Yesterday, I wrote a blog entry entitled Using Pornography That Mirrors Your Child Abuse. I clarified in the comments, and I want to clarify here as well, that I was talking about adult pornography, not child pornography. I see viewing adult pornography very differently from viewing child pornography.
On the blog entry, a reader posted the following comment:
another thing i’d like to say is that i really enjoy it when my partner ties me up and gets rough when we’re having sex. it’s like i need to feel used to become sexually satisfied. somehow feeling used feels “right” and other things like gentle sex just doesn’t cut it. i don’t know how to explain it. everything is completely consensual, but i need that feeling of being helpless and out of control. it’s weird, because in other ways i’m a total control freak. sometimes i think there’s something wrong with me because of how i feel. ~ skilover
I think this is very common. I have a friend who is a sexual abuse survivor. She is a complete control freak in every other area of her life. However, when it comes to sex, she wants to be tied up and have the other person in control, which could not be more different from her typical personality. I strongly suspect that this ties into her child sexual abuse.
Gentle sex does nothing for me, but I also don’t want to get rough – so I pretty much wind up not enjoying it at all. (As I have shared before, sexual healing has been, and continues to be, a huge challenge for me.) For me to be able to get into sex at all, I have to play out fantasies in my head. The more helpless and out of control I am in the fantasy, the more my body responds, and the more disgusted I feel afterward.
I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten drunk to feel helpless during sex. My body always responds better when I am drunk and feeling out of control. The fantasy of being drunk and taken advantage of works almost as well. Prostitute fantasies are also very effective for my body to respond. If I fantasize that I am just another object in the room and this stranger could choose to watch TV, read a book, or f@#$ me, my body gets very responsive, but I feel like h@#$ afterward. Another one that works for me is fantasizing that we are being watched, either like a peep show or a hidden video camera. Again, this is all a replay of the child sexual abuse.
I have tried to stop using any of these victim fantasies during sex, but then my body quit responding. It apparently has no interest in gentle, consensual sex. I have tried to move the fantasies to being devoid of emotion but of me being in control rather than the other person. It’s not as effective for my body, but at least I don’t feel filled with shame afterward.
I suspect that this is very common for sexual abuse survivors. We learned at a young age that sexual “enjoyment” was intermixed with being a victim, so we feel the need to continue being a victim in order to “enjoy” sex as adults. For me, this just continues the pattern of feeling shame after sex.
Related Topics:
- Reabusing Yourself to Achieve Orgasm after Sexual Abuse
- Sex after Sexual Abuse: Role of Negative Fantasies
- Sex after Sexual Abuse: Letting Go of Negative Fantasies
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Hi Faith…I just left the following comment on Mind Parts — thought I should share it with you….
You blog has been enlightening and informational. I follow both Mind Parts and Blooming Lotus. Thank you for daring to write about the sexual healing issue.
Although I had been in therapy before I never dealt with the sexual abuse I endured as a child and the repressed memories I have been trying to ignore for more than 30 years; I have just begun my healing journey with a knowledgeable therapist. I now have a better understanding of who I am. I now know I am not flawed.
You blog (as does Faith’s) gives me comfort because I know I’m not alone. I understand that I am not a weak minded person with character flaws.
Both of your posts on healing sexually makes what I am up against real, but it also gives me hope.
I maintain a blog which is really a daily journal of how I am managing my recovery and the binge eating I use at times to cope. Writing daily keeps me focused reading blogs like yours keeps me connected to the reality I am up against.
Thanks,
Fat Girl Oreo
Hi, FGO.
Thanks for your comments and the kudos. :0) I’ll have to go check out what Paul said on his blog. :0)
I am doing much better with the binge eating. It is possible to heal from it, but it is definitely a struggle. I hope you will find healing as well.
Take care,
– Faith
Everyone,
Here is the link to MindParts’ blog entry on this topic:
http://www.mindparts.org/2009/09/trauma-and-sexuality.html
– Faith
Hi Faith
I have always hated sex never enjoyed it even though I am in a loving relationship, not my H fault in anyway.
Up until six months ago I searched out dangerous sexual situations with strangers and would always climax and enjoy the sex, then when over hate every breath I took.
I searched out what I had as a child — violence, sexual abuse, emotional abuse etc….. this I could never come to terms with or even admit to myself, I just felt like a depraved animal.
But now thank God due to a very good psychologist experienced in child sexual ritual abuse trauma and DID she has helped me to not go out searching for this type of satisfaction/sex, but has said it is okay to fantasies even relax with a few drinks when my H wants sex, even though she says this is not forever or the answer but we needed to keeps me safe until I can work with my body and enjoy a loving sexual relationship without violence/abuse.
