore the realm of dating. The night I asked him if he wanted to commit came from me realizing how much I thought I had it good. From having my car door being opened to a night in with my favourite junk food and movies to laughing until I was crying like a retarded walrus from him. We had realized we were emotionally attached to each other one night after we had a shared dream. Nothing I have ever experienced with anyone in my life. We knew our subconscious wanted us to be with each other in reality.

The Fear.

Things were going great for us. I spend a lot of time at Lao Buddhist temples in Columbus, Ohio. I practice much meditation and calming house chores to ease my mind. I was transparent in the beginning of how spending time at the temple was important to me. He had mentioned how he wanted to spend more time there too, so I brought him along with me. But then we had the unfortunate circumstance of running into my ex-boyfriend there. We were uncomfortable. My son was very close to my ex and he wanted to say hi and then he started drawing chalkboard sketches of them together. He even said it was nice to hear his voice again. Me and my man didn’t know what to say. You can’t tell a 6 year old to stop loving someone. I tried to brush through the uncomfortable tension because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life avoiding places that I love because of this man. My current man’s jealousy cracked through. He said “is this the reason why you come here? To see him? Of course you would want to follow him inside. You want to see him.” I thought, well he has every right to feel this way because we are literally steps away from him. I was transparent with what happened with that relationship so my man had every right to feel jealous. So we just left.

The next morning, I wanted to go to the temple but with my man. Only because I knew if my ex was going to be there, my man would know how to make me feel comfortable. I always thought he was good at that. I woke him up and said let’s go. Shaking him and shaking him. He said he didn’t want to. I said okay then, leave because I’m going to the temple and I want you there with me because you said you wanted to start going. He gets up and leaves and at the end of the stairs footsteps, in front of my son eating his breakfast, He screams “If I don’t want to fucking go then I don’t want to fucking go. Shit.” Storms out and leaves. I was terrified of him. I have never heard him that angry before. No man had ever screamed at me like that, other than my dad. I broke it off with him. I told him I was scared that someday that screaming will turn into hitting and I have to protect my child and I. He told me it was a one time deal and that he lost his temper because I was pushing him. I let it slide because I was indeed pushing him. I felt like he had every right to be angry. I was bullying his feelings. So I decided to give it another shot.

Is he going to stop?

Weeks go on and I just noticed mood swings and more temper going out of control. I kept thinking it was me, that I am just too much to handle sometimes. From pressuring him to come with me to the temple to telling a nice man that I was scared of him although he had never put his hand on me. I just thought, this man really loves me for me and I have to keep trying to make this work for him because I’m a lot to take in. I’m hard to deal with sometimes I always thought, and he stood by me through every step of the way no matter what battle I was going through.

One night I wanted to make some boozy ice cream that I found on pinterest. My man brought over some Bourbon Whiskey for the recipe. He started drinking the bottle while we were making it. As soon as it was finished, I decided it was time for bed since we had to be up early. We’re laying in bed and he wouldn’t stop touching my vagina from the outside of my basketball shorts. He kept trying to pull down my pants and I said “no, I don’t want to have sex. I’m tired.” He pulled them off anyways. He said it was going to be real quick. I believed him so he stuck it in there. I said “this really hurts…. Can you stop.” He just changed positions, I said “I really don’t like that.” He then changed positions again. He didn’t get that when I said “stop, I don’t like that” meant “stop this sex, I don’t want it.” So he just kept going. In my mind the entire time, I’m just thinking to myself “Is it over yet? Will he cum already so the pain can stop?” but he kept thrusting, thrusting, thrusting. I thought well, maybe if I fake it it’ll make him cum faster and he’ll stop. So I started faking it and he said “How many times you cum?” I said I didn’t. He said “yeah right, I can feel it on my dick” So he kept going and going, throwing my body around wherever he needed it to be for him to get off and I just suffered through the pain because I thought if I pleased him, he’ll treat me better.

Emotional Damage

The next morning, my body started shaking. I woke up drenched in sweat and I couldn’t control my breathing or my hands. It was signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I was crying in the shower because my vagina was in so much pain. I started questioning if I just got raped? I was thinking to myself, this can’t be rape. He’s my boyfriend. He loves me. Boyfriends don’t rape their girlfriends. So I spoke to a counsellor….

Weeks went by and I just felt like I was scared of my own boyfriend. I couldn’t understand why. He loved me very much. I talked to him about it and he said he was just drunk and that he was sorry. He thought we were in “the moment.” He was sympathetic about it and wanted to make me feel safe and protected with him. He didn’t want to be the reason why I was so scared. We still continued to have consensual sex that I enjoyed. I thought well….Maybe it was just me? Maybe I was over exaggerating all of my emotions. I would often cry to him that I don’t feel loved and that I don’t feel any affection from him. Maybe I was too much too soon. Weeks went by and the sympathy turned into anger. He said “I don’t understand you. You call me a rapist but you still want to continue taking my dick. If I really raped you, you wouldn’t be mad at me whenever we didn’t have sex” then the switch would flip to “I just want you to be happy and feel loved and respected babe” and I just took all the disrespect and eventually he took my confidence along with him because I started to feel ugly about myself. He would tease how he wanted threesomes or how fat I was getting. Whenever I would cry about his jokes he said “I just don’t know how to take a joke”

I finally let go

The moment I realized my self worth was more important to me than him was the night we broke up for good. We were at his brother’s birthday party and I was feeding their dog table food. His brother’s girlfriend screams at me and says “ARE YOU FEEDING MY DOG?!” I nodded yes. She screams “ARE YOU GOING TO CLEAN HIS SHIT TOO?!” I nodded no. She screams “THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT. STOP FEEDING MY FUCKING DOG.” I didn’t know how to respond to that. She was the host of the party and the resident of the home. I just spent a year practicing how to keep calm and wasn’t about to break it. So as always, I just kept my calm. After a while, I felt unwelcomed so I told my man to take me home. I brought up the situation to him in the car and said I didn’t really have fun because of that. He said, “well did you talk to her about it?” I said no. He said he didn’t witness the situation so he couldn’t really have say in it. I was furious because as his girlfriend, I felt like he should’ve talked to her about it and tell her that I was sorry but she didn’t need to speak to me the way she spoke to me. I felt disrespected and I decided it was time to leave him for good. I don’t have a man that respects me and I just couldn’t put up with that anymore. It was time for me to let him go and love me again.

I texted him furious and said “you’re a fucking pig. you’re so fucking disgusting. I’m done with you” With anger, he replied with multiple texts that included “Fuck you. We regret bringing you into our family. You’re fucking crazy and drama 24/7.” I thought wow…. true colors really do come out. I was devastated and hurt because he was not the man that I fell for. The man that I fell for would be the man who opened doors for me. The man who would drive to my house at 3 in the morning with energy drinks to help me finish my finance reports. The man who would bring me beautiful flowers every time I felt unloved. The man who I would spend nights listening to his heartbeat to fall asleep to. The man who would make me laugh until I cried. My heart broke that that man was gone….

If you’re a victim of domestic violence, you can get help by calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE).