All Adult Sexual Acting Out is An Attempt To Reconnect With Ourselves

[Imstillstanding]

It’s so interesting reading yalls exchange… I can relate to some of it! But like in a bit of a different way it seems… like I was so scared of my sexuality I was shut off to it… but totally cool with other people just not my own! Now I’m cool with it… no shame in it… no judgement… except for what happened when I was a kid! I’m working on that! It’s the age… I judge myself because of my age… but it’s just curious how I read these things and feel I can relate a bit here and there a feel so different on other bits!

 

[MO-Survivor]

It’s so interesting reading yalls exchange… I can relate to some of it! But like in a bit of a different way it seems… like I was so scared of my sexuality I was shut off to it… but totally cool with other people just not my own! Now I’m cool with it… no shame in it… no judgement… except for what happened when I was a kid! I’m working on that! It’s the age… I judge myself because of my age… but it’s just curious how I read these things and feel I can relate a bit here and there a feel so different on other bits!

Yes. I completely understand what you are saying. We are the same... but different.

One of the things I have found, being here a year and a half: a lot of those differences... really weren't differences. Instead, I had adapted so hugely in my life that I couldn't relate or didn't feel that what some people said applied to me. But later... after working through things more and more... I realized those things really did apply to me. I just didn't know it... yet.

 

[Celtaf]

Yeah - the trust issue and admitting / accepting how we actually feel is very difficult. I've seen now that how I actually felt under the surface during my teen years was 180 degrees different than what I thought. That's still hard for me to accept, and therefore it's really hard to access those feelings.

And Jung - yeah. I hear you. I just wish sometimes people like him didn't have to resort to something so extreme like he did in a theory - in order to set themselves apart and make a name for themselves It's hard not to be cynical about that. Because yes - the "spirit" of what he meant I'm sure lines up with what you said. Or... he could have truly believed the idea of a shared unconscious. We can derive things from it either way.

One thing that jumped out at me with the Shadow Work thing was the fear I have of making mistakes, especially repeatedly. It appears, to me, to be a great virtue to be right the first time. I believe that many people do not merely respect that but expect it. Sometimes I do not understand what I am being told, and barely understand explanations, or think that I do, only to find that I am wrong. I feel fear and shame when someone comes back to me and says "It's still wrong." If I really think about it, it is because my father, stepmothers and some other persons in authority over me believed that because I was intelligent, I could not possibly be misunderstanding them; it had to be that I was deliberately finding ways to be disobedient or defiant. Or that I was no trying hard enough. I don't feel an emotional connection to the boy who learned those lessons, but I do feel it now. I feel, even now, a sense of shame at exploring that, at the idea that that bothered me. And if I feel that about something like making a mistake, then it is even worse if I touch upon something like my sexuality or sense of safety.

I find it helpful, therefore, to look at it in the Jungian way because it suggests that many of us have challenging or "shadow" feelings in common, and that nearly all of us find them challenging to wrestle with. With the approach to being intimate with our childhood selves--I'm simply not there yet. I cannot imagine looking at my boyhood self and loving him. It's almost easier to imagine that that is some other boy.

 

[Imstillstanding]

Yes. I completely understand what you are saying. We are the same... but different.

One of the things I have found, being here a year and a half: a lot of those differences... really weren't differences. Instead, I had adapted so hugely in my life that I couldn't relate or didn't feel that what some people said applied to me. But later... after working through things more and more... I realized those things really did apply to me. I just didn't know it... yet.

Yea like so relatable! Maybe not exactly the same but enough that I can understand you know! Or feel like I can!

