Struggling...Please (possible trigger)

Struggling...Please (possible trigger)

wreckage

Registrant
Hello People:

I have been struggling with the idea of consent. I know that i was molested/abused once at age 12 (obviously underage). With this i am still in early recovery. Here one question that I need feedback on: Does one time count as molest/abuse? Why do I even have this question?

The other question: I later (at age 16? 17? sought out receiving men to perform oral sex on me. I had moved to a new neighborhood and was entering Junior year in high school. I am foggy on definite age but I know it was going on 16 or 17. Is this molest/abuse if I looked for it?

I know I have been in this space asking this before. Am I in some sort of denial in recovery? Really lost and stuck and feel like I can't move forward in healing.
I feel like I'm going through the motions in life and that my life is on hold until I get back to who I am 9and not be defined by this static in my head.
 
Hello People:

I have been struggling with the idea of consent. I know that i was molested/abused once at age 12 (obviously underage). With this i am still in early recovery. Here one question that I need feedback on: Does one time count as molest/abuse? Why do I even have this question?

The other question: I later (at age 16? 17? sought out receiving men to perform oral sex on me. I had moved to a new neighborhood and was entering Junior year in high school. I am foggy on definite age but I know it was going on 16 or 17. Is this molest/abuse if I looked for it?

I know I have been in this space asking this before. Am I in some sort of denial in recovery? Really lost and stuck and feel like I can't move forward in healing.
I feel like I'm going through the motions in life and that my life is on hold until I get back to who I am 9and not be defined by this static in my head.


Hello wreckage,

I've had to overcome a similar question at my age 12-13, where a boy I can only guess was 2 years older than me had groomed me. I stopped going over after about the 4 or 5th incident. I can recall some of it, most of it is the confusion and inability to even know what I was thinking about. I had no clue what sex was, and that I had liked to have girls as friends as much as boys, it seemed like I was submitting to what he wanted to keep him as a friend. I think it would have gone a lot farther if I hadn't stopped going over. He lived on the way to my Junior high, and that was weird too. I often saw him on the way home, but, usually not going. I can't be sure why? I don't care after all this time, but that you've asked that question, I think I'm naturally reviewing it to seek a connection to what you're thinking.

When I brought him up in therapy, I was upset, looking back with my adult eyes, I was hurt that I wasn't worth enough to leave me alone. Reflecting upon what he meant to me, a friend, and one of perhaps 2 in that time-frame. He either never heard about my bullies at school (I wasn't talking to anyone about it), or he may have seen one incident? I never heard he did, and we never discussed anything like that. We talked music, fishing, t.v. stuff, and then got high sometimes. I think he started molesting me about 4-6 months into hanging out? I can't be sure at all. That time-frame seems logical to about how long I think I knew him and to stopping seeing him.

Does this kind of description resonate to any of your thinking at 12, and then reviewing it as an adult? I want to make sure you noticed the pain of self-worth it brought up in me as an adult. I thought it very sad that this had happened.

My life went pretty bad from 13-17. I'm guessing that hiding things became my natural state, and I buried all of it by getting stoned?

I felt different about boys and men after. I didn't like, nor trust them. Maybe it was projected from me too? I had so much trouble being with others, it was only to be stoned during those years. In school I wanted a friend, but usually neglected them from my own fears and anxieties, and the 3-4 whom I ever tried would fad away.

Does describing this resonate? Then if I add my parents, it was nothing. There was just nothing there. I barely understood, or really knew either of them. I was mostly raised by my mom, but at almost 16 she threw me away. I still say it that way because it was a very traumatic event. I've worked on it though, and writing it doesn't hit as hard as it used to.


TRIGGERS Begin Here:

What I hear you saying, seems like you didn't fear men? And, somehow it seemed safer to you? Is that anywhere near why you can imagine seeking out men? That it would be them who would participate with you? I wonder how you thought about them wanting to interact sexually? What I read, is that they may give a bj, and you perhaps would not? I don't want to trigger you, but in some way, sorting out the thinking has been helpful to me, and I wonder with you too? This writing you've started can really help.

