Did my abuser rapist change my sexual orientation?
Did my abuser rapist change my sexual orientation?
- Thread starterSABoy
- Start date
Childhood rape and sexual abuse most definitely impacted how I view myself sexually. However this is a very controversial and hot button topic for many. Many insist that we are born with our "sexuality". But, in my life, being raped and molested by many people of both sexes while I was growing up most definitely impacted me. My rape and abuse began when I was very, very young, so I have no idea how i would have been if my abuse did not happen but I do know how my thoughts go and how my self image has been impacted. Being sexualize between the ages of 3 and 9 makes an imprint. For sure. Good luck with this because I have seen people get very emotional on this topic. Peace to you and to all survivors.
Last edited:
George
Registrant
Yes, it did mine. I hated everything about my hyper-sexuality from 11 y/o, puberty on in which I acted out as my abuse reenactment. My abuse born learned/imprinted same sex acting out only reinforced an unwanted same sex attraction. The envy & jealousy of other boys during puberty all got twisted to into a lustful need to rob them of their power & masculinity, much like I was robbed of mine. I never wanted to marry a man or wear a dress, the sex was never about loving, honoring or cherishing another male. It was always dirty, secretive & shameful and the very second it was over the guilt & shame hit me like a shotgun blast... How can this not effect, change or at the very least confuse my sexuality? Did I question my sexuality in all this chaos? sure I did, but then I figured out the genesis of the confusion, what the drive really was. I figured out that this was sick and abusive in nature (at least in my mind) and that helped break the rut I was in and break out of the old abuse cycle where I had been abusing myself by acting out and layering more shame on myself.
drug addiction survivor
Registrant
I do identify as being gay but the sexual abuse I received at the hands of 2 male babysitters fucked with my mind and sexual orientation big time. I ran into one of the bastards in a convenience store many years later as I was buying a 12 pack of beer.
Last edited:
Very well stated George. I am sorry you had to endure this but you seem to have mastered your response autopilot regarding same sex acting out. I gained a lot of insight reading your post. Much of what you wrote also applies to me; and you said it so succinctly. Some of the lessons you seem to have learned, I seem to keep learning and relearning over and over again... i.e. layering more shame on myself by "acting out" even if the acting out is only in my mind and fantasy... I need to stop that and have stopped it - only to fall back into it. But yes to what you wrote. And thank you.
The 64 BILLION dollar question to which I will never know the answer. I do know after putting the guilt and shame back on the Perp where it belongs I like and love myself as I never knew possible. I also learned I can self flagellate on this and other past items or I can deal with the past knowing it is past and concentrate on building a happier me now and in the future. I don’t have the energy for past speculation or the way the guilt that is not mine creeps back in.
Since I was 8, 100% of my sexual bandwidth was consumed by the fantasies about reenacting my abuse. So I thought I was gay. After those fantasies stopped I realized that I am bisexual. But both my SSA and opposite sex attraction were buried under the fantasies about the abuse.
Abuse certainly does create a sexual imprint that effects how we express our sexuality. Personally though, I don’t believe that it changes our orientation.
Abuse certainly does create a sexual imprint that effects how we express our sexuality. Personally though, I don’t believe that it changes our orientation.
I struggle with this question daily. My abuse started at the age of 4 so I will never truly know what my sexual orientation may have been without the abuse. I see myself as predominately gay now.
Did my abuser rapist change my sexual
orientation?
Joe Kort talks about our Core Sexual Script.
This is not our sexual identity. Our CSS isdescribed are our sexual fantasies, whats in our erotic daydreams, what we favor or masturbate to, act on and etc. CSS often
retell or encode our past childhood experiences.
I think this helps understand the confusion
of our sexual orientation. This may or may not have merit, just an interesting concept.
This template of the sexual script is things that may have been done to us young boys.
We act them out, even though we may or may not enjoy it, we have this compulsive
urge to act out and then repeat.
I think this is what Beloved Son is saying .
I feel the same that are sexual orientation is not changed by this imprint.
I find it interesting. Have liked the thread.
Just food for thought. LRD
LRD so glad you brought up Joe Korts writings. I used to post his blog brim I thought everyone was bored with it but his analysis and words on this subject were invaluable to me. Thank you
Bornfree
Registrant
Some of my abuse started when I was 4, by a same age and gender playmate. The situation definitely has an effect on the development of sexual impulses, thoughts and actions. Yes I too, molested myself over many more years. Once you have been sexualized, there is really no turning back. You've seen the action of how things work, and for the worst part, it becomes played out in your mind every minute of every day!
