Sexual Assault I Need Help Having Sex Again

[MoonGoddessHeart]

So, I've recently just uncovered a new trauma memory about Sexual Assault I had in high school. This is before my college rape, and I had suppressed it for quite sometime. However, now that it is coming up again. I am going through the same reactions that I did when I found out about the rape. I am hyperventilating and having terrible triggers just thinking about the thought of sex. Sometimes, I am so disgusted by the feelings inside my body I want to gag. I know that is just my body re-experiencing everything again and with EMDR, processing and time... I won't feel it as much as I do now. However, I really need help on not developing an aversion or fear of sex. I really want to be healthy and want a healthy sex life with my partner. There has got to be a way that I can somehow find sex enjoyable again. Does anyone have any tips at all? The worst part of it all is the amount of guilt I feel for not being able to have it. I want to please my partner and make him happy. I know that we don't need sex, but I want to have sex with him. I want to show him I love him in an intimate and beautiful way. I want to experience that with him. And I also really don't want him to get annoyed that I'll never be able to have sex and experience it with someone else. That would break my heart. I want to be a confident woman who can feel her body and be sexy without losing her mind.

Can someone please help?

 

[hodge]

I wish I knew of the solution to this one. Ever since I've had PTSD the only way I've been able to have sex with my husband is by having two glasses of wine first. It sucks, but otherwise, I have constant flashbacks. I've brought this up with my current therapist and my last therapist, and both thought/think this is fine. And even my current T, who is a trauma specialist, did not have any other suggestions.

I avoided sex for a long time, which was really awful for him and us, until one day we found out by accident that having some wine first helped me to not have flashbacks.

 

[Deleted member 33287]

So, I've recently just uncovered a new trauma memory about Sexual Assault I had in high school...

Dear lord I'm blessed you are on this site.

My friend was raped in college and date raped few years ago. We got emotionally intemant and she told me she got raped and she pushed me away. Lot of things happened in between

Best advice I can give you being on the other side is if you love someone you only care about making that person happy. If that man loves you than you just being in his life will make him happy. I would give anything in the world to have my friend back and I bet you that special man is just glad you are in his life.

If I may ask have you told him about your history?

 

[Friday]

The biggest thing that helped me was drawing a line between sex & rape.

This? This hand here? Is a hand I want, here. It feels good here. It's a good memory. Of a good man. In a good place. Hell yes. This? This is good.

And then replaced every bad memory with roughly a thousand good memories.

***

Sex has become hugely grounding, for me, most probably because of that ^^^. Any time I might start to slip elsewhere? Old memories, flashbacks, etc? It's locking eyes, and feeling skin, and breathing scent, and hearing heartbeats, and moving bodies / being completely in control (to the point that I sometimes get a bit wicked, and just duck out to grab a sandwich ;) or something else playful, or make them come before they really want to // we'll have sex again, later, and it's just fun as blazes to be all Ha! All about you! And make them lose control) and hundreds of less gotcha! moments but that are still very much about me, doing what I want to be doing, with someone else who also wants to be doing, aka consensual as f*ck... And it all becomes about this moment. Now. Here. No future, no past, just now.

***

There were a few things that I couldn't just do that with. No amount of grounding was enough for the o-1oo reaction. I worked on those outside of sex, first. Triggered myself on purpose in a hundred different ways, until I wasn't triggering, but mildly annoyed or just tripped out. And then came at it again in a different way. Until there was no reaction. Then I added sex. After I'd already cut the reaction off at the knees.

 

[joeylittle]

I really want to be healthy and want a healthy sex life with my partner. There has got to be a way that I can somehow find sex enjoyable again. Does anyone have any tips at all? The worst part of it all is the amount of Guilt I feel for not being able to have it. I want to please my partner and make him happy. I know that we don't need sex, but I want to have sex with him. I want to show him I love him in an intimate and beautiful way. I want to experience that with him. And I also really don't want him to get annoyed that I'll never be able to have sex and experience it with someone else.

This is what helped me....

Get selfish.

What I mostly read in your post is a lot of anxiety over making sure your partner is taken care of. It took me a long time to be able to have sex and think, 'this is for me, not for him'. I hope he was having a good time too, but it wasn't about that for me anymore. Somehow in my dysfunction about sex post-trauma(s), I locked in the idea that I had to be what they wanted, that I was there to service someone else. And even when I got into a moderately healthy relationship, my big hang up with sex was that I wanted to make sure he was never affected by my dysfunction...which of course, didn't help my dysfunction.

Eventually, I figured out how to have sex for me, not for my partner.

I want to be a confident woman who can feel her body and be sexy without losing her mind.

I like this statement, because it's about you, not about giving him what you want to give him.

Sex isn't something given, it's a personal experience first, and a shared experience as a very close second. Rape isn't about sex, but it's expressed through sexual violence. When you are raped, sex is just taken from you, and it's the rapists experience only. The victim just gets to feel horror, shame, pain, regret, sadness, etc, etc. I think that somehow, in coping with rape, it's easy to get into the headspace of 'I don't get to do this for me'.

But you do.

I know this doesn't just 'poof' make it easier, but try and let your own experience be valuable to you, see if you can turn off the worry about him.

Masturbation helps, too.

 

[EveHarrington]

Sex crap is the last thing to heal IME and you're at ground zero. Start healing.

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

This is what helped me....

Get selfish.

What I mostly read in your post is a lot of anxiety over...

Wow that is really amazing. I totally agree. I almost have this abnormal fetishization whenever I have sex where I fetishize myself. I don't know how else to get turned on anymore. I like feeling like I am some object that the man desires because I can't feel anything else. I makes me feel better knowing that I am at least pleasing someone in the situation. Or right before an orgasm that is when the triggers are the worst. I don't want to feel my own personal pleasure. When I first started having sex again, I had really bad intrusive thoughts regarding BDSM practices and I internally called my boyfriend "master" and "sir." However, I knew that my thoughts were sick, and I was so ashamed of them. But it was the only way I didn't feel completely out of control whenever I was having sex. It has been so hard. Sometimes we make love and that has been the most helpful, but I also just close my eyes and wish it was over. Kind of like a roller coaster right before the drop. You know it isn't going to kill you but you also don't necessarily enjoy it because it reminds you of death.

I don't really know what else to do. How do I take my sexuality back?

 

[Gs172003]

This is what helped me....

Get selfish.

What I mostly read in your post is a lot of anxiety over...

I just read this. This is the hardest part for me. In my mind it's not FOR me. When it becomes about me that's when the flashbacks started. Before that was the dissociating. Now that's back. Ugh. How do I change that? Sorry for stealing the thread.

 

[somerandomguy]

Sex crap is the last thing to heal IME and you're at ground zero. Start healing.

Commanding someone to "get healing" probably isn't very helpful.

I agree with you about the "sex crap" though. My personal (and controversial) opinion is that some people just won't heal no matter what they try, especially if they had a lot of negative baggage surrounding sex previous to their PTSD-causing experience. Those of us sexually unhealable folks just have to learn to deal with it.