Eric and I had been friends for years, almost my whole entire time at university.

We were introduced through his girlfriend Marie, who was also a friend of mine through the nursing program. He was attractive, charismatic, and all over fun to be around. Eric was someone who was easy to talk to and he was always there to listen when I needed to talk to someone about Jason, the guy who I’d been in a five year relationship with. It took me a long time to realize how emotionally and mentally abusive Jason was, and Eric was one of the first of my university friends to bluntly point this out. Jason and I had decided near the end of our relationship to enter into an S&M (submissive and master) contract. Things were deteriorating between us, and for some reason this seemed like the answer at the time. It was his idea, and he had always been good at convincing me that his ideas were the right ideas, so I bought into it. In the beginning, I’ll admit that it was fun and exciting to have this alternate lifestyle that not a whole lot of people knew about. But of course, Jason being Jason, took it too far. He had always been a little possessive and controlling, and in certain aspects of our life, mostly our romantic life, I liked that. However, since he didn’t live in the same city or even the same state that I went to university, he didn’t like it when I went out with my friends to parties or to bars, and when I did, I had to check in with him every few hours. Jason told me it was only because he feared for my well-being, that he knew how guys were and how they’d only be too happy to take advantage of a drunk and vulnerable woman. And, to a point, I understood that, but it became an issue when he would command me as my master to stay in, to not see certain people like Eric, or to call or text him at certain times.In the end, it wore on me. I felt caged and like I had lost control over my own life. Eric saw this too. During my junior year, Eric was going through his own problems with Marie and some of them were of a sexual nature. That’s when I opened up to him about my S&M relationship. At first, he thought it was kind of hot and asked me a lot of questions about our sex life, which since we were close, I didn’t have an issue talking to him about it. But when I got to how it affected my everyday life, he became concerned. Eric told me he didn’t think it was right the way Jason was treating me, even if we were in this kind of relationship, and that it wasn’t healthy for me to live like that. That I was a grown woman and clearly could manage my own life.

I felt caged and like I had lost control over my own life.

While these words rang true, and I was grateful for his concern, I began to see that Eric might have other motives when it came to inserting himself into my relationship troubles. When he would talk about his issues with Marie, he would sometimes talk about leaving her and that maybe she wasn’t the right person for him after all. After this would come the suggestion that we watch a movie, which would lead to cuddling and then to him asking if I’d like a massage. My course load and working as an RA left me carrying a lot of stress, and it would result in back pain. Eric knew this, and he was really good at working out the knots in my back. However, these massages started to get uncomfortably sexual. He would want me to lay down completely on my front so he could straddle me to “better work out the knots” and he would lift up my shirt unprompted and slip his hands under my bra strap. I didn’t want to overreact because a part of me thought he was just trying to help me out, so I stopped coming to his room as often or inviting him to mine. That didn’t stop the texting though. Eric would text me periodically, in the beginning updating me about his day and the stuff he was doing and asking me about mine. Then, it would get sexual. He would tell me about how horny he was and would ask how I coped going sometimes weeks without seeing Jason and if I ever felt sexually frustrated. Usually I would just ignore the messages, and he would get the hint and apologize for being too forward. One time though, he took it too far. It was the summer in between my junior and senior year, and I was working our freshman orientation program as the orientation leader. The job came with a lot of responsibility, and many nights, I was up late working on getting things ready for the orientation sessions. Jason had always had issues when I worked this program because I wouldn’t talk to him as often as he liked. I told him I might be even busier being the leader of the group and he would just have to be understanding of that. He wasn’t and after not hearing from me for a couple days, he blew up at me. I had finally had enough, especially since it was starting to affect my work life, so I ended the relationship. Eric texted me not long after that since I had deleted my Facebook, not wanting to deal with the onslaught of questions over my relationship status change, to ask how I was coping. At first the conversation was nice. I was keeping most of the details from my coworkers, since I didn’t like to mix work with my personal life. It was great to unburden myself to someone. Eventually, he started talking about how his relationship with Marie was getting worse all the time and he was again thinking of breaking it off. Since I knew where this was heading, and it had gotten to be late while we were texting, I told Eric that I was in bed and I needed some sleep. But he didn’t seem to get the hint. He kept texting me about how he hadn’t seen Marie a lot during the summer and he was starting to feel it. Eric told me about how horny he was and tried asking if I was feeling the same now that I was no longer with Jason. Then, he began talking about how attractive I was and how I couldn’t possibly have issues getting laid. I tried to just ignore the texts and even put my phone across the room so I wouldn’t be tempted to look at it. I didn’t want to switch it off since it doubled as my alarm clock.

In the morning, it was with great reluctance that I looked at my phone to see how bad it had gotten, and when I read through what he had sent me, I wasn’t even remotely prepared.

Eric had gone on to describe in graphic detail what he would like to do to me. He talked about me being dressed in a sexually provocative way that I’d never dress in a million years. He described how wet he would make me, how I would scream his name and beg him for more as he took me in the most degrading and impossible positions. I remember staring at my phone for the longest time, getting more and more disgusted by the minute. After a while, I deleted the messages because I didn’t want to see them anymore. I texted him and told him that what he had sent me the night before had made me really uncomfortable and explained how totally inappropriate it had been. He texted back later in the day and apologized profusely, explaining that he had been drunk and not in his right mind and assuring me that it would never happen again. Eric went on about how much he really loved Marie and how he really wanted to make it work, that he didn’t mean anything he had said the night before. He blamed it all on the booze.So for a while, I didn’t talk to him. I ignored his texts, his calls, even a few LinkedIn messages. I started off my senior year not talking to him at all. Marie had graduated the year before, but she was living in some apartments near campus since she found a nursing job in the area. When I hung out with her, I told her that Eric and I had had a disagreement and I didn’t have the time to deal with him at the moment. She understood and told me she’d never force me to hang out with him. Marie confided in me that things were pretty bad between them and had been for a while, their time apart during the summer definitely not helping things. She was talking of leaving him, and I didn’t jump in to defend him. Not long into the semester, Marie texted me and asked if she could come over for a bit. I told her I was on RA duty in my building, but otherwise I wasn’t busy so she could come on over. We sat in my room and she told me how she had been through Eric’s phone and had seen the texts he sent me earlier in the summer. He hadn’t deleted anything. Marie assured me that she knew I hadn’t done anything to egg him on and she had been horrified that he had treated me like that. She also, informed me that I wasn’t the only girl he had done that to. Of course, once she discovered the texts it had led to a fight between them, and she had broken up with him. I supported her in her decision and told her I knew what she was going through since I had not long ago broken up with Jason. Marie told me that during the fight she had brought me up specifically, asking him how he could put me in that uncomfortable situation after all I had been through, and warned him that I had told her to not talk to me anymore. She apologized for speaking for me without asking me, but I assured her that it was fine and that I would have told her to say that anyway. That night I decided I was done with Eric. His treatment of not only me, but Marie, was all the persuasion I needed that he was no good. I wanted nothing more to do with him.If only I had known that he was nowhere near done with me.-Khaleesi