People-Pleasing and the Importance of Knowing What We Want

Part I, Chapter 3: “What Am I Supposed to Do with This?”

From my book, Unsolicited Advice: A Consent Educator's (Canceled) Memoir, only on Substack.

The book starts here.

Previous

CW: Sexual Assault, substance abuse

Live Classes • Recorded Classes • Workbooks • 1:1’s • Consulting • Merch! • Share the Load Podcast • You’re Doing It Wrong Podcast • Intimacy Coordination for TV, Film, + Theater

January 28, 2021, Thursday, 10:35pm

Holy shit. My brain is exploding. “Safety is critical for play?” I’ve been saying it like a broken record. My sexuality was repressed with A because I didn’t feel safe. I didn’t feel safe because the first time we had sex, he assaulted me. So much of my shame and trauma around sex were because my body was trying to protect me. All the fear of being frigid, bad in bed, all of that is because my creative voice got squashed. I didn’t feel safe. And…I never went down on him. Not once. He couldn’t guilt me into it. Those were my boundaries and I held them. He was not going to bully me into it so he could finish when I needed to stop because I was in pain. I was in pain because my body was trying to stop me. My body was trying to stop me because it knew he wasn’t safe. I had my “no” even then and I held it. And when I didn’t, my body did. My body knows. It knows so deeply. It gives me so much confidence to know that I can trust my body.

My brain is flipping out right now. Connected. Pressure. Like excitement. I just asked my body what it’s trying to tell me. It’s saying that being my authentic self will heal me. I’m remembering choosing to believe in god for the sake of my health. The thing is, I had to actually believe it. Literally god the concept will heal me. And I believe it. That’s acting. It’s not pretend. You actually believe it.

This is intense. I think something is happening to me.

At 19, I moved into a house in Austin, TX with my former RA at Sarah Lawrence College and someone I had seen around and been very attracted to at school. In learning that I was going to be living with him, I decided that any insecurity, discomfort, or self-consciousness that I felt around my crush had to go because I needed to be comfortable in my own home. The day I got there, my former RA pleaded with me, “Just don’t sleep with him”—referring to our roommate. I was so confused.

It turned out he’d made it known that he was attracted to me before I’d arrived, and my RA had a crush on him. She was jealous before I even got there, and didn’t want to deal with her roommates dating in front of her. We immediately had a strong connection and obvious chemistry. After about six months of getting very close as roommates, we started dating. He was in an open relationship with someone who was doing a year abroad. This made me very insecure. I assumed she was the one for him and I was temporary. I compared myself to her and figured he was doing the same.

The first time we had sex, I got us a condom and told him I wasn’t on birth control. I handed him the condom and we got back to it. Instead of putting on the condom, though, he put himself inside me and began thrusting—all without any discussion. At that point we had had no conversation about STI’s. I justified his actions and thought he knew better than I did, or knew something I didn’t. Or, conversely, that he didn’t know that precum could get someone pregnant and was acting out of well-intentioned ignorance. I told myself that he must have been tested recently and knows that he’s STI-free, because he has my best interests at heart. I dissociated and watched the whole thing happen from above. My body went numb. I couldn’t feel anything he was doing. I remember looking up at him and seeing from his face that he was experiencing pleasure and feeling so confused because I felt nothing. I said nothing.

~ if this discount is still inaccessible, Venmo what you’re able to pay for the book to @sharetheload with the abbreviation “UA" and your email address in the memo and I will give you a comp subscription for 1 year ~

This incident is the greyest of greys. Was it nonconsensual? Absolutely. Was consent taking place? Not at all. Was this rape? I don’t think so. Was it assault? I believe so. Was it stealthing? Close, but not quite. I didn’t speak up or say no. Yes, I was having a dissociative trauma response, but although his actions led to that response, he didn’t cause it. Did it traumatize me? Oh, you betcha. After we split up, I didn’t date or have sex for more than a year because I didn’t want to put anyone else through what I thought I had put him through. I thought I had hurt him by making him feel like I didn’t care about him. I thought I had better learn…gosh I don’t even know… how to be better at sex so that I could make other people feel valued . When I did become sexually active again, I would have panic attacks during sex for years after. I spent countless hours trying to convince therapists and friends that he hadn’t been at fault. I finally underwent EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing) to stop the panic attacks. It had an enormous healing effect and has been shown to be very effective in cases of trauma. The EMDR Institute describes it as “a psychotherapy treatment that …. facilitates the accessing and processing of traumatic memories and other adverse life experience to bring these to an adaptive resolution.” (emdr.com) Because EMDR shows such quantifiable results, it’s pretty easy to get covered by insurance.