Very interesting situation

Very interesting situation
E

endlessjourney

Registrant
I just found out something very disturbing about a girl I recently dated. We were never official but we had sex like we were. Shes a good friend but I'm not in love with her. Now, I have made it a point to stop sleeping with her after finding out that when she was 18, she slept with her father. Ahhh! Now, is that shocking! She described what happened very descretely but I derived that it was abuse. she herself had suffered from CSA as a child as well and obviously has trouble setting boundaries to this day. I want to avoid her for a little while and get my head straight. Now, I will not turn my back on her because of this but she was 18, not a child. If CSA can prevent you from maturing enough to stand your ground as an adult Then I guess This would be a good example. I don't judge her but this issue is too much for me to handle right now. I have my own problems. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to keep her as a friend but I feel awkward around her right now because I feel sexually attracted with her but the thought of her and her dad disgusts me. I can't do it anymore, I don't want to. I'm done with her in that sense. The problem is, she is in love with me. I want to keep her friendship but keep it on that friendship level. this is very hard for me because I am not the best at keeping it at a friendship basis after sleeping with girls. Maybe I shouldn't worry too much about it and move on to new things. Well see what happens.
 
EJ,

You go right ahead and set the boundaries you need in the here and now. You could let her know that you are not judging, only that you want some distance and time because of your own confusion. That is only reasonable in the circumstances, and you have every right to ask her to respect them and let her know how any violation makes you feel. After some cooling off, I would think the 'it's not you, it's me; I don't love you as you love me; I want to be just friends' speech would stand a better chance of re-establishing the relationship on the terms you require.

John
 
Endlessjourney,

I think you need to look out for yourself and set whatever boundries you need. I would think that if she is in love with you, she would respect your needs and desires for space. I know it is not easy- I have had several women fall in love with me in what appeared to me to be a heartbeat. It scared me because I didn't reciprocate the feeling and I essentially dumped them. I felt terrible each time.

I think it is best to be as honest as possible, but just tell her you need some space.

I hope this helps.

Bill
 
Endless, you certainly have every right (and by the sounds of it, the need) to set your boundaries. They were taken away from you as a child throughout your abuse but you can have them now.

If I can throw in a thought about your girlfriend and your thoughts about her not being able to set her own boundaries i.e. the episode with her father, I think youll see as you learn more about CSA that this was no doubt her acting out. Its a learned behaviour that we all do or face and its a futile (yet in our mind, a successful) way to escape a situation we are in. It makes no sense to non abuse victims. It makes perfect sense to victims as to why it happens time and again.

Work it through as you see best, and hope that your ex can also work on her own recovery. Nobody escapes childhood sexual abuse unharmed unfortunately.
 
I know of people here who were abused as children and again as adults. It is a different mind they grew up with, different boundaries of knowing what is right and wrong. If you are raised with abuse, it is hard to know different, even as an adult. Please try to be safe yourself, but also not be too judgemental of someone who could not protect themself as an adult; a lot of people here could say the same thing of themselves.

Leosha
 
I think this is a very difficult situation, firstly dont judge her, secondly the difficulty in staying friends is limited.

The reason I say this, is that if you refuse to have sex with her, she will blame it on what she told you of her past.

Abuse seems to be able to get into every little corner of our lives, one way or another, it is worse than having a disease.

At least most diseases are curable!

ste
 
EJ,

I think it must be one of the most heartbreaking things for a survivor to face when he knows that his abuse was not limited to childhood. If he can accept that he was not to blame for what happened to him as a boy, because he was an innocent child, where does that leave him concerning things that happened as an adult? Or in your case, what about the woman who is abused by her father when she is 18 (= adult)?

One of the first things to be said is that while setting arbitrary boundaries for adulthood may be necessary in law, in social reality it doesn't work that way. Any of us who have teenagers will have seen this in action on a daily basis. Sometimes a teenager - even an older one - is incredibly mature, a minute later he/she acting like a child. It's all part of growing up.

But I think there is something a lot more important to say. A child makes some very basic assumptions about the world: I am loveable, valuable and important; the world is a more or less safe place for me to live in; and I cannot be hurt in any really catastrophic way. When the child is abused, all those ideas go right down the drain. The world is NOT safe, and I CAN be hurt in terrible ways. Why is this happening? End of the day, because I am not loveable or important and I don't deserve any better than this.

