How She Remembers Her #MeToo Experience

A Voice for the Victim

Joy, in 2024.

(To hear Joy tell this story in her own voice, please use the voiceover available just above her picture.)

I’m afraid I don’t have a lot of memories of that night. In the hours afterwards, I worked hard to forget it. I wanted to forget it. 

I needed to forget it. Everything within me needed for that night not to have happened.

But it did, and here’s what I remember:

I remember him asking just to feel it; he just wanted to know what it felt like. I said I wasn’t sure; I didn’t think so. He asked again and I said, “I don’t know.” And I think I remember saying no, but I’m not sure.

I remember feeling no. And I remember NOT saying yes. But in a second it was like everything that I had been proud of, everything I believed made me different and special (being a virgin when fewer and fewer people around me were) was gone. 

I don’t remember the ride back to my dormitory. All I remember is going into the dorm when he dropped me off and starting to cry. Somehow I found myself with another female student who was a little older than me. She asked me what was wrong. I told her I thought I had just been raped. She told me she was sure I was wrong. She didn’t ask me to tell her what happened. Besides, I was crying so hard I don’t think I could have gotten the story out.

But she told me she knew who I was dating and that he was a good guy. She said I just needed to take a shower and go to bed; that I would feel better in the morning. She said doing anything else could ruin the lives of me and my boyfriend. I’m not sure the exact words of the interaction, but these are the sentiments that I left with. So, I took a shower and went to bed.

In the weeks afterwards I was a mess. The rope that tethered me to my foundation was gone. I felt dirty, like I was floating around with nothing to ground me. That one action threw my world into disarray.

Have you ever had a bad experience where you second-guessed every moment that came before it? Maybe you’ve been in a car accident, and you thought about how maybe if you’d just waited a little longer before leaving home, then you wouldn’t have been in the car accident. It’s maddening to think about. Nothing can change the fact that it happened. If only I’d…

Certainly, the response I received from the older student wasn’t much help. She did nothing to validate me. She validated him. 

It seems a little like gaslighting. Like, something happened to me and then she told me the thing that happened…didn’t happen. But gaslighting is a form of intentional abuse. That’s not what she was doing.

Honestly, she wasn’t much older than I was. I have no idea what her own life experiences had been. Maybe she thought I’d had sex then regretted it? I don’t know why she reacted the way she did. I think she was in disbelief and denial. Rape is a heavy word, even when it’s true. On a small, Christian college campus like the one I was attending, the idea that date rape could happen wasn’t really something anyone could think about. Certainly not perpetrated by a guy like Jeff. It wasn’t something she could consider being true. But it was, and it was him.

In the last post, Jeff described the conversation we had the next day. I don’t remember it, but I have no reason to think it didn’t happen the way he portrayed it. After that, we didn’t talk about it again, other than me referencing it the next time we had sex. “I want it to be my choice.” I had told him. 

But after that, we didn’t discuss it for years. Not until our marriage was on the brink of ending and he wanted to address what he did. Even then, it seemed like it was on his timeline, and a last-ditch effort to save a marriage that provided him comfort. By then, I’d seen that things wouldn’t likely change, and supporting him was no longer something I was going to do on a one-way street. I carried a lot of baggage for the both of us for a long time.

Which reminds me…

A few years ago I heard a podcast with Amy Schumer. She was on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah. Amy described how her boyfriend, a guy she cared about, started to have sex with her without her consent while she was sleeping. It just kind of happened.

While the details and circumstances were different, so much about the story was familiar to me- How it wasn’t a guy who jumped out of the bushes and violently attacked me. How her experience was with a guy she cared about. The emotional trauma of realizing she’d just been raped. The unfair need to care for the emotions of her boyfriend when he realized what he’d done. The way people doubt women when they say they’ve been sexually assaulted. The fact that while she didn’t want him to be sitting in a jail cell, she would have appreciated an acknowledgment that what he did to her was wrong.

It was all familiar, and I was grateful Amy shared her story. Hearing her story and remembering mine made me wonder how many people have this kind of experience. She referred to it at “grape,” short for gray-area rape. I think she’d agree there wasn’t much gray about it. It was the relationship she had with the guy that made it feel less black and white.

