From what you've shared, I notice that many experiences are lived through a lens marked by painful moments from the past. This can make feelings and reactions from earlier times still present today, as if that wounded childhood continues to influence, to some degree, the way you see the world and yourself.
It seems that the pain you experienced became intertwined with your story. It's understandable that this shaped certain beliefs about your worth and how the world works. But I also sense that there seems to be an understanding of what happened to you, despite the confusion caused by the abuse.
You are struggling with guilt while questioning whether it is "fair" to label what that relative did to you as abuse. It seems there is an illusion of "control" that they made you believe you were "in charge" (by being the one penetrating/oral sex). This is a classic tactic used by abusers to make you feel guilty for what they orchestrated and to create confusion between victim, accomplice, and consent.
You felt "loved" and "protected" by him because children in vulnerable situations confuse crumbs of attention with love. The absence of environmental references, never having seen real affection around you or receiving it, prevents you from recognizing what is healthy, making any apparent care irresistible. And you, like any child, had a biological hunger for belonging and an instinct for survival through protection.
Imagine yourself isolated in a frozen desert. Beside you, a pyromaniac who sets everything on fire. He carries the only torch. When he dies, you don’t mourn the individual himself, but the loss of the fire that kept you warm and prevented your body from freezing, even though the flames hurt you.
Those behind the screens of a computer were fully aware that they were targeting vulnerability. Their actions reflect only their nature, while you dignity remains intact.
Your search for affection or experimentation was a gesture of someone in need of connection. None of your actions justified what adults did to you. The responsibility has always been theirs. What you lived through was already grave enough, regardless of any physical details.
The violences you endured were mirrors of the people who perpetrated them, never reflections of your worth.
You mention that you would reject a controlling partner (a legacy of maternal abuse), but you would be drawn to behaviors that mirror that control when disguised as "intense affection." This strongly echoes what was said earlier about vulnerable children confusing crumbs with love. It seems to be about reenacting the trauma.
The central issue here is the fallacy that "two traumas cancel each other out." In reality, it’s like trying to put out fire with gasoline. It may seem comforting, but in practice, traumas are not mirrors, they are prisms that distort reality. What would unite you would not be affection, but the mutual recognition of the wound, creating a dysfunctional bubble.
You mention recognizing as 'unnormal' wanting someone who depends on you and that it's okay with that, but you’re not considering how this impacts the other person, who is in that position of dependency.
It’s a projection based on control over something beyond your domain. Deep down, it’s as if what you seek in the other person is actually a reflection of what you can’t handle within yourself.
You shared that you believe there are no men with similar interests or passions to yours. In reality, people with similar tastes do exist. The problem isn’t the rarity of your interests, but where you seek connection. Men on hookup apps rarely prioritize depth. These apps also prohibit users who use STDs as a criterion for sexual search or encourage risky practices.
It’s true that relationships can bring healing when there’s mutual respect and a genuine desire to care for one another. When we seek someone who shares behaviors that hurt us, or when we confuse complicity in self-destruction with support, the effect is the opposite, rather than relief, the suffering deepens.
A partner who truly cares would help you keep the tools of self-destruction, not hand them over.
I realize that when someone makes comments about this fetish, it may touch something in you. It seems that these constructive (or destructive) critiques are not received just as opinions about a behavior, but as if they are attacking something essential about who you are. Perhaps because, over time, this experience has intertwined with your life story, making it difficult to distinguish where the fetish ends and your identity begins.
But I also notice that other people's comments, even well-intentioned ones, might be experienced by you as criticism or rejection. This makes perfect sense when we carry wounds, our mind has learned to expect danger, so it filters the world through lenses of self-protection.
The intense concern about the virus arose from a moment of violation.
The original suffering still echoes. It was invasive and disconnected from any positive meaning. There was no safety, no choice, only pain.
The current desire to be exposed to the virus or someone infected may reflect an internalized belief, born from the violence you suffered, that you are already 'damaged' or 'tainted.' In this "logic," accepting more 'contamination' might seem less severe, or even deserved. This often comes from a shame planted by the abuse, making the person feel fundamentally flawed.
There is another possible layer, it could be an unconscious attempt to rewrite the trauma. By symbolically recreating the situation (but now 'by choice'), there’s a hope to master what was uncontrollable in the past. It’s as if the mind believes that by repeating the scene with a different script, it could heal the original wound. However, this only reinforces the suffering.
Even if you found someone willing to fulfill this desire or a partner who fits, it still wouldn’t be enough to achieve fulfillment. This happens because the root of the pain, that old wound trying to express itself through fantasy, would remain uncared for. The more you search outside, the more the internal need grows, creating a cycle.
I suspect that, at the time of the trauma, the pain was so intense that your mind found an escape to survive by focusing on the virus. Focusing on that may have been a way to give shape to the abstract pain of something that seemed unspeakable. But this strategy, while understandable, represents the tip of an iceberg of much more complex issues, which you seem capable of recognizing.
During your early years, the environment around you failed to offer the support and security that every child deserves. I don’t know exactly what your experience was in orphanages or the adoption process, but I know that these transitions often bring deep feelings of abandonment and loneliness.
The adults responsible for your protection failed to create a space where you could feel truly safe. Even before the sexual abuse, there was no space to express yourself and seek help.
Even before you named the abuse, the inability of the adults around you to perceive your suffering must have amplified the weight of the pain, reinforcing a negative message about yourself.
The psychologists who treated you could have been more open to hearing your complaints about your mother. Unfortunately, some mental health professionals, influenced by biases or inadequate training, don’t always offer the safe space they should. This may have made you feel that your experiences weren’t valid or worthy of attention.
As for the nurse, while the intention to spare you from painful details may have come from a place of care, the silence about your doubts ended up sending a different message, that your questions and fears didn’t deserve answers.
When the adults around you didn’t investigate the panic surrounding the virus, it reinforced a wound that your pain didn’t matter, and the fixation grew.
The blame lies with the perpetrators and the adults who failed you.
This focus on the virus actually reflects the suffering and the circumstances that originated it. It’s a way to externalize something much deeper, a side effect of what you’ve been through, not the other way around.
When you share this desire online seeking understanding or connection, the reactions you receive, whether it’s strangeness or judgment, may end up reactivating old wounds. Every negative response echoes with the same sense of helplessness you experienced in childhood, amplifying feelings of inadequacy and the mechanisms that preceded them.
Remember, the trauma does not define the being of the one who experienced it.
