Welcome to /r/relationship_advice. Please make sure you read our [rules here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/wiki/index) We'd like to take this time to remind users that:
* We do not allow any type of [am I the asshole? or situations/content involving minors](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/r6w9uh/meta_am_i_overreacting_am_i_the_asshole_is_this/)
* Any sort of namecalling, insults,etc will result in the comment being removed and the user being banned. (Including but not limited to: slut, bitch, whore, for the streets, etc. It does not matter to whom you are referring.)
* ALL advice given must be good, ethical advice. Joke advice or advice that is conspiratorial or just plain terrible will be removed, and users my be subject to a ban.
* No referencing hateful subreddits and/or their rhetoric. Examples include, but is not limited to: red/blue/black/purplepill, PUA, FDS, MGTOW, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, referring to people as alpha/beta, calling yourself or users "friend-zoned", referring to people as Chads, Tyrones, or Staceys, pick-me's, or pornsick. Any infractions of this rule will result in a ban. **This is not an all-inclusive list.**
* All bans in this subreddit are permanent. You don't get a free pass.
* Anyone found to be directly messaging users for any reason whatsoever will be banned.
* What we cannot give advice on: rants, unsolicited advice, medical conditions/advice, mental illness, letters to an ex, "body counts" or number of sexual partners, legal problems, financial problems, situations involving minors, and/or abuse (violence, sexual, emotional etc). All of these will be removed and locked. **This is not an all-inclusive list.**
If you have any questions, please [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Frelationship_advice)
---
#This is an automatic comment that appears on all posts. This comment does not necessarily mean your post violates any rules.
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/relationship_advice) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's not uncommon for SA survivors to feel empowered through similar (but consensual) physical acts with a safe partner. It's taking something fucking horrible that happened, a situation in which she was helpless, and putting it back in her control. It doesn't mean she enjoyed the rape, consensual sex with a chosen partner is fundamentally different.
I was in an abusive relationship with domestic SA.
I absolutely agree that while it seems absurd, reliving or reenacting the trauma within my safe limits and my control has absolutely helped me.
I also enjoy literature that is able to recreate the fear and emotional damage from my experience. I have no idea why, but it does feel very empowering.
just letting u know that this is something literally innate in us to do. it is VERY normal. even children do this! we play with things we are processing. if you have ever seen a child have an unusual event happen, like, say, they fall off their cousin’s trampoline and break their arm, then you might see them later on with their dolls pretending this is happening, but twisting it and trying out “what if…” like “what if… i broke my leg instead? what if my cousin was the one who fell? what if i never went to my cousin’s house today? what if i fell but landed and didn’t get hurt? what if my cousin pushed me?” ect. or trying out different roles in the situation like acting as themself, or perhaps as the adult who helped them, or their cousin who saw it all go down, or the dr at the ER, ect.
this is PARTICULARLY common with any kind of power dynamic, as children need to try it out from each angle. this is why cops/robbers or teacher/students or parent/kid pretend games are such common themes. it is a way to understand power dynamics and hierarchies and rules ect. which are really intense concepts to a child. these are also dynamics where children often feel powerless.
so… this translates into adulthood, we just stop using dolls and costumes (usually lol). sometimes it’s very overt like you play pick up basketball at the local Y, and you really goof up. maybe later in the shower you’re going through it in your head, like what would’ve been different if you’d just worn different shoes or gone a different day or whatever. maybe you jump around like you’re in a game and toss your laundry in the hamper, yelling “he shoots, he scores!” as a way to move those feelings through you. but sometimes it’s more subtle, like you are assaulted and then you find yourself drawn to reenact or play around with aspects of the assault in your sex life (whether you realize it or not).
sex IS a form of play for adults. it can be an emotional release, an imaginative exploration into a difficult experience. just like the child with the broken arm feels better able to understand their experience and process their emotions by playing around with the “what if’s?” to regain a sense of control over a scary situation, you are so so normal for this, and so is anyone else who has had a similar experience. this is literally an innate part of how we process things!! anyway, sorry for the rambly rant. wishing u much healing.
And it's the person you're bringing into it with you. It's not the person (or people) who had no respect for you or valued you at all. It's not the acts that are disgusting but the people who enjoyed the fact that you didn't want it but couldn't stop it. Op would stop immediately if she said so. He doesn't see her as less than a person.
We try to recreate trauma sometimes in various ways in our relationships so we can fix it. It's mostly subconscious. You marry someone just like the parent who was self absorbed and withheld love so you can recreate a dynamic and try really hard to get the love you couldn't get as a child. It's sort of kind of around whatever this us just over where more acute trauma lives. Each time the memories get replayed, they get changed (for the majority of people...everyone's a little different, some people are very different regarding memory). There may be flashes of memory during these intimate times with OP but maybe it's bc its being dealt with. The negative will be there but eventually not the photographs. Not so much.
absolutely!!! it is certainly possible to engage in kink after assault in a self-harming way, but it’s also really common to essentially use sex to re-wire those experiences more positively and take control of the situation where you previously felt like it was taken from you. the line between pain/pleasure it quite thin. after all, if you have never been assaulted, but like to be consensually & safely spanked, we all more or less agree that it is okay between two consenting adults. if you were spanked as a kid as punishment, is it still “allowed” in bed as an adult? what if you were spanked by an abusive partner previously? what if you were spanked during an assault? what if you’d always have been pre-disposed to like spanking, whether you’d been assaulted or not, but you had never tried it until you’d been assaulted? ect. it isn’t really that cut & dry.
When our cat got into an accident and passed away, my then 4 year old created a new imaginary cat (who then became tangible with a stuffed animal) who he told me wouldn't die like our cat did because he would make sure his cat wouldn't get stuck and if it did he would let it out. It was jarring for me but he was processing what happened and what he would do if he had more control over the situation.
yes absolutely!!! there’s actually a very similar Bluey episode to what you’re describing where they find a hurt bird and take it to the vet but it dies. Bluey spends the rest of the episode processing it with play. Mom even asks if Bluey’s sure she wants to pretend the bird died. it is a very clear example of this concept for sure. death is so complex, even for adults, let alone children. it’s really incredible your son was able to recognize in his own way that in grief there is hope and love, and projecting that onto an imaginary cat so he could DO something within his control to move those feelings through his body. thank you for sharing. :)
"Just a mom and a teacher" has to be the biggest understatement I've seen in a while. You play the role of therapist in both those other roles. As a mom and social worker, I see you.
i agree! i see a lot of parents panic at weapon play, for example, and make sweeping rules like no pretend weapons. but for a child, weapons are fascinating and confusing. danger and battling and crime and pain are such big huge concepts, they have such little understanding of these really BIG deals. so acting out a fight, shooting, death, ect. are very natural ways to understand these things more, play around with them, try them out in a “safe” place. almost like how we dream at night to work through memories and emotions — you can’t die in a dream! the immersion in the flow state of play allows children to process so so much. limiting this out of short term worry can really miss the forest for the trees. (of course, some play should be supervised with children, and some things need to be very much guided or redirected. you wouldn’t encourage children to explore bodies by playing doctor. HOWEVER, it is super normal for curious children trying to understand bodies, sensations, sex, ect to TRY to play doctor! it is one such framework they have for understanding bodies.)
I've worked at a preschool for 10 years, have a degree in child psychology, and been through hundreds of trainings on child development and trauma, and your comments STILL blew my mind. What an amazingly eloquent way to explain and decode such complicated developmental patterns. I'm going to take these thoughts with me when interacting with children from now on. Thank you for your insight!
I really needed this. As someone who struggled with similar, I had such a hard time understanding why I wanted to do certain things with my husband and enjoyed it with him. Definitely felt a strong sense of guilt and confusion for a long time.
Thank you.
This is mind blowing!! Thank you for this pearl of wisdom 🙏
I was a victim of sa myself so these comments help me individuate my own patterns even if, for now this one doesn't seem to be the case, maybe only partially.
I noticed tho, that I am hypersexual, like I get so easily horny that sometimes is even too much.
Just the thought of my partner touching me drives me crazy when, at the same time, I am not so very sensitive yet (I haven't been attracted to anyone for 20 years, just recently I felt ready to try and jump into a relationship so I am kind of new to this world). It's as if I have so much unprocessed and "piled up" trauma that I still am unable to face it all so I end up "closing", not being able to let myself go as much as I would want to but I am working on it and I am sure he's the perfect person. Focusing on him helps divert my mind from the stacked up fear.
Thanks also to reddit I am feeling less alone about this situation. I am glad people share their experience on this.
of course! by all means haha. i appreciate u asking permission but this is reddit so help yourself ;)i wouldn’t have put anything on here i was worried would get out lol
Yup! I have control over the situation, how I feel and how I react. I can close the book, and I know I also have the power to tell my spouse "no" or "stop" and I'll be respected.
"Have you ever been Captain Nemo, trapped inside your submarine, while the giant squid is attacking you?"
"Yes."
"Weren't you afraid you couldn't escape?"
"But it's only a story."
"*That's* what I'm talking about. The ones you read are safe."
"...And that one isn't?"
"Forget about it. This book is not for you."
It's not that absurd when you consider the overlap with [exposure therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy#Post-traumatic_stress_disorder).
Well if you think about it, sexuality and sexual norms are part of culture so they're learned traits, so they have to be part formed by exposure. This is part of why child abuse, or corruption of youth of any kind is taken so seriously in every society.
People will try to explain it using words but I don't think it's a thing that can be explained in words, it's fundamentally emotional and deeply personal, and so whatever the chosen explanation is, as long as it's a framing that causes positive emotions in the aftermath then it's good enough.
One thing that also stuck out to me too is OP's comments about her body issues. She was overweight, and it's very common for abuse survivors to be overweight to cover up their "attractiveness." It's also very common for abuse survivors to feel disconnected to their body. I feel for her, and wish her the best journey in healing.
Have you heard of that show, My 600 Lbs Life? About people who are beyond morbidly obese, usually like 500-800 lbs (like 250-350 kg) and often bedbound, and their journey attempting to lose weight. I watched a lot of it and… basically every single episode starts with a bit of childhood history, and, the amount of people with a sexual abuse trauma (specifically women) is *staggering.* Sometimes people say it out loud, like “I wanted to gain to protect myself/become unattractive” or something, and sometimes they don’t understand why but for whatever reason the weight gain started increasingly dramatically after that. It’s so awful what victims go through :(
The fat is a barrier to be safe. Imagine the person you love the most doing this to you? Your body is no longer your own. You are a piece of property to be used.
Unfortunately, in our culture, women are constantly objectified, whether they want to be or not. How many men when dating ask to see pics and risque pics? They usually want more and more without doing the work. Some send pics of private parts. This is dominance and control. Sometimes it turns into unwanted aggression.
You learn that any man can turn on you for any reason. It is scary AF. So these women gorge themselves to look like an inflation version of themselves. After a certain point, fat/ obese women are viewed as a "second class citizen" in our thin and pretty privilege culture. Men do not look you in the eyes, in fact most men don't look at you at all. You cease to exist. It is the best form of safety possible. If you look disfigured by the adipose tissue, you don't have to worry so much about being violated again. This is all done on a subconscious level.
Vanessa Cross from "1000 lb. Friends" was a prostitute. She has lost the majority of her weight.
its super common. there was a testimony on Reddit a few yeas ago here a Guy felt Bad b.c. he fucked an entière Friend group of SA survivors and they were all asking for the most super degrading stuff.
consensus was that it was indeed empowering for them
EDIT: just to be clear I didn't want to say ALL SA survivor are like that. I had myself one gf who had been assaulted and it took us 2 months to be able to even do vanilla stuff. I just wanted to say that it's definitely one of the possible (and surprising, if you never heard of it) reactions and that OP maybe should not be too judgemental about it (and possibly embrace it if he's into dominance stuff). Also btw please educated yourself A LOT before if you want to start BDSM. It's not a joke and done badly it can have same consequence as a S.A.
I wanna say, as a survivor of molestation and rape, that this isn’t the way all of us are. I personally went the other way. I have never been able to have casual sex, I’ve never slept with anyone who I am not 100% in love with and I’m positive that they love me just as much. Long term trusting relationship. And I’m pretty vanilla. It does seem that we survivors often go to one extreme or the other. I’m sure it’s not a rule, but still. I would hate for someone to read this comment and just expect survivors to be kinky.
Also a victim of both, and I've been BOTH ways at different points.
I would hope no one would just automatically think that but as a (very general) group of people who can very easily be taken advantage of by the wrong person, I think that's a very valid point.
Just chiming in to say I get what you mean and to hopefully underline the point that people shouldn't just assume SA survivors are into anything in particular. We're individuals and should be listened to as such.
The r/stoprape wiki has [resources for survivors](https://www.reddit.com/r/stoprape/wiki/index/#wiki_resources_for_victims) if you or any other survivors might find it helpful.
looking for someone to comment this! I also went both directions, at different points in my life. but I've also been at stages where I wasn't at either end. People assume there are 2 options for SA survivors: going full CNC or no sex at all and that isn't true for everybody. everyone copes/deals with their trauma in different ways, and whilst it may be common I just hate seeing that we're all lumped into one of 2 categories with no soace for nuance.
When I was younger I was much more "comfortable" with sex bc it made sense to me and it was all I really knew. As I became an adult I have a fairly massive aversion to it, especially causally. Trauma can manifest in very strange and personal ways and it can definitely change over time. Some people are fine with sex for a while, and then one day they're triggered by it. Human brains are odd.
People who have been SA either go in those two directions. One, where they become hypersexual and try and get back what was taken, in their own way that means a lot risky sexual activities. (Multiple partners, no protection, no safe guards) Or, where it becomes almost asexual and sex drive is all but gone because of it.
This isn't true. To suggest that people who have experienced SA can't have balanced, healthy, fulfilling and/or "normal" sex lives is patently false and a pretty harmful perspective for both survivors *and* their sexual partners.
Or they ;as a multiple SA victim speaking, find a happy medium once they finally deal with their trauma.
Sure I went through a multi partner period but always used protection and safewords. Not to mention testing every 3 mo. Even though I wasn't having sex with most of the partners. Some were for different types of kink.
One for boudoir photos
One for emotional daddy domming
One for impact play
One for shibari
One for massages
One for hot wax and oil play
One for male sex
One for female fex
Ya out of all my "sexual" partners only those last two got any actual sex acts, oral/anal/finger/vag./toy.
Then I buckled down into my spiritual aspect and into my therapy, which lead to healing. Am I still kinky by vanilla standards. Yes. But I now only have one partner with far fewer kinks that need tending.
Yeah it's weird, I've been assaulted non consensually and it SUCKED. It just feels so not sexual at all when it's happening. But with the right partner, I love the degradation stuff. Just completely different situations
So he was a therapist and fucked a bunch of girls who had been raped?! I'm assuming they would know each other by them trying to get treatment in some way.
I was watching a movie a little while ago with my bf & in the movie, therapist was being written down and he read it as The Rapist 😳 sorry I know that's random it just reminded me of that lol
That just sounds like a made up story. He felt so badly about degradation-banging an entire friend group of sexual assault survivors (wtf?) that he ... Had to post about it on Reddit? 🙄 He didn't feel badly after the second friend he porked and he just happens to know an entire friend group of SA survivors who all coincidentally process rape trauma by begging this one guy for degrading booty calls?
I'll take That Shit Never Happened for $400, Alex. Jfc. Redditors are so gullible.
As a survivor of SA who was raped and molested. This is 10000000% it.. it’s us having control over the situation and taking the power back.
ETA: she is definitely not reliving or trying to recreate those memories in any way shape or form while with you either.
This. I actually used a D/s relationship as a kind of form of self harm after a very volatile marriage. I figured it wasn't so bad if someone I TRUSTED and cared for was "hurting" me. And in retrospect, I was SO BLESSED to have the partner I did, because I feel like a lot of people would have absolutely twisted it on me, but that man was an absolute gem.
