Angry with the guy who didn't rape me

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Question: I was really nervous about moving into my own place, I hate to be alone, always have. My friend John said he would stay with me for the first week just so I wouldn't be alone. He stayed for two days and then went MIA. A casual acquaintance came over and to make a long story short that guy ended up raping me. What's crazy is I'm more angry with John than I am with the guy who did it. I just keep flipping back and forth from blaming John and blaming myself. What is wrong with me?

Answer: Your mind is trying to convince you that this world could be a safe place if you can just solve all the puzzles and find all the traps. She (that is to say your mind) is afraid that if you just accept that it wasn't really John's fault and it wasn't your fault then you will realize that this world is unsafe and you will just want to give up. Thus she is spinning you in circles to use up your energy and keep you from choosing oblivion, and so far it sounds like it is working.

Acquaintance rape is devastatingly common and rarely prosecuted. Recently a friend told me that she wrote an article for her college paper about an acquaintance date rape which led the girl to drop out of school. At the time her professors hailed her for speaking up but the guys on campus felt betrayed by her article. 20 years later at a reunion her male friends still blamed her for vilifying their friends.

Am I surprised that you blame yourself for this happening? Of course not, but it makes me so weary. "No means No" does not go anywhere near far enough. I don't know if you even said No, to this acquaintance but it shouldn't matter, you should not have to say anything, if you are not actively encouraging him he needed to stop.

We need to train our young men to understand that if you are not being intimate (connecting deeply with your partner as a whole person, not just as an object to utilize in achieving orgasm) then you should not be sexual.

John let you down. He was not there for you and something terrible happened and you should be angry with him. This however, is not his fault. You do not need to keep him as a friend but do not try to lay this at anyone's feet but the man who did it.

You have survived a horrible trauma and the pain is trying to release itself in anyway you can allow it to. I hope that you are involved in some sort of counseling for this to help you heal as quickly as possible. Most states have a number of agencies that provide free counseling for survivors of sexual assault. In the Chicago area Porchlight counseling services works with college age survivors, or places like Zacharias Center work with survivors of any age.

To sum up, when you have survived a trauma do not expect your feelings to be rational or appropriate in scale until you have done a good deal of healing work. Working with a therapist you can begin to understand why one thing triggers you more than another, but only with time and work will your feelings begin to fall back into their normal shape.