Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: dating, penis, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse, transgender
It’s been almost 10 months now since my husband told me he feels like a girl inside. The first five months were spent in heavy mourning, with a lot of crying. The next two months – I spent them in and out of the hospital due to gall bladder issues combined with iatrogenic harm. Then these last few months I spent coming to an acceptance.
My mind has begun to understand my husband as a female, and I accept our upcoming divorce. Our relationship has morphed, after a lot of crying, fighting, blaming, etc., into a lovely friendship.
Now that I’ve come to this place of acceptance, I have begun thinking about the idea of dating in the future. When I picture trying to date a new man, I worry over every part of it. I have no specific man I am thinking of dating, mind you, so all these worries occur with some faceless guy in the future. Inevitably, my mind goes to the probability of me having sex issues in bed with new guy. I mean, that was the reason I ended up marrying my husband. He never pushed me on sex, and I sought out the safety of that. So it’s inevitable that this issue will surface again with a new dude. And even that is only if I can get over myself enough to freaking try to date again.
Sometimes I picture it all going something like this:
New Dude: “By the way, Butterfly, how many dudes have you slept with?”
Butterfly: “Oh, uh, one.”
New Dude: “What?”
Butterfly: “Yeah. The first guy was my husband. I was almost 31 when we slept together. A few months before we got married.”
New Dude: “Seriously? Why??”
And this is where I stare at him and contemplate saying “This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. We grow up scared of penis and sex and we marry men who don’t want sex, or in my case, their penis.”
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: friends, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse
The other day, I was sitting with two female friends at work, and we were talking about sex. One of my friends just got a new boyfriend, and apparently they are having ‘lots of sex’. (As you know, due to my history of surviving child sexual abuse, I have never had ‘lots of sex’ in any of my consensual relationships.) Anyway, she was talking about how great the sex was.
My other friend (she’s single) chimed in about how much fun sex was, and how much she wanted to get laid. I sat there silently because even though I have had consensual sex, I seriously had nothing to add to this conversation. Even before we decided to divorce, my husband and I hadn’t had sex in years.
My single friend said “I love penises. They’re so much fun to play with.” I was bewildered by that statement. I said “How do you mean?” She looked at me and just repeated “They are fun to play with.” I have been pondering that statement for days now because I am so bewildered by it.
My friend has only had sexual experiences that she wanted to have. All of her formative experiences around sex were consensual, pleasurable, and wanted. Consequently, she has formed a very natural enjoyment of sex and everything surrounding sex, such as penises.
My formative experiences with sexual stuff was as a child surviving sexual abuse. The experiences were scary and not wanted. Consequently, I have formed a very natural fear of sex and everything surrounding sex, such as penises. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter-child sexual abuse, husband, panic disorder, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse
Another ant appeared in our hallway. I was immediately afraid, and then I remembered that I have power over the ant. I remembered what the therapist said about how from now on I will always think about ants differently. I want that to be true so badly that I keep reminding myself that she said that about me. I keep telling myself that if I find an ant in my room, or if one crawls on me while I sleep (G-d forbid), I will just kill it.
I fell asleep and within an hour, I woke up in a panic. I thought an ant was on my bed. I breathed heavy, checked my surroundings, and calmed down. I reminded myself of my power. There was no ant on my bed; it was my own panic manifesting itself in the middle of the night. Middle of the night stuff is one of the hard parts of surviving child sexual abuse.
Fear is a learned thing, just like hatred. Babies aren’t born fearing the ants. Babies aren’t born with hatred in their heart. Those things have to be taught to them.
I was thinking last night about a time when I was five years old. I remember PLAYING with the ants. Playing with them. Can you believe that? There was a time when I was so unafraid of bugs that I played with them. I wasn’t afraid of them and I didn’t have to learn to have power over them. I played with them.
That was my life before the babysitter. After she did those things to my brother and I, we were both afraid of the world around us, of the dark, of being alone. We both had trouble sleeping after that, and we were both afraid of being anywhere our mom was not.
