finding love after sexual abuse in childhood

[trenton]

I seem to be some kind of chick magnet and it is very easy for me to attract women. I do however, have my own unique struggles that make me hesitant to carry through with these offers for sex. There are some present insecurities that I am presently navigating and it would likely complicate any serious committed relationship that might come about. It seems that forming tenable relationships or having casual sex is largely a matter of just working on my own insecurities and being more confident in myself.

My biggest insecurity seems to be complex PTSD from childhood sexual abuse caused by my mother and father. My mother taught me that I was fundamentally unlovable and that I belonged in jail like a sexual predator due to having an inappropriate sexual interaction with my four year old sister when I six after having a dream in which my Uncle molested me and my father was a sex trafficker who brought me to a gang that tried to rape me. There were many trauma responses to these experiences. Some of these trauma responses that developed included a phobia of casual sex, playfulness, the fear of confirming what my mother taught me about my sexuality, the fear of becoming someone like my father, and so forth. The result is that I have been avoiding dating all my life because romantic relationships are often retraumatizing to survivors of CSA. I was too busy trying to compensate my sense of self-worth through things like life purpose, but it never feels stable because I am trying to compensate an emotional wound through external action and achievement. Therefore, I constantly feel lost in life no matter how much personal development I do. It appears that in terms of my sexual development I have been locked in stage blue as a result of trauma responses to a stage red environment. Therefore, stage orange ends up appearing predatory to me and it triggers PTSD, reinforcing the same dynamic from childhood.

I think the paradox of attraction in my case is similar to the paradox of gay men. In the case of gay men, they ironically come off as attractive to women because they don't have any sexual agenda toward them. They are polite, socially calibrated, and authentic without any need to sexualize women. Women therefore might feel safe around these men as they grow emotionally closer to them, leading to some form of sexual attraction even though the gay man isn't even trying to attract her. If you compare this gay men to straight men who struggle to with women, it reveals a cosmic joke. Straight men struggle to get laid precisely because they overly sexualize women. This leads to them being inauthentic and less socially calibrated, therefore women find them unattractive and reject them. The agenda to get laid often is a significant obstacle to getting laid because women might feel objectified and made to feel slutty around you. An alternative approach might be to find women you like primarily for the sake of having fun with them, which may or may not evolve into a sexual experience. The neediness for sex might make you less calibrated, leading to rejection. This can be tricky if the sexual desire is still there, so I think it is for the best that we don't try to pretend it isn't there or else the inauthenticity would then lead to rejection. This seems like a tricky balance to strike, which might be why straight men often struggle with attraction. The paradox also applies to virgin men who don't brag about having a giant penis because they instead focus on other forms of intimacy, creating emotional closeness even if they are not actually pursuing sex because they just don't care or are not interested.

In my case the attraction paradox works in a similar way. Due to CSA, I developed insecurities around sex which made me avoidant. Therefore, when I talk to women I did not sexualize them. I did not like being sexualized because it triggered PTSD and I understood that women probably would not like it either, especially if they were sexually abused. I also come off as deeply honest and authentic because I am not trying to hide anything from them. In order to avoid discomfort caused by sex, I often focus on other shared interests that we have fun exploring and discussing. The outcome is that there are a lot of women enjoy being around me as they start to develop emotional attachments, leading to sexual attraction. The problem is that when women want to have sex with me, it starts to trigger PTSD. Similar to the gay paradox, it appears that male survivors of CSA might ironically become attractive to women who want to have sex with them even though it hurts them. This might be why the survivors of sexual abuse are likely to be revictimized as there are many opportunities for unwanted sex that come about as a consequence of being sexually abused once.

This kind of pattern seems to repeat when I test different dating apps. I seem to be in the upper percentage of men in terms of attraction. Apparently, men often struggle with dating apps because the most attractive men get disproportionate attention from a lot women, while the less attractive men barely get any matches at all. In my case, I effortlessly get many matches every day which includes multiple women in my area who are single, attracted to me, and want to meet me or for me to come to their house. Once again this triggers PTSD though. It feels like these relationships move very fast. In my case I was hoping for something slower. It felt necessary in my case to establish a sense of safety with these people who I just met online. I feel like those dating profiles don't actually tell me much about who a woman is as a human being as it is very limited information.

Meanwhile, I am not sure how exactly I should communicate these experiences to women. Usually, we are not supposed to give away all these vulnerabilities until later in the relationship, but at the same time it has a significant impact on the entire process of dating. I don't want to make women feel bad about what happened to me because it might trigger a desire to save me, it might make them feel like they are being manipulated in some way, it might create an excessively rapid bond, it might lead to them confirming the belief that I am fundamentally broken in some way, or it might even lead to genuine compassion. I think I should probably simplify this issue by saying that I was abused as a child and it led to insecurities around relationships and sex without going into too much detail. The problem is that sexual abuse made me feel unlovable and I'm afraid others will confirm this, especially since many people blame the six year old and make excuses for my mother who was also a narcissistic drug addict making suicide threats to terrorize her children. This particular form of sexual abuse is not very well understood because it is psychological rather than physical molestation, leading the survivor to obviously blame themselves due to being mischaracterized as a child molester when the reality is more nuanced than that as adult standards can't be applied in that way. This eventually led to suicidal thoughts and repeated hospitalizations due to severe depression which then led to job loss. Sometimes this makes me think that women would be objectively better off with another man because these mental health problems complicate the relationship.

