WARNING: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ MAY BE TRIGGERING
It’s safe to say that my freshman year of college was a rough time. Sure, everyone says that their freshman year sucked, that their roommate was crazy (for me it was my suitemate), and that they made a few (try a million) stupid mistakes when they had a bit too much to drink. Well, my story is a little bit different. During my freshman year of college, I had my first relationship with a guy. This was a huge deal for me because up until I was 19 I believed down to my soul that I was a lesbian. It’s funny actually how college experimentation turned me bisexual in a pretty unconventional way. Anyways, to keep things simple my boyfriend freshman year was a horrible human being. He was the kind of guys that your friends would call you insane for staying with and looking back on it I really wish that I had the self-respect to kick him to the curb. But we live and we learn and I am going to let you in on the night that changed my life forever.
Now you may be surprised to learn that my boyfriend at the time was not the person who sexually assaulted me. To be clear, he was in all senses an abusive, manipulative, and toxic human being who deteriorated my self-worth for 8 months, but he’s not a leading character in this story. Let’s go back to February of 2014, when I had been seeing my boyfriend for about four months. It’s honestly hard to even call him a boyfriend because of how he would treat me and I wanted to get away from him in some form or another. Yet at the time, I was terrified of being on my own. I was afraid that if I cut ties that he would lure me back in somehow and I would be subjected to the abuse all over again. I was concerned for my own safety if he got upset and angry and decided to take it out on me or my close friends. I felt that I wasn’t strong enough to be single and I wanted some sort of shield against him when I was ready to break up with him. So I did what any naive young woman would do in our modern world of hookup culture, I turned to Tinder.
I had never been on Tinder before this relationship and at the time, it was still relatively new. I had heard of the horror and success stories, but I thought that I would cut my losses and give it a try. At the time I thought that anything could be an improvement to my current situation. I thought at the time that I was being safe and I told myself that I would only match up with someone who I had mutual friends with to avoid something terrible happening. Enter Andrew*. When I came across his profile, it was an automatic swipe right. He was unbelievably attractive, like some sort of model with big blue eyes that stared into your soul. We had at least twenty mutual friends and I later learned that he used to be a student at my school, but had transferred to study photography in the city. I didn’t need anything else from this man, I thought that there couldn’t be any harm in meeting up with him for a quick cup of coffee during the middle of the day.
Yet instead of having a casual first date, I was introduced to a nightmare that would haunt me for months to pass. I met him at a cafe in the city and I remember that I was wearing a green velvet dress with tights that had cats on them. I thought that I looked pretty cute, yet still fairly innocent and appropriate. We got to talking and I almost instantly realized that this guy was a huge douche. All he wanted to talk about was his photography and he kept saying stuff like “artists just see the world differently and have different brains than normal people”. Well, this “normal person” could see through all of his pretentious bullshit. About an hour in he asked me if I wouldn’t mind if we stopped by his dorm room for a minute because he was carrying a bunch of equipment that he had been using for a shoot earlier that day. I said sure, why not, the stuff did look pretty heavy to me. He took me up to his room, and I kid you not it was the smallest dorm room that I’ve ever seen. There was a twin bed raised to hip level, a two-foot walking space, and a desk with no chair. He asked me if I wanted to sit down and the only place that I could possibly sit was his bed, so I hopped up. He began showing me his pictures, which were nice but altogether not impressive enough to account for his giant ego. And then, things started happening.
He started kissing me and for a bit, I went along with it. It was pretty forward but I didn’t mind a light makeout. But it didn’t stay PG for long. Almost immediately, he started ripping my clothes off, first my dress and then unclasping my bra at rapid speed and throwing it to the floor. I broke apart from him and told him that I wasn’t comfortable going so fast. He kept going and then I told him very clearly that I wasn’t going to have sex with him. And do you know what he said to that? “We’ll see about that.”
No, that was not me giving him consent. He kept making advances, grabbing at my private parts and pushing me down onto his bed and all I could do was cry. I cried, yes because he was trying to have sex with me without my consent, but also because I had somehow met someone just as misogynistic as my boyfriend. I had tried to get away from my abuse and had wound up in a situation just as sinister. When he saw me crying, he asked me what was wrong and I admitted that I was in a relationship with someone who abused me emotionally and physically. He stopped trying to have sex with me and then said matter of factly, “No one should hit a pretty girl.”
It’s pretty clear that I took that opportunity to get myself the hell out of there. Looking back at it now, I know that I had put myself in an extremely dangerous situation and I hate to say that I was “lucky” to have been in that relationship because it prevented his from raping me. I was in a state of total shock when I went back to my campus and after that, I stayed with my boyfriend for another four months. I kept telling myself that it was my fault for using Tinder and it took years for me to realize that it wasn’t my fault and that so many girls end up in the same situation as I did.
Now as a senior in college, the memory of that day isn’t as fresh as it used to be but I will never forget what happened to me. I will never forget how he seemed like a nice guy and how lots of girls would eagerly have sex with him for his looks. I will never forget the feeling when he ignored my plea for him to stop and how embarrased I felt leaving his dorm room that day. I obviously never told my boyfriend yet knowing him I wouldn’t be surprised if he told me that I deserved to be raped. I am obviously not proud of my past, however I am a much wiser person because of what I have experienced. I know now not to put myself in dangerous situations and that I am worth being treated with kindess, dignity, and respect. And I know that a lot of girls still don’t feel that way about themselves because of the men in their lives and it makes me sick. Every girl is worth respect and I wish I had known that three years ago.