One thing that jumped out at me with the Shadow Work thing was the fear I have of making mistakes, especially repeatedly. It appears, to me, to be a great virtue to be right the first time. I believe that many people do not merely respect that but expect it. Sometimes I do not understand what I am being told, and barely understand explanations, or think that I do, only to find that I am wrong. I feel fear and shame when someone comes back to me and says "It's still wrong." If I really think about it, it is because my father, stepmothers and some other persons in authority over me believed that because I was intelligent, I could not possibly be misunderstanding them; it had to be that I was deliberately finding ways to be disobedient or defiant. Or that I was no trying hard enough. I don't feel an emotional connection to the boy who learned those lessons, but I do feel it now. I feel, even now, a sense of shame at exploring that, at the idea that that bothered me. And if I feel that about something like making a mistake, then it is even worse if I touch upon something like my sexuality or sense of safety.

I find it helpful, therefore, to look at it in the Jungian way because it suggests that many of us have challenging or "shadow" feelings in common, and that nearly all of us find them challenging to wrestle with. With the approach to being intimate with our childhood selves--I'm simply not there yet. I cannot imagine looking at my boyhood self and loving him. It's almost easier to imagine that that is some other boy.

The mistake bit I get so much I can’t even! I mean I obsess about thing like is my hair ok in the back, is my collar down, will I know how to use this check out machine or look like an idiot… the stupidest things… words I don’t know freak me out… I get such anxiety about looking like an idiot or making a mistake… my family labeled me the bad one… the one who did things for attention and just made ups stories all the time! So it’s kinda rooted in all that too…

I spent yesterday crying listening to Easy on me… thinking that the boy in me… that’s all he wants… the grown up me to do now! I don’t mind acting like a kid and all that! I don’t care lol I’ll have fun and be silly… but when it comes to the abuse stuff I’m so hard on myself! The lie (being in the closet) I can be so hard on myself sometimes… legit crying!

 

[Celtaf]

Yea like so relatable! Maybe not exactly the same but enough that I can understand you know! Or feel like I can!



The mistake bit I get so much I can’t even! I mean I obsess about thing like is my hair ok in the back, is my collar down, will I know how to use this check out machine or look like an idiot… the stupidest things… words I don’t know freak me out… I get such anxiety about looking like an idiot or making a mistake… my family labeled me the bad one… the one who did things for attention and just made ups stories all the time! So it’s kinda rooted in all that too…

I spent yesterday crying listening to Easy on me… thinking that the boy in me… that’s all he wants… the grown up me to do now! I don’t mind acting like a kid and all that! I don’t care lol I’ll have fun and be silly… but when it comes to the abuse stuff I’m so hard on myself! The lie (being in the closet) I can be so hard on myself sometimes… legit crying!

It is very hard to undo that; I have only recently begun to be aware of how anxious and worried I am when I make a mistake and have difficulty explaining why to others, and do not receive affirmation that it is sometimes difficult to learn systems in particular. What to do with this understanding, I am not yet sure.

But as you say, along with this, there is necessary compassion for the boy that I was when I began to learn that it was bad to make mistakes. Why, I wonder, were people who taught me such lessons so impatient and frustrated with me? What axes did they have to grind? I don't know. I once asked my father, and he sadly told me, "I don't know. I feel ashamed when I think of how unjustly I behaved towards you, but I do not know why."
I know why though: his own stepfather treated him that way and my father did not know that his stepfather was wrong to do so. His stepfather was an Air Force NCO who treated his family like it was a training unit. He often chided my father for being a "mama's boy" and my father recalls that his last conversation was with his stepfather was with him excitedly telling him that he had won a swimming race, and his stepfather saying, "I don't believe you. I'll believe it when I see the score for myself." Not long after that he was hospitalized and died. Hearing of how this man used to make my father practice baseball without a glove to toughen it up, and other harsh measures, convinced me that my father did not know how a man should treat his son. My father had believed that if he had had harsher treatment he might have been a more successful man. I think that that is why he was so hard on me for making mistakes.

My father was wrong; I have always taught others, whether I was training at work or in any other activity, to learn from their mistakes so that they could better understand what they had to do. I have never believed that children learn well that way.

But I have huge trouble feeling compassion for that boy that I was. I cannot even weep for him. He is a stranger to me.