I know this sounds weak and weird but for me this has been a beginging to healing from my childhood abuse to try to respect my body.
take care Faith (sorry if said things wrong in post to Lagore)
Hi, Anon.
You said nothing wrong to Lagore. I closed the comments because I felt like we were going off topic. I want to keep the focus on healing from child abuse.
I think that everything in life runs on a continuum, and the answer lies somewhere in the middle with balance. There is no question that sexual fantasies are much safer than going out and having dangerous sex with strangers. I fully support moving toward fantasies and keeping yourself safe from dangerous situations. This is a move toward healing.
Take care,
– Faith
Thanks Faith
Again Faith, thanks for bringing this up. It prompted me to gain the courage to post on the subject myself, from a rather safe analytical place. But, still, addressing it nonetheless. Thanks again. Paul.
Hi Faith,
Thanks for introducing this topic. I have had a long slow slog with sexual healing too, but am now (after 20 years of active healing) able to enjoy gentle, loving sex with my spouse without abuse related fantasies.
I personally feel that allowing myself to get off on abuse related imagery or acting out is sexually exploiting that child part of my self. I owe her/me my loyalty and don’t want to do that to myself.
I read somewhere that scientists now believe that for the brain “what fires together, wires together” – what this means is that every time I connect an orgasm and an abuse image or situation, it reinforces the connection between them. Orgasms are a particularly potent way of making these connections. However, the good thing is that every time I connect pleasure and something loving, sensual and intimate, those connections get stronger too. It takes awhile, but they do connect up. Our bodies are made for pleasure, and I sometimes have to tell myself that the orgasm will happen, it will just sometimes take longer if I do it in a way that has less brain connections reinforcing it. Self-stimulating to imagery of the kind of sex I actually want to happen – loving, consensual, intimate, passionate – can be a way of hooking those things up. Learning about how a woman’s body works and the kinds of physiological sensations and physical stimulation that generally work to trigger orgasm was helpful too. During sex the genitals (clitoris, vulva, urethral sponge) swell up with blood in a process that mirrors a man’s erection and then contracts to pump that blood quickly back to the rest of the body, which produces the sensation of orgasm. Stimulating the clitoris and urethral sponge (g-spot) with vibration or stroking will often eventually make most women orgasm. It just takes practice to disconnect that sensation from the abuse thoughts and reconnect it where it ought to have been in the first place.
I don’t think this sort of thing would change people’s sexual orientation (nor would I want it to), which is why those kinds of ‘therapies’ have been shown not to change people, but for undoing the wiring caused by an injury like sexual abuse, in my experience, it seems to work.
SDW
hello SDW,
your comment is very helpful especially the bit about re-wiring.
i am going to try it, being aware that it will take time and practice. thank you.
SDW,
Thank you so much for sharing all of this. This is a very difficult topic for me. It helps to hear a success story. I have only very recently come to accept that I am not fundamentally f@#$ed up in this area. I thought I was forever deformed and broken in this area of my life.
Take care,
– Faith
hi faith,
once again thank you for bringing up such a tricky topic. it is only recently that i have realised that i am not some perverted freak for needing to have bad sex in order to get any sexual pleasure. i have felt so ashamed for so long about needing to re-live in my head the degrading and violent abuse to which i was subjected in order to climax. if i was not married i would likely look for sexual encounters as close to violent rape as i could find. i hate myself for these thoughts. that i want to recreate what was so terrible in my childhood makes me feel dirty, disgusting and worthless – i feel as though i am betraying the child i was. my husband has no idea and this makes me feel awful – as if i am being disloyal even though i am only with him.
I am over-whelmed with the freedom I have read in the exerpts. Granted, clumsy, sometimes ill-conceived, certainly hurtful at times, counter-productive, debilitating, unreal, fantasy. I am in a world of inhibition, holding-back, stopping, never doing – patent leather shoes reflecting my privates, french-kissing as the ultimate sin. So, though I have the same inhibitions, it has never occurred to me to enter the spaces of my sexual abuse as comforting. Rather I have stuffed and stuffed and stuffed and now have absoulutely ( and I mispell that on purpose) no idea what to do. How does this anger leave me without destroying earth? That is the power behind it. I am at the end of stuffing. So as you do whatever you do to survive please know that perhaps you are dispelling your anger inch by inch. Not a horrible thing to do while I sit here waiting for me, me, to ignite the world and destroy evil. Yes, I was raised a Catholic and in a bizarre sense I am sure I was compelled to all the purity and bullshit they taught me as a priest had his penis in places that to this day give me pain, but bottom line there was something in what they said day in and day out that at the least allowed me to survive.
