DEAR DEIDRE: AFTER a night spent drinking with my girlfriend, I think I raped her.
I am 26 and she is 25. We have been together for just over two years and have a great relationship.
She doesn’t blame me for what happened and says it was the alcohol.
However, it is destroying me to know that I have brought so much pain to the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.
It all started after we’d had a drunken night out with friends.
We left quite late and once we got home we went straight up to bed and had sex.
I admit I was so drunk that I got everything wrong and didn’t hear my girlfriend telling me to stop.
She told me what happened the next day.
When we first met, she told me she was raped when she was a teenager and has suffered from nightmares and flashbacks ever since.
I have supported her with this as best I can in the time that I have known her.
But I have just made things a million times worse by bringing back her past. Now her flashbacks are worse than ever.
She didn’t tell anyone about her past except me. Now she is nervous and on edge. She keeps crying.
I can’t help but think of myself as a rapist.
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DEIDRE SAYS: Your girlfriend told you to stop and, while I doubt you need it pointing out how dangerous it is to drink so much that you don’t know what you are doing, this was rape.
Being drunk doesn’t excuse your behaviour.
Whether or not your relationship will survive, your girlfriend needs help for the rape in the past and for what happened with you, so do urge her to seek support.
She can call Rape Crisis in confidence (rapecrisis.org.uk, 0808 500 2222).
My support pack Have You Been Raped? will her help, too.
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