It’s been over 30 years since she hurt my brother and I. We’ve both had suicidality, panic disorder, been in gay relationships when neither of us identify ourselves as gay, and we both are afraid of intimacy. And I entered into a marriage (that ultimately failed) with someone because he never pushed me about sex.
And I am afraid of ants. But I am learning to have courage in the face of this fear. I am learning about my own power in this situation, and I am learning to use it. It is taking me some time to learn my power in this situation. That is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. Because if I hadn’t experienced powerlessness in a terrible situation, maybe I would still be playing with the ants instead of using great courage in plotting to kill them.
Filed under: fear, night, survivor, Uncategorized | Tags: panic disorder, safety, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse, survivor of incest
When a dog ‘guards’ his food by growling at anyone who comes near his food, dog experts call it ‘guarding issues’. Survivors have guarding issues too, but in a different way.
Sword Dance Warrior wrote in this post about being a child sexual abuse survivor : “If you’re just having sex with someone just so that they will guard you at night, get a dog.” When I read that, I thought to myself ‘Holy shit, other survivors invite people into their beds to guard them too? I thought I was the only one!’
Is it just Warrior and I, or are there other survivors out there who have done this sort of thing in a bid for safety?
I can’t count how many times I have asked people to share my bed just so that I could sleep better through the night. I invited people to share my bed just so that I would have someone to guard me at night. While I didn’t have full-on sex with these people, I certainly did share my body in a sexual way just so that they would choose to stay with me. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. If you want to prevent promiscuous sexual activity, stop fucking kids, and we will stop using our bodies to get people to sleep with us through the night and guard us against you.
As my regular readers know, when my husband travels on business, the idea of being alone at night scares me so badly, I would choose to pay someone to stay with me if I could. I have long felt that we should have some sort of service for survivors of child sexual abuse whereby safe people come stay with you when you are too scared to be by yourself. Maybe we could combine services, and get the lonely scared elderly to stay with the lonely scared child sexual abuse survivors. That way both sets of people wouldn’t be lonely and scared anymore.
Guarding issues. The 233rd way that surviving child sexual abuse has interfered with my normal adult functioning.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: husband, sex, spirituality, survivor of child sexual abuse, survivor of incest
Last night, the huz and I got into bed, and he moved his face near mine to kiss me. I said loudly “I don’t want to do that.” I heard myself say it, and I sounded like a little girl. A panicked little girl. I was immediately embarrassed at how I sounded. The huz said “It’s okay, baby. No one has to do anything they don’t want to do.”
I’ve been fucked up ever since that session with my mom. No interest in sex or kissing or anything. This is what happens when you fuck kids, truly. All our ‘normality’ around sex is completely gone. Shattered. How could we possibly be normal around sex when all of our formative experiences around sex were against our will??
This is where the pedophiles really have skewed logic. They think kids are sexual, and so they’re helping them be sexual. The thing is though, if kids are sexual, they are sexual with other kids, not creepy old men. Would these pedophiles want some man older than themselves being sexual with them??
I have no idea what kind of sexual person I would have been had these people not molested me when I was a child. I wonder if I would have been promiscuous. I wonder if I still would have been a virgin when I got married? I dated my husband for 2 years before I lost my virginity to him.
My husband is a really sweet, generous, kind man, and I am grateful every day to have met and married him. However, I wonder if without my history of sex abuse, if I would have still married my husband. The thing is, this year of marital therapy has taught me that I married the safest man on the planet, one who has almost no interest in sex. I married a nice safe man that would never push me into having sex with him. The flip side of that, of course, is that when I am interested in sex, I am shit out of luck. Lucky for both of us, that session with my mom stirred up the trauma for me again, so I have no interest again either. For now, our libidos match.
The ‘Praise G-d’ side of me says that maybe this did happen to me so that I would meet my soulmate and recognize him for the beautiful man that he is. Maybe being abused led me to someone who is a rescuer, in the best sense of the word. Maybe marrying a rescuer will help me become a rescuer too.
