Some random thoughts, driven by the reality that LW's "friend" could have been me, gender reversed, thirty years ago, or it could also have been my wife, thirty years ago. So let's look at a pattern...... and the pattern is clear.

The young woman in question engages in group sex (c'mon, a room full of guys and she only had concensual sex with ONE? cut me a break.) she enters the fray with a caretaker friend who cannot stop, but can be breathily concerned on the sidelines, and some additional friends being horrorstruck just a bit out of reach. I am sure that the event was traumatic, I am sure that at moments, it was a "controlled detonation", meaning that the general nature of the sexual explosion for LW's friend was 'structured' by her, but not the specifics, which can get scarily close to being out of hand... Then LW's friend emerges, denying that it meant squat, that it was important, that it means anything.. and goes so far as to treat the event as if it did not happen. And, I would strongly guess that LW's friend's actions were about anger, not libido. She was "proving' to someone, certainly not the Marines, who were there just to rock it out, that she could 'take it all", "bring it on", and it really, really does not matter the morning after........

To me, that sounds eerily like a behavioral memory, or "re-enactment" of, perhaps, childhood sexual abuse. Women and men do not automatically elect to be casually, drunkenly promiscuous and then deny the reality of the event..... Somewhere, would be my guess, is an eerie choriography of sexual abuse that occurred decades ago, that LW's friend chooses, at this point, to repress. Perhaps those memories are being activated by increasing intimacy and threat of marriage with her LTBF, perhaps there is something about alchohol and partying that is activating - who knows.

Between my wife and me, we pretty much laid everythng but the Atlantic Cable in what we now refer to as the Decade of Acting Out..... Stood in stark contrast to our presenting personae, which was that of highly competent well respected young professionals. I'm not proud of those years, frankly, but I do now understand my behavior... and my wife and I have been graced to carve a healing pathway together - with a lotta help from therapists, and peers in healing.........

My guess is the young woman who does a hotel roomful of Marines is only moderately emotionally associated with the friend that LW knows. Thus, a stern sister to sister converstaion will not register. Condoms in a purse, a reminder of reality, just might....As for the LTBF, if he has been connected with this woman for eight years, it is hardly that he knows her casually. And, we do not know his story, after all.... And I would be loth to second guess that, or the context of their relationship at all.

In truth, what can be done is to be aware, aware of the nuances of this young woman's life. At times, other than stuffing condoms in her purse, cautioning her to call in regularly, there is precious little to do until LW's friend connects the dots. She may do that tomorrow, she may never.... But, the other thing you can do, if you really want to be her friend for the moment of incipient awareness, is to read some basics - Courage to Heal comes to mind. Don't engage in the mawkish celebration of gory details of sexual abuse so often trumped on daytime TV, but do some serious self-help reading, and become more aware.