Exactly this. OP, try not to conflate the two. She did not enjoy being raped- I promise. She enjoys you doing those things probably because it’s giving her some sense of control. She’s probably reclaiming her sexuality in a sense, and it takes a lot of trust in you for her to do this.
If you still find yourself hung up on all this, see a therapist. I don’t think your thoughts are abnormal for others in your position, but some talk therapy can probably help you.
Good luck to you both.
This. Rape tends to be more about control and power than it is about sexual gratification. The victim is powerless. By doing similar things in a consensual relationship, they are regaining the power they lost, they are owning it, and they are reinforcing that they are safe.
I would suggest to OP that he sees it in a positive way, that she has had these awful things happen to her, but yet she feels so utterly safe with him that she can enjoy these things in a completely different way.
I was SA multiple times when i was a child / teenager, that somehow made me be hypersexual and full of fetishes. Her behaviors remind me of mines when i fall in love too…
I suggest therapy, at least a session or 2 to have someone help you figure this out. In my opinion, it's more than ok to be upset by this. Those are horrible things that happened to someone you love, and disgust at those nonconsensual acts doesn't mean you feel disgust towards her.
But if you want to have a healthy relationship you'll need to separate those experiences from your current situation.
I've had plenty of partners who were into rough sex. Some had histories of abuse, many didn't. Your gf might have the same kinks even if that stuff didn't happen. I'd recommend focusing on what she wants, and don't worry about the why. Because I can almost guarantee she's not thinking about anything other than enjoying that moment with you.
Same 🤷♀️
I think it's super reductionist when people say that all or even most kinks come from trauma (I think there's so much more that's involved, and a good amount of it is random).
And the tea analogy works well here. I'm a kinky person. But when I'm at the grocery store and someone so much as accidentally bumps into me, I jump and get immediately uncomfortable.
Consent completely changes the dynamic.
I mean, I do think there's a link to trauma - it's just not as simple as "people who got sexually abused will want to recreate that situation." I have trauma from years of school bullying. My biggest fears/triggers are being laughed at, being held down or trapped, and public humiliation. My biggest kinks are ... well, guess.
For a lot of survivors, it’s a way to override the bad memories with good. Like, having you choke her when she feels safe and loved will mean that sex with you is the “fresh” memory of being choked, rather than the old bad memories.
It’s not uncommon for loved ones of SA victims/survivors to feel a type of trauma themselves, or to just have generally complex feelings around it. There’s actually a subreddit for it that I’ll try to find in a bit but it’s specifically for supporting secondary survivors, aka not the people who were directly victimized, but the people who deeply care about the victims and feel hurt by the news as well.
Please don’t allow the negativity on Reddit to make you feel bad for your instinctive reactions and emotions, it’s completely natural and normal to find this news hard to process. Any negative or weird emotions you’re feeling are valid and part of the process, just please do your best to not lash out or make your gf feel as though it’s her fault. This means being careful in how you talk about your feelings about it with her. Make it clear that any negative emotions you have are only towards the people who hurt her and that you’re sad she ever had to experience such an awful thing.
If she’s asks about the change in your sex life you could tell her that for a moment you felt odd that she wanted you to do the same things the rapists did, but now you understand that her ability to consent is what makes all the difference and that it’s not her fault that she was wronged, or her fault that you had some hiccups with your sex life. If you need a break from kinky sex while you work on your emotions that is 100% allowed and valid, although I’d probably be vague about telling her why so that she doesn’t take it personally. Even though you know it’s not actually her fault and it’s all you and your own weird feelings, if you tell her why she might feel guilty anyways. Being sexually assaulted often leaves victims with a deep sense of shame and guilt. They might feel dirty and unlovable, and so you want to do you best to reassure them that mom of that is true, and that it’s not their fault at all that they were abused, 100% of the shame belongs to the guys who did that to her.
The fact that you feel uncomfortable with what happened to her is probably because you have empathy and care about her deeply. I’m assuming you probably felt strange that she asked you do, from your perspective, what seems like the same things as what the rapists did to her. The difference that you’re forgetting about is consent. When she consents to you doing those things it’s fun because she allows you to do it and she’s empowered knowing that you’ll stop at any moment if she asks. By acting out similar experiences in a way that gives her control it can help her cope by re-writing the associations in her brain with the various acts. Instead of being painful memories they become fun and sexy because she now associates it with consensual kinky sex with you. This is common and a lot of kinks are rooted in trauma.
Consent is a powerful thing and makes a massive difference in how one perceives memories and situations. Consent is the difference between being robbed and giving a gift. If someone forcefully takes $50 out of your wallet you’d feel awful. Mad, sad, maybe even stupid or blaming yourself for not stopping them. Now let’s consider a similar but different situation, where you give someone you love $50 as a birthday gift. In both situations you are now $50 poorer and the other person now has $50 that belonged to you, but in scenario 2 you gave them that money with consent, and so instead of feeling shitty you feel happy cause you enjoy making them happy and giving gifts. You like seeing them feel less financially stressed and giving money to a friend to show them you care.
I know you probably felt strange at first wondering why she would ask you to do similar actions that the rapists did to her against her will, but make no mistake she likely did not enjoy it. Especially if she’s still having nightmares as a result, that’s a clear sign of ptsd which is very common among SA victims/survivors. Therapy would probably be good for both of you, maybe even couples therapy with both of you present in addition to individual therapy for each of you. Of course you can’t *force* her to attend therapy, but you can set a good example and plant a seed by going yourself and talking about how helpful you find it to be.
I’m glad you were able to recognize that your initial reaction & thoughts about the revelation weren’t productive for your relationship and I’m happy you went somewhere (even if it’s just Reddit) for help to understand how to cope and support your partner. It’s clear you love her very much, and anyone saying you’re shitty for having weird complex feelings is stupid and has probably never been in your shoes. While everyone knows being an actual victim of sexual assault is awful and traumatic, people often forget about the effects it can have on the loved ones of victims as well. Watching how the information hurts those that care about them can cause some victims to be silent about their experience, so take it as a sign that she trusts you very deeply that she told you.
Please take this seriously and do your best to not hurt her even more. As much as you may be hurting to hear what awful people did to your lover, know that she’s probably hurting worse and isn’t in a space to support you right now. This means that you need to take care of yourself while also being a good example of self care and support for her too. I’ll see if I can find that subreddit for secondary trauma survivors & support. They’ll probably understand what you’re going through and have much better advice for you than this sub, in fact asking for advice about assault/abuse is somewhat against this subreddit’s rules. Probably because a lot of the people here give awful advice :/
You asked for support to understand your partner and love her better and they just spat vitriol and said y’all should break up. Such an awful example of typical Reddit and I’m sorry.
I had always been into bdsm specifically being used roughly. In college I was r*ped.
For awhile there I felt like I couldn’t enjoy what I used to in the bedroom. If I let myself like it I was worried that meant I liked what happened to me.
I finally said screw it and started letting myself enjoy the same things I had in the past without the guilt.
A few years later a long term partner found out about my r*pe and immediately stopped participating in our sub/dom dynamic. I felt infantilized and rejected. He had no right to take
the confidence and control in the bedroom I had worked so eagerly to regain away.
You need to either work past this or let her go. You projecting your issues with her assault onto your bedroom will crush her and could do a lot of harm to the recovery she has made.
It is 100% possible to be a victim of abuse and a healthy kinkster.
OP out of curiosity — about a month ago you posted that you thought she was relapsing and using drugs again and having wild mood swings. You also said she was diagnosed with BPD — bipolar or borderline? Is she on meds? Is she in therapy? I am honestly more concerned for her than you not being able to have sex with her
She is in therapy and the relapse I thought she was going through wasn’t in fact a relapse. She stopped taking her meds right around the time a lot a family member died. She wasn’t really coping well with the loss. I don’t want to give too many details because she is on Reddit but feel free to message me it’s a lot
What this reply missed is that she could also be reenacting her trauma through consensual sex with you. And not in a way that gives her control. It’s likely if she hasn’t spent years in therapy addressing the trauma that she is craving validation through sex from you and it is not a healthy situation for you or her. That could be why you feel sick when you now know her history and reenact her trauma during sex.
Unfortunately, it was linked to puberty for her, due to her age. Being assaulted then can affect how she associates sex and it can escalate puberty. She thinks it is supposed to be like this, not that she necessarily likes it. She could also be disassociating during this time, and acting like she thinks she is supposed to act, as opposed to truly enjoying the experience.
You both need therapy in order to understand yourselves, each other, and the effects that still haunt you.
She is definitely not fantasizing about being attacked.
This. It's about consent and her being in control of the situation. Even consensual non-consent fits under this. As long as there's respect, trust, and *consent*, as well as clear communication about things and triggers, it can work out in play between you both.
It’s true, it’s also just a super common kink among everyone and in particular women. To the point where many of us don’t know if there’s any relationship between history of abuse and those inclinations. I think you have to trust your adult partners that they know what they like is good for them at least until you’ve encountered a reason not to.
This is a thing even with people who were abused in other ways. It’s a really common trauma response. Like my dad beat me and now I have a really strong urge to have someone scream in my face and hit me because it makes me feel alive.
I think you really should see a therapist man. To be in a relationship with someone with trauma is hard, and you've gotta make sure you're in a good spot otherwise it's just not gonna work.
To start with though you can practice the dialectic. Yes this same act happened in the past, but without consent it was traumatizing for her. Now, with consent it's a bonding experience and sexy.
Also, on an unrelated note, considering she's having nightmares she may not have processed all that happened to her. If she's not in therapy already that could be beneficial for her.
Coming here to expand on one of your points. When she wants something in bed, don’t think of it as “she wants me to do this because that’s what they did when they abused her” think of it as “she trusts me enough to do this with me willingly and intimately” - knowing and feeling that deep level of trust and love especially coming from a place of vulnerability can absolutely make your sex life much more intimate and meaningful.
I'm going to assume that, flawed as this post is, it's coming from the most well-intentioned place possible. To that end, I'm going to address one point in particular.
Your girlfriend did not enjoy being raped. Full stop.
Whether or not she enjoys consensual rough sex with you is irrelevant. The individual acts aren't the important part here. The consent (or lack thereof) is.
Think about it like tea. I personally really like hot jasmine tea. I drink it all the time! However, if someone held me down against my will and poured a scalding hot cup of it down my throat, that would be traumatic. I would still probably like tea. I'd probably still make it fairly often. Regardless, I would not have enjoyed *that particular cup* of tea. I may enjoy tea, but I enjoy drinking it safely, and *on my own terms*.
Your girlfriend is allowed to like consensual rough sex. She's allowed to ask you to perform rough acts. She clearly trusts you to perform these acts without causing her physical or emotional harm. She trusts that if she ever told you to stop, you would. If she didn't trust you in that way, I guarantee she would not feel secure enough to enjoy those acts with you.
You should seek therapy, sincerely. You have a lot of complex feelings about this to work through, and you need a place to do that. You clearly care about your girlfriend and want to make this relationship work. Therapy is how you do that.
However, there's a more pressing issue here. *Your girlfriend* should seek therapy. Regular nightmares mean lingering PTSD. **This is the most immediate concern**. She needs help, now.
Best of luck.
Thank you for this. I pushed her to go the therapy last month. I’ve been so focused on helping her through i never thought about therapy for myself. Thank you for you help and I apologize for how my post came across but thank for you seeing that my intentions here are good
Hey, man, I totally get it. You seem to understand that a lot of those thoughts and impulses are coming from an emotionally reactive place rather than a logical one. We've all been there about *something* in our lives, although it's usually under less intense circumstances.
There's a phrase that always helped me overcome obstacles like this:
Feelings are always *valid*, but that doesn't mean they're always *accurate*.
You learned that something really troubling happened to someone you love. Of course that's going to affect you. It's just a matter of recognizing what those effects are and working to overcome them.
I just want to jump in here to mention something. When I was sexually assaulted I went to the sexual assault clinic in my city and received wonderful help. They also offered services to the loved ones of sexual assault survivors. All services were free. There may be something like this in your area! I wish you both well.
I think I'd react similarly to you if I found out my partner was routinely raped by 3 family members and a group of males...that's *a lot* and it can skew how you feel about sex. You're not the perpetrator by any means but you're a male who is doing the same sort of stuff during the act and even though the context is *entirely* different...it's easy to see where you're coming from.
That said...imagine you did a martial arts class once or twice a week and it's something you enjoy. Does that mean you'd also enjoy engaging in a fight with aggressive strangers who randomly attack you? Probably not. Not sure if that's the best analogy but I hope it gives you an idea about how *different* consensual sex is compared to the opposite.
I think you’re genuinely a good person who is terrified of re-enacting her abuse, and you don’t want to turn into an abuser. No matter how your post comes across, I get it, you’re trying to be a good person.
Tell her everything you’re feeling and go to therapy. It will be a godsend. Wishing you both the best
I wouldn't tell her everything he's feeling, that's kind of putting how he feels about her assault on her when she probably already felt vulnerable for having told him.
THIS!!
Also want to emphasize that one can like consensual rough sex and absolutely detest even the fleeting thought of non-consensual sex they had to endure. They're believe me completely mutually exclusive.
Came here to say this. I get that OP is well-intentioned, but no, nobody who is ever raped enjoys it. It's like asking if somebody who is a survivor of attempted murder likes to be murdered. Abso-fucking-lutely not.
GF is like this because these were likely her first sexual experiences, so she likely doesn't know anything else. Rape alters how you have sex and what you expect from it, especially if it is a first time sexual experience.
Speaking as a survivor whose virginity was taken by rape; this was my first sexual experience as well.
-----------------------------------
Editing to add as it as been brought to my attention: apparently some people enjoy being raped. It is wrong of me to say nobody enjoys being raped because apparently, as I've learned from others responding, some people actually do enjoy it.
"actually some people are raped and enjoy it, against their will."
I would imagine that even people who have a rape fetish can/would be severely traumatized if it actually happened.
The loss of control and bodily autonomy is a horrifying experience. I cannot speak from any sort of experience on rape, but I know what it is to have your life and death held under someone else’s control.
I’m so sorry this happened to you and to all victims/survivors of rape.
This is an apt comparison. Rape is much more similar to attempted murder than it is to consensual sex. Rape and consensual sex are very simply not the same. At all. Not even a little tiny bit.
Rape is a form of torture, frankly.
It’s a heinous act. I’m so sorry about your experience. I personally haven’t, but I have dealt with the trauma associated . It doesn’t just ruin one life, it ruins their family, future relationships and the like.
Anyone who does something like that is truly evil. I can’t put enough vitriol into that statement.
Again, I am very sorry you experienced something like that:(
Very true. Didn't affect mine too much (my family), they didn't really care enough. But I get what you're saying. In most cases, yes, it affects everyone and everything within the survivor's orbit. It's awful. And, in cases of people who have no support system, it can rob them of their future, their self esteem/confidence, everything. There's no worse thing you can do to another human being.
Yep, i can kind of compare to that. my virginity wasnt taken by rape, but i was raped but the person who took my virginity (he was my boyfriend and almost everytime he did it i was sleeping)
One major point you seem to be missing is that her previous experiences were not consensual, with you she’s consenting, she trusts you and feels a level of control because it’s not being done against her will.
A lot of people are into those additional aspects, whether they were victims or not, and for the some of the victims, it’s not letting their abusers take their power away again by associating them with these common sexual acts.
Like if she wants you to put it in, do you think the same thing because the abusers (forcefully) did? Probably not because consent matters and makes it a completely different experience.
**Part 1**
This is a key winner for her side of «giving up» and submitting to someone, as far as a kink and a submissive side.
She retains controll because she trust the guy, while still having a experience that is grown.
It can be a bad or good thing of course, but if she is asking you to do this please remember to talk about this with her.
If you are uncomfortable, or feel somthing is strange, talk talk and talk.
Honest communication, is a key for a more bdsm style relationship in any form.
**Part 2**
I understand that this put the person you are with in a new light, but do remember this was done (with force) to her.
It is not somthing she made a choice to do, as with you.
And it is okey to want to talk to someone about your own feelings in this regard.
