I was reading in another thread that you were abused as a child. My wife was too. I was wondering how your recovery process has unfolded. What were the milestones in your recovery? What were the triumphs and the failures (if any)? How long has the process taken and what did you do, or are you doing, to get there? What have been the most difficult parts and how did you overcome them? Do you feel like you really understand, now, how your partner felt during the "dry years"? If so, how do you think he felt?
I for one have been really impressed with most of the advice you have given here and I am very happy to know that you are overcoming your demons. You sound like an extremely strong person.
By the way, if this stuff is too hard or personal just tell me to take a flying leap. :-)
My wife was neglected as a child, no real father at home, alcoholic mother, lots of men through the house. Maybe even sexual abuse form some of these men. My wife says there was only ATTEMPTED assault, but I wonder. My wife actually raised most of her siblings from abouit the age of 9 on.
Which thread were you reading so I don't repeat stuff you've already read?
I don't mind at all talking about this, but it's going to take me some time to pull my thoughts together for you. Hang tight. It'll probably be tomorrow sometime.
Okay, here goes. It's really long. Sorry. Print it out, maybe share it with your wife. Ask any questions that come to mind. I apologize if it sometimes doesn't 'flow' well.
For a number of years, I had no idea how the sexual molestation was affecting me. After all, I was still able to have sex, so I didn’t think I was having an adverse reaction to it. Thought I had gotten over it, and it was all in the past.
You need to understand that sexual molestation is not rape (though it can be). It is the worst sort of emotional and mental manipulation/blackmail on the planet. It is more a crime against the psyche than it is against the body, though most victims don’t even know this themselves.
I initially went to marriage counseling because I felt my h and I were having a serious problem communicating with one another. I didn’t go because I thought I needed to get over something, you know?
Through counseling, I brought up the constant fighting re: sex. I told him how at times, if my h initiated, I would experience what I call ‘black rages,’ and I didn’t understand why I would be feeling that with my H. Rather than acting upon the feeling, I would become almost a zombie. Hard to explain. Hm.
I guess the best way to explain to you what a Black Rage feels like is this. The day my abuse stopped was the day I physically lifted my abuser by his throat and slammed him against the wall. While holding him suspended off the floor against the wall, I told him that if he didn’t stop, I would kill him. I meant every word.
In order for me to lift a man six inches taller than me and a good 50-60 pounds heavier than me off the floor, you can well image the amount of rage pouring through me. I was so out of control with it, I know I had it in me to take someone’s life.
It is without a doubt the scariest, most overwhelming feeling I have ever experienced and I never, ever want to have to feel that again.
I was again feeling these ‘rages’ because, without intending to, my H was behaving in a manner that to me felt like I was being manipulated and coerced.
I do not experience desire the way you or my H do. I don’t experience physical desire until things get going. I believe, because of my experience, that I will never, ever interpret feelings of love, loyalty and intimacy as a physical desire OF sex. I have sex and enjoy sex because of the great love I have for my husband (at least now I do).
I do not seek to have sex as a means of ‘feeling’ loved because someone I once loved and trusted as deeply as you could love and trust another person, violated my love and trust. But I have to say that anyone who feels that their love and trust were violated on an emotional level can feel the exact same way as I did – AND NEVER HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED.
He had so little regard for me and my feelings that he was able push them aside to pursue his own needs and physical gratification.
When I fell in love with my husband and came to trust him as I had no other, our sex life was jeopardized. I didn’t have sex with people I loved and trusted.
In a bizarre way, you can take your wife’s reluctance to have sex with you as an indication of just how much she does in fact love and trust you.
Anyway, the fact that I was doing all of this was something I just happened to stumble upon while in counseling. Once I did discover it, however, I realized the aversion I had to willingly offer up the most vulnerable, intimate part of myself. People can do serious damage to you when you give that up. You also miss out on the most wonderful feelings life has to offer. It’s a double-edged sword.
Because my parents divorced at a very early age, because of the weekend visitations and all the back and forth between Mom and Dad's, because of our many moves, step-fathers and step-siblings, two other of my mother's divorces before I was 14, the sexual abuse, and a plethora of other things I won't get into, I spent the first 18 years of my life in constant emotional upheaval.
Sometimes, when continually exposed to trauma and emotional pain, the body takes over and creates a defense mechanism called detachment. As we grow-up, learning a certain amount of emotional detachment is healthy. It allows us to interact in a more mature manner with our world. It's necessary, or we'd all probably spend 90% of our time in some form of histrionics.
