Does Sexual abuse affect your sex life?
Sex is as you can well imagine, a very difficult subject for the survivor.
Considering that for many of us sex, Or a sexual act, was always performed:-
A) Without our consent
B) Against our will,
C) Often with threats attached.
And You wonder why sex is a problem for us.???
One of two things happens to the survivor.
:He either becomes asexual (Not interested in sex) unless of course it is with himself.
:He Becomes a sex addict.
Both of these acts come with one common thread. There is no emotional attachment. We do these things to either relive our abuse, or to in some way gain from the experience that we had by re-enacting the abuse on others. By others I by no means imply that this happens with other children, this would be to sick to contemplate. We re-enact our abuse on our partners. In my situation, when the abuse was happening I would fantasize about being in the bed with two woman. this helped me deal with the abuse whilst it happened. This fantasy was then carried over to the bedroom. When I was making love to my partner, I could not perform unless I was fantasizing about the two woman, any two woman. This naturally held its own challenges.
Porn also becomes a very large factor in the life of a lot of survivors. We use porn to fuel our asexuality. Again we detach and find ways of having "sex" without the emotional attachment.
The odd thing is, that it is this very emotional attachment that we seek so desperately in our lives.
The same is true of the sex addict, the other side of the equation, (At least for me its the other side) The addict seeks to re-enact the abusive behaviour that he experienced on all these partners that he finds. again the more sex that he has, the more guilty he feels and the more empty he feels. So it turns out to be a vicious circle, he is out there having the physical involvement with the men or woman he sleeps with, but he still is not finding the emotional attachment that he so desires. This then leaves the addict empty and searching.
Oddly that when he does find a partner that he can connect to emotionally, he doesn't, he often ends up having wild encounters even after he is married.
We haven't even brought into the sex post the sexual identity crisis, this is a subject for a whole other page.
I welcome comments to the pages, bearing in mind that the posts are Moderated so no horrible content gets through, so please feel free to comment, it is anonymous.
Heal well all
Martin
5 comments:
Hi Martin
It is so true. Sex for an addict is just sex, its the same with my husband - its about relieving himself only & yes after we got married he still continued with those secret sexual acts. 21yrs later - I had enough & I think humiliated enough too,that's when I confronted him of his ongoing affair with a 60yr old - he is 45. In his defense all he could say was - its sex only! He couldn't even tell me for how long this had been going on - 1yr, 2yrs ? He doesn't know !
And the cherry ontop was he assured me daily, weekly how much he loved me & if ever he makes a mistake I should foregive him - cause I said to him - it would be over between us if you ever do anything again . But I guess sex had become just that and to feed his ego and let people know that he is the stud - he tried his luck with college girls - 21yr old, & he called them friends - they are just friends. I only found this out when I hired a PI to follow him - as I had this 6th sense about something going on.
During his encounters he was ontop of the world - gymed daily - Infact many times gymed twice a day, dressed differently & kept tabs on me.
Currently he hasn't gymed in ages - picked up weight and feels like a zombie , not in a mood to do anything - not even trying to save his marriage.
And blames me for feeling that way.
Infact later blamed me for never touching him when he asked, and still continues to blame other people for getting caught - but refuses to take resonsibility & shows absolutely no remorse at all. Infact he carried on like his world fell apart when he was caught & he needs to be comforted.
He has had therapy - but I don't see any change - he is still that angry person he always was & makes me feel like he is better off without me.
And yes, we have now looked at separating - cause I'm finding it difficult to trust him, as he wants to know from me what must he do to regain my trust, cause according to him - it's only me that has a problem & otherwise things are fine - cause he has promised never to do that again.
Overall I feel he just misses sex!!!
Communication is completely out of the question.
To date he has never spoken to me about his abuse. I know vague details. Yet for him to try and help an ex- gf was the right thing to do.
Overall I feel given the Aids stats in our country - did he not think about any STD's!- do you forget about such things completely?
Even though he claimed he was completely safe - almost 2-3 months later he still had some sort of STD after blood test were done.
