Sexual Assault Overreacting?

[Jade-]

I have a question that comes from a concern with my understanding of consent/assault. Given what you explained, would it be considered assault if he was fully aware of what you were feeling but continued kissing you?

For me personally, no I wouldn't consider it assault. An asshole, inappropriate maybe, but assault? No. To me the word assault means something very harmful, damaging and violent. So no I wouldn't consider kissing as that..

You seem very determined to want what your ex did to be considered assault. Would having a label for it help you in any way or change what happened? And what do you hope to gain should you press charges? Revenge?

 

[anon.co]

You seem very determined to want what your ex did to be considered assault. Would having a label for it help you in any way or change what happened? And what do you hope to gain should you press charges? Revenge?

I don't plan on pressing charges, regardless of labels for the situation. I also don't mean to give the impression that I'm determined to want to call it assault. I understand I may have anyway.

My question (as for other questions) just came from a concern with my understanding of consent/assault—whatever the answer is fine, I just want to gain knowledge on the topic. + My questions are genuine and partly come from a place of curiosity given that it seems I'm interacting with a demographic I'm unfamiliar with (age/nationality). I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

Continuing to kiss (or whatever) someone after being communicated with that they aren’t comfortable and want it to stop, is, pretty unarguably, not right or kind.

I know someone else who was kissed un-consensually, no sexual trauma history, he still finds things in that area upsetting and anxiety inducing, regardless of what we’re going to call it, etc. I still find it anxiety inducing.

9/10 people probably won’t leave that incident not caring.

Feeling certain ways is not wrong, but what we do with those feelings does matter, and we can prevent our own healing by following without question, just as much as ignoring and shoving/locking away can.

Thank you as well for taking the time to reply. I believe a lot of what you said reflected my experience. Regarding your question, I do have a trauma history and intend to look into it. That said, I plan to thoroughly discuss everything with a therapist once I’m able to see one. Thank you for sharing your experiences, it’s greatly appreciated and I have a lot to take from it.

 

[Applecore]

I am going to take this back to the preeminence of feelings over categorization, with a personal testimony.

I was unambiguously assaulted by a woman more than twice my age when I was an underage teenage boy: I was pushed to the floor by her body weight as she forcibly shoved her tongue in my mouth, she didn't immediately stop when I resisted and said "no." As an infant, I was unambiguously criminally sexualized by a man who encouraged me to engage in sexual contact with a woman while the three of us were naked in bed, of course I was uninterested and walked away as they proceeded. Both were criminal acts against me. I've been groped and had unwanted tongues several other times in my life also, in fact more by women than by men. None were the biggest problem in my life.

Neither of these criminal incidents traumatized me as much as being legally screamed at by my parents, legally being hated and ignored and legally psychologically tortured by my step-parents, living in the world of legal lies of a legal cult, having a mother who was a legally dissociating multiple rape victim (who felt she couldn't complain because one attacker was her brother and another was her work superior whose home she had voluntarily entered into), having a legally rageaholic father with undiagnosed PTSD as a child survivor of Nazi genocide and incarceration in a camp, after which he witnessed his mother being gang raped at gunpoint and he was maimed in an explosion (who felt he couldn't complain because he wasn't Jewish), plus schizophrenia diagnosis and two suicides in my immediate family. I lived in the apartment with blood from the second suicide, a copycat of the first, still on the floorboards where I walked every day.

What happened when I realized those two crimes had been committed against me was a certain kind of external justification for my feelings. I didn't need to go through the complicated work of processing my genuine complex trauma from the other things because I had a couple of badges that identified me as a victim of a a couple of crimes which were relatively less traumatic. Understanding the criminality of those acts was, in fact, a kind of vulnerable narcissism. It was at best a vehicle to finding myself, at worst a distraction. I got something out of being able to be objectively defined as a victim. That itself may have traumatised me.

Getting over myself was my path to recovery. I gave myself a narcissism audit. I realized that being sexually mistreated by damaged people did not make me special or entitled; I would never have admitted that I was seeing myself as special in the depths of my suicidal CPTSD, it was rather that being hard on myself, accusing myself of wanting to feel special, is what got me out of it. It was my fault, nobody else's, that I was such a f*cking furious man who could be very unkind and fantasized about suicide and liked a drink.