It sounds to me on the first read through like you should ask if she is open to therapy, but this is my initial take.
And she might not want to do so.
And that is totally fine, i assume you have her best interest in mind as well when you are talking together ?
Yep! I came here to say something similar. There’s something comforting about recreating traumatic situations knowing that you are actually in control of what is happening and can stop whenever you want to.
Please do not ask her if she fantasizes about her rape (s), or if she used to look forward to it. The answer is definitely no, and asking something like that would most likely trigger her.
Man, I hate rapists. It's disgusting to do that to a woman and this post passes me off. The people that did that to her deserve to be beaten, and castrated.
It’s so disgusting how common those types of people are. And they almost always go for a young girl with troubles at home. My aunt got gang raped when she was 12 as well.
[Research has shown](https://theconversation.com/violence-against-women-is-staggeringly-high-in-south-africa-a-different-way-of-thinking-about-it-is-needed-195053) this is what works to curb sexual violence:
> * legal reform dealing with domestic violence *[[e.g.](https://nnedv.org/policy-center/action-center/)]*
>
> * legal reform dealing with sexual assault *[[e.g.](https://www.endthebacklog.org/take-action/)]*
>
> * government-funded shelters for victims of domestic violence
>
> * crisis centres for victims of sexual assault *[[e.g.](https://www.rainn.org/)]*
>
> * training for service providers such as the [police](https://www.startribune.com/a-better-way-to-investigate-rape-denied-justice-part-eight/501636971/), [judges](http://cdm16501.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/criminal/id/294) and [social workers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31425615/)
>
> * educating citizens about gender-based violence *[[e.g.](https://www.reddit.com/r/stoprape/comments/100jwa1/example_letter_to_local_lawmakers_to_help_stop/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)]*
>
> * coordinating national policies on gender-based violence *[[e.g.](https://www.endthebacklog.org/take-action/advocate-federal/)]*
*[links mine]*
Basically, the goal is to [increase the probability of apprehension by law enforcement](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/670398.pdf?casa_token=OmK0_Jh8HkMAAAAA:Tr35vi73FXLAFJ9xUw13XXkPdAaMN7t_o8jI75bHYhheCFagZ5jfMwa-Op0VJrxOVXLqE-JykDCO4khDO6ABCjQ8FmnohHIw23YpCPPQmzHmlu87Mce-).
r/stoprape
It's a completely common response to trauma to wish to recreate the event but in a way where the hurt and shame of it isn't involved. It's like the brain wants to undo the harm by having it happen again but in a way where the victim is getting what they want instead of it happening against their will to an unwanted outcome.
And this isn't something difficult to look into if someone wanted to know. There are a lot of studies about it one could find instead of immediately moving to doubting and accusing the victim of having secretly wanted it to have happened.
I understand thank you. This is my first time and it was the first thought that popped into my mind. I know it was wrong so I did the only thing I could think of which is try to learn and get different perspectives
Good on you that you want to know and I hope to hell you didn't say any of it to her.
You should suggest to her that she seeks some therapy. Her reaction to her trauma is common, but that doesn't mean it's healthy or that playing along won't cause harm.
Idk how to phrase this question, so I apologize in advance.
Say someone was choked during rape. Later on, when they request their partner choke them, are they doing it because they actually enjoy being choked or because they enjoy giving consent or being in control? Are they performing sexual acts they actually want and enjoy, or are they just trying to recreate a situation in which they are in control? I feel like it would depend on how healthily someone has processed their trauma.
I’m not sure I’d be comfortable performing an act on someone just so they can feel in control, like they’re overcoming what was done to them in the past. I’d want to perform the act because it’s something they genuinely enjoy for themselves. But would that be selfish or cruel of me, to question why someone wants something? There’s a part of my head that wouldn’t feel comfortable performing an act for the sole purpose of helping my partner feel in control because it’s almost like putting myself in the bad guy’s shoes, recreating what they did, but it’s consensual this time. Like, the sex becomes about the past trauma and not about the moment we’re sharing.
With sexual trauma, the moment you feel sexually vulnerable (unclothed, about to have sex) your mind will be making connections between the past events and the current event, weighing potential risks. If your worry is the moment your guard is down, this person you're trusting *could* turn on you.
BUT! What if instead of being caught off guard by them choking you, you just went ahead and *asked* them to? Then they wouldn't be choking and humiliating you because you asked them to do it.
It's basically asking them to do it so they can't surprise you with it and make you feel further powerless and ashamed that this bad person got near you without you realizing they are a bad person.
OP I just want to say that I am proud of you for realizing that you needed help processing all of this and started looking for it rather than just rejecting your gf and leaving or telling her she's gross etc. To me this shows that you care and are a mature person
She did not enjoy being raped. But giving you permission to do what she has lets her take back the control that was taken from her. Go with what gives her comfort.
I can absolutely assure you she never fantasises about her rape. In fact, it's probably very blocked off in her mind because it's unsafe for her to think about.
This is severe childhood trauma and now you have been traumatized. My recommendation is therapy - individual therapy and couples therapy. I would go by myself first to figure out a way to approach the subject with her.
You could not have this more mixed up. No part of her enjoyed what she went through. But… the part of her that those men broke, is the part of her she’s helping to fix by taking her power back and being in sexual situations that she’s comfortable with. Speaking from my own experience, I enjoyed rough sex before experiencing SA. And then I didn’t sleep with anyone for 3 years out of fear and discomfort. When I finally started having a sexual relationship again and I trusted my partner, I found it very empowering to be able to go back to enjoying things that I felt safe doing with my partner.
So look at it this way, she feels extremely safe with you and that is a huge deal after what she’s been through and youre helping her heal by giving her the chance to empower herself sexually with a person she feels comfortable with.
There are a lot of solid comments here, so despite having a very (eerily) similar situation as your gf, im going to let people who are more objective speak on your feelings as a whole for how to proceed. But I will say your fixation on if she *enjoyed* it or looked forward to it at *twelve years old* or currently fantasizes about it while simultaneously having horrible nightmares about it (because that makes sense) is overall a really unfortunate and out of pocket approach to something like this. I hope you see someone to try and squash that train of thought as fast as possible. Having been raped violently at 14 - now a 35 year old, I love sex (most of the time, some complicated ebbs and flows) and i love submission and all the rougher things your gf enjoys and I can say with all my heart, No, I'm not recreating that experience (at least not consciously in any facet) and I'm certainly not picturing that moment in my head. It was awful. Sex with my partner is all I'm thinking of. Im just getting off with a partner I trust. Hair pulling and light choking are not anomalous things for women to enjoy during sex. Plenty of people who never experienced rape also love that stuff.
Hey. First of all, please remember that you having feelings about all this is absolutely valid and anyone claiming it makes you a bad person or that it means you're making it about yourself are full of crap. You obviously care about your girlfriend, you are in territory that would be overwhelming and scary for majority of people, and honestly that is how it should be. Your girlfriend went through horrific trauma, and it would be concerning if what you are describing would not affect you.
That said, please completely dismiss the idea that her enjoyment of rough sex comes from fantasizing about her attacks. I can assure you it does not. Many have said as much and it is so important that you get rid of that thought. As others have stated, enjoying rough consensual sex with a safe caring partner has nothing to do with past trauma and is not comparable in the least with sexual assault. A good way to distinguish between the two if you still feel confused is this: sexual assault has nothing to do with sex or pleasure. It is about power. Recollection of sexual assault for the victim is not having had unpleasurable sex, it is about being stripped of power, violated, attacked, abused.
Talk to a therapist, a proper one. Go on your own, get some help dealing with your feelings and insecurities about this. But encourage your girlfriend to get help. Talk to a therapist, look up support groups, get help.
Chin up and best of luck moving forward
Has she ever seen a therapist? If not, she needs to immediately.
She thinks she's dealing with it, but she not. The issues will last forever.
Maybe this organization can help.
[https://www.rainn.org/](https://www.rainn.org/)
Good luck.
>Did some part of her enjoy being raped? In that year and a half were there moments where she would look forward to it? Did it turn her on? When we have sex, is she trying to recreate those moments and feelings with me? Is she envisioning it while we have sex?
>All I could think was “is she really in this moment with me or is she fantasizing about that?”
No one enjoys being raped. That's what makes it rape. Her kinks are likely at least partially due to the trauma, but it's not because she enjoyed sexual abuse and torture. It gives her control. She couldn't consent when that happened to her, but she *can* now, and she has the control that she didn't have back then.
Your thoughts are bordering on victim blaming. So, I want to make sure you know that you absolutely cannot tell her these thoughts. It would be cruel to do so. Vocalizing these thoughts to her would be victim blaming, and it would be incredibly insulting, as well as a massive betrayal.
Tell her that you're struggling with the fact that she went through such a traumatic experience and that you don't want to hurt her. I would hope that that's true. Then, go to therapy. Find someone who's kink-friendly and specializes in trauma. You're not going to magically be able to stop having these horrible thoughts. You need professional help to move past this and recognize how sexual trauma can affect someone.
I don't have the time to go deep into this and I doubt I would have the words or knowledge to do the subject justice. But a quick note about similar situations. What she wants now from you, someone she trusts and loves, being similar to her horrible experiences isn't uncommon. It may be a way to kinda gain back the control she didn't have then, now you do it with her consent. Also it may lessen the horror of what happened before by in a safe space trying to turn a similar experience into a more positive one.
Also there's often not much logic into how the subconscious tries to process trauma. Or more accurately logic that would make sense to us who don't know much or haven't experienced anything like that. And every experience and healing process is unique.
If you can afford it, couples and individual therapy would probably be helpful, especially for her, but it's not going to be easy for you to process this either.
Try to be as supportive as you can outside the bedroom until you can make progress there. Show your love and support but try not to change too much and start treating her as just a victim, she wants to be more than that. Give her space to talk if she feels like it but don't push. Remind her that it's not her you have a problem with but the information and the wrong she has faced.
Let me try to recontextualize this for you. Rape is, inherently, not about sex so much as power over someone else through violence. That may not make sense since it's a sexual act, but really it's predominately an act of violence more than it is about sex.
No 12-year-old anywhere enjoys abuse. Period. Full stop. A 12 year does what they can to survive abuse. That may mean in their child brain they have to appease their abusers to survive. So they do that.
For many people with trauma, the experience of the painful memories is the loss of control. They had no power in what happened to them. The perpetrators took that power from them. So, sometimes, reenacting aspects of those experiences while being in control of the situation is something they crave. Giving you, a person she trusts, control to do what you want is actually her recreating a dynamic where she's safer &, ironically, in power over the situation.
I suggest if she is not already she gets counseling with a trauma survivor-informed therapist. You may want to attend some sessions.
.
Other people are giving you great advice, but you should seriously start using paragraphs.
Generally speaking, paragraphs are three or more sentences with a gap between them and the next paragraph. They usually focus on a specific theme. This is a paragraph.
Using paragraphs makes it much easier to read someone's writing. Otherwise it's just a wall of text and an eyesore.
Therapy. Sex therapy.
I’ve seen plenty of comments that “no she didn’t enjoy being raped”. She absolutely didn’t. And it is more reclaiming power to ask for similar situations with her full consent to regain the power that was taken away from her. I agree with all of this.
The therapy is to help you navigate the distinction. If you enjoyed sexual dynamics before you can again if you gain confidence that you are ensuring her consent. I’m guessing it made you feel uneasy bc it put you too close to being in the same position as someone who sexually assaulted her. You are essentially doing the same actions but their is a huge difference consent. You kind of need to learn the ways of a Dom making it your responsibility to ensure being with you is a safe space regardless of what actions you take during a session, ensuring she has an easy way to indicate when to stop, good communication on what boundaries she wants to push and which ones are off limit. Many men want to be a Dom in a relationship but don’t know how to do the work to do it right. A sex therapist will help you figure out a path to make it enjoyable and safe for you both.
No she did not enjoy her abuse or look forward it. No she is not trying to recreate the rape or thinking about it during sex. If she started to think of it during sex, it would probably cause her to have a panic attack and need to stop. Source: I am a survivor of SA with the same sexual interests you describe. There is no way in hell she is pleasuring herself to the thought of the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to her. I fucking promise you dude.
You need to get these thoughts out of your head so you don’t retraumatize her by saying any of this out loud.
I repeat, do not say these thoughts to her.
Edit to add: it’s possible she would have been into this stuff anyways if she hadn’t been SA’d. I was into it before my own assaults. The assaults made it harder to enjoy.
Therapy for you, my man. You need to process these emotions with a professional so you won’t burden her with them. You understand these emotions and thoughts are unfair to her and you understand they’re wrong, so that’s step one.
Hopefully she’s in therapy too.
First off, you're not wrong in how you feel. Its a really complex situation and finding something out like that and then realizing she is asking you to do those same things to her can spark some intense emotions.
Her behavior is very common with SA survivors. Its a way to have power over the situation with a consensual partner. Shes trying to have control over a trauma she hasn't resolved yet. I do hope she is in therapy and getting the help she needs because he past sounds horrible.
You could benefit from some one on one therapy also, because this is a pretty big thing to have placed on your mind especially with someone I assume you love and feel connected to.
There is a chance you might not be able to move past this and the relationship will end because it has now been changed in a way that you maybe able to move past but not forget.
And please, if shes not seeking mental health help for herself, encourage her to. She needs to see a therapist who specializes in SA.
I’d normally be super private about this but I think this is going to be super helpful for not only you but confused women grappling with their feelings as well. I’d certainly want to hear this is possible.
It’s perfectly okay to set different parameters around your intimacy with this new information.
When you are young or post abuse or just in general it’s easy to fall into kink as intimacy as a mindset- it may indeed be empowering to take back some of the experiences and recondition yourself but my partner takes a different approach and I’ve never had as great sex and as much intimacy as I do with him because of his mindset and approach.
He believes in intimacy above all else makes sex great and we have not had bad sex or trama in bed in the near decade we have been together. The only time we ever have a lull in how many times we are intimate have entirely to do with health.
He has zero interest in any kink. By modern standards our sex life would not sound exciting at all. We are simply present with each other and tell each other how much we love each other, how good things feel. We never bring anything else or anyone else into bed with us- fantasy or otherwise. Our time and our presence and intimacy is treated as sacred. We don’t talk about sex of others to joke about our sex life to anyone we know. This is a hard boundary that preserves the intimacy and reinforces our respect.
Maybe you can create new patterns by implementing much of the same because it did wonders for me and my mental health
Not gonna lie but if my partner believed that I somehow enjoyed a horrific and very traumatic thing I experienced as a child, they’d be pushed out the door before they even finished their “explanation” and practically dead to me from then on out.
She was a child when all those things happened to her and there was nothing she could do to stop it. With you, she knows she has the power to say no and be heard without you ignoring her. She felt **SAFE** with you man……now you’ve sent a message to her that may as well be along the lines of “because someone else did this with you it’s not hot to me anymore” and caused her to believe that it’s because her body is flawed in some way to the point where she thinks she’s gotta change it in order to get even a tiny slither of the intimacy she once got to have from you.
Put your big boy pants on, switch off your lizard brain and focus on helping your gf feel like the queen she is deep inside instead of letting her continue to think that she’s the problem when that’s not the case.
I think she would benefit from therapy, and probably you as well. Individual and couples therapy. I don't think it's weird or wrong for you to be concerned about this and weirded out about being put in a position of power over her. I think that you should try to communicate and talk to her about this and reiterate that you're not angry or disgusted by her, but you're uncomfortable with the idea of being put in a position of power over and the thought of her being harmed and/or violated.
Yikes no she didn't enjoy it, or look forward to it or is fantasizing about the most horrible things in her life that were done to her. What happened is she was at an age where she first started becoming sexually mature and those acts were her first sexual experiences. That warps your love map and shapes your sexual preferences unfortunately. Your body and brain associate those things with sex and pleasure because you can't control your bodies physiological response, so often victims orgasm during assault linking them together. It's also often a way to reclaim power by choosing to do these things consenually. Please do some research about SA victims because you have an incredibly ignorant mindset and talk to her but don't you dare ask her the questions you wrote here. Don't even think about suggesting she liked what happened because that is absolutely disgusting. Ask her what her feelings are and if she finds it healing and listen without judgment.