Our 25 year marriage is pretty typical of what you're saying. My husband has always kept his eyes closed when having sex and there is very little touching other than the intercourse. We also went through a 9 year period where there was no sex. He has been addicted to alcohol, now sober for a year and half, then I caught him looking at gay porn, and the final straw was him meeting up with a guy off of craigslist. After which he confessed he had a year long physical relationship with another man prior to our being married that he has kept a secret from everyone. We went into counseling and he is now working through the AA steps and goes on to Male Survivor to chat quite often. The big thing that he hasn't done is to seek counseling for his CSA directly. He contends that with the work he is doing in AA, he needs to concentrate on that right now. My concern is that its all tied together and if he doesn't work on the CSA, how can he be honest with himself or me?
Hi Anonymous.
I agree with you completely. Firstly I am so sorry for what you are experiencing in your life, It is soul destroying.
I too had to go to the AA to stop drinking and it worked to a certain extent. I started to go through the steps and went through the dreaded step four, and, nothing. Well you see I was not ready to face what my past abuse had done in my life, how it had affected me.
It was only when I saw others talking about their abuse and how it affected them that I started to realize the impact that my CSA had on my life.
ONCE I REALIZED THIS, then my desire to drink left me. My life started to change in ways that I could not fathom, good ways.
So I would recommend for your husband that he FIRST look at the way that his abuse affected him, and then the desire to drink will leave him.
In AA, a brilliant and helpful program, I think the main crux of healing is lost today. Things such as an Honest desire to stop drinking and other key words are being removed because we are trying to be PC. Its not the program's fault but rather the leadership of the group.
If we honestly desire to heal, then we will scratch open the cause of our desire to drink, In your husbands case I can almost guarantee that it is his past abuse.
Let him read your post and my reply, and then get him to read the effects and the myths surrounding CSA. This might help him to see what it is that has happened to him.
Heal well
Martin
I so agree with Martin!
My husband was a victim of CSA as an adolescent (prostituted by gay males while he was a homeless 16-year-old after having fled a physically abusive father). He never told me about his abuse because he never viewed it as sexual abuse. As a 16-year-old, he felt he was in control and that it was all his fault. He was filled with shame, and although he says there was never a day that passed without thinking about it, he never said a word.
Two years ago I discovered he was having an affair with my grandson's mother and was supplementing that affair with prostitutes. He confessed to a lifetime of masturbation, which, with the help of increasing alcohol abuse, became extremely life-threatening (inserting sharp objects rectally...my husband is a survivor of colorectal cancer and had a portion of his rectum removed, so inserting anything at all is life-threatening! Yet, he did it! Compulsively!). The list of dysfunctions continues, but I won't horrify you further.
When his hidden life was discovered, he stopped drinking, which allowed his head to clear enough to stop sexually acting out. Before long, we unearthed his sexual abuse trauma, properly labeled it and began counseling together and he, separately.
The abuse has taken the center stage of our recovery as it becomes increasingly apparent that his hidden sex life was an affect of the abuse. Once exposed to light and air, the trauma fungus that had been eating him alive, quit growing and began to die.
This man who was hiding vodka around our house, drinking it straight from the bottle, going to work drunk, then hitting his "garage" bottle before coming in the door at the end of the day, has not touched a drop since. He did attend AA for a few meetings, but quickly decided it wasn't for him as the members seemed to be perpetually stuck in victim-mode, and he couldn't tolerate hearing the same sniffling and whine over and over again. I suspect none of them had dug deeper past their addiction.
It has been two years now and he says he has absolutely no desire to drink. He is a changed person- one that I can live with. In short, I am a staunch believer in revealing what's beneath the addiction. Until the ugly truth is exposed, it will remain. When it is nourished with self-medication (booze, drugs, gambling, porn, masturbation, prostitutes, etc.) it will grow and grow until it finally consumes its host.
Truth. Truth at ALL costs!!! It's essential!
herowannabe
I totally agree with the total honesty. After my husband revealed the abuse and was 100%honest with me the feelings of needing to drink and do drugs and porn and mild sexual acting out died. When he was at his lowest pointso far in recoveryhe.explained it as a demon inside that once it got out slowly died off.
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