 

[Pollux]

Thanks for posting this. I’ve noticed that when I’m depressed, doubting my worth and in crisis that I act out with porn and trying to hookup with guys.

I just went through a binge cycle. I’m kind of still in it. It was like the perfect storm of triggers. I got triggerend by this Christian’s mens online group I was in, I think my wife is texting a BF she cheated with last August, it was our anniversary, I hate sex and made myself do it sober, life is just f-ed up.

 

[MO-Survivor]

Thanks for posting this. I’ve noticed that when I’m depressed, doubting my worth and in crisis that I act out with porn and trying to hookup with guys.

I just went through a bing cycle. I’m kind of still in it. It was like the perfect storm of triggers. I got triggerend by this Christian’s mens online group I was in, I think my wife is texting a BF she cheated with last August, it was our anniversary, I hate sex and made myself do it sober, life is just f-ed up.

Yep. We are desperate in those moments when we're feeling so badly about ourselves to connect with someone - either in our minds (through porn and masturbation) or through sexual interaction with others. Works like this:

• We have the disconnect within us with our younger self (selves), and the unresolved feelings and thoughts from our younger self (selves) drive our current emotions & thoughts
• We want to soothe the painful emotions by acting out. Ultimately, it is only when we can connect with our younger self (selves) that we get free from the pain that drives our acting out (I have been trying to formulate a good definition of what it is to connect with ourselves)

And yeah, @Pollux - you went through a whole host of high-stress, emotional crap all at the same time. Sorry man - that sounds very unsettling.

 

[Life changed at Nine]

And yeah, @Pollux - you went through a whole host of high-stress, emotional crap all at the same time. Sorry man - that sounds very unsettling.

thought so too

 

[NotAshamed1962]

All Adult Sexual Acting Out is An Attempt To Reconnect with Ourselves​

Note: some clarifications up-front for this post:

• I am only speaking here about male survivors of CSA
• "Acting Out" = acting out our sexual abuse, or sexual acting out as a result of the consequences of sexual abuse
  • "Adult Sexual Acting Out" does not include all adult sexual activity
• The "Puberty / Sexual Development" thread can take different paths for the non-CSA survivor. In fact, the non-CSA survivor picture is only one possible view of someone who doesn't experience CSA. Threads can get twisted by other things too
• Sexual development can happen for the CSA survivor outside of CSA-related issues. However, most of the time it still gets entangled with the other threads where sexual intimacy happened too early and in a f'd up way (as CSA)

I realized this is a bold statement. There is research that says that all male survivors will repeat their abuse. But that statement never seems to come with any understanding of explanation of why we repeat our abuse, especially as adults. Refer to the pictures above (that I put together) and then consider the following:

• You were sexually abused as a boy or as a teenager. When this happened, sexual and non-sexual intimacy were horribly tangled together
• After sexual abuse, all attempts to find non-sexual intimacy are sexualized because of this tangling
• Because of the trauma of CSA, your younger self was suppressed in one or more areas (emotions, memories, and / or thoughts)
• Suppression of your younger self ultimately resulted in fragmentation of your self:
  • Part 1: the Boy and / or Teen (one or two parts of self)
  • Part 2: The Adult Man (one part of self)
• Once fragmented, your different parts of self desperately long to reconnect in a non-sexual, intimate way. But you have no idea this is driving you. And you have no idea how to do this. You think your sexual acting out by yourself or with others is because you are screwed up, or you are re-playing your abuse. But this is not the case. Instead, it is an internal longing for connection & intimacy with yourself driving your behaviors, and sexual acting out is the only kind of intimacy you have known
• We will all try to solve this fragmentation / disconnection outside of us because we have no idea how to reconnect with our own internal parts of self
  • This can manifest as the boy in you attempting to intimately connect with the man you are (boy --> man): you find yourselves thinking about older men, looking at pictures / porn of older men, or even hooking up with older men sexually. This does nothing to reconnect these two parts of yourself and just brings pain and shame
  • This can manifest as the man in you attempting to intimately connect with the boy you were (man --> boy): you find yourselves having inappropriate thoughts of boys, looking at pictures of boys, or even seeking out boys in relationship
    • In Traumasexuality, the author states that all sex offenders he worked with in jail who had abused boys had pictures of boys on their wall. And in every case, the boy in the picture looked like the men when they were boys of the same age: same hair color, same eye color, etc. These boys on their walls were “copies” of the boy inside them
    • Obviously, this path can result in pain and shame. But it doesn't have to. For some men, fantasies will always be contained in the mind. For other men, they channel this desire into helping hurting boys and become law enforcement, social workers, etc. Last, this path can result in the worst outcome any of us can think of: repeating the cycle of sexual abuse
    • No matter how this path is played out, it also does nothing to reconnect these two parts of yourself and just brings pain and shame

