Do you think your abuser cared about you?

Do you think your abuser cared about you?
dcwofhs90

dcwofhs90

Registrant
I'm sure there'll be answers from one end of the spectrum to the other. My guess is most survivors would say "no"...maybe even emphatically "no". As usual, I'll probably be the different one here because I think my abuser actually did care about me.

Make no mistake, however; I'm not suggesting that he wasn't acting in his own self-interest...at least at first...because he took something (my innocence) from me without asking. But I think he cared about me because of how much time he spent in "preparing" me to accept him each time until I got used to it...the first handful of times. After that, he didn't need to "prepare" me so much. He never really hurt me...well, it hurt but I've always called it a "good hurt;" it hurt but it felt good to me.

My best friend suggested to me once that my abuser was my first love. I'm sure I had some feelings for him, especially considering how many intimate moments we had together over the course of 5 years. I never really thought about it until he suggested it. But I just have to believe that he had some feelings for me, too.

Based on some of my discussions with other survivors here, I know I'm not alone in questioning this. Still, I know I'm in the minority here...or at least I think I am.
 
This may be something to consider:

Hebephilia involves sexual attraction to young adolescents (generally 11 to 14), and individuals with this attraction may justify their actions as love or mutuality, despite the inherent power imbalance and potential harm to the victims. However, such justifications do not negate the abusive nature of the behavior.
 
Silly said:
This may be something to consider:

Hebephilia involves sexual attraction to young adolescents (generally 11 to 14), and individuals with this attraction may justify their actions as love or mutuality, despite the inherent power imbalance and potential harm to the victims. However, such justifications do not negate the abusive nature of the behavior.
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For the record, I'm not excusing anything he did. But even when there's no excuse, an abuser can end up caring about their victim... even if they didn't care about the victim at first.
 
Of course he cared about me and I cared about him on a very basic human relational level. He knew me and lived with us since about 4 years old. Obviously, "caring" doesn't say anything about all that happened over the years.
 
My abuser was an uncle. Yes, he should've loved me, but it wasn't love to be robbed of power and control of my own body and mind, it wasn't love to be consumed with the shame of the initial abuse, and then the subsequent acting out chaos in my life. It wasn't love to be robbed of my own natural sexual evolution on my terms. It wasn't love to do this to a kid already hurting from a mothers death, and layers broken family and other drama.
 
George said:
My abuser was an uncle. Yes, he should've loved me, but it wasn't love to be robbed of power and control of my own body and mind, it wasn't love to be consumed with the shame of the initial abuse, and then the subsequent acting out chaos in my life. It wasn't love to be robbed of my own natural sexual evolution on my terms. It wasn't love to do this to a kid already hurting from a mothers death, and layers broken family and other drama.
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Sometimes I feel much the same way. But then other times I feel like he really cared about me. Still, at the end of the day, though, what was done was not caring for us at all... Our futures weren't considered, only our abusers' sexual gratification was probably the main thing they worried about.

But then, he almost artfully twisted it to seem (to me) to be mostly about my pleasure, not so much his. Maybe he cared about both, I don't know.
 
I wish I could figure it out for sure. There are so many reasons for why a pedophile acts out, so many types of relationships between perpetrator and kid. I do believe that some pedophiles genuinely care for their victims, from whatever lens they view it from. There are also degrees of caring and loving, like a man may care to an extent but the care will be limited when he causes genuine harm.
When I think of my grandfather, I don't think he cared. He is a narcissist. I tried to convince myself that the men in my family who were abusing me cared, but the "care" came out in very twisted ways like teaching me lessons and training me through violence to help me become a better person, better kid to traffic.
They cared that I became a good product, a model obedient kid who would do anything, I was told all of this was done because they cared about my wellbeing and cared to make me the best I could be. And I was the best I could be, not as a human being but as a kid trained for sex.
How they cared to train me did help me out down the line, I have a lot of survival skills from it. But, after my profitable period was over my grandfather really did lose all care for me. It made me very sad and lonely.
 
