Childhood I was in love with my molester.

[HollowLavender]

I have been in IOP and trying to process some recently recovered memories from my childhood (ages 15 and under) in which I remembered a man getting into bed with me and doing things a few times. I can't remember his face but I remember the smell of cigarettes, his beard scratching my face and his tongue feeling gross when he kissed me. But over the weekend I started having other memories come back about him telling me to go to the bed and doing it as well as a positive feeling to him because he called me a good girl at a point in my life before I told my family I was transgender. I started remembering those feelings and memories and I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about them. I don't know who to tell no one in my family knows I'm remembering these things and worse my dad has a Beard and smokes but I don't remember if it was him and it makes me feel so confused. How could I be fond of the man who ruined me? I have been assaulted a number of times and seek out destructive abusive men and I can't help but think that's why. Why did I feel affection to him? What's wrong with me? What did I do to make him do that to me? Did I flirt with him or do something? I hate remembering these things they come at the most random times and I can't make them stop I don't want to remember anymore I hate it I hate myself. I don't know what to do I don't know who to talk to about this.

 

[Rose White]

Hey, it’s normal for a kid to love their dad no matter what the dad does to them. Also it’s normal to confuse what a pedophile does to a kid as love and it’s normal for people who were csa’d to think they did something to cause it or not stop it. It’s hard to undo or rewire that stuff because of how neurodevelopment works. But apparently you can at least push back a bit, and gain some sense of control in your life, through therapies of all sorts. Good luck. It’s good you can talk about it I suppose. Sorry you’re in it. It’s rough. I’m dealing with something similar.

 

[Movingforward10]

All that self hate and confusion and the not knowing all what happened, is, unfortunately, very common with childhood sexual abuse. The shame and disgust is taken inside of us as there is no where else for it to go then. But the shame, disgust was never ours. Always theirs.

It's also very common to have love or positive feelings towards abusers. I imagine especially so if that was your father. Peodophiles grroom. They know how to manipulate and make you think it was you. They have confusing thing of showing great behaviours and terrible behaviours. It's a real mind mess that they create.

You're not alone with this.
Well done for speaking out.
I'm sorry the memories are coming back. That is a very confusing time. But it also is a time that your brain is telling you, you're able to process it now.

I'm not transgender, but gay (female). And for me, I think that created another layer of confusion with what happened. Another thing to work through along with the sexual harm. I don't know if that makes sense or is too vague, or if that was/is the same for you.

Keep sharing here. Plenty of us understand as we have been through our versions of it.

Do you have a therapist to explore it with too?

 

[HollowLavender]

All that self hate and confusion and the not knowing all what happened, is, unfortunately, very common with childhood sexual abuse. The shame and disgust is taken inside of us as there is no where else for it to go then. But the shame, disgust was never ours. Always theirs.

It's also very common to have love or positive feelings towards abusers. I imagine especially so if that was your father. Peodophiles grroom. They know how to manipulate and make you think it was you. They have confusing thing of showing great behaviours and terrible behaviours. It's a real mind mess that they create.

You're not alone with this.
Well done for speaking out.
I'm sorry the memories are coming back. That is a very confusing time. But it also is a time that your brain is telling you, you're able to process it now.

I'm not transgender, but gay (female). And for me, I think that created another layer of confusion with what happened. Another thing to work through along with the sexual harm. I don't know if that makes sense or is too vague, or if that was/is the same for you.

Keep sharing here. Plenty of us understand as we have been through our versions of it.

Do you have a therapist to explore it with too?

I have been trying to open up about it but it feels so embarrassing to say it out loud. She's a really good doctor but I hate the fact I don't know who it was and the feelings I had for him. What if she doesn't understand?

 

[Rose White]

What if she doesn't understand?

That’s always a possibility. You don’t have to open up all at once. You can do it in small steps.

 

[Movingforward10]

I have been trying to open up about it but it feels so embarrassing to say it out loud. She's a really good doctor but I hate the fact I don't know who it was and the feelings I had for him. What if she doesn't understand?

Tiny steps with opening up. You're opening up years of repressed traumatic memories. You need stability along the way with this, as it is a very very rocky time discovering what happened.