What is the Cure?​

Men who have found freedom and healing from the consequences of CSA talk a lot about finding and connecting with the boy inside you. This is the only true path to freedom. The boy inside you needs you to:

• Protect him
• Physically and verbally show him affection
• Love him
• Play with him
• Give him attention
• “See” him
• Connect with him

I know I keep beating this drum, but if you can break down the wall between your adult self and your kid self, get past the self-hatred and anger, and finally connect the kid you with the adult you in a non-sexual, intimate way, the tangled threads of non-sexual intimacy and sexual intimacy will finally untangle. You will find that sexual thoughts that have plagued you for years and years finally fall away, and you are able to create non-sexual intimacy with others (including kids). And finally free from this confused, tangled mess, you can also find the freedom to have sexual intimacy with an adult partner without the kid in you confusing you with thoughts and desires you don't want and don't understand.

My Story​

The only real intimacy I had as a boy and as a teen was sexualized intimacy. I was sexually abused by my dad, and my mom was emotionally distant and offered little in terms of physical or verbal affection. My dad did do these things for me in terms of non-sexual intimacy:

• Protected me
• Played with me
• Gave me attention
• “Saw” me

However, all of those intimate connections were tainted and poisoned by sexual abuse, and non-sexual and sexual intimacy became horribly tangled for me. When I turned 18 and met my good friends in college who were able to show me non-sexual affection and intimacy, I finally received non-sexual intimacy I didn’t get as a boy. But by that point in my life I was already (unknown to me) fragmented into 3 parts: the boy (5-11), the teen (12-15), and the adult (16+). The boy and teen in me continued to long for reconnection but none of the parts of me recognized this or knew how to do this. Therefore, like all of you, I sought to reconnect the parts of myself by trying to connect with others - outside myself.

If you have been on Male Survivor for long, you have seen my journey over the last year and a half. 2021 was spent connecting with the boy (5-11) in me. And last year I finally found my way to connect with this boy and learned how to show him the non-sexual intimacy he has always wanted:

• I am very protective of him
• I have shown him physically and verbally affection (conversations telling him I love him, dreams where he has been affectionate with me and I have returned the affection)
• I have loved him by investing time in re-visiting what happened to him in therapy
• I play with him; that is, every time I play with my kids, he is there playing with us
• I gave him the attention he so desperately wanted by feeling what he felt
• I finally “saw” him and what he went through; I felt his hurt and pain
• I intimately connected with him

What has been the fruit of all of this? As this process played out, the non-sexual and sexual threads of intimacy - with respect to that boy - were untangled. Here is one example: I no longer need to or want to look externally to boys this age (5-11) for connection. In fact, if inappropriate thoughts come to mind now, for the first time I am able to ask myself this question in the moment: “Do you really want something sexual? Or do you just want to show and receive non-sexual intimacy?” And the answer each time is that I really only want non-sexual intimacy. This ability to separate sexual and non-sexual intimacy in those moments is new.