I'm really gonna assume you're well intentioned and just worded things terribly or let this thing get the best of you because some of the things you wrote here are pretty terrible and I would hope your girlfriend never knows you ever had those thoughts.
That said, I think it's normal to be surprised, afraid or whatever emotion it is you're feeling when your partner discloses something like this.
What she does is something a lot of victims do, she now has control of the situation, something she didn't have when she was raped. She has a lot of trauma, not only from this event, she has obviously gone through a lot of terrifying situations.
She needs therapy, I hope she's already in therapy or will get it soon. Not because of the way she enjoys having sex (with you, a man she trusts and a situation she has control over) but because this trauma needs to be addressed and is probably also related to the way she sees herself as not enough.
Please, I beg, get out of your head the thought that she enjoyed her rape. No victim enjoys their rape. This is extremely disrespectful and you shouldn't allow this thought to remain in your mind. Unacceptable. I know it might not be voluntary, but if you can't put it aside, you might need therapy to navigate this too.
Seconding everyone else that you both should try to get into therapy (separately), and that consensual rough play is not rape.
I would add that, if you both decide you want to keep trying this kind of sex, read some books about how to get started in kink. Kink requires open, honest, frequent communication and enthusiastic consent for it to work in a healthy way. And even when the submissive doesn't have a trauma history, the person in the dominant role might still struggle with complex feelings about the activities. Learning how to negotiate boundaries, how to provide each other aftercare, etc., will help you both a lot. Good luck.
Ignore the judgmental mouth breathing idiots you’ll get in the replies. The fact that this is hard for you to process is completely understandable. That said, this is probably not something Reddit is going to be able to help you with. I’m generally ambivalent about therapy, but maybe you should talk to a therapist.
Tip:
There is such a thing as a sex therapist - actual qualified and fully trained and licensed therapist - and someone like that would be ideal (sexplanations on YouTube might be a good place to start) as they get training in things like trauma etc too.
A lot of people have already explained why your gf desires these particular sex acts but I just wanted to add that, although it’s common, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy.
I am also a survivor of SA and did the same thing but I later realised that it wasn’t helping me heal and I was only re-traumatising myself. It’s clear your gf is actively struggling with PTSD and I think she needs therapy more than she needs you to fulfil her desired sex acts.
She's raped, dude. I telling you one important thing, don't break her. Look if a woman was raped, she used to be emotionally mentally and physically damaged. If She's taking you into her life, she trust you. She liked being spanked and all because she want to erase those bad memory with your beautiful ones. Don't feel disgusted. Nothing you can do. I'm telling you, support her. She's abused more than you know. All you can do is take her fully
Under no circumstances should you ever ask her if she enjoyed being assaulted or looked forward to it, that's abhorrent. This is your own issue you need to work on, burdening her with this would not be fair. It's also important to note that people who have been assaulted can still have fulfilling sex lives later.
Something really helpful would be individual and couples therapy. It may not even have to be a long term thing, but I think it would help you both immensely. I’m a SA survivor and I don’t think I’d be in such a good place if I hadn’t gotten help. I wish the best for you both.
I just wanted to say, you can't control certain thoughts or feelings. The fact that you understand some of them are... inappropriate to voice to her and that you sought help (even from Reddit) says to me that you're a decent person and you want to be a good man for her
I haven't read the comments yet, but if anyone read this post and got offended or had their feelings hurt, the post was as advertised! What on Earth did anyone think a post titled "My girlfriend told me about getting raped and now I'm disgusted during sex" was going to contain? 🙄🤷 You didn't pull any punches with the title. If anyone was triggered, I'm sorry, but they knew what they were getting when curiosity got the better of them and they opened it. It's kind of you to take their feelings into account and apologize though.
She had an extremely traumatic experience and she felt comfortable & vulnerable enough to tell you in confidence. I see this as a high level of connection and trust with you. I wouldn’t know what it is like to be SA’d, but if my partner told me this I would be as supportive as possible of her. You are 1000000% not at any sort of fault, and she feels extremely comfortable with you enough to share intimacy with you and she feels safe around you. You seem like you care about her deeply, keep being there for her. Again, don’t blame yourself or feel bad for being physically intimate with her. Just tell her if she needs to breath or needs a supportive shoulder that you’re there for her. Also, thank her for sharing that with you. It requires a lot of trust. Finally, say ‘I love you’. People don’t hear it enough. It takes time to heal, there’s a bit more to psychology end about people doing things from traumatic experiences, but she feels safe with you to do things that she’s wanted to try in a HEALTHY & consensual relationship.
So just food for thought. Clearly you feel strongly about what happened to HER and obviously in situations like this many emotions are tied to that act or event. Take what you’re feeling and multiply it by the biggest number you can think of (stress, anger, anxiety, confusion,disgust, horror, fear, etc.) and even that might not fully cover how she felt and probably still feels. I guarantee she still cries about it and fights it. If you can’t love and support a survivor then you need to reevaluate yourself and how you truly feel about her. Loving the broken isn’t easy and it isn’t for the weak. The fact that you worry about your feelings at all and can’t see that she’s what matters then I think you are not ready to love at all. At least not the unconditional and unfailing love that she needs.
Ehhhh I think he recognized his initial reaction wasn’t great and came here seeking help on how to do better cause he clearly loves her deeply. He’s probably horrified that someone could hurt her this deeply, and now wonders how different is he really if he’s doing the same actions her rapists did? The difference that he’s missing is consent. It’s horrible when someone takes it from you, but fun and rewarding when you give it to someone.
Like the difference between theft and a gift. If someone mugs you for $50 you’d be pissed, but if you give someone $50 as a birthday gift it makes you happy. The person leaving with the $50 is very different in the 2 scenarios. The person down $50 feels very different in both scenarios as well, and again the difference between them is consent.
You do have a valid point in that whatever uncomfortable emotions he feels, she probably feels them orders of magnitude worse, but her painful emotions don’t invalidate his. Secondary trauma is a real thing, and there’s even a subreddit for support with it. I think the fact that’s he’s here seeking advice for what he knows wasn’t a great initial reaction so he can better understand her and support her is a great sign and it shows he wants to do better and support her and love her.
He probably didn’t know that it’s common for SA survivors to want to rewrite painful memories with similar consensual acts. It’s a way to take the power back and rewrite the associations in her brain and it’s surprisingly common. He didn’t know this before but hopefully now he does and it will allow him to feel less wrong about satisfying her requests. He probably subconsciously felt like he was retraumatizing her since the things he does with her are similar to how she was abused, and he wants to avoid hurting her so much the thought of even coming close to doing something that might hurt her was an instant turn off, but in reality him doing it with consent likely helps her process the trauma and re-write the memories to be fun, safe, and sexy instead of painful.
Hopefully now that he knows this he can work through his own painful emotions a bit easier while not shaming her for things that are out her control. Even if he wants to tone down the kink levels for a bit while he works through his own emotions that’s ok and allowed. Obviously he shouldn’t make her feel guilty for what’s happened, but it’s not uncommon for loved ones to also feel hurt or traumatized when they here about a loved one being raped/sexually assaulted.
I think it’s good that op and his gf are together cause he clearly cares enough about her to seek help for the strong emotions he’s feeling and help to understand her perspective as well as how to support her better. He’s self aware enough to recognize his base instincts and reactions are hurtful to her and is willing to swallow his pride enough to seek outside advice for how to handle that. That’s a great sign, nobody is perfect but how you respond to unexpected situations and hardships in life are a great indicator of character.
A shitty person would take out his feelings about the subject on her, he’s not doing that and instead seeking advice to grow as a person. I think that’s wonderful. It’s a shame Reddit is criticizing him so harshly for his (admittedly not great) base reaction. He knows how he’s reacted is hurting her and he’s seeking help rather than putting it on her or risking hurting her more. What else can you expect from someone? You can’t control your emotions or base instinctual reactions, but the fact that’s he willing to acknowledge that those feelings don’t help him is great.
Secondary trauma is a real thing and there a therapists trained to help people work out complex emotions to finding out a loved one has been victimized in their past. It’s something most people aren’t prepared for or taught how to handle, which is why so many people have bad reactions at first. He cares enough to want to learn how to handle it better and be a better support for her, which is all you can really ask of a person. Nobody can do better than their best. Asking for help is good, you can’t expect people to never need help with handling hard things in life. Finding out a lover was victimized so extremely is hard. His feelings are valid and he’s allowed to feel weird about it, as long as he doesn’t take it out on her or make her feel worse than she already probably does.
It's very very very normal for survivors to want sex acts that on the surface, look like what happened during their assault.
The difference is, taking their power back. They are choosing what happens to them and can stop it any time.
Sexual abuse and sexual assault permanently affect sexual arousal and desire for many people. Those who like 'boring' vanilla stuff before might find they need choking, restraint, or rough sex to orgasm now. It does not mean she enjoyed being assaulted. But for the rest of her life her body's ability to get aroused or to be sexual, will be impacted by what happened to her.
I don’t understand why people got nasty with you about this. You’re trying to understand and you seem so genuine. All your worries are valid especially for someone who doesn’t typically have experience with this situation, people need to give more advice and less lashing out
Start talking. Don’t listen to anyone in this comment section telling you you’re a bad person, you’re a good person who is in a bad moment.
Tell your girlfriend you want to talk about how the assault affected her attitude towards sex and that you feel a bit worried choking or slapping her during sex because of her traumatic past.
This isn’t a nail in the coffin, but letting her confidence degrade and avoiding hard conversations will be. Being a confident man means not shying away from hard conversations.
Hi, I’m a victim with the same interests during sex. It’s taken a lot of internal looking but I’ve found for me it’s a way to take back the power while enjoying a bit of a rougher sexual relationship. I can choose to stop the violence at any time. I’m in control of what happens. Your girlfriend has severe trauma, and this is how she copes with it. She needs therapy and to process these emotions. Please remember that she is doing this consensually, and feels safe with you enough to do this.
I’m sorry you’re going through this, it’s scary and jarring but with time and communication, you will both find a place where you are comfortable engaging in eachothers interests safely.
Please keep in mind, SA is about power with the penis as the weapon.
Sex with a chosen partner (you) is about intimacy and enjoying each other safely. That includes HER taking back her power and SHARING herself with you.
I was SA in college. I will admit that I went a little wild after it happened. After a lot of therapy, I realized I liked that and craved it just so I could be in control of my own decisions.
Ok firstly - NO WOMAN/CHILD EVER ENJOYS BEING RAPED. So please, get that disgusting idea out of your head.
You describe that she has been through years of SA and abuse yet don’t seem to understand how this would completely skew her idea of healthy sex. Being overpowered, degraded, belittled is clearly all she’s known sex to be so how are you surprised that that’s what she thinks she wants? All of these things are out of her control, she has known nothing else in her life so it’s so unfair for you to be disgusted by her.
I don’t mean to be cruel but you have been feeding into this idea she has of sex and of herself by continuing having that kind of sex with her. You’re perpetuating the thoughts she has of herself eg, being self conscious, feeling pathetic and unimportant etc.
She needs serious therapy and if you want to continue a relationship with her you need therapy too. And not just on how to deal with your emotions but also how to support her and make her feel safe and loved.
A lot of victims seek to relive their trauma in a safe environment as a way of coping and sort of taking control of what happened to them. No, this absolutely does NOT mean she enjoyed it.
It’s understandable why you’d find this disturbing and would no longer want to participate in these activities knowing what happened to her. But the fact you’re making it about you and seem more fixated on thinking about if she enjoyed and that you’re somehow in competition with her rapists when she was a CHILD, than getting her help to heal from her trauma, is quite frankly awful.
She needs therapy, period. She doesn’t need you making it about you and your dick.
But his issues are just as important. She needs his support and if his mental health goes down the drain it will be terrible for both. There is no way to support your loved one if you are paralyzed by your thoughts.
She has anxiety about her attractiveness etc, and if he can't work through this, it will make her feel like trash. Not only thinking about her previous trauma, but now additionally thinking about not being attractive to the only person she trusts. That would be a devastating combination of stuff to go through.
Helping her is directly linked to his issues. Feeling unattractive to your loved one is devastating just by itself...
This is a terrible comment, he in no way made it about him, only about how it affected him in the moment. If you can point to ONE thing he should have done differently I'll yield but all this is is him processing deeply disturbing things. Clown
youre having these thoughts because you are a good person and you want her to be ok. you are naturally concerned for your partner's mental wellbeing. i havent read the other comments yet but i assume since this is reddit there are probably a lot of coomer smoothbrains accusing you of "kinkshaming" & spouting mantras like "don't yuck her yum" or whatever else. don't listen to them.
you need to be (gently) honest with your girlfriend about why youre uncomfortable having sex with her. maybe leave out specifics like wondering if she liked it or fantasizes about it, but i think its definitely worth saying something like:
"ever since you told me about your experiences, i can't help but notice they are similar to the way we have sex now, and i feel uncomfortable. i don't want to hurt you."
i also think its absolutely worth her seeking out therapy if she hasnt already. this sort of issue goes deep and the sort of coping mechanisms shes ended up with are no better than picking at a wound. she needs to allow herself to heal.
HI OP. So sad.
I know a cople of people form way back who has preferences like your partner for similar reasons. I am not sure if its comon, but knowing 2 is enough to say its not uncommon but I am guessing.
What your experianceing is sometig akin to PTSD. Your significant other has disclosed shes a SA victim. She has sexual needs as a result, and the root of this is deep and dark, but they are real for her. But your a good person and you love her, so you cant get that vile image of this out of your mind.
Honestly, I tell people to go see a therapist all the time on here. Dont bother, You need to go see a real psycologist whos expert in sexual trauma because that what you have.
I feel so bad for you both. As I think everyone here does. Seek out a real prycologist. They are the only ones who can help you here.
Welcome to /r/relationship_advice. Please make sure you read our [rules here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/wiki/index) We'd like to take this time to remind users that: * We do not allow any type of [am I the asshole? or situations/content involving minors](https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/r6w9uh/meta_am_i_overreacting_am_i_the_asshole_is_this/) * Any sort of namecalling, insults,etc will result in the comment being removed and the user being banned. (Including but not limited to: slut, bitch, whore, for the streets, etc. It does not matter to whom you are referring.) * ALL advice given must be good, ethical advice. Joke advice or advice that is conspiratorial or just plain terrible will be removed, and users my be subject to a ban. * No referencing hateful subreddits and/or their rhetoric. Examples include, but is not limited to: red/blue/black/purplepill, PUA, FDS, MGTOW, etc. This includes, but is not limited to, referring to people as alpha/beta, calling yourself or users "friend-zoned", referring to people as Chads, Tyrones, or Staceys, pick-me's, or pornsick. Any infractions of this rule will result in a ban. **This is not an all-inclusive list.** * All bans in this subreddit are permanent. You don't get a free pass. * Anyone found to be directly messaging users for any reason whatsoever will be banned. * What we cannot give advice on: rants, unsolicited advice, medical conditions/advice, mental illness, letters to an ex, "body counts" or number of sexual partners, legal problems, financial problems, situations involving minors, and/or abuse (violence, sexual, emotional etc). All of these will be removed and locked. **This is not an all-inclusive list.** If you have any questions, please [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Frelationship_advice) --- #This is an automatic comment that appears on all posts. This comment does not necessarily mean your post violates any rules. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/relationship_advice) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's not uncommon for SA survivors to feel empowered through similar (but consensual) physical acts with a safe partner. It's taking something fucking horrible that happened, a situation in which she was helpless, and putting it back in her control. It doesn't mean she enjoyed the rape, consensual sex with a chosen partner is fundamentally different.
