He Was My Best Friend

I have a hard time accepting the fact that what happened to me happened to ME. I always told myself that I would never let anyone treat me the way that he had. He was my best friend for three years before we started dating. He had been through some horrendous traumas in his life that he had trusted me enough to share with me, and to find comfort in the fact that I knew and that I supported him. I never imagined that our relationship would have turned out to be one of the hardest years of my life.

I was a virgin before we started dating. I had planned on saving myself for marriage, but when we began seeing each other in a serious manner, I thought to myself ‘I wouldn’t mind giving this very special moment to him. Of all the men in my life, he deserves it, and I deserve to have someone like him share that with me.’ And this thought process started me down a path, that I wish I had never gone down. At first he was emotionally abusive. He would get mad at me for things like, how much I slept, that fact that my senior year was had less of a work load than his, or the fact that I didn’t bring a spoon with me after I went out and bought him ice cream and brought a bowl up with me for him. He would say hurtful things about small sexual things he and I had done in front of our friends, and just any way he could tear me down, he did his absolute best.

He started telling me that I couldn’t hang out with my friends, that were male, that I had known since pre-school (ages 4-5) because he was afraid they were going to take advantage of me, and I wasn’t a good girl friend if I didn’t listen to him. He would constantly say ‘Everyone else in a relationship would feel the same way that I do about this…’ no matter what it was, that was his reason. It would frustrate me because I didn’t know how to defend myself and my opinion against, because he was so outspoken and ALWAYS had an argument for everything. He would sometimes cry to me, begging me not to be one of the girls that broke his heart. I was so afraid of hurting him, that I didn’t see that the reality was that he was hurting me. I became reclusive, because after a certain point, I couldn’t even hang out with my girl friends without him getting angry and fighting with me.

He told me at one earlier point in our relationship that he was just annoyed with me as a person, but he didn’t want to break up, he wanted to fight past that and have a good relationship. I so desperately wanted to end our relationship, and go back to be friends, but he refused, and told me that if we broke up, he didn’t want to have anything to do with me, and asking him to be friends with him was just unfair. I caved, because I didn’t want to hurt him, just like he had begged me not to do. It would all be my fault, and he would be in a tremendous amount of pain. I told him I didn’t want to have sex with him, I just wasn’t ready for that anymore, and what he told me shocked me (though it shouldn’t have) ‘The thought of us not having sex is unbearable. You can;t just tell me I can have that and then take it away’. So I said I would try, I would try to move past these feelings so we could do that.

I remember the first time. The day before I confided in my best friend, I told her he planned on having sex that night, and that I wasn’t ready, I didn’t want to, and that I was going to tell him no. She told me she was proud of me, and to do what I felt was right. He had stayed the night before, and we just laid there, talked laughed, and went to sleep. I figured I could talk him into it just being one of those nights. I was so nervous, the first time we’d tried this, long before we started having problems, it just couldn’t happen. So we left it alone. But that night, the night that it actually happened, I was so afraid it was going to hurt, but when it didn’t, I completely detached. Though it didn’t last long by any means, my mind and heart wasn’t in it.

When he had finished, I had asked if that was it, was it really over? And he apologized, I did my best to make sure he didn’t feel uncomfortable about my questions. I just felt so empty inside. It had created a void in my heart that I didn’t know how to explain, and I couldn’t even look at my best friend the next day I was so ashamed. When I finally told her I tried to make it sound like I was happy about it, and that I didn’t regret a thing, and I told myself that the entire time we dated, but I never felt that way. I never cried about it either until after he and I broke up. When I did, I don’t think I ever cried so hard.

He tried to make it fun and enjoyable, but it was hard to feel that way when outside of the bedroom he was so unbearable to me and to people around us. I constantly had people asking me why I was still with him. Two of my really good friends hated him because of some of the things I told them he would say to me. After a while I was unable to give them answers. I had to pretend like everything was great, and I loved being with him, and sex was amazing or else it would spark these huge awful nasty fights between us, and I would just get to tired and mentally exhausted, I’d let him win. Soon sex would last for an hour straight, of him just going as for as long as he could, and sometimes even as hard. I would be dry and he’d keep going, before I finally had to tell him that it hurt and I just couldn’t go any longer. Some times he would tell me to just hold on a little bit because he was almost there.