But then I realized that I am fortunate to have not committed suicide so far. Because trees are beautiful. Love is beautiful. Friendship is beautiful. I get to experience these things because I am alive. I am fortunate haven't been blinded or maimed, so I can experience these things. I am fortunate because I wasn't born in a poor country without running water. And countless other privileges. I learned to practice gratitude for all that.

And then I learned to focus on empathy. What people had done to me was a consequence of their own damage. It didn't make me special. What made me special was my survival, my resilience, rebuilding myself while trying to remain kind and trying not to show off or brag about it. Making my new world.

Take from this what you will.

 

[anon.co]

I hope I’m not dragging out the thread/discussion at this point but I'd like to say this.

There is a lot to take away from all of what you shared. There are a couple of things you described that make me think back on my own experiences in the past. I also took notice of certain things you mentioned. I believe I was able to understand a few things—particularly things that tie into trauma: narcissism/traits of narcissism, the impact of identifying oneself as a "victim," and different traumas and complex effects. I hope that sounds correct. I see a lot for myself to learn and familiarize myself with.

But then I realized that I am fortunate to have not committed suicide so far. Because trees are beautiful. Love is beautiful. Friendship is beautiful. I get to experience these things because I am alive. I am fortunate haven't been blinded or maimed, so I can experience these things. I am fortunate because I wasn't born in a poor country without running water. And countless other privileges. I learned to practice gratitude for all that.

And then I learned to focus on empathy. What people had done to me was a consequence of their own damage. It didn't make me special. What made me special was my survival, my resilience, rebuilding myself while trying to remain kind and trying not to show off or brag about it. Making my new world.

There's a lot to take from here especially. This specific part stuck with me for multiple reasons, and it’s something I hope to remember for a long time. Thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences.

 

[Applecore]

I hope I’m not dragging out the thread/discussion at this point but I'd like to say this.

There is a lot to take away from all of what you shared. There are a couple of things you described that make me think back on my own experiences in the past. I also took notice of certain things you mentioned. I believe I was able to understand a few things—particularly things that tie into trauma: narcissism/traits of narcissism, the impact of identifying oneself as a "victim," and different traumas and complex effects. I hope that sounds correct. I see a lot for myself to learn and familiarize myself with.

There's a lot to take from here especially. This specific part stuck with me for multiple reasons, and it’s something I hope to remember for a long time. Thank you so much for sharing all of your experiences.

You're most welcome. And you're not dragging out the thread. On the contrary, you're now really getting somewhere because you are starting to explore what is going on deep inside you. This thread ought to be kept open for you to keep the discussion going as a contribution to your exploration.

As far as I can see you are a relatively young person still working out who you are – just as we all did. You're going to be getting led and misled by society, experiencing unkindness and kindness. You're going through the process of growing through experience. Which we all still have to do, myself included, even though I am old enough to be your father.

It’s already clear to me that at times you have conducted yourself admirably in response to some strong comments on this thread. We can all get triggered, and usually there is a longer personal story behind it. Sometimes, brutally honest feedback is a gift in disguise. Especially because you are new here, you deserve our patience and encouragement.

You would have been forgiven for interpreting my last post as self-indulgent drama or personally challenging towards you. I particularly like that instead, you've chosen to see what you can get out of it. With that attitude, you're going to go very far very fast. I am grateful to you for your response as it warmed my heart and made me smile.

I do believe that word "narcissism" has become over-used in the past 10 years or so. The term has got massively inflated from the diagnostic NPD to pretty much any self-centredness. I’m especially interested in how we use the word to console ourselves, in the sense that everyone's "ex" seems to be accused of being a narcissist.

Very few people seem to be searching for traits of the narcissist inside themselves. For a long time I did not, but doing so may have saved my life. Doing this was part of my recovery, and I would endorse it. I'm convinced we've all got a bit of it inside of us, which can get bigger and smaller like a vital organ. On the one hand, why not feel good about praise for a job well done? On the other hand, it's very comforting to point the finger at others, when we really could be asking tough questions of ourselves.

Even therapists do this. They are often positioning themselves as right, and that we are wrong. It's consoling for them. So a caveat about therapy, which many will disagree with. In my observation most therapists are there because that is their own preferred method of treatment for their own problems; meanwhile, your very best teacher can be yourself.