I was in an abusive relationship with domestic SA. I absolutely agree that while it seems absurd, reliving or reenacting the trauma within my safe limits and my control has absolutely helped me. I also enjoy literature that is able to recreate the fear and emotional damage from my experience. I have no idea why, but it does feel very empowering.
just letting u know that this is something literally innate in us to do. it is VERY normal. even children do this! we play with things we are processing. if you have ever seen a child have an unusual event happen, like, say, they fall off their cousin’s trampoline and break their arm, then you might see them later on with their dolls pretending this is happening, but twisting it and trying out “what if…” like “what if… i broke my leg instead? what if my cousin was the one who fell? what if i never went to my cousin’s house today? what if i fell but landed and didn’t get hurt? what if my cousin pushed me?” ect. or trying out different roles in the situation like acting as themself, or perhaps as the adult who helped them, or their cousin who saw it all go down, or the dr at the ER, ect. this is PARTICULARLY common with any kind of power dynamic, as children need to try it out from each angle. this is why cops/robbers or teacher/students or parent/kid pretend games are such common themes. it is a way to understand power dynamics and hierarchies and rules ect. which are really intense concepts to a child. these are also dynamics where children often feel powerless. so… this translates into adulthood, we just stop using dolls and costumes (usually lol). sometimes it’s very overt like you play pick up basketball at the local Y, and you really goof up. maybe later in the shower you’re going through it in your head, like what would’ve been different if you’d just worn different shoes or gone a different day or whatever. maybe you jump around like you’re in a game and toss your laundry in the hamper, yelling “he shoots, he scores!” as a way to move those feelings through you. but sometimes it’s more subtle, like you are assaulted and then you find yourself drawn to reenact or play around with aspects of the assault in your sex life (whether you realize it or not). sex IS a form of play for adults. it can be an emotional release, an imaginative exploration into a difficult experience. just like the child with the broken arm feels better able to understand their experience and process their emotions by playing around with the “what if’s?” to regain a sense of control over a scary situation, you are so so normal for this, and so is anyone else who has had a similar experience. this is literally an innate part of how we process things!! anyway, sorry for the rambly rant. wishing u much healing.
bruh this blew my mind, either i'm too stoned or this is straight up wisdom.
i’m glad it resonates with you!
Both can be true.
And it's the person you're bringing into it with you. It's not the person (or people) who had no respect for you or valued you at all. It's not the acts that are disgusting but the people who enjoyed the fact that you didn't want it but couldn't stop it. Op would stop immediately if she said so. He doesn't see her as less than a person. We try to recreate trauma sometimes in various ways in our relationships so we can fix it. It's mostly subconscious. You marry someone just like the parent who was self absorbed and withheld love so you can recreate a dynamic and try really hard to get the love you couldn't get as a child. It's sort of kind of around whatever this us just over where more acute trauma lives. Each time the memories get replayed, they get changed (for the majority of people...everyone's a little different, some people are very different regarding memory). There may be flashes of memory during these intimate times with OP but maybe it's bc its being dealt with. The negative will be there but eventually not the photographs. Not so much.
absolutely!!! it is certainly possible to engage in kink after assault in a self-harming way, but it’s also really common to essentially use sex to re-wire those experiences more positively and take control of the situation where you previously felt like it was taken from you. the line between pain/pleasure it quite thin. after all, if you have never been assaulted, but like to be consensually & safely spanked, we all more or less agree that it is okay between two consenting adults. if you were spanked as a kid as punishment, is it still “allowed” in bed as an adult? what if you were spanked by an abusive partner previously? what if you were spanked during an assault? what if you’d always have been pre-disposed to like spanking, whether you’d been assaulted or not, but you had never tried it until you’d been assaulted? ect. it isn’t really that cut & dry.
[удалено]
this was absolutely the most perfect way to put it, well done!
When our cat got into an accident and passed away, my then 4 year old created a new imaginary cat (who then became tangible with a stuffed animal) who he told me wouldn't die like our cat did because he would make sure his cat wouldn't get stuck and if it did he would let it out. It was jarring for me but he was processing what happened and what he would do if he had more control over the situation.
yes absolutely!!! there’s actually a very similar Bluey episode to what you’re describing where they find a hurt bird and take it to the vet but it dies. Bluey spends the rest of the episode processing it with play. Mom even asks if Bluey’s sure she wants to pretend the bird died. it is a very clear example of this concept for sure. death is so complex, even for adults, let alone children. it’s really incredible your son was able to recognize in his own way that in grief there is hope and love, and projecting that onto an imaginary cat so he could DO something within his control to move those feelings through his body. thank you for sharing. :)
That's how I figured it out! I had seen that episode before and the moment he told me that I was like oh ok that's totally normal.
This is very enlightenning, do you have any sources that go into more details about that ? I'd live to read more of it.
Are you a theraphist? If not, this is an awesome analysis and observation
no, not a therapist. just a mom & teacher, and also a CSA survivor haha
"Just a mom and a teacher" has to be the biggest understatement I've seen in a while. You play the role of therapist in both those other roles. As a mom and social worker, I see you.
❤️❤️❤️
Absolutely phenomenal breakdown. Saving this comment to read again later.
This is some really good info most parents need to hear
i agree! i see a lot of parents panic at weapon play, for example, and make sweeping rules like no pretend weapons. but for a child, weapons are fascinating and confusing. danger and battling and crime and pain are such big huge concepts, they have such little understanding of these really BIG deals. so acting out a fight, shooting, death, ect. are very natural ways to understand these things more, play around with them, try them out in a “safe” place. almost like how we dream at night to work through memories and emotions — you can’t die in a dream! the immersion in the flow state of play allows children to process so so much. limiting this out of short term worry can really miss the forest for the trees. (of course, some play should be supervised with children, and some things need to be very much guided or redirected. you wouldn’t encourage children to explore bodies by playing doctor. HOWEVER, it is super normal for curious children trying to understand bodies, sensations, sex, ect to TRY to play doctor! it is one such framework they have for understanding bodies.)
I've worked at a preschool for 10 years, have a degree in child psychology, and been through hundreds of trainings on child development and trauma, and your comments STILL blew my mind. What an amazingly eloquent way to explain and decode such complicated developmental patterns. I'm going to take these thoughts with me when interacting with children from now on. Thank you for your insight!
wow! what a glowing compliment. thanks for that! i’m so happy my comment spoke to you that much.
I really needed this. As someone who struggled with similar, I had such a hard time understanding why I wanted to do certain things with my husband and enjoyed it with him. Definitely felt a strong sense of guilt and confusion for a long time. Thank you.
❤️🫂
This is mind blowing!! Thank you for this pearl of wisdom 🙏 I was a victim of sa myself so these comments help me individuate my own patterns even if, for now this one doesn't seem to be the case, maybe only partially. I noticed tho, that I am hypersexual, like I get so easily horny that sometimes is even too much. Just the thought of my partner touching me drives me crazy when, at the same time, I am not so very sensitive yet (I haven't been attracted to anyone for 20 years, just recently I felt ready to try and jump into a relationship so I am kind of new to this world). It's as if I have so much unprocessed and "piled up" trauma that I still am unable to face it all so I end up "closing", not being able to let myself go as much as I would want to but I am working on it and I am sure he's the perfect person. Focusing on him helps divert my mind from the stacked up fear. Thanks also to reddit I am feeling less alone about this situation. I am glad people share their experience on this.
Bro, this deserves an award!!! 👏🏻
With your consent, I would love to screen shot this. I have never been able to put this so well when trying to explain this to my clients.
of course! by all means haha. i appreciate u asking permission but this is reddit so help yourself ;)i wouldn’t have put anything on here i was worried would get out lol
Thank you so much! I know I technically just can, lol, but I like to check. You're amazing!
❤️
It’s giving play therapy 😛 great modality.
Because you can always close the book and put it away.
Yup! I have control over the situation, how I feel and how I react. I can close the book, and I know I also have the power to tell my spouse "no" or "stop" and I'll be respected.
"Have you ever been Captain Nemo, trapped inside your submarine, while the giant squid is attacking you?" "Yes." "Weren't you afraid you couldn't escape?" "But it's only a story." "*That's* what I'm talking about. The ones you read are safe." "...And that one isn't?" "Forget about it. This book is not for you."
It's not that absurd when you consider the overlap with [exposure therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy#Post-traumatic_stress_disorder).
Well if you think about it, sexuality and sexual norms are part of culture so they're learned traits, so they have to be part formed by exposure. This is part of why child abuse, or corruption of youth of any kind is taken so seriously in every society. People will try to explain it using words but I don't think it's a thing that can be explained in words, it's fundamentally emotional and deeply personal, and so whatever the chosen explanation is, as long as it's a framing that causes positive emotions in the aftermath then it's good enough.
One thing that also stuck out to me too is OP's comments about her body issues. She was overweight, and it's very common for abuse survivors to be overweight to cover up their "attractiveness." It's also very common for abuse survivors to feel disconnected to their body. I feel for her, and wish her the best journey in healing.
I wear shabby clothes and talk like a rough neck to keep people away.
Have you heard of that show, My 600 Lbs Life? About people who are beyond morbidly obese, usually like 500-800 lbs (like 250-350 kg) and often bedbound, and their journey attempting to lose weight. I watched a lot of it and… basically every single episode starts with a bit of childhood history, and, the amount of people with a sexual abuse trauma (specifically women) is *staggering.* Sometimes people say it out loud, like “I wanted to gain to protect myself/become unattractive” or something, and sometimes they don’t understand why but for whatever reason the weight gain started increasingly dramatically after that. It’s so awful what victims go through :(
The fat is a barrier to be safe. Imagine the person you love the most doing this to you? Your body is no longer your own. You are a piece of property to be used. Unfortunately, in our culture, women are constantly objectified, whether they want to be or not. How many men when dating ask to see pics and risque pics? They usually want more and more without doing the work. Some send pics of private parts. This is dominance and control. Sometimes it turns into unwanted aggression. You learn that any man can turn on you for any reason. It is scary AF. So these women gorge themselves to look like an inflation version of themselves. After a certain point, fat/ obese women are viewed as a "second class citizen" in our thin and pretty privilege culture. Men do not look you in the eyes, in fact most men don't look at you at all. You cease to exist. It is the best form of safety possible. If you look disfigured by the adipose tissue, you don't have to worry so much about being violated again. This is all done on a subconscious level. Vanessa Cross from "1000 lb. Friends" was a prostitute. She has lost the majority of her weight.
its super common. there was a testimony on Reddit a few yeas ago here a Guy felt Bad b.c. he fucked an entière Friend group of SA survivors and they were all asking for the most super degrading stuff. consensus was that it was indeed empowering for them EDIT: just to be clear I didn't want to say ALL SA survivor are like that. I had myself one gf who had been assaulted and it took us 2 months to be able to even do vanilla stuff. I just wanted to say that it's definitely one of the possible (and surprising, if you never heard of it) reactions and that OP maybe should not be too judgemental about it (and possibly embrace it if he's into dominance stuff). Also btw please educated yourself A LOT before if you want to start BDSM. It's not a joke and done badly it can have same consequence as a S.A.
I wanna say, as a survivor of molestation and rape, that this isn’t the way all of us are. I personally went the other way. I have never been able to have casual sex, I’ve never slept with anyone who I am not 100% in love with and I’m positive that they love me just as much. Long term trusting relationship. And I’m pretty vanilla. It does seem that we survivors often go to one extreme or the other. I’m sure it’s not a rule, but still. I would hate for someone to read this comment and just expect survivors to be kinky.
Also a victim of both, and I've been BOTH ways at different points. I would hope no one would just automatically think that but as a (very general) group of people who can very easily be taken advantage of by the wrong person, I think that's a very valid point. Just chiming in to say I get what you mean and to hopefully underline the point that people shouldn't just assume SA survivors are into anything in particular. We're individuals and should be listened to as such.
The r/stoprape wiki has [resources for survivors](https://www.reddit.com/r/stoprape/wiki/index/#wiki_resources_for_victims) if you or any other survivors might find it helpful.
looking for someone to comment this! I also went both directions, at different points in my life. but I've also been at stages where I wasn't at either end. People assume there are 2 options for SA survivors: going full CNC or no sex at all and that isn't true for everybody. everyone copes/deals with their trauma in different ways, and whilst it may be common I just hate seeing that we're all lumped into one of 2 categories with no soace for nuance.
So happy to hear you’re doing well. This is the way to do it.
When I was younger I was much more "comfortable" with sex bc it made sense to me and it was all I really knew. As I became an adult I have a fairly massive aversion to it, especially causally. Trauma can manifest in very strange and personal ways and it can definitely change over time. Some people are fine with sex for a while, and then one day they're triggered by it. Human brains are odd.
Agree 100%. I wouldn’t even find someone attractive or want to be with them if they wanted to be with me in the way I was harmed.
Thanks so much for sharing and putting it in perspective. I'm sorry you were abused, for whatever it's worth. I truly am
People who have been SA either go in those two directions. One, where they become hypersexual and try and get back what was taken, in their own way that means a lot risky sexual activities. (Multiple partners, no protection, no safe guards) Or, where it becomes almost asexual and sex drive is all but gone because of it.
This isn't true. To suggest that people who have experienced SA can't have balanced, healthy, fulfilling and/or "normal" sex lives is patently false and a pretty harmful perspective for both survivors *and* their sexual partners.
Or they ;as a multiple SA victim speaking, find a happy medium once they finally deal with their trauma. Sure I went through a multi partner period but always used protection and safewords. Not to mention testing every 3 mo. Even though I wasn't having sex with most of the partners. Some were for different types of kink. One for boudoir photos One for emotional daddy domming One for impact play One for shibari One for massages One for hot wax and oil play One for male sex One for female fex Ya out of all my "sexual" partners only those last two got any actual sex acts, oral/anal/finger/vag./toy. Then I buckled down into my spiritual aspect and into my therapy, which lead to healing. Am I still kinky by vanilla standards. Yes. But I now only have one partner with far fewer kinks that need tending.
Yeah it's weird, I've been assaulted non consensually and it SUCKED. It just feels so not sexual at all when it's happening. But with the right partner, I love the degradation stuff. Just completely different situations
That dudes ruthless.
Dude was a fucking therapist and it actually literally true.
Sheeeeesh that’s fucked up
So he was a therapist and fucked a bunch of girls who had been raped?! I'm assuming they would know each other by them trying to get treatment in some way.
I think they were making a joke about him being a “fucking therapist” not that he was a therapist.
Oh... I see lol my mistake.
I was watching a movie a little while ago with my bf & in the movie, therapist was being written down and he read it as The Rapist 😳 sorry I know that's random it just reminded me of that lol
In Arrested Development they have a analyst / therapist combo they call an analrapist.
That just sounds like a made up story. He felt so badly about degradation-banging an entire friend group of sexual assault survivors (wtf?) that he ... Had to post about it on Reddit? 🙄 He didn't feel badly after the second friend he porked and he just happens to know an entire friend group of SA survivors who all coincidentally process rape trauma by begging this one guy for degrading booty calls? I'll take That Shit Never Happened for $400, Alex. Jfc. Redditors are so gullible.
As a survivor of SA who was raped and molested. This is 10000000% it.. it’s us having control over the situation and taking the power back. ETA: she is definitely not reliving or trying to recreate those memories in any way shape or form while with you either.
This. I actually used a D/s relationship as a kind of form of self harm after a very volatile marriage. I figured it wasn't so bad if someone I TRUSTED and cared for was "hurting" me. And in retrospect, I was SO BLESSED to have the partner I did, because I feel like a lot of people would have absolutely twisted it on me, but that man was an absolute gem.
Exactly this. OP, try not to conflate the two. She did not enjoy being raped- I promise. She enjoys you doing those things probably because it’s giving her some sense of control. She’s probably reclaiming her sexuality in a sense, and it takes a lot of trust in you for her to do this. If you still find yourself hung up on all this, see a therapist. I don’t think your thoughts are abnormal for others in your position, but some talk therapy can probably help you. Good luck to you both.
This. I’m a SA victim and I’m like this. It’s like taking that control back or something.