What helped me (and my wife) was Dr. Joe Kort’s book “Is My Husband Bi, Gay or Straight?” In it Dr.Kort talks about the erotic template that we learned as boys. At 8 I was introduced to both oral and anal sex by a 14 year old boy. This became part of my erotic template some 20 years or more later as I re-enacted the abuse. I am not bi or gay as I have no interest in a relationship with a man but the sexual activities with men are part of my template. It was the first things I “learned” as a boy and replicating them (in the submissive positions) is part of the draw that still haunts me today. I have not had sex with a man in 20 years and happily married for 17 but the thoughts are back and straining our marriage…
Greybeard
Registrant
I wonder a lot about it. I was abused by older males, and had sex as a teen with both males and females. But it was guys that always sort of haunted my fantasies. I like to think that if I hadn't been abused I would have been a "normal" straight guy. But the abuse left me with feelings and fantasies that always lead me back to men.
Greybeard-so common. Your erotic template was set too at an early age.
If you see my reply above or look up Dr Joe Kort on YouTube, he has a lot of videos on this. It helped me get a better understanding what was going on…
Luckylarry1
Registrant
Absolutely the same. Not only was I married and Str8 for 20 yrs, along with 3 kids, but I maintained a regular gal pall with benefits on the side most of that time. Once I retired from a very demanding career, divorced a very demanding wife, and my 3 kids grown and independent did my anger grow, yet my fun times were higher than they had ever been, and I became interested in male sexuality. Almost I was 2 different people.
After loosing a second marriage and 4 yrs. into my third marriage did my internal battle begin, and I realized that once again I was becoming interested in meeting other married men. I hid my shame through toxic male behavior, alcohol, anger and began withdrawn from people.
Once the threat of loosing my 3rd marriage at 66 yrs old. I agreed to see a counselor and being a combat vet I went to VA foe free counseling.
It took two yrs of a very wily counselor's efforts before I could admit that I had been raped while in Nam, and now had clandestine male tresses out of curiosity.
George
Registrant
I wanted to add this as I just pondering on this angle about the forming of my fractured sexuality, it's a biggie that I'm sure effected others here too. Sorry it's long but it's pretty thorough.
I remember being in third grade (8) and liking a popular girl in my class, I thought she was pretty, very nice and knew she was popular. I had hoped that she would like me too. being 8 and prepubescent & pre-abuse there was nothing stirring in me about this like of her. I liked other girls too, just not as much as her, again nothing sexual as I didn't know anything about sex, couldn't even comprehend it if told about it. I was already shy & introverted by this time due to feeling like a freak because of my mother dying and our family situation & not measuring up to other boys and hated school, being in school having to be around all these kids mirroring back to me everything I wasn't, happy, content, self assured & confident... I was none of those.
By the time fourth grade comes around, I loose my step mom (of two years) as my father's drinking and staying gone out carousing drives her away. The sexual abuse is in full swing for months now and that heavy cloak of shame has consumed all that I am. Once puberty kicked in by 11 and my now out of control sexual drive with all it's faulty coping mechanisms (jealousy, power/control & ss imprinting) steering it I was a total mess.
That shame had me hiding in plain sight, I had a very small world of friends and could only stand being friends and around other hurting kids from broken homes and such, normal well adjusted kids I was too jealous to be friends with.
Girls as far as I knew were sugar and spice and everything nice, where as boys, especially bad boys like me were dirty dogs to be used and dominated to make me feel better about my broken self. I felt that no girl would ever want anything to do with me, that they would easily smell or see the shame and filth on me so I paid them no attention. I pursued no girls although two girls did come after me at 13 & 14, both times I was excited and got to fumble around, kiss & feel up their tits but nothing further, it was just a one time thing with both of them. It was a very brief sense at feeling "normal", but all I knew was going all the way with guys (daily, some times twice a day), it was so frustrating when sex with my act out friend was a phone call away and a quick walk up the street. That shame kept me locked up from reaching out or doing anything with any other girls or even risking any contact with other boys beside the arrangement I had with that one boy.
I had a gay uncle & his partner (we called uncle too) and was aware of this as a boy by age 7, I knew this before my abuse, I didn't comprehend all that being gay meant being so young but they were both loved & accepted and involved in my extended family, this was back in the mid 70's NYC. So it's not like I didn't know or had some instilled hate or fear of gays.
