Dealing with Trust Issues
Hey all, I'm Carley. I am 25 years old and am from Michigan. My whole life, I have been very forgiving, trusting, loving and selfless. I trust everyone and give others too many chances. I was raised by wonderful parents, kind of sheltered. When my parents tried to have "the talk" with me, I said "EWWW MOMMMM! I'm never going to do that!" I was naive.
Anyway, in May 2013, I was raped twice by someone I had known for over a year and thought I could trust. The first time I was drunk and don't remember much from that time other than something happened against my will. The second time was 2 weeks after and I wasn't drinking at all. I didn't feel well but he tried to convince me to drink before he came over... it didn't matter that I hadn't been drinking, he still did what he wanted. It has really been hard. Since then, I have trusted people, cautiously, and when I felt comfortable, I let my guard down all the way and got extremely hurt... every time. Now, I will trust others but have such a hard time actually trusting anyone completely, even my boyfriend of 2 years. It's not always trust regarding sex, but can be about anything. Although, my sex life has been more boring since that happened. I don't look forward to sex as much and don't enjoy it as much as I used to. I don't know... does anyone else have similar experiences as a result to rape/sexual assault?
Carley
@ccook1992 I have experienced something similar but I dealt with it a lot differently. Sex didn't mean anything to me anymore, so I just gave it to anyone who would show me even a drop of interest. Until I found my current boyfriend, he gives me hope that maybe I'm not always going to be a victim. But I do still have copious amounts of trust issues and every day seems to be something different but I just try to tell myself "what's going to happen is going to happen, regardless if I worry about it or not"
A good strategy I've found, has been to write down my thoughts while I'm aggravated and confront my boyfriend when I am calm and have had time to relax.