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7 Pitfalls To Avoid When Dating a Sexual Assault Survivor
Sarah Beaulieu struggled to find the right way to tell people she was a sexual assault survivor. Here’s how you can support someone who opens up about sexual assault.
As a survivor of sexual violence, I always found it challenging to “come out” to a potential love interest about my history. It never seemed to come up naturally in conversation on a date.
There is no right or wrong approach to telling a date that you are a survivor of sexual violence. It’s a completely personal decision, and you have to figure out what works for you. In college, one of my big motivations for sharing my story publicly at Take Back the Night was to share it with the entire universe of potential love interests all at once, so I didn’t have to tell it again and again every time I met someone new.
As the years went on, I experimented with many different tactics. Sometimes, I told people on the first date. Sometimes I told them BEFORE the first date. Sometimes I told them over coffee. Sometimes I told them after the second round of drinks. Sometimes, the relationship fizzled out before I had a chance to share my story at all.
