NSFW Partner lied to me about consenting to kink things

[itsneverbeenmoreove]

Not exactly sure what level of detail is appropriate for her, so I'll try to keep things vague.

Basically, during our break-up, my partner mentioned that she'd become uncomfortable with some of the things we did during sex and had become somewhat afraid of me. Now, to be clear, I was very careful to be as by the book as possible when it came to BDSM and kink. I was terrified I would go too far, and so I constantly was asking her to make sure she was ok with things. And in this discussion she acknowledged that not only had she not used a safeword, but she had actively lied about being comfortable with things when I asked. And I really don't know how to deal with that.

For some background, she was my first partner, and we actually started dating in high school. I was not very "into" sex when we started dating, but she had a lot of kinks and things she wanted from me. It took me a very long time to become comfortable doing the things she wanted me to do. Years. I would say it was only about the last year of our relationship that I finally became more comfortable with some of the things she wanted. But for her to say that actually, she didn't like some of those things and was lying to my face during sex and in general discussion around sex has really fucked me up. I was already extremely insecure about my physical appearance and my, I guess proficiency would be the most accurate way to describe it, so along with a number of other things that happened during the break-up, this really shattered my sense of self and the already meager confidence I had.

I had noticed that we had not been intimate as much in the past year, and she had said that a lack of interest in sex plus discomfort with some of the things we were doing were among the reasons. I feel bad speculating, but given that during our break-up she compared me unfavorably to another person she had been interested in (and proceeded to start dating on the day we broke up), I can't help but wonder if part of the reason was because she just no longer found me attractive and would be perfectly fine doing these things with someone else. Given that I still have access to some of her internet presence, I suspect it to be the case, as she added sex items to a wish list that I happened to be on with her even after the break-up, which indicates to me that it's not so much she wasn't interested in sex, but wasn't interested in sex with me.

But that's a whole other mental collapse. What I'm struggling with first is I just don't really know what to do with her repeatedly telling such an intimate and harmful lie. Among a million other things, it has been eating away at my sense of self since she left. How am I supposed to grapple with someone I trusted lying in a situation that requires so much trust and honesty? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? A partner lying to you about consent? It's particularly rough as she was the driving force behind any of kink play, and I'm just so lost about what to think of myself. Was I not paying close enough attention? Am I an abuser? Am I a bad partner? I don't know. I want to blame myself because I should've noticed she was uncomfortable, even if she said she was good, but I don't know if that's legitimate.

Don't sugarcoat it if you have input. It was my first sexual relationship and thus I was introduced to all this stuff because she wanted to. If I messed up, I want to know.

 

[ForgottenAgain]

In my opinion, if she lied then it is on her. You can't read minds to know that she was lying and people can pretend really well so it's not fair to blame yourself for not noticing something that could very well not be noticeable.

It sounds like you were very careful, you had no ill intent and you laid the rules - she was the one that decided to lie and therefore make the communication fail on purpose.

If she had said during these moments that she was uncomfortable, would you have stopped? Would you have tried to comfort her and tell her that there's no need to do these things if she is not feeling 100% for it?

If the answer is yes, then it's not on you.

I don't have experience with kinks but I have experience with a partner lying to then tell the truth during an argument and make me feel bad. He used that to paint me as the bad girlfriend, to say I should have noticed and since I didn't, I'm the problem. That to me screams manipulation. A successful relationship is based on honest communication, not on one person lying and the other playing detective.

I really don't think it is your fault and it sounds like she wanted to jump ship anyway so I wouldn't be surprised if she used that reasoning to jump ship more easily.

 

[itsneverbeenmoreove]

In my opinion, if she lied then it is on her. You can't read minds to know that she was lying and people can pretend really well so it's not fair to blame yourself for not noticing something that could very well not be noticeable.

It sounds like you were very careful, you had no ill intent and you laid the rules - she was the one that decided to lie and therefore make the communication fail on purpose.

If she had said during these moments that she was uncomfortable, would you have stopped? Would you have tried to comfort her and tell her that there's no need to do these things if she is not feeling 100% for it?

If the answer is yes, then it's not on you.

I don't have experience with kinks but I have experience with a partner lying to then tell the truth during an argument and make me feel bad. He used that to paint me as the bad girlfriend, to say I should have noticed and since I didn't, I'm the problem. That to me screams manipulation. A successful relationship is based on honest communication, not on one person lying and the other playing detective.

I really don't think it is your fault and it sounds like she wanted to jump ship anyway so I wouldn't be surprised if she used that reasoning to jump ship more easily.