My next barrier to intimacy is that I tend to focus on deeper connection and intimacy rather than casual sex as a consequence of my traumatic experiences. This might be problematic for our culture which tends to start with casual hook ups that may or may not then evolve into deeper relationships. It is challenging when I crave intimacy but simultaneously avoid it due to wanting connection yet being traumatized by it. My avoidance of casual sex was directly due to trauma due to this behavior seeming predatory to me in some way. I had come to believe that my normal sexual attraction was itself predatory because of who my parents taught me I fundamentally was. In this sense, I was not naturally attracted to women in the style that I presently operate under as I would otherwise just walk up to women because I thought they were beautiful like I used to do. From there I then learn about them and discover commonalities that lead to a deeper connection. That is what happened when I was five and I wanted to marry another five year old named Alice. Approaching the opposite sex was easy before the trauma caused all these insecurities when I was six.

That all said, I have been working with a trauma therapist for these issues. I feel like I am slowly working through these things leading to temporary peace followed by backsliding into the same turmoil. There has been a significant reduction in suicidal thoughts, I have gotten off of the pills for anxiety and depression, my sleep is improving, I am gradually becoming more secure around these sorts of issues, and I am currently preparing to get re-employed with the help of a case manager. However, there are still significant problems such as me remaining connected to the same family that caused me this trauma which might complicate any relationship that emerges. I am currently running a complex operation that is largely hidden from them as I build a support network outside of my family while removing my financial entanglement with them. This will take time, and it would probably complicate things if I was also hooking up with women while doing all of this. Once I do have all of this nonsense sorted out, then I should be able to meet these women with these insecurities removed, although I will be alone and without support of a loving family which a woman may find more stable in a man, thus improving the relationship quality. I thus fear that my circumstances might reduce the quality of relationships even though these factors are beyond my control.

I have recently discovered that my entire belief system is wrong because it is fundamentally based on emotional wounds that then get rationalized and intellectualized. I thought that beliefs were things that I intellectually concluded, but in reality beliefs are primarily emotional rather than intellectual, hence I was unable to logically convince myself out of these insecurities. It is like my brain is too smart and recognizes all of this philosophy I do with actualized.org as a sophisticated rationalization designed to distance myself from my own pain, hence any worldview that emerges inevitably falls apart. I might even try to resist doing this intellectualization, but it is like I don't have control and it happens automatically. This is also what happens when I get triggered by a sex scandal and I start becoming ideological about protecting children from harm due to my experience with sex trafficking. Consciously resisting doesn't stop the emotional wounds from overriding my logical conclusions until I lose control and become an ideologue. Depression works in a similar way to PTSD in this regard. Politicians actually do get more support and attention when they exploit people's trauma as such people tend to become the most vocal around issues that trigger them. I should become less ideological as I process trauma that distorts my worldview even though I already logically and intellectually understand the problems of ideology.

I seem to be doing all I can do on this issue and in time these issues should be resolved. Do you have any advice on finding love after CSA? I don't think Pick Up, cold approach, and actualized.org are a good match for me because it is all very triggering. Of course the men struggling to get sex are probably the ones referring to women as numbers like 1 through 10 as they are taught to do. The reason I struggle with women and men who sexualize them and me is for a fundamentally different reason because of what I was taught by my parents. I don't know if normal dating apps would be right for me given what these women seem to be expecting from me as if I am like the other men who struggle with women for the other reason instead. Finding compatible relationships seems to be much more difficult than just getting laid because I could theoretically have sex with any of the women attracted to me by saying yes, but finding someone compatible would require taking time to get to know them deeply before determining if a long term relationship is possible. That would take a long time, making building stable relationships much more difficult than just having casual sex.

[Raze]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab4UDqLyYEQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qng6c2rQKgc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJoFH5mJbhQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44LQLXt476o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmenDQvFKQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4CDWaofHvw

 

Edited yesterday at 06:16 PM by Raze

[Schizophonia]

I can't read this; just the thought of reading it all triggers brain fog lol.
Your ego is too inflated; just move.

Edited 5 hours ago by Schizophonia

[TheCloud]

@trenton How does your PTSD manifest?  Is it like a panic attack, or reliving the trauma?

[trenton]

@TheCloud it is an emotional flashback and reliving trauma. It is like a panic attack similar to what I experienced at the time. I then start to feel as if I am in great danger. This fear then leads to shame due to this sense that I have somehow caused harm even if most of the harm is falling on me. In that sense it feels like both.

[trenton]

@Schizophonia yes, my ego is inflated. In fact my ego seems to be changing a lot lately. I am reorganizing my character and sometimes it comes out in very cringe ways. I can't just will my ego into going away. I wish I could, but it does not work.

In this case, I am mixing in what I learned from a very cringe series called "how to get laid" which was also triggering to me. I believe this is exactly what was meant by it.

I currently am moving a lot on many issues simultaneously. This includes trying to overcome my fear of sex as a result of bull crap from childhood while processing trauma. I will get there eventually even if I end up looking very stupid throughout this process.

Yes my ego is full of shit now and it is inflated. I am waiting to see what becomes of this as I work on several things simultaneously even beyond the realm of dating. My life is being restructured and I will see what I become.