I was 15 or 16 years old and troubled. I didn’t live with my parents and the group that I was hanging out with was troubled as well. We were drinking and doing drugs and hanging out with much older guys.
There was a guy who lived at this house that was very charming and good looking and one night I slept with him. A few months later I fell in love with a different boy. My sister and a few of our friends went to a party at the older guy’s house. We got drunk and my sister and her friend went to someone’s room and left me with this guy who I’d slept with before. He kissed me and I told him that I had a boyfriend. He convinced me to go upstairs to his room promising that we would just go to sleep. I feel like a fool for believing this. We were in his room on the floor because he didn’t have a bed and I was trying to go to sleep and he started rubbing me and grabbing me and touching me. I kept insisting that I had a boyfriend and didn’t want to do this or cheat on him. He pulled my bathing suit bottom me aside and pushed himself inside of me. I gave in and laid there and took it. Finally we went to sleep and the next morning as we were leaving I hugged him for whatever reason.
My sister went to my boyfriend and told him what had happened that I “had cheated” on him. I tried to explain to him what had happened, he didn’t believe me. I tried to explain to my sister and friends what had happened, they didn’t believe me. They just thought I was trying to minimize it because I had “been caught cheating.” He ruined my relationship, gave me chlamydia and forever changed my relationship with my sister.
No one ever believed that I did NOT want to have sex with him that night. And since then my sister has always gone against me in anything. She always believes whoever else is involved.
I have not talked about this in almost 18 years and watching Brave New World, I thought it would be therapeutic to just write this to someone who might finally believe me. I said no, I did not want it.
— Tara, age 33
If your boyfriend couldn’t trust you, you shouldn’t have stayed together any ways. None of this was your fault. You said no and he didn’t listen.