Worried I sexually assaulted someone

Hello, I am a victim of rape myself and I am worried that I have repeated the cycle of abuse and done something that crosses the line with someone else (not my attacker). When I was a young woman I was raped, and I think I went into a severe denial of the event, maybe suppression or repression whichever one of those. I didn’t acknowledge it was a “true” sexual assault, I didn’t tell anyone what happened to me until a year after I was wondering if it really was assault. About year and a half after I started to have these “episodes” where the denial shifted away, piece by piece, until ow about 3 years after the event I think I am fully facing the reality of what happened that night.

As the denial about what happened to me left, I also gained a lot of insight into my behaviors and lifestyle these past few years. After the rape I for some reason felt justified giving in to sex addiction and it’s like my sex drive changed and morphed into something I didn’t recognize in myself previously. I drank a lot of alcohol. I was functionally an alcoholic the year after I first began to acknowledge what happened to me was real. I didn’t realize or think of it as numbing myself or denial. I was just living the good life doing me and the rape was something constantly in the back of my mind but not causing me much distress. I just felt nothing about it. Then occasionally confused. Then it would hit me fully in the face for like a second, every once in a while. Then a few minutes, each week. I don’t know how exactly to describe it but it got to the point I’d sob days at a time and have “no idea why”, but it was like I knew I was in pain but I was scared to acknowledge exactly how much.

In this time of dysfunctional behavior, I believe I sexually assaulted a former friend. We had been friends for a while and then hooked up one night, and continued this little “fling” for like 3 weeks, nothing major. During one of the hook ups we were making out, I was drunk, and I thought things were progressing to sex, or assumed they were going to. I was grinding on her thigh while we made out, and I put my hand in her underwear to start fooling around with her genitals. I didn’t stop the make out session to ask, I just slowly let my hand travel there and she didn’t stop me so i assumed it was okay. I fooled around for a bit and seeing it got zero reaction from her, she just didn’t seem into it so I stopped and we kept making out. I kept grinding on her thigh and she was letting me grope her chest as we were making out, and I had an orgasm on her leg. I knew it was going to happen, but I did bot warn her or check in with her in any way at all to see if she was okay with things going that far. In a sense, I feel like I got off to her body without her consent. And that is sexual assault.

If this is the case, I know I have a lot of work ahead of me and a long journey to setting myself straight and fixing this horrible path I fear I am headed down. This all happened quite a while ago. Many months after our fling ended, our friendship also took some space, during which was the first time I thought more deeply about the incident. We were not talking at the time, but I was so worried I contacted her anyway to apologize if I had crossed any boundaries with her in that way. She didn’t respond. But a few months after she contacted me to wish me a happy holiday season. So, she herself never said she felt assaulted or any type of way about what happened, but I know that fact in itself doesn’t mean that everything was fine. I never confronted my rapist. I acted like everything was fine after. I even met up with him a few more times and wished him the best back in his home country. I just wanted to completely deny that he had actually what he had done, I think.


Any advice?

Hello, and welcome.

I've moved your post into the more appropriate section for the content. If you feel the need to talk about your own past history of abuse, then please feel free to open up in the forum you'd originally tried to post to. Remorse is where we want this thread, however.

I think that you're being a little hard on yourself. Y'all were making out. She didn't stop making out with you. She didn't tell you to stop, she didn't try to stop. You haven't mentioned if she's confirmed bisexual or lesbian- maybe she just realised that another girl wasn't her cuppa. I know girls who have cooled on friendships when they realised their friend was lesbian and trying to make moves on them. Not that they hate them, or won't talk to them or anything, but they are just like yep nope not me. Without knowing more, how do I know she wasn't just experimenting, and when it started to get real, she bailed on the concept. Unless she tells you, you can't know for sure what was going on in her head or what she thinks. In the meantime, all you have is that she didn't seem interested in getting too sexual, but she didn't ask it to stop, either.

I know in things like this- as is so common in this forum (the Remorse forum), that they feel Black and White- or at least, people try to force it into such. But Life is shades of grey. Just because she might have decided she didn't want to go all the way, or decided she didn't like it, or whatever, doesn't automatically make this sexual assault. Who, in the heat of the moment, stops on a dime to ask 'is this acceptable'? I wager very few people. You made a move, she didn't respond the way you expected, and maybe there's a possibility from that point she just stuck it out to the end of the make out session, but it doesn't necessarily mean she thinks she was sexually assaulted in any meaningful sense. I've had people do things with/to me, that if I wanted to, I could interpret them as sexual assault, but I don't, because I don't- things were what they were in the moment, and I don't give it a second thought. It's a leap to automatically assume she feels violated. Sometimes, disinterest is merely disinterest.

I’m sorry to hear what happened to you and I hope you’re finding healing from it.

As for what you did, I do not think that is sexual assault at all. I don’t even think this is something you should hang on to whatsoever. It just concerns me how much you're overanalyzing this event and being hard on yourself; which is what I think you should focus on instead. You should not be focusing on looking for any fault in your actions here. You strike me as a very thoughtful and kind person.
I wish you all the best and hope you can let go of this incident.

I'm sorry for what happened to you and also for what I'm about to say because I'm not entirely in agreement with the above two responses.

You are definitely looking into things too much. You cannot figure this out by yourself. If you're afraid you did something you shouldn't have, the only way to know for sure in this situation is to ask.
People can freeze up when they feel assaulted. It could very well be that her lack of interest in your actions was precisely that. That's where I disagree with the people above. Disinterest means that you are violating the person, no matter what. That's kind of a big thing. If you're not interested and someone still does it to you, they assaulted you. Simple as that.
However, from what you're describing, she did kiss you back. Maybe she was uncertain and you noticed so you pulled back. That'd be a good thing. You listened to her body cues in the heat of the moment. If that is what happened then don't be too hard on yourself. Talk to her about it to be sure, but going by what you said this shouldn't be what you think it is.
Now there is a small part of me that is concerned you may be holding out on us, mostly because you gave a very lengthy justification for your actions. I am sorry for what happened to you, but I'm wondering if either a) this experience has made you remember the traumatic experience you went through and you're actually looking for support with that. Or b) you did more or know very well you did something wrong and are now trying to make yourself feel better about it.
Not many people would consider option b, and I realise I come across rather cruel for suggesting it. I am sorry for that. It is likely due to my own bitterness concerning the topic as well as my mistrust of people, but it is how this comes across to me.
In either case, you need to talk about what happened. To you and what you did to her. It will eat you up otherwise. The first step is to be fully honest about both experiences and then you can start accepting it.

I genuinely wish you all the best in achieving closure.