exaaactly. in my case it led to a lot of manipulation and coercion, which is a whole other shitshow, but it really can be dangerous.

I was definitely the more inexperienced one, and found myself really ignoring my own boundaries and needs because I felt guilty about not satisfying his.

tooooo real. this caused such an imbalance of power in one of my relationships and was so much.

new project requiring red hair??

I'm autistic/adhd and struggle with knowing when I have to go to the bathroom but the back pain is always what gets my attention

genuinely thought this was just a me thing 🧍🏼‍♀️🧍🏼‍♀️

omg I hope you’re okay!

Absolutely, and I feel like it’s ultimately going to come to that. It’s just hard since I lost a lot of my friends because of this abuser.

and i don't doubt that her honesty wouldn't have hurt me as well, but it would have been a very different kind of hurt than asking if there was any contact and being told no, and then finding out about it from another party.

and while part of me can understand "not wanting to hurt my feelings", it's like... you knew this man abused and SAed your best friend and these people defended him, and you chose to write and interact with them anyway? knowing it would hurt me?

it makes me feel like our friendship meant nothing.

this is definitely part of it - like we met because of a writing site and my abuser was part of this. she knew all of this and what i went through intimately and when i cut out the people who participated in that harm and/or defended my abuser she continued to talk and write with them behind my back

That's the part I keep getting stuck on - like I'm not denying that I probably said some hurtful things while upset, but when the sole reason those things were said were because I was in pain from her actions, it doesn't feel like a "we hurt each other" situation.

Thank you! I'm sure some of my words when I found out could be considered rude or cruel, but it was fully because of her lying to me and causing harm. I don't doubt it's painful, but it's bullshit to act like it's equal levels of pain.

which yeah, I'm not denying that my reaction included me saying some things that were hard to hear when I found out, and not denying that those things potentially caused her distress.

but it's completely unfair to say that this is "equal damage", right?