I’m an eighteen-year-old straight female. Two nights ago, I went
to a party. My ex-boyfriend was present, but my current boyfriend was
not. I had several beers, and while I wasn’t drunk, I was tipsy. I had
to go to my car to get my cell phone, and my ex offered to accompany
me. When we got to the car, he pushed me against the car and started
making out with me. I tried to push him away and said, “No, I can’t”
several times. He kept trying to pull my pants down, and every time he
did, I pulled them back up. He took his dick out and tried again to
pull down my pants. I know it sounds stupid, but all I could get out
were meek “nos” and “I can’ts.” I was afraid of a confrontation because
he and I have been friendly since we broke up. I eventually
discontinued my attempts to pull my pants back up because I figured the
easiest way to get out of this situation was to let him finish. He had
sex with me. I wanted to cry the whole time, but as much as I wanted to
scream, “Stop! Get the fuck off of me!” I couldn’t get the words
out.
I called my boyfriend when I got home and told him what happened.
He is angry because he thinks I had a part in it. I don’t know how to
make him understand how many times I said no and how at first I
physically stopped my ex from taking my clothes off. My boyfriend and I
have been through a lot together, and we talked about getting married
one day. I never wanted to cheat on him, and while I feel guilty about
what happened, I think he’s being harsh on me considering I succumbed
to force.
I’ve apologized again and again, but I don’t know how to make
things right. I still don’t want a confrontation with the ex. I just
want to forget about him and never see him or speak to him again. I
just want things to be okay again with my boyfriend. Is there anything
I can do or say to make him understand?
Date Rape Engenders Awful Depression
Understand that you were raped, DREAD — date-ish raped,
acquaintance-ish raped, gray-area-ish raped, blurry-booze-soaked-lines
raped, and raped under circumstances that would make bringing charges a
futile exercise. But raped. Your ex kept coming at you, and you were
paralyzed by a set of inhibitions — a desire to avoid
confrontation at all costs (even the cost of your own violation), a
desire to avoid making your victimizer feel bad — that are
pounded into the heads of girls and young women. Your ex exploited this
vulnerability. Your ex may not think he raped you since you finally
“let him,” and perhaps he interprets that as consent and so,
distressingly, does your boyfriend. But raped you were.
So what do you do now? I’d suggest a bit more contact with your ex.
You need to confront him — for your own sake, DREAD, but also for
the sake of all other women he’s going to encounter over the course of
his life. If you can’t face him, call him. If you can’t speak to him,
write him (a letter, not an e-mail). Wherever he is right now, he’s
rationalizing away his responsibility for what happened. He may be
telling himself that he was drunk, that you were drunk, and that, sure,
he may have been aggressive at first, but that you came around and
enjoyed it as much as he did. He needs to hear from you that you regard
— and, for what it’s worth, I regard — what happened as
rape. Tell him that he didn’t get away with it — that he raped
you, you know it, and now he knows it. Then tell him that if the
circumstances were just a little less ambiguous, DREAD, that you would
be going to the police.
Hell, tell him you still might. Put the fear of God into him.
Then you need to confront the boyfriend: If your boyfriend can’t
take your side, DREAD, if he can’t see what really happened here, if he
insists on victimizing you, too, then you don’t need him in your life
any more than you need your ex in your life.
I’m a 23-year-old gay dude from Vancouver. My boyfriend and I
have been together for four years. Thing is, he’s seriously letting
himself go — gaining weight, enjoying roomier pants. I drop hints
about working out or eating better — but he gets offended and
becomes self-conscious. I want to be supportive and not care, but I do
care and it’s killing me. Had I known at nineteen that he would be
throwing away his hot body, I might have reconsidered his LTR
potential. Now, four years later, I’m stuck with a lovable fatty who
I’m having a hard time being intimate with.
Is this awful? Am I selfish? I love him, but I want to enjoy sex
again. I have NOTHING against fatties, Dan, I just don’t want to bed
one.
Really Eating At Me
Drop the subtlety, REAM. No more faux-loving hints about the
importance of diet and exercise — he reacts negatively to that
shit because he’s picking up on your dishonestly. You’re not concerned
for his health, REAM, you’re concerned for your sex life and what the
death of your attraction to him means for this relationship. So give it
to him straight: You’re not attracted to fatties, which is why you
pursued him four years ago, and his weight gain is killing your sex
life and threatening the survival of your relationship. If he values
this relationship, he’ll get his ass off the couch.
And now a note to the infuriated fatsophere: I’m not saying that
REAM’s boyfriend is unattractive because he’s heavier, or that heavy
people aren’t or can’t be attractive, or that all must forever maintain
our “first-date weight” over the multidecade course of
relationship/marriage/whatever. But to destroy a large part of what
attracted someone to you early in a relationship — whether
actively or through neglect — is to take your partner for granted
in a way that’s not okay. And that goes for a tight-bodied fag who
parks his ass on the couch because he’s got a boyfriend now — so,
hey, why bother with the gym? — and the BBW who wastes away to
skin and bones after she lands an admirer.
A close gay friend recently seroconverted after months of
barebacking and meth use. He’s a successful professional with years of
AIDS peer-education experience. My immediate reaction was shock and
anger. He claims that I am not a true friend because I should hide my
feelings and shower him with empathy and understanding. Is there
something wrong with me for feeling mad at my friend for his
irresponsibility?
Old Fashioned Safe Sex Adherent
Let’s say you’ve got two friends. One gets hit by lightning, and the
other plops his sopping-wet ass down on a third rail. Do both friends
— presuming both survive — deserve your empathy and
understanding, OFSSA? Of course. But one friend was electrocuted while
the other electrocuted his damn self. Friendship does not obligate you
to pretend that your friend who sat his ass down on the third rail
wasn’t being idiotic and self-destructive. Friendship, in fact,
requires the opposite reaction.
