ive been asked by a good friend who wishes to remain anonymous for now to bring attention to the fact that harlan/tumblr user papauera is sexually abusive. under the cut is an account of their experience with harlan that was sent to me this morning.
i was in a relationship with harlan/tumblr user papauera for a little over two months, if i remember right. not very long. but it severely affected me emotionally and is still affecting me years later.
first of all harlan pressured/manipulated/guilted me into cyber sex and created an environment where i didn’t feel like i could say no for fear of hurting harlan’s feelings. harlan always presented themself as very delicate and even the smallest disagreement or if i ever didn’t want to go along with anything they wanted they would get personally hurt and make me spend the next few hours comforting them and reassuring them that i didn’t hate them and that they weren’t a terrible person. the first time started when we were casually talking about kinks, and they told me that i was turning them on but phrased it in a way that made it seem like i was responsible for their arousal and therefore had to get them off. and i was. very disinterested in doing it at the time but did it because i felt like it was the thing to do? and i felt obligated to fake an orgasm too. and i didn’t realize until afterwards how much i. didn’t want to do any of it. but afterwards they kept pushing me into it and bringing it up like sexting me while i was at class even while i was like “i’m in class i’m busy” and just kept bringing it up and makg me feel guilty for turning them on? and just. i just progressively realized how it made me feel disgusting and used and dirty.
they also told me outright they had a guilt fetish and would purposely make me feel guilty because they got off on it. in addition to using guilt to manipulate me into things i didnt feel comfortable doing.
anyway after… not that long i told them explicitly that i didn’t feel comfortable doing that with them anymore and i don’t remember how they responded. but it stopped. and then a while later they told a then-mutual friend about our “sex” life whtout my consent (and misrepresented how it happened, making it seem like i??? seduced them???? or something????? like just talking with this mutual friend about how hot it was when i was doing it) and when that psn brought it up with me i confronted harlan about it like hey it’s not cool to bring stuff like that up with people without talking about it with me first i don’t feel comfortable with that. and harlan turned the conversation around to be like “well when will you feel more comfortable with doing sex stuff with me again” and talking about how upset they were that i wasn’t doing that with them anymore and how hurt they were about it.
they would do it a lot like. they constantly expected me to be available for them and to listen to their feelings and talk them through them and if i ever brought up my own feelings they IMMEDIATELY turned it around back to their feelings. i felt like an object or something like my only purpose was to be there for them to listen to them and give them attention/sympathy and turn them on. because every time i would exist for anything else they would make me feel horrible and guilty about it. and whenever i would say “hey you’re doing something that upsets me” they would turn it around and make me feel guilty about it and start talking about how they just didn’t know how to interact with other people and would act very uncomfortable any time i so much as MENTIONED any of my personal problems. so i just. stopped bringing it up.
they also tried to guilt me into saying i love you back to them even after i told them i didn’t feel comfortable saying it because we’d only known each other for a short time and kept bringing it up. and they had a boyfriend at the time which i didn’t? feel comfortable with? because the boyfriend didn’t know about me. and i didn’t want to pressure them into doing anything about that like telling him or breaking it off i was just like “hey so. you can do whatever with him it’s not my business but i feel uncomfortable talking about him” and harlan just completely ignored that and specifically tried to make me jealous by bringing him up (and admitting that that’s why they did it). like anytime i felt uncomfortable with anything they did and told them they’d shut me down or turn it around to talk about their feelings and make me spend LITERAL HOURS tlaking about their feelings and how i upset them and i needed to reassure them that i didn’t think they were a horrible person. and then they would ignore it and continue doing whatever it was.
and there was like. gaslighting. specifically making me feel stupid. constantly shutting me down and talking over me and belittling my feelings. they would talk about how romantic they thought abusive/doomed relationships were. a lot of passive-aggression like, i’m talking constant passive-aggression to make me feel guilty about not saying i love you and shit. and they would start insulting themself to manipulate me into reassuring them they weren’t a bad person. they made me feel like i was hurting them if i wasn’t constantly available to give them attention and sympathy and i mean CONSTANTLY like if i wanted to go to sleep they would make me stay up to babysit their feelings and i would have to text them about them during class. one time i was trying to write an essay due the next day and they kept tryign to text me to get my attention and i was still like “hey i really can’t right now” and they kept texting “:c” at me until i got online to pay attention to them
i really can’t like. emphasize enough about this environment they created where i couldn’t bring up anything i felt uncomfortable with or any of my boundaries because they would become HORRIBLY UPSET if i ever did that and acted like i was being horrible to them for being like “i don’t feel comfortable with this”. every little disagreement (like i’m talking, like, interpreting fictional characters differently here, REALLY little shit) turned into me babysitting their feelings. one time i brought up something that they continually did to me, even after i asked them not to, i brought it up again and they were like “i can’t deal with this i need to be drunk to deal with you.”
and even after i broke it off with them like… when i broke up with them i felt like i had to phrase it in the most gentle possible way because of how delicate they were and how upset they would get at every little thing. like i felt like i was in the wrong by being upset by them, i felt like my heightened anxiety and depression from being with them was MY fault. so i said i needed space. and they continued to violate that space by coming to specifically ask me when i would feel comfrtable refollowing them on tumblr until i was finally like “i need to block you.” and even after that harlan kept trying to “get closure” and ranted about me to a mutual friend in order to get me to come back and talk to them about it.
basically harlan doesn’t care about boundaries and uses guilt to manipulate people and prioritizes their own feelings over other people’s feelings and is willing to push and pressure and guilt people into sex with them
(i have myself been made uncomfortable by harlan several times, not that they have abused me, but some of the things they would say when i discussed sexual abuse made me severely uncomfortable. like, i was talking about what kind of shit has to go through an abusers mind to violate someone like i had been violated by others and harlan publicly commented “well sometimes if both people involved have brain problems you can abuse someone without knowing it so :(” so hearing this was. honestly not the biggest surprise.)