So while other kids are laying down secure foundations for their adult thinking on sexuality, boundaries and relationships, the abused kid is leading a life in which all that is already in ruins. And once you feel you are just not "worth it" you are in one hell of a dark place. A kid there will do anything for affection, validation and attention, even if it comes only as sweetener from a pedophile who just means to use and exploit the child. I knew by the age of 12, for example, that I was being abused and lied to, but I didn't care anymore. I thought the abuser was all I had left - I was that ruined emotionally.

Things don't change for the kid just because he or she turns 18. All the poison and junk from abuse serves to shape his or her behavior and thinking as an adult, and if you think you are powerless and not good for anything except to service a pedophile, then you are absolutely set up for big trouble. Being an adult doesn't factor into what happens the way it should, or the way it would with an adult who was not abused. I don't mean to haul out the old "abuse excuse" here, but I really think this is central to the whole issue of acting out, which is what your girlfriend did.

You make the following statement that I would like to look at for a moment, and please don't think I am getting down on you here. I would just like to ask you to look at something again:

I don't judge her but this issue is too much for me to handle right now. I have my own problems. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want to keep her as a friend but I feel awkward around her right now because I feel sexually attracted with her but the thought of her and her dad disgusts me. I can't do it anymore, I don't want to. I'm done with her in that sense.
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If you look at this I think you might see that in fact you ARE judging her. She is 18, so she is an adult; she should have said no or avoided the situation.

I would suggest that at 18 or even older a young person who has been emotionally wrecked by abuse is not equipped with the emotional tools needed to set proper boundaries and keep safe. One sees this countless times, and in my own case the only reason it didn't happen was that the men I thought were hitting on me were in reality just good people. A professor at college, for example, helped me a lot and took a personal interest in me; I thought he was hitting on me, and in fact he could have had me in a second. I regarded myself as a worthless drunk and acidhead and I couldn't have cared less what happened to me.

You say you hope to continue your friendship with the woman you were seeing, and that's great. But perhaps try not to judge her too harshly? The experience of having sex with her father must have been horrific for her, and I can't imagine this was something she chose to do. It was incredibly brave of her to tell you and she did that because she trusts you. What she needs now is genuine respect and compassion.

The disgust you feel is natural, but it ought to be directed not at her, but at the man who would exploit and misuse his own daughter like this. To be honest, I feel a lot of admiration for this woman.

Much love,
Larry
 
Endlessjourney,

As I read your post my mind was crying out asking me, begging me to answer this post, but I had no words to match the thoughts that were zipping about in my mind.

As usually happens when I am lost for words, someone else said pretty much what I wanted to say, and in words that are coherent, compassionate, and to the point.

This time it was Larry. He's said it pretty well, friend, especially the following---
It was incredibly brave of her to tell you and she did that because she trusts you. What she needs now is genuine respect and compassion.

The disgust you feel is natural, but it ought to be directed not at her, but at the man who would exploit and misuse his own daughter like this. To be honest, I feel a lot of admiration for this woman.
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She's placed herself in a very vulnerable place by sharing with you. You have an opportunity here to share and grow with her, or in essence abandon her. I don't think at this point there can be a "just friends" stance taken. It just won't happen.

You, of course have to take care of you first, and it just may be that things don't work out between you. Just remember to be gentle with other's hearts, as you'd want them to be gentle with yours.

I hope you don't feel picked on by my reply. I don't intend it to sound that way at all. I really do with you the best in this uncomfortable situation.

Lots of love,

John
 
Thanks, She did, in fact, feel helpless. She just moved into the U.S. to meet her father 2 years ago. Hey! One abusive family to another! That sucks! On that token, he took her in and she then became financially dependent on him, not to mention emotionally because he is her father. I guess I did judge her because I felt it when I wrote the entry. I figured someone would point that out to me and you all did. I admire her for what she has done. She is currently learning to set boundaries and I try to help her with suggestive advice and I listen to her quite well, however, hearing all of this is a burden to me because it seems like it is the main issue when I talk to her. I'm gonna get some space for a while and tell her how I feel. And respect, well, she already has it and her father, is the one who disgusts me. Her father has threatened me by email telling me to stay away from his daughter and he's never even met me. I told him after reading the garbage he wrote me in the first two sentences of his message, I had erased it later to find out that it was full of threats, and insults towards his daughter to whom he called a whore. I asked him not to write me after that. The strange twist is that he is an attorney, for the military. He runs the JAG corp for the state of Ohio and he is a Colonel. So I already know he's a manipulative bastard so I chose not to even speak with him. He later apologized but who knows if the Colonel is going to send some thugs to my front door because I was sleeping with his daughter. One would never expect someone of his status to be so low. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
 
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