Celibacy and touch

[i-m-Bri]

I’ve done a lot in the past 9 days.
I need to vent or dump.

I came out a celibate to my trainer. I’ve really changed my body composition and he’s made a few references to how much my husband must like the changes. I’ve played along before but 9 days ago I couldn’t lie any more.I wanted to bolt but instead I talked. I told him that any and all advances are avoided and have been successfully since 1999.
The following days we exchanged a lot of emails. I told him a general version of my story. What really came up while I was writing was my history of touch, or lack of it.
Touching didn’t happen in my family. My father actively touched me 4 times that I can recall. My mother was also medicinal, checking a fever or attending to a cut. Not affection. My brother and I never fought, punched, shoved or wrestled, ever. Even my twin sister. I can recall holding her hand once to walk her home when she was sick (the teacher told me to).

My trainer has been touching me for over a year now. It's the first time I don't cringe or flinch when a man touches me. My comfort is rooted in the fact that he is straight and 30 years younger.
Maybe it's creepy, but I enjoy it. It doesn't feel judgmental or probing, it feels warm and forgiving.
I've been thinking about allowing more none sexual touch into my life. I looked into cuddle clubs, but even that seems scary and sleazy.

I have a need. I need to find a way to be intimate.

 

[Sterling]

I can relate BDD. I need gentle physical touch.
(I was badly physically abused-this is why I am afraid of
someone touching me; especially women)
So , continue on.
I think you will be aware if it gets uncomfortable.

Be proud of yourself!

James

 

[i-m-Bri]

Thank you James,

I've been working on calming down, breathing and stuff.
It really makes a difference.

-BDD

 

[Nothing Man]

BDD,

We humans are social creatures and we all crave the comfort and belonging that a gentle, well-intentioned touch can bring. I remember thinking of those poor Romanian orphans in the eighties and nineties who lay in their cribs all day, never touched, and then when they were adopted had severe psychological problems in many cases.

The problem is that we survivors of CSA have been touched in unfriendly, unwanted, and psychologically (to say nothing of physically) ways. We now recoil from the loving touch of another as our default defense mechanism.

One of our challenges is to overcome the fear so many of us have of being touched. When we can do that, and we allow others to have physical contact with us, it brings us psychic relief. I hope you are able to continue to transform yourself into accepting "good" touches.

 

[i-m-Bri]

I'm really down. I feel trapped. If I tell my husband that parts of me are waking up to touch, he might initiate sex. If I leave him to explore this, wouldn't I just end up with less tolerant guys.
Maybe thinking way to big, but the feelings behind it are a realization of how unhappy I am. There is a huge part of life I am cut off from. And needs not being met.
Ugh.
Thanks guys, sometimes I just need to dump.

 

[Nothing Man]

(((BDD)))

I hope the depression will lift soon. Wishing you the best.

 

[Bluedogone]

BDD - sometime just saying it to yourself, writing it down, acknowledging this is the way I feel, sharing it with a bunch of guys who understand exactly what you're experiencing can do wonders for getting us out of the dark places.

The touch of the keyboard keys is nowhere near a substitute for a human touch. But it's a start. Just ranting, and in just honestly laying it all out there as how you feel can be a new refreshing. {{{BDD}}} This is my hope for you. May the dark places of depression and sense of lack be fewer and fewer.

CJ

 

[dark empathy]

@Bddd, I actually wonder if your assessment that your husband would always interpret desire for touch as desire for s/x is the case.

One of the things I've found most healing with my lady is a huge amount of none s/xual, intimate physical contact, indeed for us, making love is more just an extention of this than something separate and something that happens in and of itself.
We regularly just hold hands, cuddle, often we'll wash each other's hair, or curl up and read together, (sometimes both reading the same book, often both reading separately, that's indeed what we've done all of today),indeed for me, being able to share reading, something which to me has always been a private pleasure with my lady's physical presence is greatly healing, indeed people tell me I'm now far less tactile defensive with most people than I used to be, and certainly this sort of intimacy helped hugely with my long standing genophobia, indeed my lady has commented to me that from having to muster all my energy to just stroke her shoulder back last august, to being able to quite happily sleep together with her is an amazing amount of progress, and the majority of that has been nones/xual, indeed in a lot of ways we both get as much if not more from basic loving intimacy than we do from making love, which either happens or it doesn't according to where we are at the time.

So I'd suggest perhaps talking to your husband about this, or just trying being together physically without any need or desire for anything else, sinse it's something I find one of the most healing experiences I've ever had.

Luke.

 

[i-m-Bri]

Hey guys, thank you for responding.
I tried to talk to him Friday night. It was really painful.
It was the first time he ever let me know how hard it was for him, how angry he is.
We've hardly looked at each other since...pretty hard as we work together too, ha.

I'm really looking at what I want.
You know part of me looks at this part of my life and I get really sad.
But honestly, part of me is way OK never having to be bothered with it again.
That was kind of a lighting flash.
Not sure if it's denial or honesty?

Work in progress.
Thank you,

 

[learning2remember]

Hey, BDD,

What you are talking about is not easy. The strange thing for me is that I think I used to be ok with touch, maybe not a touchy-feely person, but not averse, and then somehow through my healing I started to dislike it more. It's almost like realising what happened to me made me question every touch, and before I admitted what happened to me, I accepted touch more easily.

Having said that, I do remember being in a small group working on general self awareness--part of my training for ministry. What the facilitator told me then was that I had issues with trust and with touch. She gave me a knowing look. The thing is, I had no clue what she suspected. If someone had asked me at that time if I had been sexually abused, I would have denied it with confidence. It was only a year later that I started to look at certain memories a different way ("Oh, wait, maybe that wasn't just a big brother's joke when he made me give him oral sex."--yes, that was actually a realisation for me.)

So, I think I had issues with touch before I realised it, and before I realised my history, but I would still say that somehow consciously processing my memories has made me more wary of touch, and I've had to work to overcome that.

I admit that touch is a good thing, or can be, should be. I think we need it. But, and this is weird, if I think that someone patting me on the back or giving me a hug (I'm trying to think of forms of touch that I think can be non-sexual right now), and if I think that their reaching out also somehow feels good to them, that sort of freaks me out. The idea that someone else benefits from physical contact with me makes me feel used. Even if my brain knows that this is natural, "good" and innocent.

That is my baggage, and somehow seeing it has made it difficult to engage in touch without wondering what it means, when, in fact, it can be a natural form of human contact that doesn't benefit from overanalyses.

It has gotten a little bit better with my wife. We were distant for a while in bed, for several reasons, some rather mundane. She kept to her side of the bed and I to mine. I think we were sort of ok with this, but I also think we knew that it was a said state of affairs. She also gave clear signals that it was sad for her.

I decided to try just reaching a hand out when we slept, like holding hands as we fell asleep. Minimal contact, but intentional. It even felt contrived at first, but it has become more natural. What I now notice is that we regularly sleep closer to each other. I'm not talking about sex, because that wasn't necessarily the goal. I'm just saying that now there is much more body contact, shoulder-to-shoulder type stuff, that just wasn't happening before. And it feels natural, I don't have to think about it. And I think it started with the forced (on my part) reaching out of the hand.

I know my wife had been hurt by not being able to touch me more in the past. I don't know what to do with that, but my point right now is that we have reached a better place, and we got here by taking baby steps.

Just some things to think about.