AITA for wanting to ruin the career of a Tinder guy from almost five years ago?

TL; DR: I thought I was falling in love. He left me with PTSD and more mental health issues than my many therapists have known what to do with. Now, I want to derail his career as a musician before he can make it big time because I don’t want any other girl to go through what I have. After all, he got away with it once.

Trigger warning: SA, talk of sexual activities and discussion of mental health problems. This was as much a cathartic exercise for me as it is a genuine question. I thank all for their patience as they read. There may be typos in this post. Honestly? I started sweating and felt sick by the end and could not read it back.

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Let me talk you through the story.

It’s 2018 in Brighton, and I (now 24) had just started my university course. I was 18. I downloaded Tinder after a friend from university told me ‘it’d be a laugh.’ So, I did, and I swiped.

First, I met Scott. We dated for two weeks. Scott ghosted me and later popped up to let me know it was because he had discovered that his ex-girlfriend had cheated on him when they were together, and he ‘needed some time away from girls.’ Scott was the first guy I’d ever kissed when I was sober. Scott was five years older than me and when all was said and done, I decided to go out with someone closer in age.

That’s when I met Fred. He was 19 at the time. Just turned. I thought he was the safe option because we were similarly aligned, and he made me laugh. He was tall—6’5” with light brown hair, which he wore straight and lightly swept back. He made self-deprecating jokes about having put on weight, but I found him attractive. He liked Queen and The Beatles and listened to them in his car and sang ‘Killer Queen’ off-key despite being able to hold a tune. I couldn’t imagine a world back then in which Fred could ever hurt me because he was so kind. For years after him, I thought he’d ruined my life forever.

It was Christmas break, and we spoke every day, Fred and I. He was with his family, and I was with mine. Each night, we’d Facetime and fall asleep talking, only to wake at 7 am and hear the sound of each other faintly breathing. We were more real in those moments than anything I had known before. I told my friends about Fred, and they smiled and squealed, said they were happy for me and asked to see a picture, which I always dutifully showed. I was excited by the prospect of meaning something to someone else.

We got to know each other startlingly quickly, and soon I knew some of his innermost thoughts, and he mine. Never ghost me, I asked of him. I was still torn up about Scott. Leave me, scream at me—anything. But, please, don’t disappear without a trace.

He was a musician and sang and played keys in a band he thought could be something someday. I listened to their music and agreed. I was fascinated by his being musically inclined and liked to see videos of him at work, playing piano in a swanky restaurant up-town. I requested Bohemian Rhapsody and giggled as he sneaked my Snapchats from the piano bench.

In the interest of honesty, I will not hide the things I did. I was silly, and I ask all others to be safer than I was.

Two days after Christmas, it was my birthday, and I was preparing to head back to the seaside for my university course. My mum was giving me a lift back to Bedford station but, after speaking with Fred, I changed the plan. Told my mum I’d mixed up the stations and that we should go to Cambridge. I asked her to drop me at the Park and Ride, and I’d make my way through the city alone to save her from navigating the traffic. Always the nervous driver, she thanked me, agreed and asked no questions. I took two buses, made my way to the train station and slung my back into Fred’s car. His family weren’t staying far from ours for Christmas, and he’d agreed to drive me back to the coast.

We sang off-key all the way, grinning at each other tentatively in the way of two strangers who knew so much about the other. We spoke about everything and nothing. I was surprised at how natural it all felt. But, instead of taking me straight back to mine, he asked if I wanted to see where he lived on the way. His parents were still out, he said. I agreed. We went to his house, and I realised we’d lived different childhoods. His house was clean, immaculate, filled with expensive beige furnishings and hot-water taps. We sat on his parents’ clean, white sofa and watched The 40-Year-Old Virgin. To this day, I haven’t seen the ending.

About halfway through the film, he pressed pause and turned my face towards his. As he kissed me, I felt a thrill. A sort of ‘we’re-doing-something-we-shouldn’t’ thrill filled with butterflies and heady excitement. He took me upstairs and when he pushed on the back of my head, I did as expected, but I flapped a little, laughed nervously and danced away as his fingertips roamed. “I told you I hadn’t before,” I murmured as he touched my underwear again. He smiled and told me okay but that he wanted me to experience this anyway.

When I was naked and nervous, I firmly said I didn’t want more but I still batted my eyelashes, so he knew I was ‘fun’. He stopped, smiled again, and said he’d get me home. As I went into the bathroom to clean up, I smiled at my flushed reflection and felt glad I was strong enough to know my boundaries.

He dropped me off at my house, and I thanked him. A housemate was taking me out for dinner—sushi—but I was going out later, and did he want to come along? He did. We agreed to meet and, before he left, I told him he could spend the night of mine but “nothing funny, I just don’t want you to drive the half hour to get back home as we’ll be drinking.’ He feigned crossing his heart, carried me back up the steps to my front door and laughed as he kissed me goodbye.

That night, after dinner, we went to the club—my favourite “gay” club that no gays actually go to as it’s all a gimmick—where I usually felt the safest with synth-pop blasting. A group of my friends were there and met Fred. They said they liked him. To my face, that is.