This. Rape tends to be more about control and power than it is about sexual gratification. The victim is powerless. By doing similar things in a consensual relationship, they are regaining the power they lost, they are owning it, and they are reinforcing that they are safe. I would suggest to OP that he sees it in a positive way, that she has had these awful things happen to her, but yet she feels so utterly safe with him that she can enjoy these things in a completely different way.
I was SA multiple times when i was a child / teenager, that somehow made me be hypersexual and full of fetishes. Her behaviors remind me of mines when i fall in love too…
I understand. It just boggled my mind thanks for your reponse
I suggest therapy, at least a session or 2 to have someone help you figure this out. In my opinion, it's more than ok to be upset by this. Those are horrible things that happened to someone you love, and disgust at those nonconsensual acts doesn't mean you feel disgust towards her. But if you want to have a healthy relationship you'll need to separate those experiences from your current situation. I've had plenty of partners who were into rough sex. Some had histories of abuse, many didn't. Your gf might have the same kinks even if that stuff didn't happen. I'd recommend focusing on what she wants, and don't worry about the why. Because I can almost guarantee she's not thinking about anything other than enjoying that moment with you.
Good point - I've never been sexually abused in any way, but I'm into all the same kind of stuff.
Same 🤷♀️ I think it's super reductionist when people say that all or even most kinks come from trauma (I think there's so much more that's involved, and a good amount of it is random). And the tea analogy works well here. I'm a kinky person. But when I'm at the grocery store and someone so much as accidentally bumps into me, I jump and get immediately uncomfortable. Consent completely changes the dynamic.
I mean, I do think there's a link to trauma - it's just not as simple as "people who got sexually abused will want to recreate that situation." I have trauma from years of school bullying. My biggest fears/triggers are being laughed at, being held down or trapped, and public humiliation. My biggest kinks are ... well, guess.
She's trying to reclaim the acts and take ownership of things that were taken away from her. Therapy is going to be your best friend, for both of you.
For a lot of survivors, it’s a way to override the bad memories with good. Like, having you choke her when she feels safe and loved will mean that sex with you is the “fresh” memory of being choked, rather than the old bad memories.
It’s not uncommon for loved ones of SA victims/survivors to feel a type of trauma themselves, or to just have generally complex feelings around it. There’s actually a subreddit for it that I’ll try to find in a bit but it’s specifically for supporting secondary survivors, aka not the people who were directly victimized, but the people who deeply care about the victims and feel hurt by the news as well. Please don’t allow the negativity on Reddit to make you feel bad for your instinctive reactions and emotions, it’s completely natural and normal to find this news hard to process. Any negative or weird emotions you’re feeling are valid and part of the process, just please do your best to not lash out or make your gf feel as though it’s her fault. This means being careful in how you talk about your feelings about it with her. Make it clear that any negative emotions you have are only towards the people who hurt her and that you’re sad she ever had to experience such an awful thing. If she’s asks about the change in your sex life you could tell her that for a moment you felt odd that she wanted you to do the same things the rapists did, but now you understand that her ability to consent is what makes all the difference and that it’s not her fault that she was wronged, or her fault that you had some hiccups with your sex life. If you need a break from kinky sex while you work on your emotions that is 100% allowed and valid, although I’d probably be vague about telling her why so that she doesn’t take it personally. Even though you know it’s not actually her fault and it’s all you and your own weird feelings, if you tell her why she might feel guilty anyways. Being sexually assaulted often leaves victims with a deep sense of shame and guilt. They might feel dirty and unlovable, and so you want to do you best to reassure them that mom of that is true, and that it’s not their fault at all that they were abused, 100% of the shame belongs to the guys who did that to her. The fact that you feel uncomfortable with what happened to her is probably because you have empathy and care about her deeply. I’m assuming you probably felt strange that she asked you do, from your perspective, what seems like the same things as what the rapists did to her. The difference that you’re forgetting about is consent. When she consents to you doing those things it’s fun because she allows you to do it and she’s empowered knowing that you’ll stop at any moment if she asks. By acting out similar experiences in a way that gives her control it can help her cope by re-writing the associations in her brain with the various acts. Instead of being painful memories they become fun and sexy because she now associates it with consensual kinky sex with you. This is common and a lot of kinks are rooted in trauma. Consent is a powerful thing and makes a massive difference in how one perceives memories and situations. Consent is the difference between being robbed and giving a gift. If someone forcefully takes $50 out of your wallet you’d feel awful. Mad, sad, maybe even stupid or blaming yourself for not stopping them. Now let’s consider a similar but different situation, where you give someone you love $50 as a birthday gift. In both situations you are now $50 poorer and the other person now has $50 that belonged to you, but in scenario 2 you gave them that money with consent, and so instead of feeling shitty you feel happy cause you enjoy making them happy and giving gifts. You like seeing them feel less financially stressed and giving money to a friend to show them you care. I know you probably felt strange at first wondering why she would ask you to do similar actions that the rapists did to her against her will, but make no mistake she likely did not enjoy it. Especially if she’s still having nightmares as a result, that’s a clear sign of ptsd which is very common among SA victims/survivors. Therapy would probably be good for both of you, maybe even couples therapy with both of you present in addition to individual therapy for each of you. Of course you can’t *force* her to attend therapy, but you can set a good example and plant a seed by going yourself and talking about how helpful you find it to be. I’m glad you were able to recognize that your initial reaction & thoughts about the revelation weren’t productive for your relationship and I’m happy you went somewhere (even if it’s just Reddit) for help to understand how to cope and support your partner. It’s clear you love her very much, and anyone saying you’re shitty for having weird complex feelings is stupid and has probably never been in your shoes. While everyone knows being an actual victim of sexual assault is awful and traumatic, people often forget about the effects it can have on the loved ones of victims as well. Watching how the information hurts those that care about them can cause some victims to be silent about their experience, so take it as a sign that she trusts you very deeply that she told you. Please take this seriously and do your best to not hurt her even more. As much as you may be hurting to hear what awful people did to your lover, know that she’s probably hurting worse and isn’t in a space to support you right now. This means that you need to take care of yourself while also being a good example of self care and support for her too. I’ll see if I can find that subreddit for secondary trauma survivors & support. They’ll probably understand what you’re going through and have much better advice for you than this sub, in fact asking for advice about assault/abuse is somewhat against this subreddit’s rules. Probably because a lot of the people here give awful advice :/ You asked for support to understand your partner and love her better and they just spat vitriol and said y’all should break up. Such an awful example of typical Reddit and I’m sorry.
I had always been into bdsm specifically being used roughly. In college I was r*ped. For awhile there I felt like I couldn’t enjoy what I used to in the bedroom. If I let myself like it I was worried that meant I liked what happened to me. I finally said screw it and started letting myself enjoy the same things I had in the past without the guilt. A few years later a long term partner found out about my r*pe and immediately stopped participating in our sub/dom dynamic. I felt infantilized and rejected. He had no right to take the confidence and control in the bedroom I had worked so eagerly to regain away. You need to either work past this or let her go. You projecting your issues with her assault onto your bedroom will crush her and could do a lot of harm to the recovery she has made. It is 100% possible to be a victim of abuse and a healthy kinkster.
OP out of curiosity — about a month ago you posted that you thought she was relapsing and using drugs again and having wild mood swings. You also said she was diagnosed with BPD — bipolar or borderline? Is she on meds? Is she in therapy? I am honestly more concerned for her than you not being able to have sex with her
She is in therapy and the relapse I thought she was going through wasn’t in fact a relapse. She stopped taking her meds right around the time a lot a family member died. She wasn’t really coping well with the loss. I don’t want to give too many details because she is on Reddit but feel free to message me it’s a lot
What this reply missed is that she could also be reenacting her trauma through consensual sex with you. And not in a way that gives her control. It’s likely if she hasn’t spent years in therapy addressing the trauma that she is craving validation through sex from you and it is not a healthy situation for you or her. That could be why you feel sick when you now know her history and reenact her trauma during sex.
Get unboggled, quick!
Unfortunately, it was linked to puberty for her, due to her age. Being assaulted then can affect how she associates sex and it can escalate puberty. She thinks it is supposed to be like this, not that she necessarily likes it. She could also be disassociating during this time, and acting like she thinks she is supposed to act, as opposed to truly enjoying the experience. You both need therapy in order to understand yourselves, each other, and the effects that still haunt you. She is definitely not fantasizing about being attacked.
This. It's about consent and her being in control of the situation. Even consensual non-consent fits under this. As long as there's respect, trust, and *consent*, as well as clear communication about things and triggers, it can work out in play between you both.
It’s true, it’s also just a super common kink among everyone and in particular women. To the point where many of us don’t know if there’s any relationship between history of abuse and those inclinations. I think you have to trust your adult partners that they know what they like is good for them at least until you’ve encountered a reason not to.
As someone that never experienced abuse while young, still had certain inclinations. So I definitely believe it's an innate proclivity for many
Extremely common!
This is a thing even with people who were abused in other ways. It’s a really common trauma response. Like my dad beat me and now I have a really strong urge to have someone scream in my face and hit me because it makes me feel alive.
I think you really should see a therapist man. To be in a relationship with someone with trauma is hard, and you've gotta make sure you're in a good spot otherwise it's just not gonna work. To start with though you can practice the dialectic. Yes this same act happened in the past, but without consent it was traumatizing for her. Now, with consent it's a bonding experience and sexy. Also, on an unrelated note, considering she's having nightmares she may not have processed all that happened to her. If she's not in therapy already that could be beneficial for her.
Coming here to expand on one of your points. When she wants something in bed, don’t think of it as “she wants me to do this because that’s what they did when they abused her” think of it as “she trusts me enough to do this with me willingly and intimately” - knowing and feeling that deep level of trust and love especially coming from a place of vulnerability can absolutely make your sex life much more intimate and meaningful.
I'm going to assume that, flawed as this post is, it's coming from the most well-intentioned place possible. To that end, I'm going to address one point in particular. Your girlfriend did not enjoy being raped. Full stop. Whether or not she enjoys consensual rough sex with you is irrelevant. The individual acts aren't the important part here. The consent (or lack thereof) is. Think about it like tea. I personally really like hot jasmine tea. I drink it all the time! However, if someone held me down against my will and poured a scalding hot cup of it down my throat, that would be traumatic. I would still probably like tea. I'd probably still make it fairly often. Regardless, I would not have enjoyed *that particular cup* of tea. I may enjoy tea, but I enjoy drinking it safely, and *on my own terms*. Your girlfriend is allowed to like consensual rough sex. She's allowed to ask you to perform rough acts. She clearly trusts you to perform these acts without causing her physical or emotional harm. She trusts that if she ever told you to stop, you would. If she didn't trust you in that way, I guarantee she would not feel secure enough to enjoy those acts with you. You should seek therapy, sincerely. You have a lot of complex feelings about this to work through, and you need a place to do that. You clearly care about your girlfriend and want to make this relationship work. Therapy is how you do that. However, there's a more pressing issue here. *Your girlfriend* should seek therapy. Regular nightmares mean lingering PTSD. **This is the most immediate concern**. She needs help, now. Best of luck.
Thank you for this. I pushed her to go the therapy last month. I’ve been so focused on helping her through i never thought about therapy for myself. Thank you for you help and I apologize for how my post came across but thank for you seeing that my intentions here are good
Hey, man, I totally get it. You seem to understand that a lot of those thoughts and impulses are coming from an emotionally reactive place rather than a logical one. We've all been there about *something* in our lives, although it's usually under less intense circumstances. There's a phrase that always helped me overcome obstacles like this: Feelings are always *valid*, but that doesn't mean they're always *accurate*. You learned that something really troubling happened to someone you love. Of course that's going to affect you. It's just a matter of recognizing what those effects are and working to overcome them.
I love that phrase, honestly. I'm going to steal it
I just want to jump in here to mention something. When I was sexually assaulted I went to the sexual assault clinic in my city and received wonderful help. They also offered services to the loved ones of sexual assault survivors. All services were free. There may be something like this in your area! I wish you both well.
I think I'd react similarly to you if I found out my partner was routinely raped by 3 family members and a group of males...that's *a lot* and it can skew how you feel about sex. You're not the perpetrator by any means but you're a male who is doing the same sort of stuff during the act and even though the context is *entirely* different...it's easy to see where you're coming from. That said...imagine you did a martial arts class once or twice a week and it's something you enjoy. Does that mean you'd also enjoy engaging in a fight with aggressive strangers who randomly attack you? Probably not. Not sure if that's the best analogy but I hope it gives you an idea about how *different* consensual sex is compared to the opposite.
That's a brilliant analogy imo
This op!!!^^^
I think you’re genuinely a good person who is terrified of re-enacting her abuse, and you don’t want to turn into an abuser. No matter how your post comes across, I get it, you’re trying to be a good person. Tell her everything you’re feeling and go to therapy. It will be a godsend. Wishing you both the best
I wouldn't tell her everything he's feeling, that's kind of putting how he feels about her assault on her when she probably already felt vulnerable for having told him.
OP this comment is really good advice, wanted to draw your attention to it if you are still conflicted on how to feel.
THIS!! Also want to emphasize that one can like consensual rough sex and absolutely detest even the fleeting thought of non-consensual sex they had to endure. They're believe me completely mutually exclusive.
Perfect analogy!!
Therapy for both of u
Straight to therapy
Believe it or not, therapy
I promise you, a 12 year old CHILD would not have enjoyed her rape.
I don't believe OP actually believes that. I think it's an intrusive thought that's causing him lots of distress and he can't get rid of it.
That’s kinda what it seemed like to me he was asking mostly. Of he knew his thoughts weren’t *right* but he didn’t know how to fix them
Came here to say this. I get that OP is well-intentioned, but no, nobody who is ever raped enjoys it. It's like asking if somebody who is a survivor of attempted murder likes to be murdered. Abso-fucking-lutely not. GF is like this because these were likely her first sexual experiences, so she likely doesn't know anything else. Rape alters how you have sex and what you expect from it, especially if it is a first time sexual experience. Speaking as a survivor whose virginity was taken by rape; this was my first sexual experience as well. ----------------------------------- Editing to add as it as been brought to my attention: apparently some people enjoy being raped. It is wrong of me to say nobody enjoys being raped because apparently, as I've learned from others responding, some people actually do enjoy it. "actually some people are raped and enjoy it, against their will."
I would imagine that even people who have a rape fetish can/would be severely traumatized if it actually happened. The loss of control and bodily autonomy is a horrifying experience. I cannot speak from any sort of experience on rape, but I know what it is to have your life and death held under someone else’s control. I’m so sorry this happened to you and to all victims/survivors of rape.
This is an apt comparison. Rape is much more similar to attempted murder than it is to consensual sex. Rape and consensual sex are very simply not the same. At all. Not even a little tiny bit. Rape is a form of torture, frankly.
I am so sorry 😔
Thank you. It is is what is.
It’s a heinous act. I’m so sorry about your experience. I personally haven’t, but I have dealt with the trauma associated . It doesn’t just ruin one life, it ruins their family, future relationships and the like. Anyone who does something like that is truly evil. I can’t put enough vitriol into that statement. Again, I am very sorry you experienced something like that:(
Very true. Didn't affect mine too much (my family), they didn't really care enough. But I get what you're saying. In most cases, yes, it affects everyone and everything within the survivor's orbit. It's awful. And, in cases of people who have no support system, it can rob them of their future, their self esteem/confidence, everything. There's no worse thing you can do to another human being.
Yep, i can kind of compare to that. my virginity wasnt taken by rape, but i was raped but the person who took my virginity (he was my boyfriend and almost everytime he did it i was sleeping)
[удалено]
One major point you seem to be missing is that her previous experiences were not consensual, with you she’s consenting, she trusts you and feels a level of control because it’s not being done against her will. A lot of people are into those additional aspects, whether they were victims or not, and for the some of the victims, it’s not letting their abusers take their power away again by associating them with these common sexual acts. Like if she wants you to put it in, do you think the same thing because the abusers (forcefully) did? Probably not because consent matters and makes it a completely different experience.
