****TRIGGER WARNING*****
Man do I hear that! I have been learning to live with the label put on me, not realizing at the beginning that I have been living with it all my life. I have never felt I had any inter-personal skills, so I kept quite, isolated, and that made the social problem even worse.
I was blessed in life to meet a woman 35 years ago, the only person, besides my kids, whom I ever felt honestly loved me. From earliest memories I had been taught that if someone loves you, they want sex with you--a fallacy that led to many feelings of betrayal and distrust of others. I think she is the one who taught me how to be a good person, at least in the eyes of others, by satisfying that drive within me that equated love with sex. She taught me that love is not sex--she is actually not good at it and is VERY conservative--but also understands and accepts that I am not. clearly, I have learned that love is much more than sex. She taught me to open my heart, to be compassionate, that I do not have to fear the judgement of everyone. I stopped the wild life for her. I left a gang for her. I went back to school for her and my children. I learned a lesson from her that people see as a cliche, but I see as a very valid argument for moving past those "ideation" times: those that mind don't matter, and those that matter don't mind.
She is the only person in the world who has seen beneath my mask. It took time, but she has heard the generalities about my childhood and the still existing social phobia and other fears. She does not know exact details, but she does not ask either, knowing it hurts me. When she passed menopause and was no longer interested in any intimacy, it was a shock to my hyper-sexualized system that was already on a severe diet, and all hurt, shame, fantasies and effects ended up becoming front and centre. But, you know what...she still loves and accepts me. She even told me that it was ok, that I should try to meet someone to deal with it, and if I developed feelings for them, that was ok too--she would welcome them into the family. Of course I have not done it, I would feel like I was betraying her even if she is the one who said I should, but man--that is how much she cares about me. She doesn't want to lose me as much as I do not want to lose her. She taught me that the way inter-personal relationships work is not simply through sex, but to give and accept empathy, kindness, compassion--it's a reciprocal relationship and I had been so lacking in trust, so fearful of judgement, so fearful of giving anyone the power to hurt me again, that it took me the greater part of my life to learn that the world was not out to get me, that I am not the only one who survived or faces other barriers, that risking at least a little trust in light of other peoples barriers and needs is necessary to get along with people.
The label will always be with me. I will always crave that intimacy and fear it at the same time. I have not engaged in intimacy with anyone for the past 5 years, since she stopped desiring it, lest I hurt her even as she says I won't. But I also do not do it because I no longer trust people to that extent easily anymore. I no longer equate sex with love. I still have trouble interacting at a social level beyond my helper role, but here I am, in a social profession, helping others; a far cry from the distrusting, socially phobic, dumpster diving, self-medicating, sexually immature person I used to be. Yes, the very nature of my work and the label put on me causes me to crash and burn a lot, but I have another, greater, need inside me now, put there by her, by her showing me what love is; I care about others now, and help them overcome their own barriers, because it does not matter that they are not able to care for me, I have learned the value of caring about them.
What was done to me during the first 16 years of my life was not about love, or even sex; it was about power and domination. I had two choices to respond to it: I could do what I first did and isolate, deny anyone any power over me, continue with a mindset that sex meant love and any inter-personal relationship was based on sex so I had to fear anyone who did not want sex, (yes, that's messed up but it was how I thought,) OR, I could learn that lesson that sex was about using someone else physically, with or without consent. It was about satisfying a biological need. Even where one necessarily seeks to please the other, it is done with the goal of our own release and satisfaction in the end, to not be abusive, but still to get them to satisfy one's own needs. Without consent, or with children who have no power to resist, it is about power and domination. It has nothing to do with love. So, by accepting that, to fight back against power and domination, I could, and did, choose to seek to empower others to overcome the effects thereof, or of other oppressing things, that dominate their lives, that dis-empower them, that make them struggle in life as I did/do, to take away the power of those that dominate others. It is with that understanding that I often feel I did not so much survive as I was forged to be the man I am today. And so, I have learned to engage with people on an inter-personal level, but only in that helping, professional, relationship--I am still not comfortable, still have latent fears, in the personal social arena.
Yes, I still wear a public mask, as I have learned that sexual abuse of males is not a subject those who have not experienced it are willing to accept. I have lost jobs and chances in life for daring to speak of my own experience. To this day, I still crash and burn now and then. I still struggle with my own sexuality, struggle to not seek that intimacy. But that is more of a strength than anything, because it reminds me that what I am really seeking is not about sex, but about social acceptance, inclusion. So I have forged a place for myself and return, everytime, to my role of helping others as my way of interacting socially--the more I help others, the more I learn about healing and accepting myself. I have taken away the power my abusers had over me, and used the effects of my own "surviving" to help others take back their own power. To me, that is much more satisfying than a mere biological release I can take care of on my own, and it has opened the door to my rejoining society, and to making my own weakness the very source of my inner strength.
To me, I had to learn to separate the mindset of sex as an important part of social interaction. Then I had to learn to trust a little. Then I had to understand the link between sex, power, and domination, thus realizing that social relationships are not about engaging in sex, rather, they are about supporting and helping others, being there in their time of social need, to empower them where they have been dis-empowered. If I never get accepted as I am by someone other than by my life partner, so be it. No one ever said life was fair, but our very social need as a community, as human beings, demands at least some of us step up to be their for others.
Sorry for waxing so philosophically. I very recently crashed and burned big time while dealing with a family where a child was sexually abused and the child was having the same reaction I did by age 6--he was 7. It was too close to my own past and I held it back for several months before I broke down and ended up with that "suicidal ideation" thing again. I came back to these pages to work past the flashbacks and ideation that cost me my job when people learned what was under my mask. I am no longer the big, strong, well educated, twice honourably discharged veteran, respected as being extremely capable and knowledgeable as a Child Protection Worker, in their eyes, but am, instead, a weak-willed closet homeosexual that is a danger to them and their organization. (I am actually heterosexual with bisexual inclinations I do not act on because I do not cheat on my partner--but that does NOT mean I am any danger to children just because i am a survivor myself.) No worries though, I just have to figure a way to move out of Child Protection and into a different type of caseworker role--where male "survivors" are not rejected or looked down upon, publicly shamed and humiliated for "letting" it happen because we "wanted it to happen", but, instead, are accepted and helped to overcome being triggered. So far, I have found no such safe work place and am struggling as a result.