Mikhail098 said:
so many types of relationships between perpetrator and kid.
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In my case, he didn't even know me. I was his paperboy for about 2 years but he mailed his payment. Then all of a sudden he switched to be a "collect" customer, meaning I collected his payments in person. My theory is that he noticed me delivering (or maybe he was waiting for me to be the right age) and swooped in for the prey. However the way it happened, the Playboy magazine on the kitchen table was certainly planted there. Once he saw me looking at it, he made his move...and the rest is history as they say.
 
Our minds are always looking for answers to questions we can probably never truly know the answer. CSA creates an interesting (sometimes painful to say the least) internal conflict around care and love for sure. Major confusion created in a kid. In a way, I sometimes wish he was just an uncaring stranger so it would be less complicated to deal with inside myself. Maybe it would be easier for me, just a guess.
 
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WeDeservedBetter said:
Our minds are always looking for answers to questions we can probably never truly know the answer. CSA creates an interesting (sometimes painful to say the least) internal conflict around care and love for sure. Major confusion created in a kid. In a way, I sometimes wish he was just an uncaring stranger so it would be less complicated to deal with inside myself. Maybe it would be easier for me, just a guess.
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Couldn't have said it better. All the unanswered questions that'll never be answered is probably one of the most difficult parts of CSA in my opinion.
 
I wasn't saying that there no genuine feelings involved... just offering up some information. I hope you didn't take it the wrong way.

If there had been feelings of love and affection involved I may have viewed the abuse differently, but it would have still been abuse. It adds another layer of confusion I suppose.
 
Silly said:
I wasn't saying that there no genuine feelings involved... just offering up some information. I hope you didn't take it the wrong way.

If there had been feelings of love and affection involved I may have viewed the abuse differently, but it would have still been abuse. It adds another layer of confusion I suppose.
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I gotcha, @Silly
No worries here!
 
Mary Definitely cared about me at some point in time when I was younger and needed someone to take care of me. Once I turned ten, she slowly became angrier and meaner and got really angry if I made mistakes or didn’t behave the way she believed I should have been acting. As an adult, she became even worse because she started to drink wine everyday after work. She made sure that I was completely reliant on her “help.” She made me believe that I couldn’t survive without her around. I remember that her love and positive affection towards me became conditional by the time I was eleven and I was pretty aware of it without understanding what it was. If I forgot some homework at school, she’d yell at me and accuse me of doing it on purpose but hug and kiss me if I passed a test. I know she had to have cared about me at some point before it turned into pure hatred towards me because as a four year old, I remember her being so loving and caring to the point she didn’t even hit me once. She’d hug me a lot and she even made sure that I felt safe and never yelled at me without any reason to do so. She didn’t even get angry with me if I made a mistake or misunderstood something.
 
In a very misguided way. Mine found out my dad never taught me how to throw a football so he showed me. ( my dad was much more of a baseball fan and we legit played catch when i was little as corny as that sounds) In my mind he did this to make me more masculine? The dude was virulently homophobic around me and others DESPITE molesting 14 year old me. He didnt want to rape some queer kid.
 
I don't think my father was capable of caring about me. He was a victim of CSA and a serious alcoholic. I've forgiven him so that doesn't matter. I also don't think my brother cared about me but to be honest I didn't care about him either. We enjoyed sex with each other but that's about it. There was one man, one among many, who I think cared about me. He treated me very nice, taught me a lot about sex, baseball and also about life. All the other sex abusers, no they didn't care one whit about me. They just wanted to nut in a child. Fortunately I have moved beyond being concerned whether they cared about me when they were having sex with me when I was a child.
 
There was one that was "good" to me in that he was affectionate and gentle. The others were cruel and brutal so no caring there. There was one other one that refused to abuse me. He was young man and they brutally raped him as punishment. He cared enough to not want to use me..
 
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