Angry at my boyfriend’s attitude towards my experience of sexual violence
I am in a bit of a stuck place at the minute. I am struggling how and if I can move forward in a relationship with my partner of 6 months. I have recently experienced a rape (May 2016) - he was an ex boyfriend at the time. I have also experienced numerous other forms of sexual violence throughout my life unfortunately. A large majority of this was under 18 and in very different circumstances to each other - no link whatsoever. My boyfriend has said he is supportive of me, for months said he believes in me, it is not my fault but as I have disclosed some other experiences he appears to be victim blaming. After a difficult week I went out last week and got plastered, struggled to get in the taxi and made a idiot of myself (as most people do when they are mega drunk), however he was pretty pissed off at me with this. Fair enough, nobody likes an irritating drunk but what has really upset me is that he linked this behaviour to my experiences of sexual violence, saying that he could understand if I was behaving the way I did whilst drunk that I could be "preyed upon". He suggested that my behaviour is perhaps why I have experienced so much sexual violence, "most people have one or two things happen but to have so much.." I took this as him saying there must be something inherent about me, my actions and behaviour. He said all this whilst telling me that he was NOT victim-blaming. Is it too fucking hard for people to accept that the responsibility of abuse lies with the abuser???! How he can connect the dots and find a commonality / theory - the theory being me! Is this what people do when they cannot make sense of it and have no experience of sexual violence? Am I asking too much for people just to get it? Why don't people just get it? Do I really want to be in a relationship with someone that doesn't get it? Probably not. I feel like he is some faux feminist - lots to say but little to base it on and extremely hurtful! I bloody like him though but this just takes the biscuit - don't know if I can move forward from this one. Any thoughts?
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