Some women will laugh at the fact that they just had rough sex and they could barely walk, because they enjoyed it. I had to laugh when I said it because I was so exhausted by him, and couldn’t last in an argument. So many times in my head I would almost cry because I just wanted it to stop. I just wanted him to be finished so I could lay down and rest. He would keep me up every weekend all night. If I some how managed to find the courage to tell him ‘not tonight’ he would be so angry with me he would talk to me. He would roll over IN MY BED and refuse to touch me (I have a twin size bed, and he’s the type of guy that hits the gym and was about three times my size in muscle mass) I would lay there for most of the night refusing myself to cry myself to sleep right next to him. I would never give him the entire bed, I would never sleep on the floor or the couch. I would not humiliate myself like that. It was my own little way of standing up for myself. Eve n though I got satisfaction from that, it was minuscule in comparison to the hurt I felt. For only being useful when he wanted sex.

Despite these moments, and sexual experiences, I refused to believe that he wasn’t my best friend anymore, that he wasn’t just using me for sex. So there were times when he was decent for a couple days, and I thought to myself, I really do love him, and I want to share intimacy like that with him where I can enjoy it, and I did. Unfortunately the next day he would change again, and be irritable with me, and make me feel useless and unwanted, even when we spent almost every waking moment of every day together. That’s when I hated sex.

Towards the end of our relationship he stopped using condoms (I wasn’t on birth control, I couldn’t afford it) I would ask him to and he owuld refuse. He said that they interfere to much with the way it feels. So the only protection and lubrication I was getting after those one hour to hour and a half sexual escapades were gone. I still couldn’t end it though. At that point, we weren’t even friends anymore, and I could barely look at him in a loving way, let alone be turned on by him.

One day he tricked me into giving him my phone (which I am very against most of the time, I get anxiety when people go through my phone, not because I have anything to hide, but from other experiences I’ve had in my life) and I was busy giving my cat a bath because she had been bitten by and animal and was bleeding. While I was preoccupied he went through all of it. He went through my text messages, and my social media before he came across my facebook messages. He had heard rumors that I was talking to an ex of mine. I ad been, we were still really good friends, and for the longest time he had just been my support through this relationship, and quite recently it had grown into something more. He only had to read two comments in before he knew that the least offensive of rumors were true. Oh he blew up like I had never seen before (and I was privy to some amazingly brutal tantrums).

He treated the situation like I had been sexting this man, and having sex with him our entire relationship, when in truth , the only thing I had said to my ex was that I still had feelings for him, and that when my boyfriend and I were over I would like to give it another shot.

At the end of a very long night, where he texted my ex with death threats, told me lies about what my ex was saying to his friends, and questioned me for hours, he told me he didn’t know why, but he was going to forgive me. That he still was madly in love with me and didn’t want to lose me. I was so afraid of him spreading rumors that I had cheated on him that I agreed to stay with him, even pleaded for us to still be together. I felt so alone and alienated from everyone who really DID love me that it was like the boy who had been hurting me for 12 months was my only saviour out of this.

When we got back to my house he told me that we didn’t have to have sex or anything that night. That I could just go to bed if I wanted to. Before I could though I had to text my ex, right there in front of him and tell him how much I hated him, that I never wanted to see him again and that if he ever talk to me again he was going to be in serious trouble with my boyfriend (a very large specimen, the only reason he was daunting). I didn’t believe a word I sent to my ex, but I was so desperate to just lay down on my pillow and close my eyes that I sent it without hesitation. I kept getting phone calls from him, I finally had to turn of my phone so I could go to sleep.

My boyfriend laid next to me with his arm over my waist all night long, and I just wanted space, far from him, and far from the rest of the world. I wanted to crawl into the deepest darkest whole I could find, and shut everyone else out for the rest of my life.

Two days after that it was his birthday. He stayed the night at my house. I was on my period. I told him we couldn’t have sex that night. His exact words to me were ‘I either get a blow job, anal, or we have regular sex on your period, but it’s my birthday, and there is no way I’m not getting any.’ …I hated giving blow jobs, I had never done anal, or had sex on my period before. I couldn’t tell him no, I had put him through so much emotionally, I couldn’t hurt him and tell him no, but I in no way wanted what I got. At first we tried for anal, I tried to have a good time, to loosen up, to at least just be happy. There was no way anal was happening that night. So I slowly walked to the bathroom and pulled out my tampon while he waited in my room.

At first we started on my bed. I just laid on my back while he would thrust into me. I didn’t want it on my sheets so I stopped him to lay down a towel on my floor and we continued there. It lasted for two hours. I don’t really remember him ever slowing down really. He went as hard as he could at time, occasionally stopping so I could change positions. My knees began to ache, as well ass my elbows, it began to burn every time he pulled in and after thirty minutes. He went for two hours and he only stopped because he was tired. He didn’t even finish.

