Consent play and history of sexual assault

I'm feeling really mixed up about this and wondering if anyone has any experience of this?

I have a fair history of rape / sexual assault. My husband knees about abuse in my childhood but not the rest. At times we have dabbled a bit with very mild consent play (me playfully telling him to stop or not do something - he knows me very well, and any time I've told him to actually stop he has immediately, if it before).

Yesterday we were getting ready to go to an appointment and I went upstairs to get changed. We had been exchanging dirty messages all day and were both quite wound up. He started to touch me and I said no, we will be late although clearly I didn't mean it as I didn't tell him to stop in the way I would when I actually mean it (we don't have an actually safeword, I just say "okay, actually stop now" and he always does). For some reason I can't really understand it escalated very quickly - initiated by me, not by him. I was struggling to get away, telling him no, he was pinning me down. Again, I didn't actually tell him to stop and I was really into it. Within a few minutes I'd come a few times and he finished too.

Afterwards he was saying how bloody amazing it was, I think it's the most enthusiastic I've ever heard him be to be honest. Then he saw my face - I was on the verge of tears. While it was happening I was having an awesome time but as soon as it was done I felt very upset and mainly confused about why I had acted that way. I couldn't really get my head round why I was so upset, so I couldn't tell him. We got ready and he kept asking me if I was okay. He was very concerned.

By the evening I was an emotional wreck. I broke down and told him a lot of things he didn't know, about me being raped and assaulted by multiple people in my life. He was absolutely mortified and said he would never ever have done this if he had known, but it wasn't him who escalated it, it was me.

It feels so completely wrong that I could get so turned on by this after what I've been through. I do trust my husband absolutely and feel completely safe with him, so perhaps that's why I felt safe in the moment, but it brought up a lot of emotions afterwards.

What have i done? Is there something wrong with me? I'm normally pretty confident in my sexuality but this has really knocked me for six - if has taken me a long time to get past what happened and to be able to enjoy activities that were formerly used to assault me. In fact one is now one of my favourite things to do, and has no negative connotations for me at all, and that has everything to do with the trust in my husband since even when we've been unable to have sex for long periods he has never forced me or coerced me.

Why am I so upset about this? I'm not upset with him at all - he's done nothing wrong, although maybe some part of me is concerned by how much he enjoyed it but far more about how much I enjoyed it to be honest.

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I think this could be part of the healing process for you....?

Continue to talk with your OH but maybe get some counseling also. It sounds like you are dealing with a shitty history but being aware and willing to communicate should help you regain composure and contine to heal. I feel for you, best of luck.

Thank you, I think you're right. I suspect my history isn't uncommon sadly, when I was talking to my husband about this last night he said he'd barely had any sexual partners who didn't say that they'd previously had bad experiences with some act or other. It's hideous really.

But yes - it's one thing to work through and reclaim what are otherwise normal consensual sex acts in this way I guess, not there's an extra element of concern for me in this. I will consider counselling definitely, I'm just not sure I'm quite ready to talk about it in that much depth.

Thank you so much for sharing that with me Alicia, it does make so much sense to my logical brain but I guess there's a part of my brain that's having an involuntary reaction of fear. I'm so angry we have to deal with this and I think everything has been exacerbated by all th sexual assault stuff in the media at the moment. I really felt fine with this stuff but now it's like I can't put it all back in its box any more.

I completely agree - I haven't told him previously because of his reaction when I told him about the child abuse I suffered (he was understandably very upset but I didn't really need that to be honest). However, he was fantastic - he wasn't shocked, and said it doesn't change anything, he just feels he knows me better and understands my reactions to things more. I just worry he will now see me as broken / damaged in a way he didn't before and that it will affect our lives together in ways I don't want it to.

I have so much messed up stuff going on right now - one of my assaults directly led to me being traumatised by gynae exams and procedures and that led to me being terrified of birth and I've ended up with pretty bad birth trauma. It infuriates me that so much comes back to those incidents and I don't want them to take anything else from me.

I completely agree. The way it's thrown about as entertainment is horrific, and then you have people who will never ever understand complaining about trigger warnings... they have no idea. I'll be honest, all this MeToo stuff on social media has really triggered this I think - I have felt really backed into a corner to out myself as a victim, because if you don't it's not representative, but I'm not comfortable with it. I don't have any contact with the people who've raped or assaulted me but friends in common and so on. I don't want to open that can of worms.

I'm so sorry you've never found anyone you trust and love. I hope you do. It's so difficult to trust men after things like this. I was very inexperienced when I was first assaulted (I'd had two longterm boyfriends, both virgins, who were not very sexual and were very respectful) - that's the one that has scarred me the most. Then I was raped by the second guy, who continued to pursue me afferwards so he clearly didn't understand what he had done. By the third and fourth times I didn't even bother to put up a fight. I just thought this was how it was for everyone. Then I ended up engaged to the first guy who came along who didn't hurt me, even though we weren't in love. My husband and I were friends during that time and fell in love, but I knew he was really into porn and I fully expected him to be abusive too - I kept my distance for a long time but fortunately I was completely wrong about that. He told me last night that when he was about 15 he'd already had multiple female friends and relatives confide in him that they'd been raped and assaulted and he's no longer shocked about what men do to women. I'm very lucky to have someone I trust implicitly. I'm sorry you don't, I hope you find someone x