The club was fine, and we danced and drank and then, as it was my birthday and everyone bought me at least one drink, I drank some more. Skinny jeans, a loose-fitting, green satin vest and black Converse. That’s what I was wearing, for those of you who’d want to know.

I felt safe as I danced, you know. The safest I’d ever felt in a club and the most carefree. Fred kept other random boys from grabbing at me in that way university boys in not-gay gay clubs love to do. I danced without fear of being groped, and we all stumbled home sometime after. I couldn’t tell you what time.

When we got back to mine, my housemate and her boyfriend laughed and grabbed me water while Fred helped me up the stairs. An absolute lightweight, they laughed. They were right.

And this is the part I remember but don’t want to. The memories are tinged with the fuzziness of sheer will. I’ve never wanted to remember. The important thing to know, I suppose, is that when I woke up the next morning, I told my friend that ‘it was a bad first time but nothing we wouldn’t be able to work through.’ Three months later, a therapist called it rape.

Regardless, the key facts are, I was so out of it, I was nearly unconscious. I gagged every time I moved because I’d drunk too much. When Fred undressed me, I covered myself and said I wanted to go to sleep. When he climbed on top of me—I still remember every exact detail of how he looked—I said again, can we just please go to sleep? When I was too drunk to bat him off of me, and he slipped in anyway, I remember my eyes flaring back open from the pain and him telling me it wouldn’t hurt for long. I remember making sounds which could have been construed as me enjoying myself but were actually because it hurt. I remember tears leaking from my eyes. I remember feeling like something was being stolen, even as I resolved to try and relax because that would help it to hurt less.

I remember, finally, when he still didn’t stop, giving in and allowing him to pull me on top. I then remember him falling asleep and me being so fucking hurt, in pain, confused and crumpled that I went to sleep, too.

The next morning, I woke up and decided to just make the best of it all, right? I couldn’t change the night of my 19th birthday, but I could change how I viewed the memory in time. So, when Fred woke, we had sex again. Coherent, more willing and less of me half-unconscious this time. It was fine. I still hurt from the night before, and he came inside me without a condom, and I was mad. Not because I wasn’t on birth control—I was—but because I’d been sick the night before, so I was worried it wouldn’t be as effective, and because he hadn’t even asked. Despite being inexperienced, I felt that asking should have been a common courtesy.

We went on a date to the arcade by the sea. Bowling. Dinner. It was fun, I guess. And, that night, Fred kissed me goodbye as he’d done before. And drove home.

And ghosted me.

I sent messages, no reply. I tried calling, no answer. A week passed; nothing.

I wish I could tell you that, with him out of my life, I bounced right back and realised I’d dodged a bullet. But life doesn’t work that way, and, honestly, I was emotionally messed up before he even entered my life. Mummy issues, daddy issues, an upbringing intermingled with neglect and being a young carer. I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder at seven years old, with the estimation it had been manifesting since around three years old. Honestly, it’s amazing I made it through that first year of university.

I dealt with a lot of problems. Particularly those first few years. I won’t go into them in too much detail nor how they affected my life for the worse, but know they did.

I was lethargic for a long time, experienced panic attacks at human touch and had to stick to the sidelines in clubs and crowds until I eventually just stopped going. I cried a lot. I hardly remember the first three months. I went home and laid on the sofa for a full seven days. I went to a therapist because intrusive memories that I hadn’t realised I still carried kept popping into my head of the ‘big bad things’ which happened to me as a kid, and generally, I wasn’t coping.

The therapist told me in very blunt language that I had been raped. She then told me the NHS couldn’t treat me for this and to either go private or join the crisis charity in Brighton (I called, but their waitlist was years long; incidentally, they finally rang me about two years ago but, you know, I’d moved away by then so…).

I never heard back from Fred again. My friend did spot his profile on Grindr though, so… I am not sure how I feel about that.

But I still follow his band’s page on Facebook.

I didn’t realise I did at first, I swear. They stopped posting on their years ago then, one day a couple of years ago, I was lying on my sofa in my now fiancé’s (he’s nice, promise) house, listening to Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights when I saw a picture of him.

I swear, the blood drained from my face, and I hyperventilated as I closed the app. I immediately texted my best friend. I was too afraid to re-open the app, to see his face, to unfollow the page.

I calmed down as my friend spoke to me. Stopped panicking. She offered to use my login and unfollow the page for me, but… I declined.

Truthfully, I had a psychotic idea: What if I kept following the page to stay ‘in the know’ and derail his career if he ever seemed to be getting more famous?

I know it’s kinda messed up. I mean, there are other people in this band. But I still want him to suffer as much as I did in those initial years. I still have PTSD and panic attacks and get flashbacks on my birthday every year.

Seriously, this guy dated me, raped me on my birthday and then ghosted me. I’m no longer pathetically crying but angry.

His band is small. An ‘alternative pop’ band with four members. They’re currently driving Route 66 playing in America; Dallas the other day, Denver soon and on tour across the US/EU/UK. I laugh whenever I see the name of their newest song. I find it ironic after my experience of him.

He plays keys or guitar. I hate him and his mild success, even though their Facebook page gets an average of 3-15 likes per post.

I want him to become successful, just so I can make it hurt when he has further to fall.

So… AITA?

*Names have been changed to preserve anonymity.