I am grateful to have met him. Of course I am grateful. But this is the reality of living with the miracle of love in my life. I don’t know what normal sexuality looks like, and I sure as fuck don’t know what it feels like. That’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: brother-sister incest, flashbacks, marital therapy, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse
The other night, my husband and I were in bed, and he started kissing me. As my regular readers know, we are having trouble trying to fuck each other, and the kissing was a really welcome surprise. Anyway, so we’re kissing, and a picture of my brother flashed into my brain. I quickly pushed the image away and told myself I am with my husband, I am safe, everything’s okay, and BAM – there’s my brother again. Dammit. So I push his image out of my mind again and beg myself not to fuck this up for us, that it’s been so long since we have kissed like this, and BAM – there he is again. ‘Okay,’ I tell myself ‘He’s not really here. It’s just me and my husband. Please, please don’t fuck this up. It’s been so long since we have kissed like this’ and BAM – there’s my brother again. At that point, I stopped kissing my husband. I yet again fucked it up for us.
My husband realized what was happening and said in a quiet, soothing voice, “Everything’s okay. It’s just us in bed, just two adults relaxing. We only do what we want to do and when you don’t want to do something, we stop.”
His hand was still on my hip, and I was laying there trying to breathe, but it was dark and I was afraid and I kept staring at him and trying to will his hand away. He realized what was happening and took his hand away, gently.
“I’m sorry” I said.
“You have nothing to apologize for, baby. Like I said, nothing’s gonna happen that you don’t want to happen” he said.
So we talked about it in our marital therapy session this week. She said that I have a “sex map”, that we all have “sex maps”, and that my road always goes to that scene with my brother. She said that the more times it happens like that, the more times it is imprinted on the map. She said that I keep trying to will it away, but she explained that instead of trying to be a hero with this, I need to listen to myself.
Then she said some pretty interesting stuff. She said that these flashbacks and scary thoughts are really my body’s way of warning me. She said that when the sex abuse happened to me, I didn’t have a choice, and now I am in a situation where I am about to be sexual again, and this is my body warning me that last time this happened it was bad.
She told me I need to stop beating myself up over this every time I fuck up our intimate times. She said it nicer than that, obviously. Whenever I say ‘I fucked it up’, she says “You didn’t fuck it up, the trauma fucked it up, and you’re reacting to the trauma.”
Anyway though – this is the part that stuck with me – she said “When you beat yourself up like that, you think you are going to beat yourself into not ‘fucking it up’ again, but that’s not what happens. When you beat yourself up, I want you to imagine beating up that little girl inside you, the one who is trying to warn you about the bad stuff. When you beat yourself up like that, you are really beating her up. She’s trying with all her might to protect you, and you keep beating her up for it. Instead, you need to open yourself to listen to the message, not beat yourself up for getting the warning signals.”
Then she said that in our next alone session, she would teach me how to find out what my body was trying to tell me.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: babysitter-child sexual abuse, brother-sister incest, father-daughter incest, sex, survivor of child sex abuse
I was thinking about my sex life today. Actually, I was talking to my aunt about sex today, and it got me thinking about my sex life.
For me, the best sex I can hope for is the kind of sex that happens when I am not afraid.
Did you guys ever read “The Lovely Bones”? The book scared the shit out of me. It’s written from the perspective of a 13 year old girl who was raped and murdered. She watches from wherever she is, (not in heaven, not in hell, sort of in this weird limbo place), as her sister loses her virginity to her boyfriend that she loves. The dead girl thinks how different sex is for her sister, since sex for herself was all blood and horror whereas for her sister it is all love and flowers.
As I was talking to my aunt today, it became apparent to me that I was in a similar situation. For my aunt, sex was all love and flowers, and for me it is something to get through, something I know other people enjoy, something I think I should be doing, something that reminds me of my abuse and my abusers, something that I haven’t really found a way to enjoy yet. This is, of course, why you shouldn’t fuck kids. It makes perfect sense why sex wouldn’t be enjoyable for us, ever. Our first experiences with sex were forced, not enjoyed, no matter how much these pedophiles convince themselves differently. And now we are reconciled to a life of totally shitty sex, even when we love our beautiful sweet partners, as I do.
