Cognative Dissonance

I see myself as able to be assertive, as willing to tell how I feel.

Then I realize I’m wrong.

Until I read this site, I didn’t realize it was because of how I was socialized (though I suspect my fiance did… he’s probably a better feminist in some ways than I am).  So… putting up two things about me, both involving guys.  One with a positive outcome, one where the only positive outcome is that I no longer talk to the guy involved.

First the positive outcome:

Important, yet somewhat… oversharing background:  I am very tight vaginally.  Sometimes (not often), intercourse is painful because the stretching is just not what it wants to do (I have my yearly women’s, the speculum causes the same problem, I get checked out, it’s not a problem, it’s just my body).

And the story:  My now-fiance (when this happened we were dating, not engaged) is the only man I’ve had sex with.  I’ve known him over half my life now (I’m 21), and I trust him completely.  I also want to satisfy him.  This desire is too strong, really, but thankfully my fiance knows me so well, and is an amazing man.  One time (okay, several times before he convinced me that it was OKAY), sex was painful.  I tried to hide it, because I wanted to get my fiance off, even though it wasn’t enjoyable, and was not fun for me.  My fiance noticed the difference in me, and kept asking, "Are you okay?", and even though I nodded, or told him yes… he could tell I wasn’t, and immediately stopped.  Not only did he stop, he was immediately completely turned off, and went straight to comforting me because I was feeling guilty for not satisfying him.  He was so wonderful about it, taking care of my emotional needs.

Now… the very negative story, the one I hope I’m assertive enough to avoid now.

Trigger warning

This is hard to write, because I don’t know how I feel about what happened yet… well, a couple years ago, over the summer, I was at my dad’s for a week during the summer, and a "friend" came over.  This guy wasn’t the greatest of people, but I have a bad habit that I’m getting over of trying to "fix" people, so I wasn’t willing to dump him as a friend despite knowing he lied.  In fact, he was so good at lying, he manages to basically make the lie real to him, as near as I can tell, without a psych degree.  That contributed to the incident, because he got himself into one of his… states… where he claimed to have some sort of multiple personality thing, and managed to fake it completely.  We were home alone at my dad’s, and he went into a zoned out state where he really wasn’t himself.  He then started to touch me, in a sexual manner, and started to unbutton my skirt (which was buttoned from the ground up), after managing to get himself on top of me (I don’t remember how he did that).  I rebuttoned the skirt, and he kept trying, kinda.  I didn’t say anything, but I pushed him away, but he is heavier and stronger than me, so… he stayed, until he snapped out of whatever state his mental issues (and I’m convinced he has them), and then he claimed he didn’t remember a bit of it, and apologized.  I accepted it, and made an excuse as to why he had to leave… and it took me a while to actually get mad at him for what he did, rather than blame myself.  After I did that, I blocked him on messenger and don’t talk to him anymore.  But… I still feel that it was to some degree my fault for letting him in… for not saying anything… for not letting him know how wrong it was (despite the fact he obviously knew!).

I don’t want to make people mad.  I don’t want people to hate me.  I want to please people.  I need to reduce that to make sure I don’t get hurt again.

Yet, I see myself as assertive, after all that.  Contrary, no?