Lack of trust after sexual assault

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm so sorry you were attacked. Your husband's reaction makes things worse for you. Your post focuses on his feelings and trying to understand and respond to them. Not to disregard his feelings, but the victim of an assault should be focusing on recovering from her trauma. Primarily, at any rate. The way you describe your post-rape dynamic, it almost seems that he's the recovering victim, rather than you.

If you'd made a driving error - say, you'd driven through a stop sign - and that was a factor contributing to your being in the path of a speeding drunk driver who then hit and injured you, would you think it's reasonable for your DH to say he has trust issues with you in the aftermath of that accident? People do stupid things, and you admit you did stupid things the night you were attacked. That doesn't make you complicit in the crime that was committed against you. His report of "trust issues" in your marriage following a rape is troubling. His insistence on your going through with the horrible post-rape legal process when you didn't want to is also troubling.

I feel for you. You seem to be in a difficult place. Intensive therapy will hopefully help you gain some perspective, and perhaps some answers, with regard to your marriage.

Op here. Thank you. It is easier for me to focus on my DH than myself, I suppose. Because the truth is i do blame myself and I do feel like I should have known better given what happened to me before. There is a lot of "evidence" in the way society views this issue to support this negative view of myself. My husband does love and support me in many ways - and in this one aspect of our history together I do feel like he was focused on himself and how the event impacted him in all this - hence the trust issues type comments. Therapy will help.

PP here: you're not to blame. Assault affects victims in ways that sometimes lead them to make poor choices making them vulnerable to additional assaults. That's a well-documented tendency. It doesn't mean you aren't trustworthy.

What does it mean? It means you're traumatized by the original assault. That trauma has not been resolved. This unhealed injury rendered you vulnerable to additional assault, which then, very sadly, occurred.

Society inappropriately and cruelly blames victims of sexual assault. You're internalizing those messages.

Op here - thank you for this. Also the part about recurring tendencies - I didn't know that. I guess anither fact my husband doesn't know about is that as I child I was molested by my babysitters high school aged son on one occasion. So that probably features into all of this as well.

[Anonymous]

I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I hope I would. Those are all very accurate statements. Hopefully I could put aside my hurt and focus on her more significant concerns. But I can't say for sure. My insecurity about whether she finds me fun and attractive is probably the biggest Achilles heel in our otherwise excellent marriage. Sex is how I feel loved and our sex life is pretty tepid. So a scenario where our sex life gets messed up even further due to a situation about which I might be jealous anyway would fuel all kinds of toxic emotions. So, doing what I need to do and being a responsible husband could possibly be easier said than done.

This is a perfect example of a person who is toxically selfish. I thank the PP for being honest but, WOW. Just wow. Anyone who could be pissed off at someone you love for getting sexually assaulted (for WHATEVER reason) is self absorbed and shows a total lack of empathy. That really sucks.

I think you have a bit of tunnel vision going on by pretending that the assault victim is the only one affected -- which shows a lack of empathy on your part. The spouse of the assault victim is affected too. Much less directly, for sure. But the spouse had absolutely no control over the situation and has to feel that much more helpless in the face of it. While the assault victim is damaged more profoundly and has to be the primary concern, if you ignore the damage also done to the spouse, you're going to wind up not fixing the entire problem.

I understand that the spouse is affected and I also understand that a man who would put his own feelings first when his own wife has been physically and psychologically harmed in this manner is a pathetically selfish person. When you love someone and she has been harmed, you think of her feelings first. You are thinking with the emotional maturity of a child.

[Anonymous]

Your husband knows you are a sexual abuse survivor and still makes disparaging comments to you about other women in the same situation, he's not supportive at best and a total asshole at worst.

[Anonymous]

OP, it's not your fault. Please don't feel responsible. Someone took advantage of you and they were wrong. Something similar happened to me and I can relate.

I think you and your husband need to seek counseling together. If my spouse felt that I was in some was responsible for being assaulted, it would be hurtful and I don't know how I would get past it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

Op here - yes!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

It's not a woman's job to live in fear. It's a man's job NOT TO RAPE WOMEN.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

It's not a woman's job to live in fear. It's a man's job NOT TO RAPE WOMEN.

+1000!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Saying men shouldn't rape is trite. It's a person's job not to steal my stuff. But I still lock my car doors.

[Anonymous]

It is not trite when OP's husband is blaming her for getting assaulted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

It's not a woman's job to live in fear. It's a man's job NOT TO RAPE WOMEN.

Does that mean that I being a sexy woman should walk alone at night in southeast doc every night and not worry about men who look at me weird?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

It's not a woman's job to live in fear. It's a man's job NOT TO RAPE WOMEN.

Does that mean that I being a sexy woman should walk alone at night in southeast doc every night and not worry about men who look at me weird?

It does not mean you should not be careful. It means you should not a blame the victim when something bad happens to her. If you do blame her, you are an asshole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Saying men shouldn't rape is trite. It's a person's job not to steal my stuff. But I still lock my car doors.

Using that same argument, you could say that even if you locked your doors, it would be your fault for going were you went, parking where you parked, buying the car that you bought, buying the house where you bought it, etc.

Yes, there are precautions that can and should be taken, but it doesn't make it the victim's fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, it is absolutely NOT normal to think of yourself and your own feelings first when someone you love has been severely hurt. Your husband is a selfish ass. I am sorry to tell you that. Stop making excuses for him.

OP here - maybe it's not nice and I often agree that he is being a selfish ass when it comes to this. I am married to him, though, with two children. In my shoes, what would you do? I don't know yet if leaving him is the answer. I do love him and he does love me. I Never knew that he felt this way generally before we got married - it really isn't one of those things you talk about snd I never raised the high school thing because I still feel so much Shame and feared he would judge me. It's like, I wisg there were a pre-marriage list of questions to ask - one should be, what do you think about if a woman is assaulted while blacked out drunk? Her fault? Discuss. If we had that discussion pre-marriage, pre-kids, maybe I would have learned this and perhsps that would have changed my decision. Or maybe not. I didn't know and I didn't ask and now I do and we've experienced it together so what do I do. Divorce him, or hope that through my own healing he will "see the light" and think more like I do? Or accept that I can't do anything about how he thinks, and just focus on feeling his love and support in other areas? It's not like every day he says "I don't trust you" or says the thiNgs he said in anger when this happened 3 years ago. It's the little stuff like getting really pissed when I don't answer my phone right away and calling multiple times in a row (I'm not ignoring him but im either in a work meeting or in the elevator going down to my car in the garage). Or when he is angry at me for something unrelated saying "you know I have trust issues with you". He is saying those things from a place of concern and insecurity - I yhink. It does trouble me that he can't see my own pain and put that first. But do I leave him for that? I don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like this list of rape prevention tips:

http://canyourelate.org/2011/05/24/rape-prevention-tips/

It's not a woman's job to live in fear. It's a man's job NOT TO RAPE WOMEN.

Does that mean that I being a sexy woman should walk alone at night in southeast doc every night and not worry about men who look at me weird?

Op here - ok, so I'll bite though I might regret it. My details - I was in professional attire at a well known upscale bar in downtown DC with work colleagues when this happened. I accepted a drink from someone we all were talking with as a group together but that I hadn't known before that evening. We had been talking about our families and kids. Then I blacked out and my work colleagues apparently left. I am told I am a sexy and attractive woman - though I myself do not feel that way. I guess I should have somehow seen this coming?