I Gave My Consent. He Gave Me Bruises.

My meet-cute went wrong: Was it misaligned expectations or old-fashioned lying?

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich

(Content warning: consent violations. This story originally appeared in YourTango and is shared here with permission.)

I’m straddling a man on his sofa, on our second date in a week, our third if you include the night we met at a neighborhood karaoke bar, where we both sang Juice Newton songs: “Queen of Hearts” for me and “Angel of the Morning” for him.

That night, I was dazzled by the meet-cute of this karaoke coincidence. His song choice felt fated and in hindsight, prescient. “For it was I who chose to start,” indeed.

He was tall, confident, and handsy in all the right ways. “You really do it for me,” he said, his fingers tracing the sleeve of my cardigan from my shoulder to my elbow. “Wanna go on a date and make out sometime?”

I blushed as I gave my most enthusiastic yes and my number. “Text me,” I told him. I wanted to feel pursued to establish trust with this stone-cold silver fox.

Sure enough, he texted me the next night and asked me for dinner and a show the following Wednesday.

Initial trust, earned.

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That date was amazing. Chemistry sparking, our words as entangled as our hands and limbs, this man charmed my pants off as we shared our stories and similarities. He told me he’d been married for over 20 years, then with another girlfriend for four more right after. He’d been single since June and wanted to be in a long-term relationship again and was figuring out how to date to get there.

From where I sat — giddy on pheromones as we effortlessly touched and talked and kissed across three neighborhood establishments — we’d seemed to have figured it out pretty well, together. I didn’t want to get ahead of myself but everything about this guy had an ease and a heat that felt intoxicating, magical.

Readers, I took him home.

But I made it clear I wasn’t quite ready, as I wasn’t one for one-night stands.

He pushed a bit more but ultimately respected my boundary, and asked when he could see me again. “I’m free tomorrow and Saturday,” I answered. I was thrilled he picked tomorrow — which was already today by the time he left my place after 1 am. I was just as eager to see him again as soon as possible.

We texted that afternoon, each lamenting how sleepy we were thanks to our late night. It was nearly 7 pm by the time we were both home and child-free. “Want to see my place?” he asked. Of course, I did.

So now I’m here on his sofa, on his lap with his hands all over me, high on endorphins and expectancy. He invites me to his bed, but first, he has something to tell me, too.

“I know you said last night that you’re not casual about sex. So I want to be upfront that I like you but I’m not looking for anything exclusive right now.”

Oh boy.

I appreciate he’s being transparent with me but can see he’s rolling back on what he’d said the evening before. Intellectually, I note the disparity. Emotionally, my pulse cools a beat, disappointed. But physically, I can’t — no, I don’t want to — pivot.

This isn’t the way I usually roll, but I tell him I really like him, and I’m good with starting a non-exclusive relationship with him, if he feels the same way. Just no one-night stands. He enthusiastically agrees; he likes me, too.

We are aligned.

And so it happens.

I have realistic expectations of what first times can be like. Small surprises under clothing, parts not parting as they should, especially as men age and doubly so as we’re new to each other and need to wrap things up.

But even with my managed expectations: it isn’t very good.

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Looking back, I can see things weren’t very good from the start.

His initial invite to come over, which seemed sweetly familiar at the time, now reeks of laziness. I arrived at dinner time, but he had no food in his house; I told him I didn’t mind, but I went home hungry that night, in more ways than one. His bedroom was disheveled; he hadn’t bothered to pull up his bed sheets.

And then there was his touch. This part is harder to examine and trickier to explain. Kindly, he wasn’t receptive when I told him how I liked to be touched. Bluntly, he hurt me. His grabs and jabs and bites were too much. I tried to redirect him, and I said “Ouch” and “That hurts” more than once, but he didn’t change.

Now I’m bruised.

And not just my heart and ego — I mean, literally. The next day I got into the shower and gasped. Angry purple marks stared up at me from my chest, forcing me to confront some unsavory truths about our night together.

I did not consent to being marked.

And physical bruises weren’t the most painful part. What stung the most? He went dark. No call, no text, no nothing.

I did not consent to a one-night stand, either.

I’m well-versed in the language of consent. I preach — and practice — the importance of using one’s words. And yet there I stood in my shower, feeling the sting of hot water mixed with the shock and shame and indignation and doubt that deluged all at once, unsure of which emotions were even fair to feel.

When we navigated that conversation about our relationship model on the cusp of intimacy, I was not ambiguous. He wanted something not exclusive. I wanted something not casual. We were to enter a non-exclusive relationship, with an emphasis — at least for me — on that second word. That part was non-negotiable. And then he disappeared, violating our terms of consent.

