Member-only story
Why We Lose Ourselves as Women
Hint: It’s part of the job description
Every now and then, I have nightmares about an incident that happened about five years ago — something that only belongs in nightmares. I still remember his exact words. How many times he pushed and pushed, becoming increasingly inappropriate with every exchange.
Most of all, I remember how it felt in my body. My stomach felt sick, as if I was going to vomit — that familiar feeling of disgust that is unique to women when we encounter men who engage in a kind of sexual behavior that I can only describe as sickening. I also felt like a tuning fork that had just been struck with a sledgehammer. Every part of my body and soul were ringing so violently that I felt physically disoriented.
I didn’t understand at the time that I was caught in the web of a sexual predator. Or rather, I didn’t know intellectually. My body, however, was telling me very clearly that something was seriously wrong.
I tried pushing back: putting up boundaries, explaining my feelings, and even directly confronting him at one point. But each time, he came back with a sob story about how rejected he’d always felt by women and how no one had ever really paid attention to him or made him feel special.
And in response to this, I did what I’d always felt pressured to do: I forgave him for violating my boundaries even though he did not make any effort to change his aggressive behavior, I apologized for my boundaries, and I listened to his complaints about how horrific his life was for hours.
When he made yet another move to sexually coerce me, I felt less and less able to respond with boundaries or to share my true feelings. In all honesty, I couldn’t stand him. There was something about him that repulsed me, a feeling I wouldn’t understand until later. I didn’t want to talk on the phone with him let alone have sex with him. But the more he told me how much he felt hurt by the world, the more trapped I felt. Wouldn’t it make me a monster to draw hard lines with him or share my honest feelings when he was clearly so damaged?
I talked to friends about it, hoping they would encourage me to hold firm to my original boundaries…and maybe even give me permission to walk away in light of the fact that…
