the empty drawer

I've never said it first! The closest I've ever come to saying it first was with my current boyfriend. We had started a relationship years ago but when I told my parents I loved him they forced us apart...*tear*...so when I re-initiated our relationship late last year I ended an email with Love, name and so he gives me credit with saying it first this time around. Years back he said it first to me and I happily reciprocated.

As for where the "idea comes from" think of the message you feel society gives about sex to young people, and the younger the less likely it is the young person will be able to question or understand why there is a message. But it is undeniably present. It is something known. It is unquestionable. It is the "truth". It is there! Sex is presented as a very bad thing to young people. Abstinence being the only acceptable choice by society at large. Also think of the concept of virginity. You have it or you don't. There is no middle, or compromise, or halfway. Its an absolute to societal values...absolutely bad *eyeroll*. And young people do not have the freedom to get sexual information. Its the parent's job. Or maybe there is a school program. Or perhaps a Church or other community group could provide info. But there is no guarantee for anyone to get info appropriate for whatever age they are and how to be safe and not taken advantage of. Anyway.... So as a young mind if you discover that you were not a virgin since a young age, there are only a few things you now know. Nothing you can do for the rest of your life will ever be able to change what happened to you. A person could especially feel horrible about their own body and self if they were coerced into sex instead of physically forced. In a sense feel extra bad for something which was never their fault...at any age truly and any gender. As for women specifically think of the worship there is of the thing known as the hymen. A mere piece of tissue designed to help protect the vaginal innards until menarche occurs. A female who loses her virginity (or simply been molested) has very very likely lost their hymen. So now not only would you know that you cannot ever be a virgin but you do not have a hymen to offer for when you choose to have sex for the first time, "choose" being the key word there. Don't underestimate the insane worship of the hymen. People have died and killed for it and still do today. Thats how much it influences societies. (Specifically I was thinking of "honor killing" in the middle eastern culture where its common for a girl to be killed by her family for having sex before marriage...because of the lose of the hymen!) Its sad because I think societal values have good intentions. Promote abstinence and waiting til marriage to help people life more stable lives. But then its a double whammy too because if you don't fit into that ideal there is no possible way you can ever fit into it...because the ideal deals in absolutes. So no wonder people feel bad and feel even badder, virgins are "pure" so then would is a nonvirgin..."nonpure" perhaps? Or if the assault was from someone of the same sex there is still a large stigma against homosexuality so that just adds further to a person not being to conform to the "ideal". Thats part of my thinking anyways and just why I know, personally, I felt so horrible and dirty for so long.

Many hugs to you Alexis. Its (whats a good word now?) remarkable how some people can treat a person who genuinely and honestly just needs kindness, especially after living through a cruel event.

@ Locke2121 I still live with my parents since I'm going to college and I do not want to bring this up while still living with them. After this year I will move out because I will have gotten my AA degree and then I can worry about telling them one bad thing at a time. And I wouldn't leave y'all hanging with no closure to a story. =) Maybe "guilty" was the wrong word to use at the end there...because a person is only guilty if they have done something wrong. A better word might be shame, which may not make much sense either but feelings are not logical things. And yeah sophie274 this is my "road to recovery" as you put it. I've already had and passed days where I just felt like things would be better if I had never been born. I hear how sometimes people have suicidal thoughts to try and end the pain, but I never contemplated suicide because I knew even if I did die I still would have existed. And more than anything (for a while) I wished I had never existed at all, but that of course was something far beyond my power to do.