Is this my forever sex life now? Or will I ever get to know of beautiful enjoyable sex?
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: irish catholic, Jewish, sex, survivor of child sexual abuse, therapist
Tomorrow the huz and I are trying out yet another fucking therapist. The use of the word ‘fucking’ in there is actually a double entendre, because literally we are seeing her to help us learn to fuck each other, and also I am using it as a curse word because it’s our third fucking one.
We saw our first one when we first got married and realized we weren’t fucking each other. We knew it was weird because we were still newlyweds in our first year of marriage or so, (and aren’t newlyweds supposed to be fucking each other senseless?). She was a complete quack, and by the third session she had disclosed to me that she came from a family of gypsies, she told me the price she had paid for her home, the fact that her daughter was an aspiring singer, and that her boyfriend helped her fix up her home. That’s way too much self-disclosure for my comfort level. I like to go ahead and have the therapy sessions focus on my shit, not the therapist’s.
Our second therapist came less than a year ago, and I wrote about our experience with her in Reason #50. She was really terrible with the sex abuse stuff, and the worst thing about her was that she thought she was good at it.
Now we have to go to yet another one, because our problems are bigger than us.
I was asking my husband why his family doesn’t believe in therapy at all. My husband comes from an Irish Catholic background, and as you know, I am Jewish. My family believes pretty strongly in the value of therapy, and his family pretty strongly believes that if you need therapy, you must be fucking nuts. Anyway, when I asked him why his family didn’t believe in therapy, he told me that his mom once said “There’s nothing about my children that I can’t fix myself”. I said “That’s all fine and dandy until someone comes along and fucks your kids. No one can fix that themselves, and certainly not your mom, because she’d have no idea where to even begin.” This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Man, I hope this one works.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: husband, sex, sexless marriage, survivor of childhood sexual abuse
They say that female survivors of child sexual abuse either turn into sluts who fuck everyone (basically recreating a situation where they are being used for their body only, instead of having their heart involved), or we marry men who don’t much give a shit about sex at all. I did the latter. I married a man who doesn’t want sex. I know I have spoken before about the fact that we hardly ever fuck each other, but usually it was because of me that we weren’t fucking each other.
The truth is that some of the reason for our sexless marriage is that he doesn’t particularly want to have sex, ever. It’s just not something he wants, or has ever really wanted. Some men are like that, even though we expect them to always want sex.
However, on behalf of me and all the other fucked kids in weird sexual relationships, this is why you shouldn’t fuck kids. I am very glad to be with my husband, lack of sex or not. He’s a wonderful, kind, and generous man who has shown me the depths of my dreams and has handed them to me one by one. But we don’t fuck, and that’s why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: child sexual abuse, Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, sex
Did you ever see that movie “Desperately Seeking Susan”? It has Madonna in it and Rosanna Arquette. The whole movie, Roseanna goes around desperately seeking this Susan character.
As a person who survivied incest and child sexual abuse, I continually seek safety in my life. I generally choose the safer of any options. I live my life safely. I hardly drink. I do not use non-prescription drugs and never have. I dated women, because I felt they were safer than men.
Did you ever hear that quote “Ships in the harbor are safe, but that’s not what ships are built for”? When I first read that quote, my immediate thought was “Yeah, but they’re safe. What could possibly be better than being safe?”
I wonder if, without the sexual abuse, I might have lived a different life. I wonder if I would have been pursuing my dream of singing onstage somewhere. I have always been a feminist. I wonder if I would have done something with that. I wonder if I would have had sex and enjoyed it before my husband, with other men?
I can’t even count the many ways in a day that I choose the safer option. Like locking myself in my room instead of being in the rest of the house, or even dare I say it, going outside for a walk. I can’t help but think about Warrior, who spends her life being courageous. I want to be like that, but safety always wins out. This is why you shouldn’t fuck kids.
Reasons You Shouldn't Fuck Kids 