I'm bisexual and thus have experience of relationships with both genders and I've experienced some differences that I need to discuss. Of course it is just a small number of people so I'm generalising but I wonder if anyone has seen the same thing or have different experiences.

I've found that my CSA and following damages causes difficulties in all my relationships, but with men it seems more possible to work around and with women it turns out to be a deal breaker. I wonder why this is.

One issue is that in all close relationships when I really love someone, I expect them to abuse me and even want them to since this is the way I have learned to show love. In my relationships with men this leads to talking and explaining, setting boundaries, sometimes experimenting a bit, crying and hugging and so on (I fall in love with good people, luckily). It's an issue but we work through it.

With women it seems to be interpreted as an insult, as me not really loving her (if you love me you don't need to be forced) and something that is her fault, like her not being attractive enough or feminine enough. Like if she was a real woman I wouldn't be scared and expect abuse when she's angry and I wouldn't expect her to want to abuse me as a sign of love. This interpretation makes it completely impossible to talk about the whole thing. Since I don't want her to feel insecure or unwomanly or whatever I repress those feelings wich results in never resolving it in the relationship. I pretend not being afraid, not longing for self sacrifice and so on and then I become a bit emotionally distant since what I'm feeling is not what I'm showing.

Another thing is my sexuality issues. I get scared, I get flashbacks and need to stop it all, I get the feeling of being a perpetrator and need to stop (even though everything is fine). I react unexpectedly violated by physical touch, get triggered by things that were meant well and so on and so forth.

In my experience with men this is an issue but we work through that to. Talking, boundary setting, holding and crying and so on.

In my experience with women this is a dealbreaker. Me breaking down because of being triggered by her touch seems to be interpreted, again, as me not really loving her, not being attracted to her, as her being unattractive or not a real woman and all of that.

Women seem to take these things personaly on a whole other level than men. Why is that? Is it so or have I just had bad luck?

I've been thinking, that the projection of the perpetrator (when I get scared or expect abuse I project a perpetrator on the person) is something that men are more used to? That men are more used to being percieved as dangerous even though they know they are not? And have had the chance to work through this awful feeling of someone being afraid of them, feeling threatened by them, misinterpreting love as wanting to abuse. That men have separated this generalized dangerous man from themselves and therefore more easily can see that I'm afraid of an abusive man even though this man is not, I just am not really sure about that right now but it's really not that much about this individual person.

Maybe the generalized view of men - perps and women - victims means that women are generally not prepared for the unpleasantness of being seen as dangerous when they are not, intrusive when they are loving, wanting to abuse when they just want sex and so on.

Do any of you have experiences like this or different with women? I just don't know how to handle it, for now I don't dare to have relationships with women because I seem to just hurt them by being so damaged.