I read it all the time here, CSA doesn't change your innate sexuality. I ask this of everyone here? How do I come to know what innate sexuality is when the sexual abuse started at 5 years old? There is no possibility of ever knowing what my innate sexuality was supposed to be.

I still struggle with sexual addictions. It feels like a prison. It feels like I am cutting myself open every time I fall back into it. I have never known healthy masturbation, healthy attraction, healthy sex or whatever you call it. I look at sex with complete disgust, because as much as I want to say that I see it differently, I don't. Al I see is usury. Does anyone make love? Does that even exist?

I feel like I am sitting on the outside, the last kid picked for dodge ball. Because I don't understand relationships, I don't ever see myself loving someone the way others seem to do so easily. Why? I have no idea. I know too much about human behavior, and I can see someone's thinly veiled motives just in talking to them briefly. I analyze and pick people apart, and I hate it. I don't want to know what I know, but I developed this ability because the world was once a scary place. My boundaries were shattered, and I have never recovered them.

Heal well brothers.

Daniel,

ditto

i'm with you on this one, Daniel!

for me, too - abuse started at 5.
for me, too, sex started at 5.
i equated abuse with sex and vice versa.
all of it was at the hands of either older or more powerful and dominant males.
there was never any chance to find out what was "normal" for me.
everything became questionable and chaotic.
all my experiences and imaginings of any kind of sexual activity until i was 21 were either abusive ones or tinged, slanted, warped by the abuse and all male/male (even solitary self-stimulation.)
even the male/female relationships and experimentation was a struggle to resist and negate all the previous conditioning.
at 21 i married and had all of that baggage to try to overcome so even the "normal" relationship and sex was impacted severely.
for all my life i have struggled with confusion and conflict over the mixed attractions and aversions.
i feel like i am just now - decades later - starting to emerge from a long dark tunnel.
but i am still affected very directly by what was done to me.

lee

I have never been able to get the "images" out of my mind during ANY sexual anything...not in any any circumstance. As soon as sex-mode begins, I'm 10 again, getting used like a warm pot-roast.

I have never (not even one lousy time) had a sexual experience without very loud, noisy, aggressive and vivid flashbacks. not once!!!

I struggled with damaged sexuality for years.

My innate (authentically me) sexuality was hijacked by the abuse and the lessons my family taught me-
-lack of real intimacy
-secretive behavior,
-"don't talk about it"

In facing my sexual acting out, I had to be rigorously honest and look at this all and strongly disconnect from fueling the cycle of shame and isolation that sex had always delivered to me.


THe brain can be rewired- you can discover healthy sexuality if you are willing to do the work of getting help and open this entire problem up to honest reviewal, journaling, meditation and seeking guidance from those who have been there and are in a better place

I see how I spent years reinforcing the lessons of my childhood abuse-it took a lot if effort to escape this gravitational pull- but those efforts reap rewards- just as my efforts towards seeking sex in unworkable ways used to reap more shame and isolation.

Know yourself. Don't be afraid. Honesty and compassion will light the way to healing and discovering Sexuality that is affirming, powerful, loving and connecting.