My boyfriend took the condom off during sex without telling me

I’d just had sex with my boyfriend. A bit of a quickie, no frills.

Insecure about my body, I never wasted time in getting my clothes back on. So while he relaxed on the bed, I bent down to grab my top.

That’s when I saw the discarded condom in the bin. 

For a moment, I felt like I’d left my body.

‘Had he taken it off afterwards?’ I wondered uneasily. ‘But how could he have removed it and thrown it away without me noticing?’

Growing more worried by the second, I didn’t know what to say or do. I just froze, my mind blank. All I could see was that used condom.

I snapped out of it when he kissed my shoulder, chucked my top on, and headed to the bathroom to gather my thoughts.

The one thing I did know was that if I questioned him, or he saw the doubt in my eyes, it would end in another one-sided argument about my ‘commitment and trust issues’ while I sat silently in tears.

The only thing I could think to do, while locked in the toilet with my phone, was to look up a pharmacy offering free emergency contraception – just to be on the safe side. Then I deleted my browsing history before I flushed. Just in case.

And that was the end of that. I went home the day after, as planned, and collected my pill locally. 

What I later learned though, was that the non-consensual removal of a condom is called ‘stealthing’. And in England and Wales, stealthing is legally considered rape.

However, a new study has found that around one in 10 people between 18 and 25 years old either don’t know or don’t believe that removing a condom without the other person’s consent is a crime.

My boyfriend and I had originally met online mutual friends when I was 17.

He was 25, funny, with a deep voice, dark curly hair and blue eyes.

For months, we exchanged flirty messages, but we lived quite a distance from one another. He invited me to stay with him for a weekend, but I didn’t want to be trapped there if it didn’t work out. 

Then, as luck would have it, not long after I turned 18, we ended up at the same party.

He was just as funny in person and things felt more natural than they had online.

One thing led to another… That was the night I lost my virginity, and the night we made our relationship official.

Things moved fast – less than a month in, he told me he loved me – which unnerved me, but after a few months, I started to feel more comfortable around him.

That was when the sex started getting rougher.

A couple of times he wouldn’t let me up for air during oral. Another time, despite repeated protests, he initiated anal sex without my permission.

I never told anyone about these incidents though. Or the one with the discarded condom.

I thought it was normal. Just part of figuring out how each other gets off, like I’d read in magazines as a teenager. 

These weren’t the only lines he crossed though. He started hurting me physically, too. 

He said he was being playful, but he’d do things like bite my arm when I tried to pack my things ‘too early’ to catch my train home. That left me with a nasty bruise for weeks. Like the times he pinched me hard for no reason.

Asking him to stop got me nowhere.

And the one time I tried to start a serious conversation about how he treated me, he ghosted me for a week.

The next time we spoke, he ended our relationship, saying that me bringing up the way he treated me ‘wasn’t fair’.

I realised how toxic he was. I wasn’t going to fight for him.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that someone did not consent if the other person tricked them about the ‘nature’ of the sex

But there was still one question on my mind – had he removed the condom during the last time we’d had sex, or after?

Already broken up, I felt brave enough to ask.

That’s when he nonchalantly admitted to removing the condom during sex, not just that day, but multiple times beforehand.

I felt sick and faint. I’d been betrayed, put at risk, and then discarded by the man that was supposed to love me.

I only learned of the term ‘stealthing’ when I stumbled across a forum post of a young woman anonymously asking for help to determine whether she’d been raped. Her experience was similar to mine, and that term – ‘stealthing’ – kept coming up.

So I did more research. On their website, Rape Crisis explains that stealthing happens ‘when people agree to have sex with a condom and then someone either lies about putting a condom on or removes it without the other person’s permission’.

They go on to explain that, while there is no criminal offence called stealthing, it falls under the umbrella of rape in English and Welsh law.

And the Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that someone did not consent if the other person tricked them about the ‘nature’ of the sex – in other words, what exactly it was going to involve.

Anyone who carries out this act can be prosecuted and receive up to life in prison.

However, there have only been two successful convictions in the UK. One in England in 2019, and another in Scotland in March 2023. 

Learning this, that my ex-boyfriend had raped me, was shocking.

I felt stupid and angry for not even knowing the whole definition of rape.

I didn’t know who to talk to about it. I’d kept our relationship a secret from most people, including my family, because they wouldn’t approve of our seven-year age difference.

Going to the police crossed my mind, until I remembered reading about how women are portrayed and treated when their cases get to court – if they ever do.

In the end, I told one of our mutual friends. Someone I trusted like a brother.

Only, he told me that it wasn’t a big deal. That he’d done it to his own partner before.

I sat in silence as he told me how she’d got pregnant and had to go through an abortion, and that’s why he doesn’t do it anymore. 

He said I should ‘let it go’. We weren’t together anymore so it wasn’t like it was going to happen again. 

Unable to let it go, I told two other mutual friends, both men, and their reaction wasn’t much better.

One said he didn’t want to get involved, while the other warned my ex what I was saying.

They made me feel so small. Like I was being dramatic and childish.

But rape is rape.

I wasn’t intimate with another person for almost three years. I couldn’t trust anyone and was suddenly aware of how little power I had.

And I still hadn’t found the courage to use the ‘r-word’ out loud either, never mind get support. 

It was only from supporting another rape survivor at university, completely by chance, that I finally saw the situation with clarity.

She went through the same thing as me, and I understood she’d been raped. So I’d been raped too.

That helped me, as did taking back control of my sexuality and enjoying casual sex.

But when I survived an attempted rape by a stranger in 2018, it brought it all back. I still struggle now.

I find relationships difficult, and I’m waiting to start another round of therapy for PTSD symptoms.

Sometimes I struggle with seeing my own experience as entirely valid and a clear-cut case of rape.

I don’t think the term ‘stealthing’ helps either.

It sounds like a game. A pop-culture dating buzzword, like ghosting or breadcrumbing. It makes it seem different to other forms of rape. Like it’s less serious or doesn’t count.

Yet, I’m proof that it is just as serious and has just as long an impact as other forms of rape.

I want to see more people challenge the lad culture that lets men think it’s acceptable to carry out things like stealthing. 

I want to see schools, colleges, and universities talk about it. Teach young people about consent beyond a simple ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. That you can give conditional consent, such as ‘yes, as long as a condom is used’. 

We need to recognise the trendy slang term while calling it what it is. Rape.

This article was originally published March 9, 2024

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