So now what do I do? How does that anger go away without destroying me. It has been a hard two weeks and I was so hopeful that that dimension of pain would diminish. My heart goes out to all of us who are healing. God be with us in this journey. Esther.
Hi, Faith –
I have found that, for me, the rape fantasies allow my body to respond during sex while I am comfortably absent and disconnected from my body. I, too, feel dirty afterwords.
I am not currently in a relationship, so I don’t have to deal with sex right now. However, I have been practicing moving my energy back into my body and pressing it up against the inside of my skin . . . while fantisizing about being touched affectionately (non-sexually but intimately; for example, caresses).
It has a whole different feel and after-feel to it — it leaves me feeling respectful and honorable.
I have attempted to do this while fantasizing about gentle and loving sexual contact — but, so far, everytime I “go there”, my energy goes flying back out of my body. Maybe someday . . .
I’m not sure about my ability to translate that into staying present in my body during an actual sexual experience with another person . . . but it gives me hope.
– Marie (Coming Out of the Trees)
http://mmaaggnnaa.wordpress.com/
Thank you everyone for your candid posts, now I know I am not alone and I have value…..
barbi
Hi Faith,
Thank you for continuing this subject. I am still in the process of trying to heal from this myself. It has not helped me at all that the first 20 years of my married life were porn then sex in that order. When I started working on me and my past, this routine didn’t sit well with my insides. Its been a work in progress moving from that to strictly alcohol or weed. Then to just plain old prescribed meds, all of which were of course no better. I have spent the last year and a half dealing with nerve pain (down there) that there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for. Body memories, perhaps that is part of it, a particular part has a lot to do with it for sure. I don’t know if old habits die hard but I have yet to break clean away from the adult porn in order to be with my H, although I can say that I may not be where I want to be, but I sure am not where I used to be and that gives me hope.
Hi everyone,
I just discovered this blog. Great stuff, courageous stuff. I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I’ve worked long and hard to overcome the connection between domination and sex. I’ve tried both roles within the confines of consensual relationships but neither brought me joy. Always there was the connection to the things of the past.
Finally I just decided to go ahead and enjoy sex no matter what it connected to and to let go of the guilt. I told my therapist I wanted sex to be an enjoyable part of my life, not something spooky and scary to avoid. Like sworddancewarrior said, it took time and effort to reeducate my brain and body to enjoy sex without the need for dominance. Most importantly it took letting go of all guilt about what happened, as none of what happened was my sin to begin with.
And wouldn’t you know it? I have since found a partner who is neither dominant nor submissive, who considers sex healthy fun for both people involved. I learned to enjoy that through my love for him.
Ivonne
Interested in Windtraveller? Read more on: http://hubpages.com/hub/Hub-Challenge-Day-1
Today I wake up silently screaming, covering my head in fetal position. Like that terrific night, my voice didn’t come out and instead a guttural grunt suffocated in my throat. Is now very early in the morning and I cannot go back to sleep. I can not remember what my dream was about, something terrible must have been. But Faith, b/c I have exactly that (faith and hope) I need to speak out, I need to heal. All my life I have had an incorrect notion of sexuality, I also don’t know what I like and what I don’t like, and I am/was (b/c I am not in any relationship) incapable of asking for intimacy. First, that notion that I inherit of my parents of sex being something forbidden, that you just don’t mention and later as something painful to avoid. I married a guy that used rough and sadist porn to get arouse, without suspect that it’ll become almost an addiction to me as well. Ill fantasizes with being a prostitute b/c that was the only way of feeling something. Then I would run to the bathroom in tears. I do have several self harming, almost compulsive behaviors such as scratching my back almost to bleed, (between others).
Faith, I don’t feel alone anymore, thanks to your blog and thanks to a wonderful psychologist that I’ have been seen. I am also writing a journal and it helps. Thanks,
Atabex
Hi, Atabex.
I am so glad that you are realizing that you are not alone. We are all in this healing journey together. I am pleased to hear that you have a therapist as well. That is key is healing from child abuse.
Take care,
– Faith
Oh, I can so identify. I find I often respond when I replay certain situations which were abusive to me in my head. I don’t know why I do this, but I have heard it is common among survivors.
Kudos to you for tackling such a tough topic.
~Secret Shadows
For me I feel like sex is me “giving something away” and that I am “naughty” for having sex and that everyone knows I have been so bad as to have sex and that the whole world can see me and is ashamed with me. I haven’t had a partner in about 3 years. I don’t have specific memories of abuse, just shaking and all of these feelings that I have mentioned that just overwhelm me. In past relationships I was all giving and treated it asthough it was my duty. Does anyone relate to any of this? Thanks
thanks. i am not so weird anymore.