Sexual Assault Realizing rape was planned

[Deleted member 44517]

Wow, this thread is hitting home with me.
I came to the conclusion that mine had to be planned as well.
I also went back to him for more abuse because I needed it to be a relationship and not rape. He was very cruel about it.
I have an even harder time with the second time now and I hate myself for it. Which, is unfair. I was young and stupid. I had convinced myself that I wanted it and it was a miscommunication. None of that was true. Hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Deleted member 37474]

Wow, this thread is hitting home with me.
I came to the conclusion that mine had to be planned as well.
I...

I prefer you use “young and naive”. ;)

 

[Deleted member 44517]

@Hooper
I can understand your pain. You have a lot of what ifs swimming around in your head. I would love to tell you that everything will work out in your marriage but I'm not that naive anymore. I will say that many marriages do make it and sexual healing does happen.

Have you considered therapy for yourself? It would maybe help you to put all this energy into loving your wife instead of being angry over what you cannot change?

 

[Hooper]

@jael,
I don't think my marriage is on the rocks by any stretch. As for therapy the details came out 2 Aprils ago. So this April will be 3 years of therapy. My therapist as well as my wife agree with Texcat that I have personalized her trauma. As for my anger I don't think it's misplaced. I have every right to be angry and if more people felt the way I did I don't think we would have an epidemic. My therapist has a theory that I personalized my wife's trauma to deal with my traumatic childhood so we've worked on that which has accomplished little more than digging up things I'd buried and looking at them through the eyes of an adult who is now a parent. Doing so made me even angrier. Apparently I don't process my emotions properly. I skip sad and go straight to mad leaving me in a hyper vigilant state. I really had no choice but to go to therapy since I couldn't talk about it with anyone. Over the past 6 months I've told 3 people what happened. My 2 brothers and one of my best friends. All 3 of their spouses were raped as well with not one doing time. It did not have the same effect on them for some reason. Maybe they didn't know the details. I really don't know. The bottom line is the more I know and dig into the past the angrier I get. I'm not religious but if there were a God (I don't know) he did not grant me the ability to accept the things I cannot change. Since justice is off the table my choices are narrowed down to 1 and that is forgiveness. I am just not ready for that yet. In between I get set off constantly. I can't listen to the radio, watch the news or record an old movie I used to enjoy without the subject of sexual assault coming up. The discourse on the subject is maddening as well. I even went to a sex therapist twice to make sure I'm not abnormal. I'm supposed to embrace the concept of "radical acceptance" where you just accept that bad things happen to good people. I'd be fine with that if bad things happened to bad people but that is the exception and not the rule. I guess I need to radically accept that fact as well. I never thought knowing exactly what happened to my wife would have had this effect on me. Hopefully it ends soon but until then I'll be in therapy.

 

[deeplyloved]

Acceptance doesn’t mean that the behavior or event is acceptable. We can all agree that it never should have happened to any of us. But it did. We have to accept that it did happen. And then we have to figure out how to do an honest assessment of the consequences...and address them...and try to heal...and try to make new meaning of our lives. Accepting doesn’t mean what happened was ok.

 

[Deleted member 44517]

@Hooper
It's not the exception that bad things don't happen to bad people. You just don't know about them.

Don't we all kind of walk around with our masks on?

 

[Deleted member 44517]

Glad to read that you are getting help @Hooper.

 

[Hooper]

Acceptance doesn’t mean that the behavior or event is acceptable. We can all agree that it never should have happened to any of us. But it did. We have to accept that it did happen. And then we have to figure out how to do an honest assessment of the consequences...and address them...and try to heal...and try to make new meaning of our lives. Accepting doesn’t mean what happened was ok.

Deeplyloved,
I've gotten a lot out of other posts besides yours but I'm going to have to single you out based on what you said above. What you said got me thinking. I know you don't mention it but forgiveness and what you wrote above are intertwined. My problem in the past with forgiveness is I don't feel the need to give anything to someone who takes the most precious of things. Even the word forgiveness is a bit of a misnomer because it implies giving vs receiving. What I've come to realize is by forgiving someone else I am giving more to myself than to who I am forgiving. I've been to therapy since you wrote this. Had I not read it prior to going to therapy I don't know if what I picked up in therapy would have stuck. I'd like to take credit for the definition of forgiveness my therapist gave me in the form of a youtube video of an Oprah show on forgiveness but I can't. In the video a guest on Oprah defined forgiveness as "giving up hope that the past can be any different." 2 weeks ago I wouldn't have gotten that. Some may not today. I know my brothers don't. For me it was profound. I deeply appreciate your and everyone else's comments and if you'll let me deeply love you I'll do that to. When I post here I never know what will come of it. In the beginning I came for relief. Writing and outlining my thoughts is therapeutic as well as it lets me know if I've made progress when I reread old posts. The thought of helping others brings me back as well although I feel unqualified. In the case on this thread I hope 13reasons gets as much out of it as I have. For the first time I feel like I've turned a corner.
thanks,
hooper

 

[Deleted member 37474]

I don’t consider acceptance and forgiveness as the same thing.

 

[Freida]

forgiveness my ass. But if my Ts are right I can't forgive anyone else until I forgive myself - so maybe some day it will make sense

 

[Hooper]

I don’t consider acceptance and forgiveness as the same thing.

I don't either but to get to forgiveness you have to accept that you can't change the past but you don't have to accept what was done. I am rethinking my definition of forgiveness. I've always seen it as an act of generosity to someone else that may not be merited. I'm now seeing it as an act of generosity to myself. If I don't forgive I allow my wife's rapist to effect my sleep, mood and other areas of my life and I am not into that. If I do forgive I'm the biggest beneficiary of the act of forgiveness. Forgiveness was always something I saw as selfless but I'm starting to see forgiveness as a very logical selfish act. I have to accept/give up hope that I can't change what happened to my wife. There is nothing I can do to change it. If I beat the hell out of him, paid someone else to or worse it still changes nothing except that I may go to jail. It's just where I am right now and it's a better place than where I was. I don't expect everyone to get it or feel the same way.

 

[Freida]

I have to accept/give up hope that I can't change what happened

And that is the holy grail.......