Feeling like such an outsider and a freak, my biggest hope and dream from early childhood on was to one day to be in a normal happy, healthy family with a wife and children, I even dreamed as a kid to be rescued by my death mother's family as I hated my own messed up family situation but they left me/us for dead too. I wanted a wife and family of my own someday and for all this craziness in my head that was driving me to have shameful sex with guys to stop. I hoped that finding love and marriage would someday fix me. I knew that I wasn't gay (my ss sex drive was not romantic) and knew that I could never have all that I craved by being gay so that was never an issue but still I was locked in the abuse cycle with the ss acting out, fantasy & thoughts.
Thanks to that shame I was locked up in I never dated girls girls in or out of high school and by the end of high school my act out friend stopped coming around for fear that he was doing gay stuff.
There was one girl who I happened to know from childhood who I respected and used to play with from time to time as kids, only a few houses away. She had a normal family and yet she still liked me as a friend, she was so incredibly nice and someone I could *trust*, as much as someone like I could trust. Years later after loosing contact out of the blue she asked me to the prom, I was taken by surprise, I had already stopped going to school, kind of dropped out already due to still hating school. I never got back to her about the prom and left her hanging, like the asshole I was/am... This was the first hint that I got that she still liked me somehow... A few years later she reached out to me through letter after I moved across the county, she was in college and I was stuck in the very blue collar world. She wanted to get together as friends and I relented so we met and had a nice time catching up but my feelings of shame and inferiority killed her hopes of getting together again after assuring her that we'd go out again soon. Months later she'd send funny ransom type cut up magazine letters to me wondering what happened to me... this coaxed me to call her finally and we picked up our friendship despite my inner demons of shame & inferiority trying to sabotage me/us. It was almost two years before we fooled around, due to my hangups about not being worthy and her being so pure and virginal, I was still acting out once in a while, but hoped that marriage would fix that (yeah i know, cliche). We ended up getting married by 22, still acting out once in a while and still suffered with the ss fantasy, thoughts & memories of abuse till it all came to a head at 31 when I stumbled onto healing once my denial of the abuse crumbled. Thankfully we did start having kids to after I was well underway with my healing from the abuse. I finally had my forever hopes and dreams of a healthy, happy family come to pass and it's been very healing in its self to be a Husband & Father being heavily involved with my kids growing up, I actually felt at times that I had a chance of regrowing up with them at times.
If it wasn't for my wife pursuing me that shame would've probably would've kept me single and locked in the secret abuse cycle of acting out or perhaps convinced myself that I was gay and risked aids at the time or lived out my life unfulfilled with not having that happy healthy family and children I craved since forever. Had we had kids early on in our marriage before dealing with my abuse issues I would've been either a very distant unattached husband & father with all my issues or worse yet, I might've even abused them with the way my mind got wired with power/control issues and masculinity hangups.
What a tangled mess the evils of sexual abuse does to our young minds and our futures, to our sexuality, to life its self sometimes.
Between 10 and16 I was abused by both female and males
1 am now 82 and since then I have acted out with males
At the age of 77 I was given a phallometric assessment test
Turns out I am a rare case being 50 % interested in females and 50% interested in males
Was I born that way or made that way
I will never know so I just accept it now
It's sad so many of us are left to wonder
1 am now 82 and since then I have acted out with males
At the age of 77 I was given a phallometric assessment test
Turns out I am a rare case being 50 % interested in females and 50% interested in males
Was I born that way or made that way
I will never know so I just accept it now
It's sad so many of us are left to wonder
The Bluefoot
Registrant
I'm a strong believer you are born, gay, bi or straight. But being abused gives your mind a reason to be mixed up. Also I feel it causes us to react the abuse hoping we come out with a different out come. Also if the abuse was added with a twist as in my case. We then may act out the angry part unto others like I did for 20 years.
I am bi, I have dated both, but married only once my husband and we have been happy married for 17 years. I did also marry a man who was sexually abused as well and we adopted a teenager who was sexually and physically abuse along with being tossed out for tell his birth parents he is gay.
I am bi, I have dated both, but married only once my husband and we have been happy married for 17 years. I did also marry a man who was sexually abused as well and we adopted a teenager who was sexually and physically abuse along with being tossed out for tell his birth parents he is gay.
@The Bluefoot i am so tired of hearing about parents who kick their kids out for being gay. WTF are those parents thinking? The family should be the safest place for a child to be who they are. I am glad he has you and your husband.
I couldn't agree more.