Published on 12, July, 2020
I have known my friend for 17 years and have been best friends with her for at least 10 of those years. I stayed with her for a few weeks.When I told her that a guy she was seeing r*aped me i could tell she didn't really believe me. i am very good at reading people so i knew straight away she didn't believe me. i somewhat understood why she didn't believe because I'm not the best communicator and didn't explain everything in full as it was a sensitive topic and i wasn't ready to talk to her about. i wasn't ready to talk about it because i was scared she wouldn't believe me and i was also scared of accepting what had happened to me that night however i still told her because i felt that it was my responsibility to do so for her own safety. I asked her if shes going to ask him about the situation and she said no. She then messaged the guy to hear his side of the story and they had a phone call, once that phone call was done she said that he had said that the sex was consensual then she asked so who's lying? that really hurt me because shes the friend i never lie to,i was not even ready to speak on the matter but knew i had to tell her because i don't want him to hurt her the way he hurt me. After this we had a conversation and she explained that she does believe me she just had doubts about what had happened because i didn't explain the situation properly. i understood her doubts and decided to let the situation go as i just wanted it to be over with. her saying that she believed me made me feel happy as i just wanted the situation to be over with. after that we never spoke about it again but then she started mentioning small things about him which really irritated me but i didn't realize how much it irritated me until a few weeks later as sometimes it is hard for me to understand/process my feelings. she once watched his snap chat story and made the comment that he's so rich and she also once showed me his snap chat story which was a video of a girl he went on a date with, whilst showing me the snap she said to me that it makes her feel happy when she sees him chilling with ugly girls. in my head i just felt like why do you care who he is with i just told you he r*aped me but whatever. of course i never said that to her I just didn't respond. we continued to be cool after this like nothing happened. At some point I had to go home as I had responsibilities to get back to as did she. We continued to face time/ text but after sometime the reality of the situation hit. I realized the fact that she was still mentioning him to me meant that she either didn't believe me or that shes just very inconsiderate. Either way I am very hurt and I have stopped calling her and have been ignoring her calls. sometimes id reply saying that i would call her back because i would actually intend on doing so but every time i would think of calling her i just cant do it as i am too hurt. i love her so much but I'm so hurt and i don't think this is something that i can move past its sad because i really want to be able to and I'm still holding onto the possibility of being able to move past it. i know she feels a type of way because i always you used to talk to her about how important communication in a friendship is and here i am not communicating. the longer i go without talking to her i risk the possibility of losing her as a friend forever. apart of me feels like i don't owe her an explanation but a part of me feels like i do if i still want this friendship. i don't know what to do. i don't want to talk about this situation as it is a traumatic topic for me which is the biggest reason as to why i haven't reached out to her and explain why I haven't been speaking to her. i don't want relive those events and i also don't want to be invalidated.i don't know what to do. can i have some advice please?
I'm so sorry this has happened to you. This shouldn't be primarily about how it's affected your friend. You deserve support and to feel your feelings matter, especially because sexual assault robs you feeling that you matter or deserve to be taken care of. From what you've described about your friend it sounds like she isn't able to provide that for you, for whatever reason. For now, I would try to stop expecting that from her and focus on recovery. There are people that do know how to support you so I would reach out for that support because you deserve it and to feel better. You can contact https://rapecrisis.org.uk/get-help/want-to-talk/ . There is an option to chat online if you don't want to speak over the phone. Don't expect yourself to be able to continue like nothing has happened, just like you wouldn't expect it of anyone else if they had experienced trauma. I understand that you don't want to talk about what happened. I'm a sexual assault survivor too so I get it. When we experience assault our brains and nervous system don't process what's happening to us in the way it does for non-traumatic events. Talking and getting appropriate support helps move those traumatic memories from the area of our brain that went in to defense mode during the assault, to a place where it can be processed safely. You can let the person at the helpline know you are autistic because they will have had training and understand that your autism impacts how you are processing what happened to you.
Thank you for your response and time taken to respond to me. I will stop expecting her to be good friend and also visit the site you have linked when I am ready. Your words of encouragement mean a lot to me and have helped me feel as though I'm not alone in this matter. Would you suggest that I speak to her again or not?
No, not unless it's the kind of chat that firmly states that you need her to take you seriously if your friendship is going to survive. You need support not to be re-traumatised at every turn and gaslit through minimisation about your experiences.
You have worded it perfectly. I felt exactly that in the moment. She did minimize my situation