[4/8] Part of a larger story that starts here.

Brenda then went on the defensive in order to protect Adam despite her admitting his damaging actions. She argued that if what Adam had done was sexual harassment, then me kissing her on the neck after our sexting was assault. I was gutted and found myself silenced; she guilted me into believing I was a predator like Adam when she was the one who had initiated the sexual messages, had also expressed an interest in me, and had never rebuked my actions until one time, after the fact. This was completely absurd, but I somehow believed her. Brenda was okay with being sexual in text, but she would go back and forth from saying she doesn’t want contact in real life, to maybe she does, and her frequent refrain was “I just don’t know (what I want).” We made a list together at one point well before the ordeal with Adam, where we listed what actions she was and was not okay with, but after this she still voiced that she really didn’t know what she wanted. So, at one point [2 months before the incident with Adam], I tested the waters with Brenda by moving my hands up her sides and kissed her neck while we were hugging, she moved away from me and seemed shy but she didn’t seem upset. Later she told me this made her uncomfortable, so I apologized and told her I would not initiate contact and would wait for her to. She accepted this and “forgave me” and eventually we settled into hugging and started to be close again. However, when I told her what Adam did to me, all of a sudden she was angry about that event after-the-fact and revoked her “forgiveness”, saying that what I did was worse than Adam somehow. She said this despite later stating again that what Adam did was far worse and that she knew that I wasn’t some sort of predator. She said that she could see how Adam went from “Squiddy might be interested in a date” to “Squiddy might want to have sex” though it sounded like “mostly broken logic” to her. I felt betrayed, and used; clearly this woman did not care that I was victimized by either of them and she seemed blind to the fact that she was emotionally exploitative. One of the first things Brenda said when I told her what Adam had done to me was “I swear that I didn’t put him up to this”.

Read More: https://skwid.ink/gaslighting-and-emotional-exploitation/