But sometimes, as in my case, detachment protected me from the continual upheaval in my life. The only way I could move sanely through my world was to learn not to respond to it. The problem though is that once the defense mechanism is in place, it's still there even after the trouble and trauma are gone. (And, by the way, one doesn't even know they HAVE such a defense mechanism. For me, it was a way of life, and I didn't know any different.)
I realized the aversion and rages I was feeling was my defense mechanism of detachment kicking in. Intimacy overwhelmed me, and I could only take so much of it. My shrink told me that until I was able to ‘unlearn’ my defense mechanism, I would never be able to be truly intimate with my H.
I had a very low prognosis of recovering from my detachment. Since I learned it at such an early age, it was as if it were engrained in the fabric of my character. As my shrink said to me, “it is counter-intuitive for you to be intimate because all that intimacy has ever brought you is pain and suffering.”
I had to unlearn an involuntary impulse I didn’t even know how to recognize. I had to learn not to personalize my husband’s constant criticism, and learn that the anger and anxiety I was experiencing right before sex was my defense mechanism kicking in, not my true feelings for my husband. That is an extraordinarily difficult impulse not to give in to. It would be like me telling you that you should only touch the stove when it is hot, or to breathe deeply while under water. I bet you can’t even fathom that, can you?
I made my break-through last April when I finally FORGAVE myself and finally realized that what had happened to me as a child was very, very sad, but it didn't make me evil or unlovable. It was something that happened. It was nothing I could undo. And it certainly wasn't anything my H held against me... or anyone else for that matter. The only one who held anything against me was ME.
True intimacy for me was overwhelming because we must surrender control of our emotions to experience it. I 'tuned out' from habit, even when I didn’t WANT to 'tune out,' because as a child, it was the only way I could survive what was happening to me.
During the abuse, my body responded in ways that horrified me. I thought that if I in any way, shape or form, responded to physical stimulation, then that must have meant I WANTED those things to happen. I did not understand that my body responded because that is what it was built to do. Your body is an animal being... it doesn't know the difference between incest and non-incest. It responds to stimulation because that is what nature intended for it to do.
I knew what was happening wasn't 'right.' But my body didn't know... and those are two huge, conflicting signals. But the crime was not my conflicting emotions and confusion, but of someone knowingly taking advantage of a child who does not have the mental or physical maturity to sift out the differences. That is why the crime works. Someone you trust takes advantage of your confusion. And then it only gets worse and more horrifying when the whole mind manipulation/blackmail games starts.
To unwire my defense mechanisms, I had to learn to recognize them. I might start feeling panicked, crabby, anxious, angry, extremely sleepy... rather than giving in to these things, I’d face them, either by myself or with my H. But you have to do it slowly. Almost like restretching a pulled muscle... you stretch a little more each time, but not far enough to hurt yourself. See what I mean?
I’d do deep breathing, talk out loud to my H, slow him down, and if it got to be too much, stop him altogether. But finally, I just got tired of fighting. When I read Michele’s book and realized I was NORMAL to only experience desire after things got started, I was able to let the last remaining fears and self-punishment go.
I was normal, I was lovable, I was not evil, and my body was exactly as God had intended it. And I was finally able to risk all and trust my husband. I get better at it every day.
Wow! Thank you for the info. I would like to comment on one thing though:
You said:
"I do not experience desire the way you or my H do. I don't experience physical desire until things get going. I believe, because of my experience, that I will never, ever interpret feelings of love, loyalty and intimacy as a physical desire OF sex. I have sex and enjoy sex because of the great love I have for my husband (at least now I do).
I do not seek to have sex as a means of "feeling" loved because someone I once loved and trusted as deeply as you could love and trust another person, violated my love and trust. But I have to say that anyone who feels that their love and trust were violated on an emotional level can feel the exact same way as I did " AND NEVER HAVE BEEN SEXUALLY ABUSED."
I say: Don't sell yourself short on this stuff. Anything that is learned can be unlearned. Feeling loved because of sex or having sex as an expression of love are pretty amazing things when it is mutual and shared with a trusted partner. Life is too short to say that you will NEVER be able to feel a certain way. It makes me sad to hear you say this about yourself. I am sure you enjoy sex because of the great love you have for your husband and I am sure that it is good, but the physical act of sex stemming from feelings of love, loyalty and intimacy is on a completely different level....a truly mind altering experience. One that should not be missed, and if you really have forgiven yourself, released the pain, and truly opened up to your husband, I doubt you will be able to miss it, even if you wanted to.
Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part but, to me, is seems that someone who was abused, like you and my wife were, has a skewed view and does not even know it. Therefore, you don't know how you were "built" because your foundation was cracked. Its only after you are completely past this stuff (if that is even possible) will you be able to learn how you were "built." Childhood abuse does not have to equate to low sex drive.