Most therapists will understand and will have heard it many times from all their other clients. So it won't be a suprise. And they won't have any of the feelings you have about it.
In the tiny tiny chance that she doesn't understand, then that would be a her thing and not you. It would be a sign you need a better therapist rather than you have done anything wrong.

 

[arfie]

How could I be fond of the man who ruined me?

as a child sex trafficking survivor, my perps were plural and cross-gender. my own experience was in the 60's, early 70's before all the sexual distinctions formalized, so man/woman covered the verbal bases of the day. the contemporary names had yet to coalesce, but i specialized in the "janes" while i was on duty. the trail of tears started with my father.

how can i be fond of the people who ruined me? dunno, but, in addition to my own psycho baggage, i feel it twisted into the same cultural snot knot where sex, love and sleeping are synonyms. is that the same snot knot that finds huge diffs between "in love" and "love?"

wish i had clear and easy answers for both of us, lavender. that be a sticky, icky question for me, too. my guess of the morning is, "the heart goes where it goes." for sure it is not a mathematically logical question.

 

[Mach123]

I don’t hate my mother. I did. She’s been dead quiet awhile. Since before I realized what actually happened. I wish she was alive. I know that what she did to me was a result of something that was done to her. It was in the family myth. I don’t know how else to say that but my sister used to say you know grandpa did something to mom grandpa used to get in bed with Mom because when he was drunk, he thought that Mom was like his wife. And he stopped drinking. He never drank again. But like I said, this is a family myth. I mean it’s just the way I understood it. So then she did something to me and then I was infected. She made a little vampire. That was what I used to say. I remember when I saw Claudia in the vampire Chronicles I forget what they were called interview with the vampire Claudia. I identified with her so much. I was never a child that was taken away from me, I was something else.

But regardless of how I feel or don’t feel, I mean, I have to live with the psychological fallout. I’m looking forward to telling this to the psychiatrist. That’s gonna start next month.

 

[Muttly]

I remember being in a similar stage of recovery as you. I remember hating myself for liking him. It took a lot of therapy and work and time but I have forgiven myself. Children need affection, attention and care. It is instinctual to attach themselves emotionally to those that have power over their lives.

 

[Bland]

I have been in IOP and trying to process some recently recovered memories from my childhood (ages 15 and under) in which I remembered a man getting into bed with me and doing things a few times. I can't remember his face but I remember the smell of cigarettes, his beard scratching my face and his tongue feeling gross when he kissed me. But over the weekend I started having other memories come back about him telling me to go to the bed and doing it as well as a positive feeling to him because he called me a good girl at a point in my life before I told my family I was transgender. I started remembering those feelings and memories and I feel sick to my stomach just thinking about them. I don't know who to tell no one in my family knows I'm remembering these things and worse my dad has a Beard and smokes but I don't remember if it was him and it makes me feel so confused. How could I be fond of the man who ruined me? I have been assaulted a number of times and seek out destructive abusive men and I can't help but think that's why. Why did I feel affection to him? What's wrong with me? What did I do to make him do that to me? Did I flirt with him or do something? I hate remembering these things they come at the most random times and I can't make them stop I don't want to remember anymore I hate it I hate myself. I don't know what to do I don't know who to talk to about this.

to me it doesn't sound like love exactly. i feel like children are wired to show affection to people that give them attention especially if they don't have full context for what's actually happening. thats why you hear about girls that "date" grown men in highschool and then when they become adults they look back on it and feel disgusted. because they gain context and awareness of what was really going on.

for what happened to me, i don't think i had enough context to push back at all and it was also people i knew. people i thought were my friends that cared about me. which is why i never retaliated against them. rapists are really good at manipulating the people they hurt into not just seeing the bad they've done.

so it's completely normal for you to have felt affection for him because you were a child and receiving attention you had no context for. and you didn't do anything to make him do anything. he chose to. and if you ever try to blame yourself i want you to think about this, if a 15 yr old tried flirting with you, would you feel a need to have sex with them? probably not. the truth is that children look and behave like kids, nothing about them is appealing.