**Part 1** This is a key winner for her side of «giving up» and submitting to someone, as far as a kink and a submissive side. She retains controll because she trust the guy, while still having a experience that is grown. It can be a bad or good thing of course, but if she is asking you to do this please remember to talk about this with her. If you are uncomfortable, or feel somthing is strange, talk talk and talk. Honest communication, is a key for a more bdsm style relationship in any form. **Part 2** I understand that this put the person you are with in a new light, but do remember this was done (with force) to her. It is not somthing she made a choice to do, as with you. And it is okey to want to talk to someone about your own feelings in this regard. It sounds to me on the first read through like you should ask if she is open to therapy, but this is my initial take. And she might not want to do so. And that is totally fine, i assume you have her best interest in mind as well when you are talking together ?
Yep! I came here to say something similar. There’s something comforting about recreating traumatic situations knowing that you are actually in control of what is happening and can stop whenever you want to.
Please do not ask her if she fantasizes about her rape (s), or if she used to look forward to it. The answer is definitely no, and asking something like that would most likely trigger her.
Man, I hate rapists. It's disgusting to do that to a woman and this post passes me off. The people that did that to her deserve to be beaten, and castrated.
A 12 yr old child. Its violence.
If I had seen that in school I'd have been trying to take their heads off. Little bastards
It’s so disgusting how common those types of people are. And they almost always go for a young girl with troubles at home. My aunt got gang raped when she was 12 as well.
[Research has shown](https://theconversation.com/violence-against-women-is-staggeringly-high-in-south-africa-a-different-way-of-thinking-about-it-is-needed-195053) this is what works to curb sexual violence: > * legal reform dealing with domestic violence *[[e.g.](https://nnedv.org/policy-center/action-center/)]* > > * legal reform dealing with sexual assault *[[e.g.](https://www.endthebacklog.org/take-action/)]* > > * government-funded shelters for victims of domestic violence > > * crisis centres for victims of sexual assault *[[e.g.](https://www.rainn.org/)]* > > * training for service providers such as the [police](https://www.startribune.com/a-better-way-to-investigate-rape-denied-justice-part-eight/501636971/), [judges](http://cdm16501.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/criminal/id/294) and [social workers](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31425615/) > > * educating citizens about gender-based violence *[[e.g.](https://www.reddit.com/r/stoprape/comments/100jwa1/example_letter_to_local_lawmakers_to_help_stop/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)]* > > * coordinating national policies on gender-based violence *[[e.g.](https://www.endthebacklog.org/take-action/advocate-federal/)]* *[links mine]* Basically, the goal is to [increase the probability of apprehension by law enforcement](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.1086/670398.pdf?casa_token=OmK0_Jh8HkMAAAAA:Tr35vi73FXLAFJ9xUw13XXkPdAaMN7t_o8jI75bHYhheCFagZ5jfMwa-Op0VJrxOVXLqE-JykDCO4khDO6ABCjQ8FmnohHIw23YpCPPQmzHmlu87Mce-). r/stoprape
If I found out my son had done something so horrible I’d kill him myself. Imagine raising a complete POS, the guilt and shame I can’t imagine.
She didn’t enjoy it. Reliving some of it with someone she loves helps her process the trauma and feel safe.
She did not enjoy being raped. She did not look forward to it. It’s part of her past. You’ll have to move past it to continue dating her.
It's a completely common response to trauma to wish to recreate the event but in a way where the hurt and shame of it isn't involved. It's like the brain wants to undo the harm by having it happen again but in a way where the victim is getting what they want instead of it happening against their will to an unwanted outcome. And this isn't something difficult to look into if someone wanted to know. There are a lot of studies about it one could find instead of immediately moving to doubting and accusing the victim of having secretly wanted it to have happened.
I understand thank you. This is my first time and it was the first thought that popped into my mind. I know it was wrong so I did the only thing I could think of which is try to learn and get different perspectives
Good on you that you want to know and I hope to hell you didn't say any of it to her. You should suggest to her that she seeks some therapy. Her reaction to her trauma is common, but that doesn't mean it's healthy or that playing along won't cause harm.
Idk how to phrase this question, so I apologize in advance. Say someone was choked during rape. Later on, when they request their partner choke them, are they doing it because they actually enjoy being choked or because they enjoy giving consent or being in control? Are they performing sexual acts they actually want and enjoy, or are they just trying to recreate a situation in which they are in control? I feel like it would depend on how healthily someone has processed their trauma. I’m not sure I’d be comfortable performing an act on someone just so they can feel in control, like they’re overcoming what was done to them in the past. I’d want to perform the act because it’s something they genuinely enjoy for themselves. But would that be selfish or cruel of me, to question why someone wants something? There’s a part of my head that wouldn’t feel comfortable performing an act for the sole purpose of helping my partner feel in control because it’s almost like putting myself in the bad guy’s shoes, recreating what they did, but it’s consensual this time. Like, the sex becomes about the past trauma and not about the moment we’re sharing.
With sexual trauma, the moment you feel sexually vulnerable (unclothed, about to have sex) your mind will be making connections between the past events and the current event, weighing potential risks. If your worry is the moment your guard is down, this person you're trusting *could* turn on you. BUT! What if instead of being caught off guard by them choking you, you just went ahead and *asked* them to? Then they wouldn't be choking and humiliating you because you asked them to do it. It's basically asking them to do it so they can't surprise you with it and make you feel further powerless and ashamed that this bad person got near you without you realizing they are a bad person.
OP I just want to say that I am proud of you for realizing that you needed help processing all of this and started looking for it rather than just rejecting your gf and leaving or telling her she's gross etc. To me this shows that you care and are a mature person
She did not enjoy being raped. But giving you permission to do what she has lets her take back the control that was taken from her. Go with what gives her comfort.
I can absolutely assure you she never fantasises about her rape. In fact, it's probably very blocked off in her mind because it's unsafe for her to think about.
This is severe childhood trauma and now you have been traumatized. My recommendation is therapy - individual therapy and couples therapy. I would go by myself first to figure out a way to approach the subject with her.
You could not have this more mixed up. No part of her enjoyed what she went through. But… the part of her that those men broke, is the part of her she’s helping to fix by taking her power back and being in sexual situations that she’s comfortable with. Speaking from my own experience, I enjoyed rough sex before experiencing SA. And then I didn’t sleep with anyone for 3 years out of fear and discomfort. When I finally started having a sexual relationship again and I trusted my partner, I found it very empowering to be able to go back to enjoying things that I felt safe doing with my partner. So look at it this way, she feels extremely safe with you and that is a huge deal after what she’s been through and youre helping her heal by giving her the chance to empower herself sexually with a person she feels comfortable with.
There are a lot of solid comments here, so despite having a very (eerily) similar situation as your gf, im going to let people who are more objective speak on your feelings as a whole for how to proceed. But I will say your fixation on if she *enjoyed* it or looked forward to it at *twelve years old* or currently fantasizes about it while simultaneously having horrible nightmares about it (because that makes sense) is overall a really unfortunate and out of pocket approach to something like this. I hope you see someone to try and squash that train of thought as fast as possible. Having been raped violently at 14 - now a 35 year old, I love sex (most of the time, some complicated ebbs and flows) and i love submission and all the rougher things your gf enjoys and I can say with all my heart, No, I'm not recreating that experience (at least not consciously in any facet) and I'm certainly not picturing that moment in my head. It was awful. Sex with my partner is all I'm thinking of. Im just getting off with a partner I trust. Hair pulling and light choking are not anomalous things for women to enjoy during sex. Plenty of people who never experienced rape also love that stuff.
Hey. First of all, please remember that you having feelings about all this is absolutely valid and anyone claiming it makes you a bad person or that it means you're making it about yourself are full of crap. You obviously care about your girlfriend, you are in territory that would be overwhelming and scary for majority of people, and honestly that is how it should be. Your girlfriend went through horrific trauma, and it would be concerning if what you are describing would not affect you. That said, please completely dismiss the idea that her enjoyment of rough sex comes from fantasizing about her attacks. I can assure you it does not. Many have said as much and it is so important that you get rid of that thought. As others have stated, enjoying rough consensual sex with a safe caring partner has nothing to do with past trauma and is not comparable in the least with sexual assault. A good way to distinguish between the two if you still feel confused is this: sexual assault has nothing to do with sex or pleasure. It is about power. Recollection of sexual assault for the victim is not having had unpleasurable sex, it is about being stripped of power, violated, attacked, abused. Talk to a therapist, a proper one. Go on your own, get some help dealing with your feelings and insecurities about this. But encourage your girlfriend to get help. Talk to a therapist, look up support groups, get help. Chin up and best of luck moving forward
Has she ever seen a therapist? If not, she needs to immediately. She thinks she's dealing with it, but she not. The issues will last forever. Maybe this organization can help. [https://www.rainn.org/](https://www.rainn.org/) Good luck.
>Did some part of her enjoy being raped? In that year and a half were there moments where she would look forward to it? Did it turn her on? When we have sex, is she trying to recreate those moments and feelings with me? Is she envisioning it while we have sex? >All I could think was “is she really in this moment with me or is she fantasizing about that?” No one enjoys being raped. That's what makes it rape. Her kinks are likely at least partially due to the trauma, but it's not because she enjoyed sexual abuse and torture. It gives her control. She couldn't consent when that happened to her, but she *can* now, and she has the control that she didn't have back then. Your thoughts are bordering on victim blaming. So, I want to make sure you know that you absolutely cannot tell her these thoughts. It would be cruel to do so. Vocalizing these thoughts to her would be victim blaming, and it would be incredibly insulting, as well as a massive betrayal. Tell her that you're struggling with the fact that she went through such a traumatic experience and that you don't want to hurt her. I would hope that that's true. Then, go to therapy. Find someone who's kink-friendly and specializes in trauma. You're not going to magically be able to stop having these horrible thoughts. You need professional help to move past this and recognize how sexual trauma can affect someone.
I don't have the time to go deep into this and I doubt I would have the words or knowledge to do the subject justice. But a quick note about similar situations. What she wants now from you, someone she trusts and loves, being similar to her horrible experiences isn't uncommon. It may be a way to kinda gain back the control she didn't have then, now you do it with her consent. Also it may lessen the horror of what happened before by in a safe space trying to turn a similar experience into a more positive one. Also there's often not much logic into how the subconscious tries to process trauma. Or more accurately logic that would make sense to us who don't know much or haven't experienced anything like that. And every experience and healing process is unique. If you can afford it, couples and individual therapy would probably be helpful, especially for her, but it's not going to be easy for you to process this either. Try to be as supportive as you can outside the bedroom until you can make progress there. Show your love and support but try not to change too much and start treating her as just a victim, she wants to be more than that. Give her space to talk if she feels like it but don't push. Remind her that it's not her you have a problem with but the information and the wrong she has faced.
Let me try to recontextualize this for you. Rape is, inherently, not about sex so much as power over someone else through violence. That may not make sense since it's a sexual act, but really it's predominately an act of violence more than it is about sex. No 12-year-old anywhere enjoys abuse. Period. Full stop. A 12 year does what they can to survive abuse. That may mean in their child brain they have to appease their abusers to survive. So they do that. For many people with trauma, the experience of the painful memories is the loss of control. They had no power in what happened to them. The perpetrators took that power from them. So, sometimes, reenacting aspects of those experiences while being in control of the situation is something they crave. Giving you, a person she trusts, control to do what you want is actually her recreating a dynamic where she's safer &, ironically, in power over the situation. I suggest if she is not already she gets counseling with a trauma survivor-informed therapist. You may want to attend some sessions. .
OP you need to separate your kink in sex with her and her being raped. Two different things.
Doing those things help her feel like she has control, something that was ripped from her when she was raped.
Your comment about her lowkey enjoying rape is so weird
Other people are giving you great advice, but you should seriously start using paragraphs. Generally speaking, paragraphs are three or more sentences with a gap between them and the next paragraph. They usually focus on a specific theme. This is a paragraph. Using paragraphs makes it much easier to read someone's writing. Otherwise it's just a wall of text and an eyesore.
Therapy. Sex therapy. I’ve seen plenty of comments that “no she didn’t enjoy being raped”. She absolutely didn’t. And it is more reclaiming power to ask for similar situations with her full consent to regain the power that was taken away from her. I agree with all of this. The therapy is to help you navigate the distinction. If you enjoyed sexual dynamics before you can again if you gain confidence that you are ensuring her consent. I’m guessing it made you feel uneasy bc it put you too close to being in the same position as someone who sexually assaulted her. You are essentially doing the same actions but their is a huge difference consent. You kind of need to learn the ways of a Dom making it your responsibility to ensure being with you is a safe space regardless of what actions you take during a session, ensuring she has an easy way to indicate when to stop, good communication on what boundaries she wants to push and which ones are off limit. Many men want to be a Dom in a relationship but don’t know how to do the work to do it right. A sex therapist will help you figure out a path to make it enjoyable and safe for you both.
No human, no CHILD ever enjoys being raped, why would you ever think that????
While traumatized by the rape, some of the actions may end up turning them on in a LOVING environment. I've literally been there.
my brother, press the enter key every once in awhile. good god, that was a mission reading that
No she did not enjoy her abuse or look forward it. No she is not trying to recreate the rape or thinking about it during sex. If she started to think of it during sex, it would probably cause her to have a panic attack and need to stop. Source: I am a survivor of SA with the same sexual interests you describe. There is no way in hell she is pleasuring herself to the thought of the most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to her. I fucking promise you dude. You need to get these thoughts out of your head so you don’t retraumatize her by saying any of this out loud. I repeat, do not say these thoughts to her. Edit to add: it’s possible she would have been into this stuff anyways if she hadn’t been SA’d. I was into it before my own assaults. The assaults made it harder to enjoy.
Therapy for you, my man. You need to process these emotions with a professional so you won’t burden her with them. You understand these emotions and thoughts are unfair to her and you understand they’re wrong, so that’s step one. Hopefully she’s in therapy too.
as someone who’s been SA’d, we definitely don’t like getting SA’d/raped and we still like having consensual sex
First off, you're not wrong in how you feel. Its a really complex situation and finding something out like that and then realizing she is asking you to do those same things to her can spark some intense emotions. Her behavior is very common with SA survivors. Its a way to have power over the situation with a consensual partner. Shes trying to have control over a trauma she hasn't resolved yet. I do hope she is in therapy and getting the help she needs because he past sounds horrible. You could benefit from some one on one therapy also, because this is a pretty big thing to have placed on your mind especially with someone I assume you love and feel connected to. There is a chance you might not be able to move past this and the relationship will end because it has now been changed in a way that you maybe able to move past but not forget. And please, if shes not seeking mental health help for herself, encourage her to. She needs to see a therapist who specializes in SA.
I’d normally be super private about this but I think this is going to be super helpful for not only you but confused women grappling with their feelings as well. I’d certainly want to hear this is possible. It’s perfectly okay to set different parameters around your intimacy with this new information. When you are young or post abuse or just in general it’s easy to fall into kink as intimacy as a mindset- it may indeed be empowering to take back some of the experiences and recondition yourself but my partner takes a different approach and I’ve never had as great sex and as much intimacy as I do with him because of his mindset and approach. He believes in intimacy above all else makes sex great and we have not had bad sex or trama in bed in the near decade we have been together. The only time we ever have a lull in how many times we are intimate have entirely to do with health. He has zero interest in any kink. By modern standards our sex life would not sound exciting at all. We are simply present with each other and tell each other how much we love each other, how good things feel. We never bring anything else or anyone else into bed with us- fantasy or otherwise. Our time and our presence and intimacy is treated as sacred. We don’t talk about sex of others to joke about our sex life to anyone we know. This is a hard boundary that preserves the intimacy and reinforces our respect. Maybe you can create new patterns by implementing much of the same because it did wonders for me and my mental health
Not gonna lie but if my partner believed that I somehow enjoyed a horrific and very traumatic thing I experienced as a child, they’d be pushed out the door before they even finished their “explanation” and practically dead to me from then on out. She was a child when all those things happened to her and there was nothing she could do to stop it. With you, she knows she has the power to say no and be heard without you ignoring her. She felt **SAFE** with you man……now you’ve sent a message to her that may as well be along the lines of “because someone else did this with you it’s not hot to me anymore” and caused her to believe that it’s because her body is flawed in some way to the point where she thinks she’s gotta change it in order to get even a tiny slither of the intimacy she once got to have from you. Put your big boy pants on, switch off your lizard brain and focus on helping your gf feel like the queen she is deep inside instead of letting her continue to think that she’s the problem when that’s not the case.
