Taboo topic at MS--Eroticizing the abuse--Triggers
A Skeptical Optimist
Registrant
I just wanted to stop here a moment and reflect back on the significance of what has been shared in this thread. Sex abuse is a very special category of abuse. If we get sucker-punched in the gut, we double over in pain. If we get hit in the face, it hurts. If we get stabbed or shot, we are fighting for our lives. In almost all those cases, there is no confusion between what happens to us and how we are reacting. It all makes sense.
But rape and sex abuse are fundamentally different from those other abuses. The reactions we have make little sense to what we think we should be feeling. The title of this thread is Eroticizing the abuse. That road starts with the unwanted touch that first elicits a response you can't understand - and when you do, you can't forgive yourself for. The penetration that you say "no" to but realize your body is saying "yes" despite yourself - and the tragic split from yourself that lasts a lifetime. It may have felt okay at the time - maybe even good. But frankly it might as well have been rat poison shoved into us, slowly killing our souls from within. The sexual acts sow the seeds of immediate confusion. And they germinate through the years, growing into weeds of self-doubt and self-hatred. They grow so big they choke out the dreams and plans of who we would otherwise become - the freer spirits we were meant to be without the heavy sack of secrets that takes all our energy to carry without spilling. But the weeds keep growing. The sudden drop in grades. The avoidance of touch from those who do love us. The inability to trust ourselves. The failed marriages. The anger issues. The inability to hold a steady job. A punch in the gut doesn't do that no matter how hard it is thrown. A gut punch never bleeds into our lives very far beyond its moment. It does not sow those seeds and grow those weeds. Sex abuse does.
This topic is precisely why it took me years to finally look at what happened to me as a child - and no doubt that is true for many of you as well. We might have liked it at face value. And maybe at some point we went to our abusers and asked for it again (I did). And when we grew up, our hopes that it was a phase we'd grow out of were never realized. We could not unlearn what we were taught, as fervently as we tried. So we blame ourselves for being too weak, too complicit, too damaged, too weird. We pack it all up in a secret box, throw it on a shelf, and pretend it's not there. We even hope it goes away through sheer neglect. Until one day when the marriage breaks down. The porn is discovered. The secret affair is revealed. The boss fires you. The drinking kills your health. And suddenly those secrets you thought you buried since you were a towheaded blonde come spilling out when your hair is gray.
And that's the moment many of us finally face it.
So this is an important thread. Maybe someone will read it and for the first time in their lives realize they are not alone. They are not freaks. They are not guilty of anything. They have not minimized by a single speck of sand the magnitude of the crime against them as kids just because they never let go what it taught them to enjoy. The eroticization is how they grew around what they could not stop. And in so doing, each of them is acting precisely like a sex abuse survivor.
This is an important thread. Because someone will read this through tired, older eyes - eyes that will suddenly open for the first time. They'll recognize themselves in us. They might even say, "My God... me, too!" There are over three thousand views on this thread. So someone will. Maybe it's even YOU.
And that's when the journey to healing begins.
I know this an old thread, but this post is so poignantly written! Thank you, @Chase Eric !
I would love to see this thread stickied (I think that's the word?) to the front page. I can't tell you how much it means to not feel completely alone in this.
Actually, you all probably know exactly how much it means :/