18 | Hindsight | 5/23/26

 This post will delve into some heavy subject matter. If you are easily triggered by mentions of sexual harassment/assault, please skip this. It's not my intention to make anyone uncomfortable, merely to express my own experiences in an outlet that is helpful for me.

Back in September of 2021, when I was 15 years old, I started dating someone online. I will refer to them as "SO" for simplicity. They were 16, roughly six months older than me. We were both around the same mental maturity.

Something I did not know about at the time was that, a fact that I would discover later, I had OSDD/DID. In simple terms, this means I have multiple distinct personalities with their own preferences and memories. It's not easy to know about something like DID at a young age. It has even taken some people 40-60 years to discover it.

Something I have learned about DID is that separation in preferences means that dating becomes HARD, if not straight-up impossible. As far as I remember, this did not effect me too deeply in the first couple years of me and SO dating. There were occasional moments where I did not remember previous things we had talked about, ranging from non-vividly to being totally absent. I even struggle with that a bit now.

I remember when SO and I first got intimate. Since we were online, none of this happened physically, but we replicated these actions using custom emojis I had drawn of us. We started by pretending to hug. Then kiss. I remember these being fine for me (obviously, since I had drawn them out to begin with). But then SO became interested in my breasts. Part of me thought it was funny. How can someone be so interested in breasts of all things? Another part of me got uncomfortable by it. I worried, almost, that it was the only thing he liked about me. This was ultimately paranoia, not legitimate, but it's true that SO got quite absorbed in talking about breasts.

We gradually amped things up. This is something I don't need, nor want, to talk about. But I could tell there were times when I was less interested than usual. It didn't make sense to either of us. I was enthusiastic one day and then suddenly I wanted nothing to do with it. There were times when SO thought I was lying just to avoid being intimate. I wasn't. I felt offended. But ultimately, what else could have been the cause of my sudden shifting interests? I must have been lying, right?

As the years went on and other personalities of mine became more prevalent than others, I slowly lost interest in intimacy altogether. For a period I would only engage because... well... it made sense for me to. I didn't want to, but it didn't make sense for me to suddenly not want to engage anymore. There were a number of times where I hesitantly consented just because I felt like I had to do things. I said yes, and I engaged, but all the time I was thinking how little I wanted to do this. It's not my intention to blame SO for how I acted. But ultimately, I've started to wonder if I was sexually harassed/assaulted.

SO wanted me to do a lot of things. Most pretty innocuous, but things I did not want to do. They wanted me to compose music on a music making program. I did not care for it. But it became increasingly clear that SO would break up with me if I didn't force myself to get interested. Same with singing on a recording, which I was very audibly uncomfortable doing (my voice was shaky, I was way off-tune, and I had very little passion). But it made them happy. That's all I cared about.

When this crossed over into the intimacy boundary, that was when things got especially difficult. SO wanted me to take pictures of myself very often, or to chat with me on video chats. Neither of which I was very comfortable with. But I did it anyway. These pictures included more intimate subject matter which I desperately did not want to ever take pictures of in my entire life. But I did it anyway. All that mattered was making SO happy.

I was not very quiet about my hesitancy. I often told SO when I wasn't interested in certain things. Half the time they would say "fair enough" and move on, but during the other half, they would push me. And push me. And push me. Until I finally compromised or buckled. Just because I didn't want SO to break up with me.

But why would I suddenly lose interest out of nowhere? It just did not make sense.

I wondered to myself, "Is what I'm feeling wrong? Am I not supposed to feel uncomfortable?"

To a couple of these personalities, they were perfectly happy and consenting. To the others, they were deeply uncomfortable and unhappy, but buckled just because the other two personalities had agreed to it before. It hurt to force myself to feel and be intimate when I did not want to. It permanently soured my outlook on intimacy. I would reckon to say if I was even slightly on the aroace spectrum before, I definitely am now, merely because of the pain I felt.

There's a void in my chest where my heart was continually bashed in. Many times where I felt like I was not truly in a happy, consenting relationship because I had to force myself to do things. SO would get upset with me whenever my opinion on intimacy suddenly changed. It wasn't so much "it is changing, so let's adapt", it was "it's not supposed to change so YOU need to adapt".

But it's not like they knew at the time. Neither did I.

It's why I'm so on the fence if this even counts as sexual assault. I said "yes" and I went through with it, no matter how uncomfortable I felt. None of this happened physically. Or, at least, not between the two of us.

I just look at this time in my life with a lot of pain.

Perhaps I still have that mentality of the need to adapt.

Until next.