If you're in college therapy may be free, so it's well worth making the most of that while you have it. In my experience, I had too high expectations and perhaps consequently all therapists I tried were disappointing. Having lower expectations, say simply having a sitter or listener to a life story, may have been better in hindsight.

Because I do think therapy is worthwhile, especially for telling your whole uncensored life story in a contained or sacred time and place to someone who will listen. (And we need to be careful about using our friends and family for therapy too much, when we could be bringing them joy). Telling our story to a therapist is itself cathartic and can be initially distressing for us before slowly dissolving our trauma.

Books are great, especially audio. If you don't know it already I can recommend The Examined Life: How we Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz and will recommend more if you want.

I would encourage you to keep up this thread. Could you write us a little bit about your background, your childhood and your family?

By the way, speaking of writing, I noticed that some of your sentences are very well composed, with a tone reminiscent to me of Chat GPT or Grammarly. Or maybe it appears that way because of my research work recently, in which I have used AI. Just curious, have you been using it as a composition assistance tool here? Either way, no need stop now that you have really made a great start.

Thank you again.

Applecore

 

[anon.co]

You would have been forgiven for interpreting my last post as self-indulgent drama or personally challenging towards you. I particularly like that instead, you've chosen to see what you can get out of it. With that attitude, you're going to go very far very fast. I am grateful to you for your response as it warmed my heart and made me smile.

I do believe that word "narcissism" has become over-used in the past 10 years or so. The term has got massively inflated from the diagnostic NPD to pretty much any self-centredness. I’m especially interested in how we use the word to console ourselves, in the sense that everyone's "ex" seems to be accused of being a narcissist.

Very few people seem to be searching for traits of the narcissist inside themselves. For a long time I did not, but doing so may have saved my life. Doing this was part of my recovery, and I would endorse it. I'm convinced we've all got a bit of it inside of us, which can get bigger and smaller like a vital organ. On the one hand, why not feel good about praise for a job well done? On the other hand, it's very comforting to point the finger at others, when we really could be asking tough questions of ourselves.

Even therapists do this. They are often positioning themselves as right, and that we are wrong. It's consoling for them. So a caveat about therapy, which many will disagree with. In my observation most therapists are there because that is their own preferred method of treatment for their own problems; meanwhile, your very best teacher can be yourself.

If you're in college therapy may be free, so it's well worth making the most of that while you have it. In my experience, I had too high expectations and perhaps consequently all therapists I tried were disappointing. Having lower expectations, say simply having a sitter or listener to a life story, may have been better in hindsight.

Because I do think therapy is worthwhile, especially for telling your whole uncensored life story in a contained or sacred time and place to someone who will listen. (And we need to be careful about using our friends and family for therapy too much, when we could be bringing them joy). Telling our story to a therapist is itself cathartic and can be initially distressing for us before slowly dissolving our trauma.

Books are great, especially audio. If you don't know it already I can recommend The Examined Life: How we Lose and Find Ourselves by Stephen Grosz and will recommend more if you want.

I would encourage you to keep up this thread. Could you write us a little bit about your background, your childhood and your family?

By the way, speaking of writing, I noticed that some of your sentences are very well composed, with a tone reminiscent to me of Chat GPT or Grammarly. Or maybe it appears that way because of my research work recently, in which I have used AI. Just curious, have you been using it as a composition assistance tool here? Either way, no need stop now that you have really made a great start.

Thank you again.

Applecore

I’m surprised. I had not interpreted it at all as drama or a challenge in any sense. I was actually very touched by what you shared. I didn’t express that fully in my previous response because I thought I should keep it short. But going back to what you said: aside from maybe two experiences you described that I could relate to, there was also what you mentioned about suicide. I used to be very suicidal. I attempted almost two years ago now, but found that I was grateful to be alive after I survived. Since then, I’ve made changes to my life and found a few things to be passionate about. Like you said, I'm grateful for the positive things I'm still capable of experiencing and it's nice that I've been reminded of that.

I have a question. I’ve recently been thinking back on and uncovering a few details related to what happened when my ex kissed me and whatnot. Would it generally be considered fine if I continued this thread with things I may want to ask or share regarding that experience? Maybe a dumb question but I really am not familiar with this website and how things are typically conducted here so I want to ask.

