Rape and sexual assault

When I was raped part of me was not in my body, I had left my body. My body remembers, our bodies are the most dense part of our existence so even when we try to push away the memories they lie in wait for us in our cells.

To begin with generally the sex was good, this man knew exactly what he was doing - an experienced lover. I was everything he was not, innocent, soft and nieve. The good sex was partly what drew me in and kept me there, the deep connection that I got from him when having sex. Like any drug, you keep needing more to keep you on a level. Making love with him was the only time I could feel his presence and feel ok myself. I was deeply wounded also you see, we were both wounded.

I was serving a purpose when I let a man use my body to attempt to heal himself, these were the times that I consented to sex but from a place of service. That is what I believed I was doing, I wanted to fix him, to stop his pain and I did this temporarily in that moment after his orgasm. I believe having an orgasm for him and me was the only way to feel ok for a split second, a release from the numbness.

But then as some of us know, the sinking feeling when you drop back down to your reality. Sex for me and him was a temporary release from the hell we were both living in. There are, of course, victim and perpetrator aspects to the experience but when you take the higher perspective we were both blind and desperately trying to feel at peace the only way we knew how. If I could fix him then maybe he could fix me. Just as it would be beneficial for his healing to take responsibility for what he did (raped me and used my body as his medicine) it is important for my healing to take responsibility for what I required from the relationship. On a soul level we were serving each other, on a 3 dimensional level it was an abusive relationship. There was an array of aspects to the abuse and they changed as I got older and more sexually developed, became less acute. Before the last time we had sex, over a decade later, I just sort of pushed him off and realised I had out grown him, I did not require the abuse anymore but also the sex was boring. I wanted more.

The many nights I would not sleep as I would be on call for sex for him or to get him food, this was when the migraines came on. He would say that a good friend could never sleep if someone is in pain which dug away at that part of me desperate to fix him (so he could fix me). The most torturous aspect to my experience I would say is having penetration when you are not turned on, it hurts as the genital areas are not moist and so this is painful. But, it's amazing how the mind can protect ones being by getting the horniness going so that it's a bearable experience, my mind could trick me into thinking it was good. This phenomena is the one aspect to rape that I could not explain to the police when I finally reported the assaults. When you get raped by someone you love, you still love them even when they are raping you. And one minute you can feel you are being raped and then the next you are seemingly enjoying the experience, weird right but true for me - this is survival of the harshest variety. I have read of tales of explorers in the depths of the cold of the North Pole but my survival was epic too.

This dance that happens between two people in a relationship like this is extremely fascinating and absolutely devastating. We mirrored each others dysfunctional patterns. We pulled on each other for love that our parents were un able to provide, we cursed each other when we repeatedly failed to fill that gigantuous void within us. People would say to me ‘why are you with him’? I would say ‘I love him’. This was true to the core but this love we shared was not from a place of wholeness it was from a place of pain. I wanted to get something from him and it took me many slow years of torture to realise I could never fix him, this was devastating for me and also the start of me becoming free of toxic relationships.