TRIGGER WARNING: SA
My (19F) boyfriend (19M) and I have been together for almost two years and I am a very restless sleeper which is most likely due to my history of being sexually abused as a child. Every night while I’m asleep, I grind on my boyfriend. This usually turns him on and has resulted in the past in him reciprocating, then I wake up and feel violated and he feels awful because he didn’t know I was asleep. We’ve resolved that issue and decided he shouldn’t try anything unless he actually sees me sit up and open my eyes since it can be hard to tell if I’m asleep. It does still cause problems though. He can hardly get a good night’s sleep because of it and because if there are any sudden movements or noises, I will go into fight mode and start hitting and kicking in my sleep. I feel safe with him and he’s told me that sometimes when I do this (the fighting) in my sleep, he’ll hold me and tell me it’s okay it’s just him and it actually calms me down. On top of hardly being able to get sleep, he wakes up feeling sexually frustrated because I’ve just been teasing him all night in my sleep. It’s not really hurting our relationship but I just feel really bad knowing he can hardly sleep because of me and I don’t know how to stop being so active in my sleep. Apparently I even punched him in the chest the other night. Does anyone have any advice for this kind of thing?