I've never exposed myself online like this before but thought I'd give it a shot...while I still have some nerve. Forgive my train of thought and verbosity. Next month I am going to be age twenty-three and I am partly terrified, because in my head I see how my life has gone and I think I see a cruel pattern from Fate that, for three of the years of my life, have happened five years apart each. For those on unfriendly terms with numbers those years would be age eight, thirteen, and eighteen for me. Unpleasant things happened to me during those ages. The only time I've ever seen a professional on the "bad things" (thats what I call those three events) was on something that happened to me when I was age thirteen. And I only saw the professional once, nice woman, gave me some good insights, but its nothing something I need to continue. Anyway this bad thing seems so strange and twisted to me because it was my older cousin who assaulted me. He would have been age thirty-nine I think, very much an adult while I was yet young and small at age thirteen. I had never meet him before until a (surprise) family union in the summer time. At the reunion a lot of my extended family was making fun of me because I had a big crush on a boy I meet in the hotel we were all staying at. Its important to know that. After the reunion was over my parents offered to drive my adult cousin back to his house since it was on the way to our own. He and I took the back seat of the van while my parents had the front seat. To be curt during the car ride he tried several time to touch me and tried to get to me to touch him, if you all get what I'm saying, but I pulled away and shook my head "no" to him. Which I was not comfortable with but I was too confused to inform my parents who were right there in the van just three/four feet away that my adult cousin was trying to play a fondling game with me. Finally we got to his house and I was feeling very happy to think I would be ride of him and hopefully never see him again. My parents went with him inside the house to get coffee because they had been driving for half a day...I stayed in the van, go figure. When they came out my cousin popped into the van and grabbed my hands saying my parents agreed to let me go on a car ride with him and he said I had to go. I got out of the van and pleaded with my parents to just get back on the road, I begged and begged, then got angry and begged some more to not go with him! But my parents said I had to go because they wanted to take a nap in the house and they didn't want me to wake them up. After what felt like forever I submitted to my parent's demands and got in my cousin's car. The whole drive to his house we never actually spoke to each other and this car ride started out like that. We had been driving for ten minutes or so and I was hoping it would stay quiet. It didn't of course. He pulled over the car and put it in park, then turned to look at me, then said to me "So you liked that boy at the hotel? Did you want to sex him?". I didn't answer. I didn't move. After a few moments he then said "How about you sex me?" then he screamed at me "Or aren't I sexing good enough for you to sex?!". {he didn't say "sex" of course but the vulgar verb that starts with "F" and rhymes with hockey "puck"} At that he jumped on me and started to grab me and rub himself against me and I just kept screaming and fighting as best I could. But he was a very strong full grown man there was nothing I could do to stop him. He hit me and told me to just shut up and sex him but I was too scared to stop screaming. I don't know how long he struggled with me but after a while I guess he decided I wasn't worth it so he refastened his cloths and I pulled whatever clothing he had torn off me back on. He could have really raped me but didn't, but it was a horrifying assault. So that was me at thirteen. I never told my parents and since he hadn't hit me in the face any marks on me weren't visible when we arrived back at his house. They noticed I was acting different but my cousin said I saw a dead cat...or some other equally lame excuse my parents didn't question. When I was age eighteen I had something more complicated happen to me. Though it was simpler it was more complicated, much like life to be that way. Okay important background stuff...I had been going out with a boy for two years. Big thing for a High School started relationship. He was one year older than me and had graduated the year before and was in college while I had just graduated High School the month before. I was in a depressed loop of finding I had almost no friends from all my twelve years of public school except for an ex-boyfriend who I really shouldn't have been hanging out with because he was a drug pusher and user and a class A jerk. Anyway I wasn't happy with my boyfriend. I no longer felt I loved him. So I went over to his house to break up with him. Even though he seemed like a normal guy and wasn't prone to violence or outbursts I thought I would be smart and stand on his doorstep not stepping foot inside to tell him I break with you. Which is exactly what I did. He responded by getting on his knee and asked me to marry him. I said no. He gave me a diamond to prove he had been planning this all along. I still said no, and was still outside while he was just inside the door. He started freaking out so I turned to walk away, he grabbed me, dragged me into his house, locked the door, I'm starting to freak out now too, then was screaming at me and punching me. Somehow he threw me backwards and I hit my head on the stairs and almost blacked out. But I was still very conscious how to dragged me up the stairs to his room where he undressed me and raped me, I still fought some...I think...but after hitting my head things were blurry for a while. I remember him telling me how great it was that we got over our little fight and he kept saying "I love you" over and over. He gave me the diamond and I told him I would take it back to my parents and so he let me leave. Maybe it was my head or what happened or both, but I just felt like I was in another world. The only thing I could think to do was go see my ex-boyfriend. He had called earlier asking if I wanted to have dinner with his parents and him and that was the only thing I could think of. So I drove to his house and I went inside and told all of them what had just happened. I begged them to help me. You want to know what they advised? They said they felt sorry for me but that kind of thing happens all the time and I should get over it. Then they started to ask me if I could prove he raped me but I didn't know what to say, it was hard to stand because of my head aching let along talk (I don't know how I mustered the will to drive a car). So they told me it would be harder on me to go to the police because I couldn't prove anything and I should just stay at their house for a few days and "heal up"...I complied because I didn't know what else to do or where else to go. So I was bed ridden for a few days and they quote unquote took care of me and told to forget anything bad ever happened. Of all the people on Earth aren't I so lucky to have found people like that? I spent a few years not even thinking about the bad thing that had happened to me then, but two years ago I was able to admit it happened and come to terms with how I failed to do justice when it would have been so easy. Its not been reported and I never saw my rapist boyfriend again. He never even tried to contact me so I have no idea what went on in his mind or what he is doing now. If you are still reading kudos to you. Want to know what happened to me when I was age eight? I've had a lot of time to think about the bad thing that happened to me when I was age eight. My neighbor was a boy who still looked like a child, no voice change no facial hair, and he wanted to be my "friend". Over a summer we became "friends". He was far from being a child in the respect that he had fully functioning genitalia and well...its important to note I had no idea what sex was at this age, and no one had ever told me about good touched and bad touches (thanks mom and dad!)...because he was a little older and smarter than me he coerced me into sexual play. Touching and body part kissing. I didn't like it but he always convinced me if I was his "friend" I would play with him this play. In short over the course of a summer he used me like a sex toy. In essense I lost my virginity at age eight but I wouldn't realize this until later in life. He also liked to do whatever he could to hurt me as much as possible. Now my parents warned me of the dangerous stranger, don't let a stranger get you in his car, or help him find his lost dog, but all this stranger fear was a cover for the real fear of a child being used for sex. And for some reason that real message is rarely conveyed to children, heaven forbid they know why they mustn't talk to stranger...or perhaps a neighbor. This has never been reported either. I feel guilty that I am saying all these things and how it could be interpreted that I hate men or something. For the record I don't hate anyone, not even those who hurt me and did bad things to me. I am afraid of them if I ever saw them again, but I have never hated any of them. For a long time I was very angry at my parents. I feel like they should have protected better when I was eight and later when I was thirteen. I feel anger at how cruel those people I begged for help were after I was raped when I was eighteen, that there are people who could care so little about me they used me because I "owed them" after they had "taken care of me" when I came to them for help. They never helped me. I've been able to talk too two people offline about these bad things. But I to be honest only one person really really knows every detail like how I've gone into here. This is part of my self prescribed therapy, talk about it. Too afraid to talk to people in public yet but this is a small step in that direction.