I walked bow legged to the bathroom, and cleaned all the blood off of me. I soothed the burning with cold water. I walked back and had to slowly lay down on my bed, because it hurt to much to just flop down.

The next day after he left, we got into a fight because he didn’t believe that I was going somewhere to hanging out with just ONE of my friends before she went to work. I sat on my bed and stared over had the blood stain in my carpet and I felt this rush of adrenaline through me. This was the only time I felt even remotely capable of breaking up with me. I called my Aunt sobbing, telling her that I was breaking up with him, he was on his way over to the house at that moment and I was breaking up with him. I was so afraid I couldn’t stop shaking.

It took me three hours of explaining to him that I was breaking up with him before he finally got the message, and he left my house, slamming the door and screaming fuck as he got in his stupid loud obnoxious car and sped out of my drive way.

The next couple of weeks, I would leave my house and be extremely anxious and worried that he would drive past my house, or that I would see him around town. I only did once, and he made sure that I knew he was there.

I don’t know if anyone will read all of this, I know it’s a lot. I left out may other stories and details. I don’t know if anyone thinks it is rape, what he did to me. It has only been three and a half months since I freed myself from that relationship, but it feels as though it has been a life time. I’m with my ex now. He’s very sweet, and kind. He loves my family and my family loves him. He loves me so very much, and I love him, for always being there when I need him. I lament over the fact that I gave up that first moment for someone who didn’t love me, and that I could have given that to my real best friend.

The first night I stayed with my new counter part, we started to kiss, and then he got on top of me and I began to panic inside my mind. I almost began to cry when he stopped. He got off of me and just laid next to me. I didn’t have to say a word. The next day I looked up the definition of rape. I searched for hours, and read so many heart breaking stories. I read about grey areas. I read about blatant rapes. I’ve read so much, and still haven’t been able to say that I’ve been raped. The three people that I’ve have given every detail to about my relationship say that I have been.

I’m so desperate for it to not be true that I will completely shut everything to do with him out of my mind. Then as if by some cruel twist of fate someone will remind me of him, a joke that he would have laugh at, a song he would have liked. Even having sex with the man I love more than anyone in the world can give me flash backs, and I will immediately go from enjoyment to sheer emotional and physical pain, so much that I can’t even hide it for him to have a good time. I’ll start to get a panic attack and so I just find a place where it’s quiet, and then I just sob. I start and I can’t stop for what seems like forever. I’ll yell at myself, hate myself for letting someone take advantage of me like that. I’ll just sit there and helpless cry thinking of all the times I just begged God to make it stop.

I can’t bare for it to be true, and if it is, I can’t bare for anyone to hear it and then tell me it’s not true and what happened to me was all my fault. Mostly because deep down in side of me, I know it’s not, but it just feels like there were so many situations I could have ended my suffering, but I didn’t have the back bone to do it. I was to afraid. I’m still afraid. I’m not crazy. I didn’t make any of this up, and all my feelings are true and deep. Every second, minute, hour, day, week or month of pain, emotional or physical was felt, and it was seen by others that didn’t know how to stop it. No one ever knew how bad it was though, I would never let them see, and I still can’t.

I don’t want to be the girl who everyone pities or afraid to upset. I don’t want to cry myself to sleep or will myself not to. I don’t want to feel so cut deep, by someone who was supposed to love me and support me. Someone who was supposed to make like fun and never hurt me, like he promised he wouldn’t. I don’t want to be the girl that was lied to. That was duped. I don’t want to be the ignorant girl. The one that didn’t have enough courage or self respect to leave.

Unfortunately though, I am all of those things. All of those things and still to afraid to say the words, because either it’s not true, or I don’t want it to be. I don’t know. It’s killing me not to know. I said yes before, so I don’t know if my saying not saying no is void.

I found Brave Miss World on Netflix, and knowing nothing as to what it was about, just the cover drew me in. Once I began watching it started to tug at my heart. I began remembering things I didn’t want to, and relating with a lot of the feelings Linor felt, which only confused me more because my story is not like hers. I found the link to the site, and I thought writing this down would bring me some sort of clarity to my questions, but I only feel doubt.

I wish peace upon the women who have survived, and clarity to the ones who are unsure, because not knowing in itself is a burden. It’s like not knowing who you are. Once you felt strong, but now you feel weak and battered, pretending to have control, but really only just sitting the drivers seat, not steering.