To me, and I had the opposite desire than you, but had more male friends by 18-23 than female. I guess circumstances changed, and those were around my job, and few social things.

Here's something I'm certain of. We as older teens can make up our mind about what we want, and in fact, many can deal with life on its terms if they're not subjected to our confusions and trauma. I keep that in mind when I respond to questions like you bring up. I must add a caveat, it's that everyone has something that brings deep emotions, it's that some have support we just haven't had. I think seeing that we held our emotions into ourselves in different ways is why there's a sort of numb confusion during the time of things, and now later as adults. We look through adult eyes and have a harder time sorting the way some things were emotionally different back then.

I have learned for me that the above holds very true. I've only moved forward when I process into the old emotions, which sorts them, and then I bring them to the here and now.

When I thought about men, I feared them the most. I think men whom are older than us have well formed lusts that are less formed during puberty. It is to that understanding, and that the age difference, regardless of desire, has unexpected confusions. Here and now, I see you're trying to sort those unexpected confusions. When I note that older adults, contrary to the new lust of teens, have a better developed lust, it's they who have an advantage toward dominating the situations you may have been in as an older teen.

That domination of age, experience and matured lust seems to me to make the situation that you sought out an unfair advantage to the older men. Perhaps you're wondering about how then to get the experience of sex? I don't have that answer, because I barely had two make-out sessions as a teen, and I'm not qualified to share about same sex attraction as a teen, let alone opposite sex. To me, there's an age advantage that puts the situation into the socially accepted stand that those men were wrong to play into what you sought? That noted, I wonder whether you tried with males your own age or 1 year ahead?

I've played this out too far, so please ignore what doesn't work. I hope for best wishes to you always, I felt the 12 year old experience really connected with me.
 
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Hi Wreckage,

All I can share is my experience. First, yes, one time counts. How many times do you have to be cut to be assaulted?
I know for me to question what counts is a form of denial. Generally, from a legal perspective, if the men are 5 years older than you, in states where the age of consent is 18, it is definitely abuse. In states where consent is 16, it is not.

When you are seeking oral sex, what is the prior experience? Did you just decide you were going to seek it, never experiencing oral sex for at least 4 years? This is unlikely. Were you trying to experiment with pornographic reenactments?

Were you exposed to the porn when you were younger, or were you invited to accept oral sex as part of the initiation? I think your experience is greater than you are expressing. Certainly mine was. I was molested by my older brother when I was 10. Conned into sucking him at 12. Instructed to strip for my mother so her friend, the photographer could take pictures. I was sick when I was 13 and my mother had a friend come over, and over the next 6 months was abused, anally and orally raped. My mother told me she thought he was a homosexual. And I disclosed, she asked if I liked being penetrated, I said no it hurt. She said "Then, you are O K".

For whatever that is worth.
 
Hello Wreckage

I agree it is not the number or frequency. Simply put you were abused. Each of us, due to genetic and physiological make-up will react differently to similar situations. It is important you do not compare or try to rationalize why others handled the situation differently. You are you and how you reacted and are reacting today to the abuse is because you are you. You are facing the abuse which can be a very painful process. Admitting and accepting such an horrific act puts the mind into overdrive and others shut-down. Move at your own pace.

What you lived, no child should ever live. I believe until we fully accept the truth of the abuse we move back and forth into denial. Denial, at least for me, was a safety zone so I thought. Actually it was a place that caused additional emotional and physical harm to me and others. I would deny and syncope and dissociation would set in--take over my life. They allowed me to escape the pain and hurt of the abuse and triggers. As one doctor told me, dissociation allowed me to live, for a period of time, in full denial. When I returned the abuse was still there. I will be honest, the journey was long for me, while others are able to travel it a faster pace. Today I accept the truth of the abuse and how I was treated as I unraveled as truth. I no longer let the abuser and others into my life--they will always be a part of my life and not a part that will control my life. Once I gave control I was the one who lived on the path of destruction. It all seems so simple in hindsight. It is the emotions, societal pressures and denials and my own coping mechanisms that I adopted over the decades that held me back. I will say the old 80%/20% rule applies. 80% of people in this world are good, kind and caring the other 20% are not or they are lost in their own emotional issues.