Accidental biting happened on both sides FYI. And he is the only one that that has occurred to me with. Maybe its his fault !! And no thanks to lessons...respectfully.

I did kiss a girl once. We had a class together in college and hanging out one night these two guys were watching us and kinda following us. She dared me to kiss her so we could blow them off by pretending to be a couple while also making them wish they could see more. I didn't mind the kiss...but the horrible taste of cigarettes I minded A LOT. It was just some lip kissing, no tongue. Probably won't kiss another girl again because why kiss someone I'm not gonna be in a relationship with?

Whenever my boyfriend and I have our eyes closed while kissing one of us always accidentally bites the other...no serious injuries yet though . But I think he and I are really compatible kissers, and personally he is the only person I have ever enjoyed kissing. I guess I'm more of an eye open type, but not totally wide open eyes, more like slow blinking so I can sneak peak at the other person. Every other guy I have kissed have been complete shut eyes. So they didn't notice me looking. However I didn't ever kiss that much with anyone because the mouth movements we could never get right and it wound up not being a good kiss. But my current boyfriend, what a kisser! Its honestly the most enjoyable part of my physical relationship with him. He tells me all the time he loves my kisses so maybe it has to do with that we are both open eye people, but not too much eye-thus the accidental bites. LoL

Actually I always thought that was what both people in a relationship did for each other no matter what gender a person was, you do for their partner (to a point of course) the things they have not done for themselves but have had done for them. And its that equally beneficial give and take that can help make a strong relationship. If its not equally beneficial than its not fair, thus past the "to a point" I just said. Way easier to say than to do, but thats my hope of what to get out of a relationship because I know there are some things I have not and will not do and would expect my man to do for me so in turn I would love to bestow whatever I can give to him.

1. In my adult life? Well when did I become an adult...honestly I'm still waiting for the magic moment to happen so I feel the change inside me, lol. Well I've never said "I love you" first in any relationship. So I don't think I can answer that. 2. I don't think there is a set amount of time to have feelings of love, but I do think people should wait a little bit to try and realize if they have feelings of lust at first sight instead of love at first sight. My current boyfriend I fell in lust with at first sight, but it wasn't until a year after knowing him that I really began to love him...but at the time we were not boyfriend/girlfriend. Its only recently we got together like that. So maybe wait at least a month at minimum to try and avoid confusing feelings.