I appreciate your thoughts. We both had problems with communication. Towards the beginning, she pressured me into sex, something that was very uncomfortable for me, and something she felt really bad about when I told her years later, especially since she had been a SA victim when she was younger. That said, I was usually a lot better at expressing my feelings than her. She was very cagey a lot of the time. She said that it was because she was afraid of my reaction. This is partially my fault, as earlier in our relationship I wouldn't react great when her feelings involved me doing something wrong. Nothing like, violent, but I would get very upset with myself and shut down and be uncommunicative. This continued to the present day however which had me constantly saying "are you sure, are you sure". And she would say yes. Except at the very end when she said she'd be lying the whole time. I do think that's manipulative.

However, I am not innocent of manipulation. In fact, I was quite good at it, mostly unconsciously. It's something I'd been working on for years, but still struggled with. This was often an issue with communication because, once I told her this was something I'd been doing, she became worried that I was manipulating her all the time.

I just wish I had paid more attention to her feelings. I absolutely was not good at reading her, and would frequently either, be totally unaware of her feelings, or, worse, argue against them. As in, I would try to, hmm, debate the facts of her feelings? And that was really invalidating and unsupportive.

But thank you again. Apparently she's afraid that I could come after and hurt her and is generally afraid of me, which really upsets me, because I don't want to believe that I fucked up so hard that I gave her legitimate reason to be scared I could do that. But what if I did? Even if she was the one not communicating properly, it's still my responsibility to make sure she's okay...

 

[Begotten]

There's really nothing to blame on yourself judging by what you said here.

 

[fleetingnight]

It's definitely not your fault. You did everything you could to make sure you had consent. I understand why some people struggle to say no, but it sounds like it wasn't anything you did, it's probably something personal about her that made her decide against honesty.

 

[Linda]

Not exactly sure what level of detail is appropriate for her, so I'll try to keep things vague.

Basically, during our break-up, my partner mentioned that she'd become uncomfortable with some of the things we did during sex and had become somewhat afraid of me. Now, to be clear, I was very careful to be as by the book as possible when it came to BDSM and kink. I was terrified I would go too far, and so I constantly was asking her to make sure she was ok with things. And in this discussion she acknowledged that not only had she not used a safeword, but she had actively lied about being comfortable with things when I asked. And I really don't know how to deal with that.

For some background, she was my first partner, and we actually started dating in high school. I was not very "into" sex when we started dating, but she had a lot of kinks and things she wanted from me. It took me a very long time to become comfortable doing the things she wanted me to do. Years. I would say it was only about the last year of our relationship that I finally became more comfortable with some of the things she wanted. But for her to say that actually, she didn't like some of those things and was lying to my face during sex and in general discussion around sex has really fucked me up. I was already extremely insecure about my physical appearance and my, I guess proficiency would be the most accurate way to describe it, so along with a number of other things that happened during the break-up, this really shattered my sense of self and the already meager confidence I had.

I had noticed that we had not been intimate as much in the past year, and she had said that a lack of interest in sex plus discomfort with some of the things we were doing were among the reasons. I feel bad speculating, but given that during our break-up she compared me unfavorably to another person she had been interested in (and proceeded to start dating on the day we broke up), I can't help but wonder if part of the reason was because she just no longer found me attractive and would be perfectly fine doing these things with someone else. Given that I still have access to some of her internet presence, I suspect it to be the case, as she added sex items to a wish list that I happened to be on with her even after the break-up, which indicates to me that it's not so much she wasn't interested in sex, but wasn't interested in sex with me.

But that's a whole other mental collapse. What I'm struggling with first is I just don't really know what to do with her repeatedly telling such an intimate and harmful lie. Among a million other things, it has been eating away at my sense of self since she left. How am I supposed to grapple with someone I trusted lying in a situation that requires so much trust and honesty? Has anyone else experienced anything like this? A partner lying to you about consent? It's particularly rough as she was the driving force behind any of kink play, and I'm just so lost about what to think of myself. Was I not paying close enough attention? Am I an abuser? Am I a bad partner? I don't know. I want to blame myself because I should've noticed she was uncomfortable, even if she said she was good, but I don't know if that's legitimate.

Don't sugarcoat it if you have input. It was my first sexual relationship and thus I was introduced to all this stuff because she wanted to. If I messed up, I want to know.

Some relationships just don't work out. It's not necessarily either partner's fault; it may be that you just don't work as a couple. I had many boyfriends, two of them for 3 years, before I met the man who is now my husband. I was 30 when I met him.
Just move on and start looking for someone else.
If your tastes in sex are somewhat unusual, it would be a good idea to make that clear to any partner at a fairly early stage of the relationship. (Not necessarily immediately, but within the first 6 months.) There are then three possibilities. (1) Your partner will find your tastes unacceptable and will end the relationship. (2) Your partner has no problem with your tastes, and is willing to participate. (3) Your partner has no problem with your tastes but does not wish to participate.
Option 3 can be made to work. One way to do it would be for you both to agree that you can indulge those tastes with someone else, but that in other respects you stick with your partner. Otherwise, either you will become frustrated bcause you are not getting what you want, or your partner will become annoyed because you keep asking for something they are not wiling to provide.
If this is really important to you, then you could seek a partner within the BDSM community, to ensure that you finish up with option 2.

