Returning with Another Question!

[jayssa]

I posted a little while back and you were all so helpful. I am hoping I can find an answer to this question.
As I had previously explained:
As a 5 year old my fiance was raped by an adult cousin several times and again by and uncle at age 8. He never told anyone. Then at age 14 he found himself in a situation were he had sex with a male friend on a few occassion and again with another person a year or so later.

Since then, the scary reality that things are getting worse has become evident. He is now looking at pronography a LOT! And it isn't what Iw ould consider main stream pornography but it is of men ejaculating on the face of women. (sorry, didn't know how to put it nicely). I have spoken to him about this many time and explained that I dont like it and that it makes me feel bad, dirty and makes me not want to be intimate with him. Many times he has said he would stop but I keep finding on the computer inadvertantly. I guess the question is, is this part of the issues that occur when a man is sexually abused as a child. He has said that he can't seem to stop himself from looking at it. Is this possible that he really can't help it or is is an excuse, cop-out? It would seem to me that if I knew somthing was destroying my realtionship, I'd be sure not to do it.
I keep getting so many insights from people that just say " he's a young guy, it's normal. Don't let it bother you". Is that good advice. Becasue if so then why does it hurt me so much?
He realizes he has an issue with it but how am I suppossed to handle this? What is the right thing to do while we are waiting for availablity with the psychologist? I dont mean to sound like a prude or anything, I am just so confused...as usual.

Thanks!
Jayssa

 

[shadowkid]

no it's not normal but neither are the hundreds of things that abuse does to us ,i believe him when he says he can't stop . in my case it's like i am two different people i do things i know are not good for me but i do them anyway it's hard to explain but i think that during abuse we lose control of our lives one of the after effects of losing that control is we also lose control of ourselves ,any kind of control is a thing of the past,when your forced to give up total control of your life i don't know if we ever get it back .i had to lose control of myself in order to distance myself from what was being done to me ,you just give up in order to survive maybe the therapy should be to get back that control i know this didn't help you much it's very hard to explain adam

 

[Lloydy]

Jayysa
that type of porn seems to say more about 'control and power' than it does about sexual fantasy.

We lost all control over sex as children, we should have learned about sex in a normal, controlled way but we didn't. We had a lesson in the abuse of power with sex as the weapon of choice.

As someone who also uses porn a bit more than I'd like to, I think that there are many reasons we use porn.
Firstly, like so many men, we use porn because it excites us and we find it erotic, which for me is good looking girls in sexual acts and poses.

Then there's the porn that has a big element of degradation in it, like the porn you describe above. To me that kind of porn creates the feeling of power that I seek to recreate, it doesn't matter that the picture is of an adult man 'dominating' an adult woman in a pose that is more than likely simulated. The picture / movie stimulates within me the desired feelings of sex being used as a weapon, a tool of power. And then I can transfer the power to me because I made the effort to go and find that particular kind of porn.

Does that make any sense? It's kinda hard to express, and to a degree it can seem like a list of excuses, but I think there is usually a deeper reason that we seek a particular coping mechanism.

Dave

 

[Lloydy]

TRIGGER WARNING

More thoughts....

Do we see ourselves in this kind of 'humiliation' porn and somehow - maybe subconciously - empathise with what we see?

What happened to us as kids was the ultimate humiliation, or at least that's how we can very often perceive our childhood abuse from our adult viewpoint. So we enter into a world of thinking that we are some kind of worthless trash that deserves nothing more that sexual humiliation.
I'm now certain that my acting out sexually with strangers was me fullfilling my role of expecting nothing more than a life of sexual humiliation, and the porn I sometimes wander into is the same thing.

I don't get aroused by looking at 'humiliation' porn. Normal porn does arouse me though, like any guy I guess. So the humiliation stuff must fulfill another need?
If I masturbate to regular porn, good looking women having sex with guys, or gay porn, as long as it appears to be consentual, then that works just fine, although it's still something I'd rather not fell the need to do. But masturbating to porn that depicts someone, female or male, in a submissive or humiliating manner then it's actually very hard work and nothing more than a purely physical act. I might as well be looking at the weather report!
But I 'THINK' that this porn is what I should be looking at and getting excited over.

It's an odd and strangely subconcious thing, I somehow know that it's not going to be as erotic as I ( subconciously ? ) feel it should be, but I still have a compulsion to go there because I also feel it's all I deserve, or what will work best.

Using porn is a nightmare for those of us that feel compelled to use it, I know guys that use porn very openly and seem quite OK with it, but for me, and I think many other survivors, that isn't possible. There is also the whole thing of 'secrecy' that surrounded our abuse, and that's one more thing we can recreate by using porn, only now we can be in control over our secret.

It's a difficult subject, and especially for partners who discover our taste in porn and then think that's what we actually desire. I don't happen to think that's always the case, in fact I think the opposite is more likely and we wouldn't wish humiliation on our partners at all. I personally don't want my wife to humiliate me in a sexual way either. I don't want humiliation, but maybe I still believe it's what I deserve?

I think that our tastes in porn will almost certainly be traceable back to our abuse, and then on to the way we are dealing with our past abuse as adults. It's yet another coping mechanism, and not a very good one either.

Dave

 

[Born to Resist]

How much is a lot? Please define? How old is your fiance? How many female partners has he been with?

So far it (behaviorly) doesn't sound too different from my friends who were not abused. However, your fiance is certainly experiencing it differently than someone who wasn't abused.

Courage-Wisdom-Spirituality

 

[SAR]

Hi jayssa,

Honestly, whether or not it is "normal" has nothing to do with it. The only people you need to worry about here are you and your fiance.

It was "normal" for my high school and college friends to smoke. It wasn't normal for ME, and I never dated anyone who did. I guess those smokers could go date any of the many folks who don't have a problem accepting that behavior in a partner.

Where I see the problem is that you have told your fiance how this behavior makes you feel, you have asked him to stop, he told you that he would stop, and yet he continues to do it.

I think this is an issue for many survivors, and Dave's post about control and humiliation is right on.