I always considered a friend as someone I want for company, companionship, for fun. For dating/relationship I figure its like interviewing for marriage, and I do mean that literally. I always ask myself: "Is there mutual respect. How do we get along together. Are the one that I want to say "I do" with. Are we similar enough. Can our differences help us both. Can we talk about things that would break most friendships. et cetera..." Ya know, the tough stuff being possible along with some happy go lucky things that are mutually beneficial and wanted by the both of us.

You make a good point Eva at the present time I have no idea if he is in denial or making a conscious choice to "forget" we broke up. I would not to think he is making the choice too but I would be a fool to close off a possible explanation that you have presented to me. Honestly I would like to completely cut ties with him for at least six months so he could deal with it. I've been dumped before so I know that it does take time to get over a person when its not your choice to end the relationship, as he would prefer to be with me I do not feel the same. And will not be with him. My offer of friendship is because aside from me he only has one other person in the world he can really count on, and he (the best guy friend) lives far away and so distance is a bit of a problem for them getting together. He has no family members he can count on and no other friends nor a job he can go too. The family thing is not his fault, but not having a job is his own fault. Yet, not having a job really isolates him from the world and with me breaking up with him he isolates himself. Basically I do not want him to be stuck like what happens to people who get dumped at times. If could get a job and get away from his family I think he could start to move on. But thats easier said then done and I cannot make him do it even though he needs too. Well I was rambling there...if he does "forget" again there is a strong possibility I would say what you recommend, call him on it because I will not be manipulated in any way. I could check for a free counseling service and tell his best guy friend about it. We get along okay and he appreciates me trying to make sure my ex-boyfriend moves on from me.

(If a thread like this already exists somewhere please feel free to link me in the correct direction b/c I didn't see it) (and this is long but I try to get to the point with the details that matter) Last year in November I broke up with my, at the time, boyfriend. We had been going out for 4 years and had known each other as friends for 2 years previous to going out. I always thought of him as my friend more than my boyfriend which is just part of why I'm here now, for the person I was and hope I could be friends with again and help him with his denial-or just what is up with it. He seems to be denying to himself that I have broken up with him. I tried to be very clear and told him, face to face, that I do not love him and I am now a single woman and we are not a couple and this is how things are going to be. To seal this deal I told him I would refuse to see him for a month so he could have time to comprehend with what I did to him, we were kinda living together so I hoped him being without me there would confirm the fact in his mind. In small doses I tried to see if we could see each other in just a friendly manner, but he kept asking me if things between us were "okay now" as if just being in the same room suddenly means we are a couple again. I then refuse to see him again for a number of weeks but told him we could keep lightly in touch over the phone or email if he needed a friend. That was a few weeks ago, just last week I again had to tell him that we are not a couple and I am a single woman and we are not boyfriend and girlfriend. Each time I've told him this, now totaling three times, he has reacted like it was the first time I told him. Bawling, being depressed, isolating himself. I tried to help him out by contacting his best guy friend and telling him what was going on and that they should go for a guy's night out. The point is he seems to suddenly and magically forget that we broke up every few weeks. I'd like to say he could go see a counselor of some sort but he has no job to pay for it or a ride to go see one, if one exists. Aside from his one guy friend I was the only other person helping him get through life as his family are dysfunctional drug pushers and users. Thankfully he does not drink or use any kind of drugs. Part of this problem I think stems from I was his first in everything. He first kiss, first love, first time having sex. I didn't think about it when we first started our relationship but thats a lot of firsts to have tied all into one person. First and only girlfriend for him. How can I, as an ex-girlfriend, get it in his head for good that I do not love him? I'm at a lose for what to do, whether I do nothing or do something it doesn't seem to matter, he is in denial and part of me feels for this person who was a dear friend of mine. So its for the friendship we once had I want to help him, but to clear in no way do I love him or would ever pursue a relationship with him now. My problem is how to get him to completely comprehend FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL that we were not meant to be...help appreciated.

Blue Skittles, you say that your boyfriend knows about your past but does he know that you are currently bothered and feel bad about it? Since it seems like he has never dealt with any of the things you have personally experienced he may not know how to talk about it with you, thus why he would say it doesn't bother him. It may be helpful if you decide what it is you would want from him concerning things about your life in the past and tell him what it is you want in order to help who you are right now. In my opinion that would both you and he get a better understanding of each other and that could, in turn, help you feel better about yourself. Afterall who you are right now is everyone and everything that has ever touched your life. Even if you do not like some of the things that happened along the way to becoming the person you are now...even though you are still moving forward in turning your life around as you said. Keep at it and good luck.