 

[itsneverbeenmoreove]

Some relationships just don't work out. It's not necessarily either partner's fault; it may be that you just don't work as a couple. I had many boyfriends, two of them for 3 years, before I met the man who is now my husband. I was 30 when I met him.
Just move on and start looking for someone else.
If your tastes in sex are somewhat unusual, it would be a good idea to make that clear to any partner at a fairly early stage of the relationship. (Not necessarily immediately, but within the first 6 months.) There are then three possibilities. (1) Your partner will find your tastes unacceptable and will end the relationship. (2) Your partner has no problem with your tastes, and is willing to participate. (3) Your partner has no problem with your tastes but does not wish to participate.
Option 3 can be made to work. One way to do it would be for you both to agree that you can indulge those tastes with someone else, but that in other respects you stick with your partner. Otherwise, either you will become frustrated bcause you are not getting what you want, or your partner will become annoyed because you keep asking for something they are not wiling to provide.
If this is really important to you, then you could seek a partner within the BDSM community, to ensure that you finish up with option 2.

I wasn't even interested in BDSM before her Hell, I hadn't had sex before. She was the one who asked me to do everything. In fact, she pressured me into sex before I was ready. That said, I believe she may have actually been lying about the lying I describe in the original post. I was on tumblr the other day, and a post from her (I could've sworn she blocked me) came up where she said that she finally got her new boyfriend to sleep with her and it was the most mindblowing 4 hour sex ever and that her ex (me) could never. So I have no idea what to believe anymore. I had a feeling that she was unsatisfied with me sexually, but like... I didn't really need to see confirmation of that. Or evidence that she was just bullshitting me for some reason.

But thank you very much for your feedback. Provided I don't CTB like I'm currently planning/contemplating, I think it'll be a very long time before I'm comfortable with sex, let alone bdsm...

 

[EvisceratedJester]

I wasn't even interested in BDSM before her Hell, I hadn't had sex before. She was the one who asked me to do everything. In fact, she pressured me into sex before I was ready. That said, I believe she may have actually been lying about the lying I describe in the original post. I was on tumblr the other day, and a post from her (I could've sworn she blocked me) came up where she said that she finally got her new boyfriend to sleep with her and it was the most mindblowing 4 hour sex ever and that her ex (me) could never. So I have no idea what to believe anymore. I had a feeling that she was unsatisfied with me sexually, but like... I didn't really need to see confirmation of that. Or evidence that she was just bullshitting me for some reason.

But thank you very much for your feedback. Provided I don't CTB like I'm currently planning/contemplating, I think it'll be a very long time before I'm comfortable with sex, let alone bdsm...

She sounds like a piece of shit. If I were you, I'd just say good riddance and try to pretend I never met her in the first place. You aren't an abuser and you weren't really in the wrong. If you explicitly asked for her consent and made sure to have safe words in place and everything and she goes out of her way to continually lie to you then that's on her. You can't try to get someone to pratice something like BDSM with you and then get upset afterwards because you decided to lie instead of properly communicate your boundaries with your partner. The fact that she also pressured you into sex is also is just one big red flag, especially since she know better as a SA victim. And then to make such a rude comment about you online is just a cherry on the shit cake. I know this is easier said then done, but don't bother getting worked up over her. She sounds like she sucks and you can do way better than her.

 

[Whale_bones]

I agree with the previous responses that you're not in the wrong here; you established consent and did your best to be on the same page going in to it. It was completely wrong of her to start off your sexual relationship by pressuring you before you were ready, and it sounds like her starting it off that way (and then continually asking you for other things you were uncomfortable with) may have set the stage for bad communication.

If she didn't care about enthusiastic consent- that is, both people are happy to engage, it's not one person pressuring the other, guilting them or dragging them along- to start with, then she should never have asked you to engage in something like kink/bdsm, where consent and communication are absolutely key. She may have appeared more knowledgeable about consent if she was more experienced than you, but that doesn't mean she was practicing it.

I mention this because when I was younger, I had experiences of being pressured into similar things by people who at first seemed so knowledgeable about consent. They sure could talk a lot about it, they knew all the definitions and descriptions, but when it came down to actually practicing it they would lie, guilt me, ignore my protests and hesitation, and were just all around awful. I realized there's a certain type of person who uses this supposed knowledge as a shield for their lack of actually caring about enthusiastic consent. Anyone who cares will never pressure you and never try to get you to do something you don't want to do.

Several of the things you mention (like that TMI Tumblr post) make me think she has some deep insecurities. It's only human to worry it reflects on you when a bad breakup happens, but I truly think this was all driven by her lack of honesty and disregard for communication and consent. It seems to me like she had that problem from the start, and nothing you did (sexually or otherwise) caused it.