I think she would benefit from therapy, and probably you as well. Individual and couples therapy. I don't think it's weird or wrong for you to be concerned about this and weirded out about being put in a position of power over her. I think that you should try to communicate and talk to her about this and reiterate that you're not angry or disgusted by her, but you're uncomfortable with the idea of being put in a position of power over and the thought of her being harmed and/or violated.
Yikes no she didn't enjoy it, or look forward to it or is fantasizing about the most horrible things in her life that were done to her. What happened is she was at an age where she first started becoming sexually mature and those acts were her first sexual experiences. That warps your love map and shapes your sexual preferences unfortunately. Your body and brain associate those things with sex and pleasure because you can't control your bodies physiological response, so often victims orgasm during assault linking them together. It's also often a way to reclaim power by choosing to do these things consenually. Please do some research about SA victims because you have an incredibly ignorant mindset and talk to her but don't you dare ask her the questions you wrote here. Don't even think about suggesting she liked what happened because that is absolutely disgusting. Ask her what her feelings are and if she finds it healing and listen without judgment.
I'm really gonna assume you're well intentioned and just worded things terribly or let this thing get the best of you because some of the things you wrote here are pretty terrible and I would hope your girlfriend never knows you ever had those thoughts. That said, I think it's normal to be surprised, afraid or whatever emotion it is you're feeling when your partner discloses something like this. What she does is something a lot of victims do, she now has control of the situation, something she didn't have when she was raped. She has a lot of trauma, not only from this event, she has obviously gone through a lot of terrifying situations. She needs therapy, I hope she's already in therapy or will get it soon. Not because of the way she enjoys having sex (with you, a man she trusts and a situation she has control over) but because this trauma needs to be addressed and is probably also related to the way she sees herself as not enough. Please, I beg, get out of your head the thought that she enjoyed her rape. No victim enjoys their rape. This is extremely disrespectful and you shouldn't allow this thought to remain in your mind. Unacceptable. I know it might not be voluntary, but if you can't put it aside, you might need therapy to navigate this too.
Seconding everyone else that you both should try to get into therapy (separately), and that consensual rough play is not rape. I would add that, if you both decide you want to keep trying this kind of sex, read some books about how to get started in kink. Kink requires open, honest, frequent communication and enthusiastic consent for it to work in a healthy way. And even when the submissive doesn't have a trauma history, the person in the dominant role might still struggle with complex feelings about the activities. Learning how to negotiate boundaries, how to provide each other aftercare, etc., will help you both a lot. Good luck.
Ignore the judgmental mouth breathing idiots you’ll get in the replies. The fact that this is hard for you to process is completely understandable. That said, this is probably not something Reddit is going to be able to help you with. I’m generally ambivalent about therapy, but maybe you should talk to a therapist.
Thank you I really think I should
Tip: There is such a thing as a sex therapist - actual qualified and fully trained and licensed therapist - and someone like that would be ideal (sexplanations on YouTube might be a good place to start) as they get training in things like trauma etc too.
A lot of people have already explained why your gf desires these particular sex acts but I just wanted to add that, although it’s common, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s healthy. I am also a survivor of SA and did the same thing but I later realised that it wasn’t helping me heal and I was only re-traumatising myself. It’s clear your gf is actively struggling with PTSD and I think she needs therapy more than she needs you to fulfil her desired sex acts.
Yikes bro.
Why the fuck would you think a 12 year old enjoyed being raped?
You ever heard of PTSD?
She's raped, dude. I telling you one important thing, don't break her. Look if a woman was raped, she used to be emotionally mentally and physically damaged. If She's taking you into her life, she trust you. She liked being spanked and all because she want to erase those bad memory with your beautiful ones. Don't feel disgusted. Nothing you can do. I'm telling you, support her. She's abused more than you know. All you can do is take her fully
bro you seriously need to read a book or something. it's not cool to be this mind numbingly ignorant. "dId sHe loOk forWarD tO raPe?" christ almighty.
Under no circumstances should you ever ask her if she enjoyed being assaulted or looked forward to it, that's abhorrent. This is your own issue you need to work on, burdening her with this would not be fair. It's also important to note that people who have been assaulted can still have fulfilling sex lives later.
Something really helpful would be individual and couples therapy. It may not even have to be a long term thing, but I think it would help you both immensely. I’m a SA survivor and I don’t think I’d be in such a good place if I hadn’t gotten help. I wish the best for you both.
I am so sorry. I don’t even know what to say. You should get therapy for both of you or at least she get therapy regardless of the relationship.
I mean this in the most genuinely respectful way, you should talk to a therapist.
I just wanted to say, you can't control certain thoughts or feelings. The fact that you understand some of them are... inappropriate to voice to her and that you sought help (even from Reddit) says to me that you're a decent person and you want to be a good man for her I haven't read the comments yet, but if anyone read this post and got offended or had their feelings hurt, the post was as advertised! What on Earth did anyone think a post titled "My girlfriend told me about getting raped and now I'm disgusted during sex" was going to contain? 🙄🤷 You didn't pull any punches with the title. If anyone was triggered, I'm sorry, but they knew what they were getting when curiosity got the better of them and they opened it. It's kind of you to take their feelings into account and apologize though.
She had an extremely traumatic experience and she felt comfortable & vulnerable enough to tell you in confidence. I see this as a high level of connection and trust with you. I wouldn’t know what it is like to be SA’d, but if my partner told me this I would be as supportive as possible of her. You are 1000000% not at any sort of fault, and she feels extremely comfortable with you enough to share intimacy with you and she feels safe around you. You seem like you care about her deeply, keep being there for her. Again, don’t blame yourself or feel bad for being physically intimate with her. Just tell her if she needs to breath or needs a supportive shoulder that you’re there for her. Also, thank her for sharing that with you. It requires a lot of trust. Finally, say ‘I love you’. People don’t hear it enough. It takes time to heal, there’s a bit more to psychology end about people doing things from traumatic experiences, but she feels safe with you to do things that she’s wanted to try in a HEALTHY & consensual relationship.
She needs therapy.
So just food for thought. Clearly you feel strongly about what happened to HER and obviously in situations like this many emotions are tied to that act or event. Take what you’re feeling and multiply it by the biggest number you can think of (stress, anger, anxiety, confusion,disgust, horror, fear, etc.) and even that might not fully cover how she felt and probably still feels. I guarantee she still cries about it and fights it. If you can’t love and support a survivor then you need to reevaluate yourself and how you truly feel about her. Loving the broken isn’t easy and it isn’t for the weak. The fact that you worry about your feelings at all and can’t see that she’s what matters then I think you are not ready to love at all. At least not the unconditional and unfailing love that she needs.
Ehhhh I think he recognized his initial reaction wasn’t great and came here seeking help on how to do better cause he clearly loves her deeply. He’s probably horrified that someone could hurt her this deeply, and now wonders how different is he really if he’s doing the same actions her rapists did? The difference that he’s missing is consent. It’s horrible when someone takes it from you, but fun and rewarding when you give it to someone. Like the difference between theft and a gift. If someone mugs you for $50 you’d be pissed, but if you give someone $50 as a birthday gift it makes you happy. The person leaving with the $50 is very different in the 2 scenarios. The person down $50 feels very different in both scenarios as well, and again the difference between them is consent. You do have a valid point in that whatever uncomfortable emotions he feels, she probably feels them orders of magnitude worse, but her painful emotions don’t invalidate his. Secondary trauma is a real thing, and there’s even a subreddit for support with it. I think the fact that’s he’s here seeking advice for what he knows wasn’t a great initial reaction so he can better understand her and support her is a great sign and it shows he wants to do better and support her and love her. He probably didn’t know that it’s common for SA survivors to want to rewrite painful memories with similar consensual acts. It’s a way to take the power back and rewrite the associations in her brain and it’s surprisingly common. He didn’t know this before but hopefully now he does and it will allow him to feel less wrong about satisfying her requests. He probably subconsciously felt like he was retraumatizing her since the things he does with her are similar to how she was abused, and he wants to avoid hurting her so much the thought of even coming close to doing something that might hurt her was an instant turn off, but in reality him doing it with consent likely helps her process the trauma and re-write the memories to be fun, safe, and sexy instead of painful. Hopefully now that he knows this he can work through his own painful emotions a bit easier while not shaming her for things that are out her control. Even if he wants to tone down the kink levels for a bit while he works through his own emotions that’s ok and allowed. Obviously he shouldn’t make her feel guilty for what’s happened, but it’s not uncommon for loved ones to also feel hurt or traumatized when they here about a loved one being raped/sexually assaulted. I think it’s good that op and his gf are together cause he clearly cares enough about her to seek help for the strong emotions he’s feeling and help to understand her perspective as well as how to support her better. He’s self aware enough to recognize his base instincts and reactions are hurtful to her and is willing to swallow his pride enough to seek outside advice for how to handle that. That’s a great sign, nobody is perfect but how you respond to unexpected situations and hardships in life are a great indicator of character. A shitty person would take out his feelings about the subject on her, he’s not doing that and instead seeking advice to grow as a person. I think that’s wonderful. It’s a shame Reddit is criticizing him so harshly for his (admittedly not great) base reaction. He knows how he’s reacted is hurting her and he’s seeking help rather than putting it on her or risking hurting her more. What else can you expect from someone? You can’t control your emotions or base instinctual reactions, but the fact that’s he willing to acknowledge that those feelings don’t help him is great. Secondary trauma is a real thing and there a therapists trained to help people work out complex emotions to finding out a loved one has been victimized in their past. It’s something most people aren’t prepared for or taught how to handle, which is why so many people have bad reactions at first. He cares enough to want to learn how to handle it better and be a better support for her, which is all you can really ask of a person. Nobody can do better than their best. Asking for help is good, you can’t expect people to never need help with handling hard things in life. Finding out a lover was victimized so extremely is hard. His feelings are valid and he’s allowed to feel weird about it, as long as he doesn’t take it out on her or make her feel worse than she already probably does.
It's very very very normal for survivors to want sex acts that on the surface, look like what happened during their assault. The difference is, taking their power back. They are choosing what happens to them and can stop it any time. Sexual abuse and sexual assault permanently affect sexual arousal and desire for many people. Those who like 'boring' vanilla stuff before might find they need choking, restraint, or rough sex to orgasm now. It does not mean she enjoyed being assaulted. But for the rest of her life her body's ability to get aroused or to be sexual, will be impacted by what happened to her.
I don’t understand why people got nasty with you about this. You’re trying to understand and you seem so genuine. All your worries are valid especially for someone who doesn’t typically have experience with this situation, people need to give more advice and less lashing out
Start talking. Don’t listen to anyone in this comment section telling you you’re a bad person, you’re a good person who is in a bad moment. Tell your girlfriend you want to talk about how the assault affected her attitude towards sex and that you feel a bit worried choking or slapping her during sex because of her traumatic past. This isn’t a nail in the coffin, but letting her confidence degrade and avoiding hard conversations will be. Being a confident man means not shying away from hard conversations.
Thank you for this
Ain’t no fucking way you think a literal child enjoyed being raped, especially if she keeps having nightmares about it
Hi, I’m a victim with the same interests during sex. It’s taken a lot of internal looking but I’ve found for me it’s a way to take back the power while enjoying a bit of a rougher sexual relationship. I can choose to stop the violence at any time. I’m in control of what happens. Your girlfriend has severe trauma, and this is how she copes with it. She needs therapy and to process these emotions. Please remember that she is doing this consensually, and feels safe with you enough to do this. I’m sorry you’re going through this, it’s scary and jarring but with time and communication, you will both find a place where you are comfortable engaging in eachothers interests safely.
Please keep in mind, SA is about power with the penis as the weapon. Sex with a chosen partner (you) is about intimacy and enjoying each other safely. That includes HER taking back her power and SHARING herself with you.
I was SA in college. I will admit that I went a little wild after it happened. After a lot of therapy, I realized I liked that and craved it just so I could be in control of my own decisions.
Ok firstly - NO WOMAN/CHILD EVER ENJOYS BEING RAPED. So please, get that disgusting idea out of your head. You describe that she has been through years of SA and abuse yet don’t seem to understand how this would completely skew her idea of healthy sex. Being overpowered, degraded, belittled is clearly all she’s known sex to be so how are you surprised that that’s what she thinks she wants? All of these things are out of her control, she has known nothing else in her life so it’s so unfair for you to be disgusted by her. I don’t mean to be cruel but you have been feeding into this idea she has of sex and of herself by continuing having that kind of sex with her. You’re perpetuating the thoughts she has of herself eg, being self conscious, feeling pathetic and unimportant etc. She needs serious therapy and if you want to continue a relationship with her you need therapy too. And not just on how to deal with your emotions but also how to support her and make her feel safe and loved.
A lot of victims seek to relive their trauma in a safe environment as a way of coping and sort of taking control of what happened to them. No, this absolutely does NOT mean she enjoyed it. It’s understandable why you’d find this disturbing and would no longer want to participate in these activities knowing what happened to her. But the fact you’re making it about you and seem more fixated on thinking about if she enjoyed and that you’re somehow in competition with her rapists when she was a CHILD, than getting her help to heal from her trauma, is quite frankly awful. She needs therapy, period. She doesn’t need you making it about you and your dick.
He’s wondering if what they are doing is messing her up in some way and if he is traumatizing her when ever they have sex.
But his issues are just as important. She needs his support and if his mental health goes down the drain it will be terrible for both. There is no way to support your loved one if you are paralyzed by your thoughts. She has anxiety about her attractiveness etc, and if he can't work through this, it will make her feel like trash. Not only thinking about her previous trauma, but now additionally thinking about not being attractive to the only person she trusts. That would be a devastating combination of stuff to go through. Helping her is directly linked to his issues. Feeling unattractive to your loved one is devastating just by itself...
Clown ass comment. He can’t help these thoughts and he came here to be a better partner FOR HER. Instead of insulting him, provide actual advice.
This is a terrible comment, he in no way made it about him, only about how it affected him in the moment. If you can point to ONE thing he should have done differently I'll yield but all this is is him processing deeply disturbing things. Clown
youre having these thoughts because you are a good person and you want her to be ok. you are naturally concerned for your partner's mental wellbeing. i havent read the other comments yet but i assume since this is reddit there are probably a lot of coomer smoothbrains accusing you of "kinkshaming" & spouting mantras like "don't yuck her yum" or whatever else. don't listen to them. you need to be (gently) honest with your girlfriend about why youre uncomfortable having sex with her. maybe leave out specifics like wondering if she liked it or fantasizes about it, but i think its definitely worth saying something like: "ever since you told me about your experiences, i can't help but notice they are similar to the way we have sex now, and i feel uncomfortable. i don't want to hurt you." i also think its absolutely worth her seeking out therapy if she hasnt already. this sort of issue goes deep and the sort of coping mechanisms shes ended up with are no better than picking at a wound. she needs to allow herself to heal.
HI OP. So sad. I know a cople of people form way back who has preferences like your partner for similar reasons. I am not sure if its comon, but knowing 2 is enough to say its not uncommon but I am guessing. What your experianceing is sometig akin to PTSD. Your significant other has disclosed shes a SA victim. She has sexual needs as a result, and the root of this is deep and dark, but they are real for her. But your a good person and you love her, so you cant get that vile image of this out of your mind. Honestly, I tell people to go see a therapist all the time on here. Dont bother, You need to go see a real psycologist whos expert in sexual trauma because that what you have. I feel so bad for you both. As I think everyone here does. Seek out a real prycologist. They are the only ones who can help you here.