At first, I took my rage at him and turned it inward. Was this my fault for jumping in so quickly? If I couldn’t count on my words and judgment of character to protect me, then what options did I have to negotiate the dating world?

It felt awful to wrestle with this self-doubt and anger. I hated my own needs and poor judgment. I hated this person for putting me in this position and destabilizing me. I hated that my words couldn’t protect me.

I was downward spiraling and felt nearly powerless to stop it. So I turned to three trusted friends for advice.

The first shrugged. “My boyfriend leaves me bruised all the time, it’s not a big deal.”

The second was aghast and exclaimed, “Dana, he raped you! You need to go to the police!”

Neither of these responses resonated for me. Both the bruises and his disappearance were big deals, but I wasn’t about to round that night up to rape.

I messaged a third friend and she hit closer. “I gotta be brutally honest here: He did violate your boundaries. Please take this as my concern and care for you.”

Her words moved me to tears and truth.

Until I read them, I was still questioning myself. Maybe my newness to non-exclusive dating was to blame? Maybe I was overreacting to a couple of bruises and a really busy week?

Reading her response made me reexamine our dates through the lens of his neglect, and helped me understand which wounds were superficial and which cut deeper. Those literal bruises? I could’ve easily dismissed them as accidental, a result of our newness. But juxtaposed with his disappearing act? That made it clear he had no respect for my relationship boundaries. Why would he have respect for my physical ones?

As I’ve shared this story with friends, I’ve noted the heightened concern around my bruises and a dismissiveness around his disappearance. My bruises have been rounded up to abuse, his disappearance was shrugged off as ghosting. To me, it’s a misclassification. The two are intertwined, as the latter validates the egregiousness of the former. But there’s no question of which was the true consent violation.

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My skin is thick. Bruising it came with a moment of pain but with ambiguity around intent. One woman’s ouch is another’s oh yes, and yes, a more skillful lover would have noted the difference and adapted. I could grant a lot of leeway in the name of unfamiliarity and desire, but even assuming negative intent here — which seems likely — the damage was superficial.

But ignoring my words, and our agreed-upon terms of consent? This undermined my psychological safety and left me emotionally compromised.

And that was reprehensible, unforgivable.

Dating can be brutal enough. The only way to safely and respectfully start with a new partner is to speak the language of consent. What do you want, what do I want, are our wants compatible?

He told me they were. But he knew they weren’t. He lied to obtain my consent.

That violation shook me, and healing from it is going to take a lot longer than the bruises.

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Consent isn’t a single moment. It’s fluid and can be rescinded before or during any act, for any reason.

But can it be rescinded after intimacy if one gives consent under false pretenses? Legally speaking, I’m sure not. I’m not building a criminal case, though. I’m exploring a moral and emotional one.

I can see I let my vigilance slip. I didn’t speak firmly enough in the moment, and instead accepted our initial agreement without revisiting it as his actions wavered into questionable spaces. I allowed boundaries to blur like these bruises on my chest, now nearly imperceptible blotches after ten days.

But the invisible bruises inside my chest? They persist, taunting me from a deeper place than the visible ones ever could. “

And so I hurt, and I heal.

My mind wanders back to the song “Angel of the Morning,” and I pay attention beyond the bombast of the chorus. I hear how the lyrics take the listener through feminine desire, compromise, heartache — and consent.

“Through the tears, of the day, of the years.”

This lament in the bridge of the song is a small sadness; blink and you’ll miss it. What most listeners know is the belt of the refrain, exuberant and empowered.

“Just call me angel of the morning, angel.
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.”

The narrator leaves no ambiguity about what we’re meant to hear in this song. She wants to have sex with this man — on her own terms. It’s a song that celebrates how validating even casual sex can be when one’s emotional requirements are met.

What makes this song an expression of joy instead of heartache, even as he leaves her? Consent.

Unlike my unkind Angel, hers listens to her needs and honors them. He calls her Angel. He touches her cheek. So she feels okay when he slowly turns away.

There was no need to take a stand. She didn’t beg him to stay.

It was what she wanted, now.

Me too, Juice. Me too.

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I’m Dana DuBois, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I’m a founder and editor of three publications: Pink Hair & Pronouns, Three Imaginary Girls, and genXy. I write across a variety of topics but parenting, music and pop culture, relationships, and feminism are my favorites. Em-dashes, Oxford commas, and well-placed semi-colons make my heart happy.

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