I will be adding the book you recommended to my reading list. I would greatly appreciate it if you could recommend more. The Body Keeps the Score by Van Der Kolk is one I've been reading recently. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to keep up with it much since life has gotten a bit busy. What you mentioned previously about resilience reminded me of this book. Building resilience was a goal of mine a while back but I forgot about it with some stuff that had been going on. It’s a goal I'm excited to work on again and it gives me some hope for the future. If you hadn't mentioned anything about resilience, it would still be forgotten to me.

I don't mind sharing about myself, but I'm not sure what to write really. My childhood was okay I suppose. I developed a set of mental health disorders when I was young, so there weren't always good moments. But there are still a lot of very happy moments I can recall, such as the time I spent with close friends or my two sisters (one younger, one older). Me and my siblings used to be very, very close and I looked up to my older sibling. As for my parents: my parents divorced when I was very young, and me and my siblings primarily lived with my mother after that. My father was physically abusive until I was about 6 I believe. Both of my parents had neglected me since I was very young. As I grew older—about 12 to 17 years old—my mother bit by bit became extremely emotionally abusive, and only towards me. I also grew apart from my siblings. I don’t talk to my younger sibling anymore for reasons that have to do with protecting my well-being and safety. I still speak with my older sibling, but I haven’t trusted her for a long time after some things happened in the past involving my mother.

Regarding your question about my writing, I haven’t used ChatGPT or Grammarly. I believe I can see why you asked though lol. I’ve always had trouble putting thoughts/ideas into words since I was young. It was bad enough to the point that it often interfered with socializing. It’s improved greatly since then, and I suppose I would say the way I write is purely just an effort to try and communicate clearly. It can be very easy for me to make mistakes or be unclear in my writing, so I try to be careful.

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

 

[Applecore]

I’m surprised. I had not interpreted it at all as drama or a challenge in any sense. I was actually very touched by what you shared. I didn’t express that fully in my previous response because I thought I should keep it short. But going back to what you said: aside from maybe two experiences you described that I could relate to, there was also what you mentioned about suicide. I used to be very suicidal. I attempted almost two years ago now, but found that I was grateful to be alive after I survived. Since then, I’ve made changes to my life and found a few things to be passionate about. Like you said, I'm grateful for the positive things I'm still capable of experiencing and it's nice that I've been reminded of that.

I have a question. I’ve recently been thinking back on and uncovering a few details related to what happened when my ex kissed me and whatnot. Would it generally be considered fine if I continued this thread with things I may want to ask or share regarding that experience? Maybe a dumb question but I really am not familiar with this website and how things are typically conducted here so I want to ask.

I will be adding the book you recommended to my reading list. I would greatly appreciate it if you could recommend more. The Body Keeps the Score by Van Der Kolk is one I've been reading recently. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to keep up with it much since life has gotten a bit busy. What you mentioned previously about resilience reminded me of this book. Building resilience was a goal of mine a while back but I forgot about it with some stuff that had been going on. It’s a goal I'm excited to work on again and it gives me some hope for the future. If you hadn't mentioned anything about resilience, it would still be forgotten to me.

I don't mind sharing about myself, but I'm not sure what to write really. My childhood was okay I suppose. I developed a set of mental health disorders when I was young, so there weren't always good moments. But there are still a lot of very happy moments I can recall, such as the time I spent with close friends or my two sisters (one younger, one older). Me and my siblings used to be very, very close and I looked up to my older sibling. As for my parents: my parents divorced when I was very young, and me and my siblings primarily lived with my mother after that. My father was physically abusive until I was about 6 I believe. Both of my parents had neglected me since I was very young. As I grew older—about 12 to 17 years old—my mother bit by bit became extremely emotionally abusive, and only towards me. I also grew apart from my siblings. I don’t talk to my younger sibling anymore for reasons that have to do with protecting my well-being and safety. I still speak with my older sibling, but I haven’t trusted her for a long time after some things happened in the past involving my mother.