Thank you for sharing and we are here for you.

Kevin
 
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Hi Wreckage,

All I can share is my experience. First, yes, one time counts. How many times do you have to be cut to be assaulted?
I know for me to question what counts is a form of denial. Generally, from a legal perspective, if the men are 5 years older than you, in states where the age of consent is 18, it is definitely abuse. In states where consent is 16, it is not.

When you are seeking oral sex, what is the prior experience? Did you just decide you were going to seek it, never experiencing oral sex for at least 4 years? This is unlikely. Were you trying to experiment with pornographic reenactments?

Were you exposed to the porn when you were younger, or were you invited to accept oral sex as part of the initiation? I think your experience is greater than you are expressing. Certainly mine was. I was molested by my older brother when I was 10. Conned into sucking him at 12. Instructed to strip for my mother so her friend, the photographer could take pictures. I was sick when I was 13 and my mother had a friend come over, and over the next 6 months was abused, anally and orally raped. My mother told me she thought he was a homosexual. And I disclosed, she asked if I liked being penetrated, I said no it hurt. She said "Then, you are O K".

For whatever that is worth.

I had a prior experience in high school with a gay classmate before that. It was about a year earlier than the acting out I mentioned (age 16-17). Thank you for your insight. In new York (where it happened so many years ago (I'm 56 now), the age of consent is 17. That number along with yours is helpful though I think that one's state of mind is important. Why did you ask about prior experience? My very first sexua experience was with the dude I mentioned.
 
Wreckage,

Certainly one's state of mind is more important. I asked about prior sexual experience because it is unusual to act out
after 4 years in an explicit engagement in oral sex. There is usually an awareness of what it is you are seeking
Before you seek it. Certainly I had oral sex at 13 and 14 with the perp (my mother's friend) and my older brother
at 12. That was how I knew to seek oral sex.
 
Does one time count as molest/abuse? Why do I even have this question?
I'm a minimizer, not a denier. I know these questions well.

Yes, one time is being abused. Period.

I know I minimize for a number of reasons.
One of the things I get from it is the chance to berate myself...other boys could have taken it...
It's a chance for my self hatred to dig in and eat away me.
I've learned to pull back, look at myself with compassion and the question become meaningless.
Better I should ask what it did to me?
 
Hello People:

I have been struggling with the idea of consent. I know that i was molested/abused once at age 12 (obviously underage). With this i am still in early recovery. Here one question that I need feedback on: Does one time count as molest/abuse? Why do I even have this question?

The other question: I later (at age 16? 17? sought out receiving men to perform oral sex on me. I had moved to a new neighborhood and was entering Junior year in high school. I am foggy on definite age but I know it was going on 16 or 17. Is this molest/abuse if I looked for it?

I know I have been in this space asking this before. Am I in some sort of denial in recovery? Really lost and stuck and feel like I can't move forward in healing.
I feel like I'm going through the motions in life and that my life is on hold until I get back to who I am 9and not be defined by this static in my head.

Abuse takes many forms but what you can look at the main thing abuse does no matter how far it goes sexually is you have lost your sense of safety in the world, you have been betrayed and you have been pushed into an emotional physical situation that your psyche is not ready for or can process.

When you sought it out at 16 or 17 it was a continuation of your old abuse in some ways, you had not been given a choice to define what love meant to you so you sought out comfort in the only way you knew it because of the incident. The power dynamics and situations have a lot to do with the abuse and it is not just the sexual component it is the emotional component that does the most harm.
 
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