Thread: Attitude toward sex by a woman who was sexually abused as a child

It is great that you are getting off the drugs!

Memory is a tricky thing and we can "remember" things that didn't actually happen to us, we can also completely fail to recognise things that did. There are a number of books on this subject, one author whom I think does a pretty good job of explaining the current understanding of how our brains work is Shad Helmstetter. You might want to check out his books; What To Say When You Talk To Yourself and The Self Talk Solution.

What constitutes abuse can be very subjective. You remember losing your virginity, so you know you did not experience penetrative sex and probably not penetrative fondling either. You have an idea that exposure may have been part of this. How would that be so traumatic as to affect the rest of your life? (only you can answer that, your responses are different from anyone else's) I'm not saying it couldn't be but my guess is there is something else. Having grown up with cyclic abuse I have some ideas of what it can do to you emotionally. But, as I've said many times, as a child when the people whom you are dependent on and who are supposed to love and protect you, are the people you need protecting from, it creates a lot of trouble with boundries and natural self protective behavior. You have it on at least two fronts; a parent who was an alcoholic, distant and untouchable and the other parent who may have failed to intervene in stopping the results of their spouse's behavior.

Keep in mind that what you think you are remembering is coming through a filter of many years, is based on a child's perception and understanding and that you have spend years on psychotropic drugs. All these all drugs have side effects and those may include some of the things you are trying to treat such as anxiety.


Trouble with bounderies and wanting male attention and affection probably accounts for your past inablitity to say NO in a defining manner and to follow it up with appropriate action. Having been forcibly gang raped I am cautious about calling situations we wish hadn't happened 'rape' when we had the power to walk out. But I don't know what circumstances happened to you, so I cannot really make any comment on that. Systematic or regular physical abuse can certainly result in 'training' into accepting inappropriate treatment, so can belittlement and emotional abuse.

You may very well never know what really happened. While sometimes knowing the origins of a response or behavior can be helpful, what really counts is how we chose to respond now. We can break old patterns of behaviors and consciously create new ones without spending years analysing everything. It is possible that the treatment you received in past relationship(s) created a pattern of response that has resulted in a fear of sex. What you have to determine is if it is a fear of harm from another? Fear of some kind of inadequacy? Fear of being manipulated or taken advantage of? Sometimes our fears are missplaced, have been redirected so to speak.

I told a story here a while back of my experience with jumping off a cliff into a swimming hole. I had done things like this before in my youth and had fun doing it and under far less safe conditions. It wasn't a particularly high drop. There were people of all ages jumping into this pool; little kids, teens, adults, elderly people - I couldn't do it. A gentleman offered to hold my hand and jump with me. I thought I could and pulled back at the last moment. The idea of going over the side into nothing and then water just paniced me and I am not a person generally given to irrational fears. If I had an opportunity to do it today, I'm not sure I could. Up until very recently I've been doing some work that carries a fair level of risk. In work situations I've broken into 100s of vacant properties without knowing who or what may be in there, walked around on third story roofs (they aren't flat), if I fell there it would really dangerous. I've worked around power lines with a chain saw - that was stupid and in the future I'd call the power company - but it really didn't bother me. I've been in some places that were so structurally damaged that they should be condemed. I don't know why I have this problem with going over a nice easy cliff into water. It's litterally child's play.

My point is that we may never know where something came from. What counts is; can we live with it and if we can't, what are we going to do to change it? It doesn't really matter if I never jump over a cliff, while I wonder why I can't because I remember it is fun, it doesn't really affect my life. But being afraid of sex will affect your life and keep you from many pleasurable experiences. Only you, perhaps with the help of a good counselor, can decide if you would benefit more from digging around in your past or teaching yourself new responses. We humans seem to learn negative responses much faster than positive ones. I read the someone had a theory that was due to some survival mechanisms, but it sure can mess us up in some situations.

Above all treat yourself lovingly.
Oh and I have an idea that you may find reading, The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock, thought provoking and enjoyable.