Regarding your question about my writing, I haven’t used ChatGPT or Grammarly. I believe I can see why you asked though lol. I’ve always had trouble putting thoughts/ideas into words since I was young. It was bad enough to the point that it often interfered with socializing. It’s improved greatly since then, and I suppose I would say the way I write is purely just an effort to try and communicate clearly. It can be very easy for me to make mistakes or be unclear in my writing, so I try to be careful.

If you have any other questions, I’d be happy to answer them.

Well then, compliments on your clarity of composition. Some people who were scared of water as kids end up as gold medal Olympian swimmers.

In my experience of this forum you're fine to say what you want on this thread, and moderators will close it when they feel it has run its course. Personally I appreciate them leaving threads open because conversations can move into very important matters later on, even months later. For example, I think the fact that you attempted suicide two years ago is a very important disclosure that I expect is somehow, even abstractly, related to your said relationship experience.

A lot of us here have been suicidal, so this is your community and you are welcome here. Many of us here have had many moments of joy and love in our childhood that bring us resilience during setback, interspersed with complex trauma and troubling family systems.

I also don't speak with my siblings, for my own self care and mental health. This is an extremely tough situation to manage for everyone, I believe. Separating from our tribe is traumatic for very good, evolutionary reasons.

I think you have made an excellent summary of your family dynamics, and my question would eventually be: might there have been a connection between your family system and your past suicidality?

On the theme of such paradoxes, getting good and bad from our family at the same time, I'll connect it with something about the incident with that girlfriend at university. As it happens, she also was the first person outside my family who showed me the meaning of love in its sincerest form - and its power.

Thanks to her, her love and sharing life with her for two years while at college, my self-confidence was given such an enormous boost that it changed my life. What she did in that incident on the bed, she thought was funny, and it wasn't. And it was far less significant than the rest of our relationship. I think this is important: something drew your to your girlfriend that may have been very beneficial and very good, alongside any unpleasant behaviour.

I listened to the audio book of The Body Keeps the Score by Van Der Kolk and found it dense, heavy, saddening, impressively professional and very important. That Stephen Grosz book is a very much lighter read or listen, I got through it in a weekend. It's uplifting as it gives us hope by showing us a way forward. It's all about how we suppress hidden truths inside ourselves, which come out when we tell our story. If we don't tell our story, our story tells us.

He writes: “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. But if we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us- we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand."

So by all means, talk about the kiss., etc, because your story started with a kiss. And it's clear that there is very much more to your story than that.

Tell it !

 

[anon.co]

A few months before the night she kissed me, there were moments she’d snap at me if I wasn't physically affectionate. I was a pretty affectionate person. When I wasn’t, I was simply occupied or distracted. When she would do this, I’d feel guilty and do what she wanted. I didn't realize it at the time, but I became constantly affectionate to please her, and it stopped being because I genuinely wanted to. Aside from that, one particular thing she’d do was offer her shoulder for me to lay my head on. I often said no because it could be physically uncomfortable or even straining for me to do since she was shorter than me. Any other form of affection between us was okay with me at the time, so that was the only thing I leaned away from. Despite that, she’d persist over and over anyway on different occasions for that one specific thing and I began saying yes (despite saying no so many times). These things went on for a while before the night she kissed me.

Although it’s not sexual, is this coercion? Maybe they’re small things, but I think it heavily influenced how I reacted that night.

As for the night when she kissed me: I thought she asked once, but I remember now that she asked twice to kiss me. My first response was something that wasn’t a yes or no. The second time she asked, she came close to me and put her hands on my arms, held onto my arms, and said, “So can I?” I wasn’t really comfortable but I said yes. Then everything happened with me pulling away a few times throughout it, telling her I was uncomfortable, her continuing, etc. I didn’t walk away because I remember her hands on my arms during the whole thing. But I don’t remember exactly if she used physical force to hold me in place while kissing me or not.

I went through some texts and found out I was there for about 1-2 hours. Before this, honestly, I had been roughly guessing I was there for 20 or 30 minutes. I guess everything I remember was during the first hour.

I'm wondering if it was coercion, especially considering the way she asked me and maybe her behavior in the few months before that. Any thoughts?

 

[Applecore]

I'm wondering if it was coercion, especially considering the way she asked me and maybe her behavior in the few months before that. Any thoughts?

I think it was unpleasant and it looks like the right decision to move on.