Dear Jamie:

I am sorry that you were sexually assaulted.

You shared that you were sexually assaulted about ten years ago.  Nine years after the assault, you met your partner, a wonderful and supportive man, and with him you experienced your first meaningful relationship since the assault.

About a week ago, you were present around the area of the assault and you “got really triggered”, more than ever before. You searched the guy’s name and discovered that he died about five years after he sexually assaulted you.

Since this triggering and this discovery, you have feelings of repulsion about yourself, you’ve been experiencing a high level of anxiety about your relationship, feeling or thinking at times that you fell out of love with your partner, that you don’t deserve his love, and, you wrote: “I have a strange feeling when I look at him that I don’t recognise him or the way I am feeling”-

– my thoughts: I figure (and please let me know if I am correct, or not), that when your partner touches you in any sexual way, or maybe even when he looks at you that way.. when you recognize that he feels a sexual desire for you- in your mind, your partner is replaced by the man who sexually assaulted you. Naturally, when that happens, you fall  out of love with your partner.

“I have had feelings of repulsion about myself”- it may be the repulsion you felt when you were sexually assaulted, transferred to a repulsion you feel when your boyfriend touches you in any way that is sexual.

“I have had.. a high level of anxiety about my relationship”- an anxiety of re-experiencing the sexual assault when sexually approached by your partner, perhaps (?)

You asked: “is there something I can do to stop feeling like this… cannot shake this dreaded feeling”-

I would like to attempt to answer your question, and for that purpose, I will wait for your feedback in regard to the content of my post. Also, if there is more to “this dreadful feeling”/ if you can elaborate on it, please do.

One more thing: it is possible that sometime after the assault, in your mind- this man  became a vague image, no longer a real person who was still alive and going about his business of life,  as if he never assaulted you. A week ago, when you discovered that he died five years ago, that brought to your awareness that he was alive, and going about his business of life as usual, five whole five years after assaulting you, and that “felt strange”.

anita