I’ve been asked why I stayed with him after that night, or even after the other times when he escalated things physically before that. I’m not sure, and conjecture likely isn’t useful.

But I’d received some messages growing up that likely influenced my decision-making at that age.

In high school, boys hadn’t been particularly good to me. For instance, I was once stood up by the same guy, a soccer player, three times. As I left the restaurant where we were to meet for the supposed third date, alone and in tears, I found him in the parking lot with his soccer team. He’d made a bet with them that he could stand up the same girl three times. They were all handing him money as I left the parking lot.

The girls in high school weren’t much better. I was kind of a nerd, I suppose. This was back in the day when being a “nerd” wasn’t chic, and it made me a target of bullying and teasing. I was also slow to develop physically. My self-esteem was almost non-existent.

Even within my small group of friends, things weren’t healthy. We were all constantly creating drama for ourselves, picking on our shortcomings, ganging up on each other one by one. We’d be the target of ridicule from our friends one day, and then join up with the others in the group to target someone else the next. It was somewhat of a vicious cycle.

Church, the place where we’re supposed to receive unconditional love and care wasn’t much better. In fact it might have been worse because I didn’t expect to be treated well at school anyway. The girls in the youth group would talk about me within earshot, and for a while, youth group wasn’t a great experience. I felt alone. Later in high school this got a bit better and I found a friend in the pastor’s daughter, but the emotional damage had been done.

The messaging I got from the church about sex was deplorable too. Everything was about staying a virgin until you were married. I went to one youth conference where I heard horrible analogies about girls who had sex before they were married. “Once you lose your virginity it’s like being an Oreo without the cream filling, or gum that’s already been chewed.” At least, this was what they told the girls. I’m not sure what they told the guys.

So, why did I stay with him? I guess didn’t know there was another choice.

Besides, I liked the guy. You know, other than his inability to control his hormones. He never threatened me. He never yelled at me. We argued a lot, but that stuff would come and go. He was on the baseball team, and he never made a bet that he could stand me up three times. He sang in the choir with me. I liked his family.

Actually, we did break up with a few times. He didn’t try to make me stay. He didn’t even try to prevent me from dating some other guys. In the end, I came back to him.

It’s hard for people to understand why I stayed, given what happened. But it’s even harder for them to understand how happy we are together today. But something changed in him. I’m not sure what made the difference, and it wasn’t like he became perfect or anything, but things changed.

When we went to counseling, I was sure we were done. His crying confession to me that day looks like he was trying to manipulate me. I see that, I suppose. But what he didn’t discuss in that story was that by the time that conversation happened we’d pretty much arrived at an agreement to separate. But we had two children and were going to have to know how to co-parent. The date rape was something we needed to discuss. So I thought counseling was a good place to do it. Besides, I was hoping our counselor could help move him along.

Then, something I didn’t expect happened.

It was in our first meeting with the counselor, Jimmy. He asked me what I wanted to get out of the counseling experience. I told him that I thought Jeff was a nice guy. I thought he was a great father. He was funny, and people liked him. I even liked him, as a person. But I also told him he was a terrible husband. He wasn’t a good partner and I wasn’t going to carry him anymore. I didn’t love him anymore and couldn’t imagine a scenario where I thought I could again. Jimmy looked at Jeff and asked him what he thought about what I said.

“Jimmy… I want to do everything I possibly can to change that. I’ll do anything. I’ll give up anything I have to give up. I’ll change anything I have to change to be worthy of her love again.”

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but it wasn’t that. I was skeptical, but that was the night when he began to change. He gave up the “dreams” he had for his life. He got a steady job with an income and started entry-level. He began to pick up his crap around the house. He started to do things that were important to me.

He took actions that showed he meant what he said. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe like he repented of the stuff that didn’t work well in our marriage. Don’t get me wrong, there were times when he’d slip up. But he’d also acknowledge when he did and work harder. Eventually, the “nice guy who was a good father that people liked” became someone I learned to love again. I even began to see some ways I could change in our marriage.

I realize I’m a bit off-topic from “that night.” But I suppose there’s more to the story than just that night. I wish it hadn’t happened. But when he said he was sorry, and then worked to prove it, I guess I just began to be able to look beyond it.

Joy, during her college years.