I’m not with this guy now. But we dated for 6 months. He’s a marine and was about to deploy to another state, and didn’t want to do LDR.
I love physical touch and I am very playful. I don’t mind getting rough etc. which is why I brushed these moments aside when they first happened.
I am petite, and this guy was physically bigger and taller than me. My first ex was mindful of our size difference and would not overdo it.
He had a tendency to yank me in public. If I was slowing down or distracted. He would abruptly pull on my hand, and I’d stumble every single time and laugh it off awkwardly because people were around.
He dropped a pillow on my face. (This was more my own trigger, I got suffocated as a kid and I just don’t like any reminder of that feeling).
He put a hand on my neck during intimacy without asking me.
I made a joke teasing him while I was laying on top of him on bed, he abruptly shoved me off him. I fell to my side on the bed and it actually hurt. I remember being stunned while laughing and I stopped reaching for him. He initiated touch after I fell silent, cuddled me and then I forgot about it.
I need lube during sex because I can get very tense and it hurts. He knew this. But he’d sometimes just preferred using spit instead of the lube that I actually bought and put it in his bedside drawer. He never asked if I needed lube, it always had to be me to remind him to use it.
Once I bit his arm playfully after us not seeing each other for a while due to overlapping schedules. He reached over and smacked me lightly on the cheek. I hated it immediately but didn’t say anything.
He was already touching me on the first date, he put his hand on my thigh when we were on a bench together to show me something on his phone even though he could have just held it in the air.
For most of these I just laughed it off or stayed quiet. I thought it was just his way of showing love and I wasn’t used to it and maybe I’d get used to it but now that I’m single I’m trying to learn how to listen to my body better. Even if it his way of showing love, clearly my body was trying to tell me that it didn’t feel safe in those moments. I mean we wrestled once and I liked that because I egged him on and I was an active participant in it.
All of these moments I listed were accompanied by things like forehead kisses, him rubbing my back, stroking my hair and I liked those.