Another example: I still find myself occasionally playing “rescue” fantasies (rescuing boys 5-11 from sexual abuse) in my mind. These fantasies always bothered me in the past because I knew they reflected something broken in me. The cool part now is that when one of these fantasies does come along (which is very infrequently), I no longer have any desire to include scenes of boys being sexually abused (and me rescuing them from the midst of the abuse) in these fantasies. Because the threads of sexual and non-sexual intimacy between me and the 5-11 year old in me have been loosed, the sexual aspect is no longer a part of our interactions.

I also noticed an interesting phenomenon occurring in me as this was happening last year: my sexualized thinking shifted. For example, I know it sounds strange but I actually looked at a picture of myself at 14 years old and had sexual thoughts about that kid in me (which is very weird and had never happened before). But it makes sense. That teen boy wants non-sexual intimacy, but only knows sexualized intimacy. So things are still tangled up with the teen me (11-15) and we have to unravel those threads. Now that we are focusing on this teen kid in me this year in therapy, I am finding out he has all the same needs and desires the 5–11-year-old boy had (although he is a bit more difficult to deal with – like most teenagers). And as I figure out how to reconnect with this teen kid, I anticipate all three threads to finally untangle for me: sexual development, sexual intimacy, and non-sexual intimacy.

There is one other critical ingredient to all of this that I don’t want to leave out. That is this: all our lives, we have interpreted our own thoughts and actions through the filter of sexual abuse that was forced upon us. This filter has caused us to interpret our own thoughts and actions over the years incorrectly. For example, this whole post focuses on sexual and non-sexual intimacy. The filter of sexual abuse caused me to interpret all my desires for intimacy as bad – because the only intimacy I knew was what my dad did to me - and it was bad! This is why it is critical to do this work with someone trained to help with trauma and sexual abuse. They can help us create a new filter to interpret our thoughts and actions. Without this, reconnection with the younger parts of ourselves is very hard to do. We will continue to blame them and see them in much the same way as our abusers because of the faulty filter we were given.

I hope this post makes sense and is helpful. Please stop focusing so much on the negative behaviors you hate in yourselves, and start paying attention to the boy inside of you He needs you, and reconnecting with him is 100% the key to healing.

@MO-Survivor - This is all incredibly insightful. Thank you.

 

[Khabeni]

I can understand this sexually acting out your abuse. After my abuse and assault as a middle aged child (10+) and teenager I masturbated constantly, even when I wasn't in the mood to try I guess to relive my abuse. As an young adult (20s) I had sex all the time with random strangers. Mostly women and a few men. I never had the opportunity like all of us here to develop a healthy sexuality. I've always viewed sex as harmful or abusive and still do today. My ex-wife didn't help much in my recovery when she cheated on me with mutilple guys. She is a sex addict and always wanted it. I would just do it to please her but always felt disgusting afterwards. Finally I got the courage to say no and that's when she sought sex elsewhere. For some reason I always attract sexual deviants.

 

[MO-Survivor]

I can understand this sexually acting out your abuse. After my abuse and assault as a middle aged child (10+) and teenager I masturbated constantly, even when I wasn't in the mood to try I guess to relive my abuse. As an young adult (20s) I had sex all the time with random strangers. Mostly women and a few men. I never had the opportunity like all of us here to develop a healthy sexuality. I've always viewed sex as harmful or abusive and still do today. My ex-wife didn't help much in my recovery when she cheated on me with mutilple guys. She is a sex addict and always wanted it. I would just do it to please her but always felt disgusting afterwards. Finally I got the courage to say no and that's when she sought sex elsewhere. For some reason I always attract sexual deviants.

I'm sorry @Khabeni. We had so much taken from us as kids. We should have had the freedom to develop sexually like so many other kids - but definitely had strong feelings about sex and sexuality as a result of our abuse. It also sucks your ex-wife was like that. I've never seen a study or investigation on how survivors seem to find each other - but we do. I've puzzled over this many time, wondering about all parts of who we are as humans: physical mannerisms, emotional cues, interpersonal differences due to our survival techniques, and even spiritual damage that somehow gets seen. Of all those things I think it's maybe the interpersonal aspects of us as survivors that attract us to each other. Maybe?