Questioning everything again after being sexually assaulted

I used to spend a lot of time on these forums when I was trying to come to terms with my same sex attraction. I’m female, married to a man, love him so, so much, and I’m also attracted to women. I have been struggling with my attraction to men vs. my attraction to women, trying to find out if they are both “real” or if I just think I want to be with a man because of social conditioning or whatever, but I ended up deciding I’m in a relationship that I cherish and I don’t want to change anything. That was four years ago and we have been happy, most of the time.

4 months ago I was raped on the way home from a party by a stranger. I was scared he would hurt my, but it wasn’t that violent, I was very drunk and scared and unable to defend myself. I have been feeling a lot of guilt about that, and the past months have been awful. My husband has been supportive. I have gone to therapy and I have been dealing with the legal process and it has been exhausting.

I feel like I am starting to recover, but suddenly all the confusion about my sexuality has resurfaced and I hate that it’s happening right now. I have too much stuff to deal with.

I find myself looking at people in the street and comparing my reactions to them, and I know that’s a kind of obsessive-compulsive behavior and not healthy at all, but I still do it. I feel so guilty about everything. And I don’t want to put THIS burden on my husband right now that we are going through all of the other things.

I feel like I check out some men and a lot of women, but I fantasize mostly about men. I don’t have much experience with women and maybe I need that before I can reach any sort of conclusion. But I don’t want to cheat, my husband doesn’t want an open relationship and I don’t want to throw everything away. Sometimes I feel like I just need FREEDOM. I need to sort things out without being in a relationship and being responsible for another person. But I feel like if we were not together I would want to date and have sex with other men, as well as women, so maybe sexual orientation isn’t the problem, maybe I’m just bored. Or maybe I’m just not a monogamous person. When I try to imagine a different life I don’t envision myself in a relationship. I just think about living alone and going on dates in the weekend. But I’m married with small children and it’s really stressful so maybe I just long for some privacy and time to myself.

I feel so awful having all those thoughts right now. I don’t know how to sort this out. Please respond even if you don’t have advice, I just need someone to tell me I’m not crazy or a bad person.
I feel like I’m just a burden on him right now. He has done so much to help me. We have been having some problems because he disagreed with the way I wanted to handle the rape (I wanted to report it and he thought it was a bad idea), but he has been telling me over and over it wasn’t my fault and he has been so patient with me.

Our sex life is good and always have been. I used to be very turned on by the idea of being dominated by a man, but it has changed after the assault, so some of the stuff we used to do makes me uncomfortable. But our sex life isn’t ruined by the assault or the questioning process.

 

Thanks, both of you. I have reported it, and I am in therapy. I used to be in therapy back when I was questioning my sexual orientation a lot, but I have found a different therapist now because I wanted one who was trained in dealing with sexual assault victims. She’s great, but I haven’t even gotten to the sexual orientation thing yet. I know I need to bring it up. I have been so focused on recovering from the assault so could get back to being myself and being with my husband and children. But now that I am getting better I am not even sure who I am and what I want from life anymore. I’m questioning pretty much everything about my life, including career choices and stuff like that. This has been such a difficult time and I don’t think I am the same person anymore but I don’t know exactly how I have changed.
But I feel like I have spent so much so much time feeling guilty and ashamed because of something that someone else did to me... and now I don’t want to feel guilty anymore. I’m done apologizing for things I can’t control