About 7 years ago, I started going out with my, at the time, best friend (I had known him for 11 years). He was sweet, kind and funny and I loved spending time with him. We soon noticed that we were becoming more than friends. One night we kissed, and soon after he became my boyfriend. I never thought that he, who was so gentle and kind, would later cause me to have so many problems with my mental health.
During the first weeks of our relationship, he was sweet, affectionate and he took good care of me. He was the perfect boyfriend. After some time he invited me over to his house and I decided to go. As soon as I got there he started touching me and he took my clothes off. I was young, I didn’t understand what was about to happen. He pushed me to his bed and started touching me so violently that I was hurting. I was shocked. I couldn’t understand what was happening- I couldn’t make sense of it. Soon after he undressed himself and told me “Stay still. Don’t move” as he put his body on mine. I didn’t move. I was desperately trying to understand how the person who I loved so much could do something like that. Just before he could take my virginity he noticed that I had stained his sheets; it was my period. He moved away, with a disgusted look on his face and I only managed to say “I’m sorry”. I got dressed and left his house.
In the following weeks he became a person who I never imagined to have next to me. He was arrogant; he looked at other girls in front of me; once, after a party, I had to get the metro by myself at night because he had left me to go hang out with his friends. It had become a nightmare. I found the courage to leave him. I wasn’t okay, I was sad all the time. When I broke up with him, he got really mad. He gave me the fault for everything.
After sometime, I started going out with my first highschool boyfriend, when he found out he told me that I was a bad person, that I had hurt him. He put me in a bad light in front of our friends, who stopped talking to me. For a long time I didn’t like myself. I thought I didn’t deserve to be happy. Even now, after all these years, I’m not always comfortable when I have sex. Only with time I could slowly recover from what had happened. Now, after a four-year relationship with my current boyfriend – who is a really good person – I am slowly healing. It isn’t easy. But I believe that after a painful experience it is possible to start over and I am doing just that.