When I was 17, I had to have surgery on my ovaries because there was a large cyst (the size of an orange!) hanging from my fallopian tube. It was incredibly painful… I was vomiting out of pain when I first went to the emergency room. It was also very stressful, since I had just started having sex with my then bf, and before the doctors figured out what was going on, I was paranoid that I was pregnant. The surgery went fine but there was a recovery period where I wasn’t supposed to have sex.

My bf at the time said he loved me and I thought we had a normal relationship, but looking back, he was incredibly manipulative. He convinced me that once a guy is used to having consistent sex, it becomes painful for them to go a while without it. He said that it wasn’t his fault that I had the ovarian cyst and made me feel guilty that it was something wrong with my body. I usually listened to him about anything related to sex, since he said he already had previous partners, and I had 0 experience. I felt awkward about the whole realm of sex, but was happy that a guy loved me, and I didn’t want to mess it up.

He convinced me to have sex with him soon after the surgery even though it hurt because that was supposedly how I would show I loved him. I tried to pretend that it wasn’t so bad, but he could tell that I wasn’t enjoying it at all and still didn’t stop. There were also times where I told him that giving him a blow job was hurting my jaw or made me nauseous, and he would say, “Other girls I’ve been with really liked giving me blow jobs, so maybe you just need to get used to it or there’s something wrong with you.”

Now that I’m older, I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I let him control me like that. My advice to others is you never have to have sex with anyone, even your bf/gf, and if they actually care about you they’ll totally respect that.

-26, Boston, Female, Loves travel