Need help/advice please - (new to this forum)
My name is TKC and I was sexually assaulted by an older female when I was a 17 year-old teenager in 2002. I was taken advantage of after a drunken night with friends and what was worst is that this was my first experience of a sexual nature.
When I came-to mid way throughout my rape I pulled away. I was confused, scared and worst of all alone. I still remember my surroundings as if it were yesterday. I knew my friends weren't the type to help and in those days I never knew men could actually be sexually assaulted let alone raped.
For a while I avoided women but it wasn't long before I started noticing everyone around me enjoying their privilege of being in healthy relationships. Worst of all for me is that I didn't know how to commence a healthy sexual relationship. I had no older siblings to turn to and I was too afraid to ask my parents.
Before long I began to start trying to connect with women, but I went about it all wrong. I would have sex first and then try and determine if the person was appropriate for a relationship. My efforts were very sporadic as I faced an uphill battle with maintaining an income, studying, and doing what I could to take my mind off of that first time.
Later in life after having met a girl whom I wanted to have a long-term relationship with, these bad habits surfaced again. I later came to identify that I had developed a form of sexual addiction. The worst instance of this surfaced after a bout of frequent internet pornography use. During this time my partner and I discovered that we were expecting a baby. We were told that this was impossible. We didn't have any money and I decided against my partners wishes to work as a stripper. At the time I did not see a problem with this but I believe that I was o.k. with this choice due to my misuse of internet pornography. I initially chose to become a stripper to make money and had a good sense of intentions in doing the right thing by my growing family to support them. Little did I realize that I would often be abused physically and emotionally while working there by both men and women who visited the nightclub. This fed into my porn addiction where I would use internet pornography to de-stress. This fed into a cycle of a need to 'get-off'.
I began to masturbate heavily, sometimes even at my day time work. The exposure to this nightclub on Saturday nights and the people there began to fuel flashbacks of the painful memories of being raped and I don't feel like I ever truly came to terms with it. I began to cheat to fulfill this need to 'get off' though the incidents left me upset, angry and ashamed. This fueled my flashbacks even more. I became angry, enraged and depressed at my actions after each time. I became abusive to my wife and wasn't there for her when I needed to be. I became more demanding of my wife sexually when I was there. This sexually demanding energy boiled over into anger and my wife ended up wearing the brunt of this, placing strain on her and our relationship throughout this time; this was before discovery was even made.
The news of both being abused as a teenager and having cheated numerous times traumatized my wife, leaving her as confused as what I was. It lead to diagnoses of trauma, P.T.S.D., Anxiety, Depression, Anger, and more.
My wife and I have stayed together for our daughter and in the hope that we can make things work. However my wife feels that huge flood of emotion multi-daily when she is hit with the realization of what I have done whether it be by an imagination of events, a trigger, places that give a reminder or simply my presence/my being away from home to run errands, etc.
Feelings of depression, anxiety have hit me also. I know that my actions and inaction have led to excommunication from some members of family, humiliation, shame, fear and helplessness.
I have since completed a course in anger management, read through chapters of books relating to sexual addiction as well as healing from rape. I have also been to both individual counselling and relationship counselling but it hasn't addressed the sexual acting out. I have stopped the negative behavior and cannot believe how far I had fallen. I didn't realize how badly I was treating my wife and family and want to be a better person for not only my family, but for myself as well.
I am so confused, stricken with grief and don't know why I was so angry all the time. I'm in disbelief that I developed an addiction to sex. I never wanted to be this type of person.
I want to know if any of this makes sense to those of you reading and if it's normal acting-out behaviors after an assault? Your feedback may help me to understand how I can better understand myself and how I can better help my family into the future.
When I came-to mid way throughout my rape I pulled away. I was confused, scared and worst of all alone. I still remember my surroundings as if it were yesterday. I knew my friends weren't the type to help and in those days I never knew men could actually be sexually assaulted let alone raped.
For a while I avoided women but it wasn't long before I started noticing everyone around me enjoying their privilege of being in healthy relationships. Worst of all for me is that I didn't know how to commence a healthy sexual relationship. I had no older siblings to turn to and I was too afraid to ask my parents.
Before long I began to start trying to connect with women, but I went about it all wrong. I would have sex first and then try and determine if the person was appropriate for a relationship. My efforts were very sporadic as I faced an uphill battle with maintaining an income, studying, and doing what I could to take my mind off of that first time.
Later in life after having met a girl whom I wanted to have a long-term relationship with, these bad habits surfaced again. I later came to identify that I had developed a form of sexual addiction. The worst instance of this surfaced after a bout of frequent internet pornography use. During this time my partner and I discovered that we were expecting a baby. We were told that this was impossible. We didn't have any money and I decided against my partners wishes to work as a stripper. At the time I did not see a problem with this but I believe that I was o.k. with this choice due to my misuse of internet pornography. I initially chose to become a stripper to make money and had a good sense of intentions in doing the right thing by my growing family to support them. Little did I realize that I would often be abused physically and emotionally while working there by both men and women who visited the nightclub. This fed into my porn addiction where I would use internet pornography to de-stress. This fed into a cycle of a need to 'get-off'.
I began to masturbate heavily, sometimes even at my day time work. The exposure to this nightclub on Saturday nights and the people there began to fuel flashbacks of the painful memories of being raped and I don't feel like I ever truly came to terms with it. I began to cheat to fulfill this need to 'get off' though the incidents left me upset, angry and ashamed. This fueled my flashbacks even more. I became angry, enraged and depressed at my actions after each time. I became abusive to my wife and wasn't there for her when I needed to be. I became more demanding of my wife sexually when I was there. This sexually demanding energy boiled over into anger and my wife ended up wearing the brunt of this, placing strain on her and our relationship throughout this time; this was before discovery was even made.
The news of both being abused as a teenager and having cheated numerous times traumatized my wife, leaving her as confused as what I was. It lead to diagnoses of trauma, P.T.S.D., Anxiety, Depression, Anger, and more.
My wife and I have stayed together for our daughter and in the hope that we can make things work. However my wife feels that huge flood of emotion multi-daily when she is hit with the realization of what I have done whether it be by an imagination of events, a trigger, places that give a reminder or simply my presence/my being away from home to run errands, etc.
Feelings of depression, anxiety have hit me also. I know that my actions and inaction have led to excommunication from some members of family, humiliation, shame, fear and helplessness.
I have since completed a course in anger management, read through chapters of books relating to sexual addiction as well as healing from rape. I have also been to both individual counselling and relationship counselling but it hasn't addressed the sexual acting out. I have stopped the negative behavior and cannot believe how far I had fallen. I didn't realize how badly I was treating my wife and family and want to be a better person for not only my family, but for myself as well.
I am so confused, stricken with grief and don't know why I was so angry all the time. I'm in disbelief that I developed an addiction to sex. I never wanted to be this type of person.
I want to know if any of this makes sense to those of you reading and if it's normal acting-out behaviors after an assault? Your feedback may help me to understand how I can better understand myself and how I can better help my family into the future.
