And My Family Loved Him

My first serious relationship, but not first love, was actually my fourth. I was 16 years old in the 11th grade and he was in the year above. He was my friend before he was my boyfriend. We'd hang out and go for walks and just laugh. He'd pick me up in his car and my mom would be mystified that I was at the age now where my boyfriend could drive. I enjoyed the time I spent with him, our jokes and pranks, but I didn't love him. Something kept me from loving him. But he loved me and I liked that.

There comes a time in a young relationship, or in any relationship, really, where one party is ready for the next step and the other has to make a decision. Do we stay where we are or do we keep progressing? When he wanted to have sex for the first time, it was a couple months into our relationship and I wasn't ready. I told him I wasn't, that I need more time. I decided to stay where we were and he chose not to listen.

This decision led to hands on my breasts, down my shorts, and hundreds of empty apologies when I pushed hands away...only for them to return. He was trying to ease me into the thought of sex with him not realizing that it wasn't making me comfortable. I started to fear spending time with him. That again I would find hands down my jeans and I would just give up. That I would just let it happen even though I didn't want it. I would ignore his texts for days, I would only hang out with him in public places with others so that he couldn't, wouldn't touch me like he did in private. I started to have doubts about myself. Why didn't I want to have sex with him? Was I gay? Asexual? Why didn't I love him?

Eight months later, I changed my decision. I chose to end things. I wasn't comfortable with him like I used to be, I didn't love him, and that wasn't fair to him. We chose to remain friends but once he graduated and I didn't have to see him every day at school, communication broke down. I didn't want to talk to him.

For a year I listened to my family say how much they liked him. How much they wished that we would get back together. How much they liked me with him. I sat there biting my tongue time and time again, trying not to tell them what he did to me. How he violated me. How he made me feel dirty.

He reached out to me at some point. We started talking again as I tried to keep up this veil of normality with him so that my family might not pry into why things had stopped so abruptly between us. He had a few clients in a town not too far from home; he was a photographer. He asked me if I wanted to come along, help him out. I said sure, wondering if we could get back to the friends we had been prior to our relationship. He told me to bring a few changes of clothes, as he intended on also taking some photos of me. So I climbed in the car, bag filled with clothes, and drove an hour north with him.

That entire day I felt like garbage. He treated me like shit; bossing me around and getting angry when I didn't entirely know what I was doing, which I didn't because I had never done anything like this before. I wasn't a professional. He didn't take any photos of me. Yet, I walked through frigid water for him so that we could get the perfect bounce of light and while I dried off my feet and put my shoes back on, he walked away. By the end of the day, I didn't want to be friends with him anymore. Not after how he had treated me.

Yet, when we sat outside the candy shop, just the two of us...I let him kiss me. I let him suck me back into the relationship. Luckily, I was smarter this time and got out only a month later...to the dismay of my family.

This boy made me question everything about myself. He made me hate myself without intention to do so. He abused me in a way that I didn't even fully realize was abuse till years later...Abuse that I don't even know if I can classify as abuse, so I just don't tell anyone...and my family loved him.