Validation?

[PAS]

Tabor,

In trying to understand the effects of SA on someone, its easy to get confused. I have found that I have spun my brain into shorting out trying to figure out why my fiance has done this or that or still does this or that...

With respect to your situation, maybe he feels like he has to surround himself with what freaks himself out most in order to try and get over his fears? Or maybe being friends with women does not freak him out but anything closer with a member of the opposite sex might be too scary? Maybe he has a need to have a lot of women in his life, but to keep them at a distance?

Anyhow, I have learned that trying to understand trauma-induced behaviour is difficult to do. Although my experience and current situation is different from yours, I hope my experience can be of some use...

...As many people on here remember, I have wrapped my brain around my partner's sexual past for years... knowing his casual sex track record, and knowing he was a SA survivor and likely issues around sex and intimacy, I was really nervous and afraid to be involved with him even up until we got engaged last fall.

I never understood why sexual abuse could result in a survivor having no problem with casual sex, or becoming promiscuous when it was the very act of sex or sexual stimulation that created so much pain and anguish to begin with. I could understand someone *never* wanting to have sex after being sexually abused, but why some survivors would go the opposite way was a real mystery to me.

I just have come to learn there are no hard and fast rules or explanations for why some survivors react in certain ways, and others seem to do the opposite, and still others swing between two extremes.

Some survivors cope by avoiding anything that reminds them of the abuse, others actively seek it out for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with trying to gain some control over what they never have controlled in their lives (sex, men, women, relationships, power struggles, etc).

I do believe in what I posted in one of the "Nancy" threads about Rule #1 being: expect unexpected and illogical behaviour. I have wrestled with trying to understand fx of SA for a few years now and after awhile I still didnt get some things and just said to myself that "I have learned that this or that behaviour are some things commonly demonstrated by SA survivors.. I STILL dont get it but I can accept that it has more to do with the abuse and less about who he really is as a person" and tried to let it drop as best I can.

P

 

[SAR]

Tabor

He has told me that Im the only person whos made him feel comfortable and allowed him to just be himself, that Ive treated him better than anyone hes ever known. So then why would he distance himself from me,

I wish I still had the book and could properly cite this study. But some researchers watched the way toddlers interacted with their moms and other kids on a playground and actually found that there is a "come here-go away" dance... say the mom is sitting on a bench, the baby will start out at the bench, go so far away, look back, come back to the mom just to sort of check on things, then go a little further away, then come back, etc... each time putting more distance between them, and eventually getting to the point where he doesn't have to come all the way back to the mother, just part of the way back... the most interesting thing is that if the mother changes her position, the baby has to come all the way back to the mom at her new position and start all over again.

I'm not trying to say that your friend is a toddler. My point is that we learn to trust people and feel confident in our relationships to them by learning about what happens when we are with them and as we move towards and away from them. The fact that you are a source of stability and comfort for your friend means that he'll want to look at other relationships in contrast to the one he has with you. Which means that he'll need to invest in some other relationships a little. But maybe it's a credit to the good friendship that the two of you have?

SAR

 

[Lloydy]

SAR
Most of the psychological 'Attachment Theories' give us great insight into the way we are now - Survivor or not. And it's why a good therapist goes back to way before the abuse began, to find out the way we were raised and what made us vulnerable to abuse, and then find a route through the jungle of healing.

I think the research you;re thinking of is Ainsworth & Bell - The strange situation.
https://www.findarticles.com/g2602/0005/2602000506/p1/article.jhtml

But any of Bowlby's - Scaffer & Emerson's and even Pavlov's famous dogs theories tell us a little bit more about why we are the way we are.

And I think that the behaviour Tabor is talking about could have a lot of roots in upbringing and attachment - as well as being abuse related.

Sometimes it's easy to lump all our problems onto our abuse just because we're Survivors and it's easy. But our parent's, childhood environment, peers and teachers all play a major role in the moddeling of our behaviours as well.
We can be screwed up outside our abuse !

Dave

 

[James_dup1]

Tabor,
You said:

Would it not make more sense

I'll tell you....nothing about us makes sense....and if you can find something that does....write a book LOL.......Good luck.

James