Creating a New Meaning for Sex
The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
—WILLIAM JAMES
When I was a young mother, I came into the living room one day and found my then seven-year-old daughter, Cara, playing with her Barbie dolls. I noticed that Ken and Barbie were naked and seemed passionately involved under a pink lace blanket. Cautiously, I asked Cara if she had any questions about sex. She hesitated for a moment and then said, “Mommy, I don’t understand why rape is so bad. Isn’t it just like what mommies and daddies do when they have sex?”
After I got over my initial shock of her asking such a mature question, I ventured an answer: “It’s true, some of the same body parts are involved. And some of the same behaviors occur. But,” I continued, “rape and lovemaking are really very different. Rape is a form of violence where sex acts are used to hurt someone. Rape hurts a woman because her body is not ready or wanting sex. And it hurts because she feels bad she’s being raped. Lovemaking is different; it’s sharing. Lovemaking is happy and joyous. A woman’s body goes through changes which make it pleasant. It’s something that feels good.”
Cara nodded her head and seemed content with this reply. Then she added, “I think, Mommy, you should tell people who have been sexually abused what you told me so they won’t think sex is a bad thing anymore.”
Many survivors think about sex in a way that associates sex with sexual abuse. This is understandable: Sexual abuse experiences are often a survivor’s first exposure to sex. For many of us who were abused as children, abuse provided our primary sexual learning. Even for survivors who were sexually active before, sexual abuse can be so traumatic and upsetting that it mentally fuses sex with sexual abuse. Regardless of how or when we were abused, sexual abuse can seriously impair our thinking about sex.
When I ask survivors who are new to sexual healing to finish the phrase Sex is . . . , they often respond with answers such as bad, dangerous, overwhelming, dirty, frightening, a tool, a duty, violent, secretive, humiliating, or a powerplay. And when I ask them to finish the phrase, Sex is like . . . , these same survivors may tell me a nightmare, a drug, a punishment, murder, being robbed, or being tortured.
Survivors’ responses to both questions rarely reflect a positive view of sex as an expression of love and caring, as a pleasurable and fun experience in itself, or as a special bond and sharing between two people. Instead, survivors’ meanings for sex often reflect a view contaminated by the offenders’ distorted thinking about sex and the traumatic qualities of the abuse. The abuse robs survivors of the right to develop a view of sex for themselves, free from the influence of abuse.
THE SEXUAL ABUSE MIND-SET
When survivors’ attitudes about sex are contaminated and determined by the abuse, survivors develop what I refer to as a sexual abuse mind-set. In this mind-set, sex is seen as bad and dangerous, something to avoid or to pursue secretly and shamefully. The sexual abuse mind-set cripples a survivor’s ability to change his or her sexual behaviors or improve a sexual relationship with a partner. It prevents healthy sexual enjoyment and intimacy. Here are two stories to illustrate.
Linda, a forty-five-year-old survivor of long-term sadistic abuse by her brother and mother, learned to view sex only as pain and torture. She hated sex and had recently withdrawn from it completely. In couples therapy, Linda and her husband, Mike, were surprised to discover that different meanings for sex were at the root of much of their suffering and miscommunication. After Mike shared how depressed he felt that they had stopped having sex, the couple conversed:
MIKE: Linda, I love you. I find you sexually attractive. I want to have sex with you sometime in the future. (Linda tenses as Mike says the word sex. She grabs a pillow and hugs it to her chest.)
LINDA: I hate it when you say sex. To me sex is violent, disgusting, ugly, and sick. I want nothing to do with it. I don’t understand how you can want to do it without wanting to do something bad to me.
MIKE: When I say I want to have sex with you, I mean that I want to share a special, private part of myself with you. I want us both to feel pleasure. You’re my wife. You’re the person I love. You’re the person I want to have sex with. (Mike’s eyes become filled with tears.) What is so bad about wanting to be physically intimate?
LINDA: Intellectually, I know you don’t want to hurt me. And there’s a part of me that’s even glad you find me attractive. But it’s just that I’ve always thought of sex as something bad. I have a hard time believing it could be positive and that I might enjoy it. I don’t know what sex really is. I feel like a child who needs someone to talk to me about sex and teach me healthy attitudes.
Another survivor, Jack, had recently been realizing in counseling that his view of sex kept him locked in behaviors that were destroying his fifteen-year marriage to his wife, Donna. Jack described sex as “a drug to blot out pain.” He compulsively masturbated, cruised in his car to look at women, and sometimes engaged in secretive sexual affairs outside his marriage. Though Jack said he loved Donna and found her attractive, he didn’t like to have sex with her. Their marriage was failing because Donna felt isolated and betrayed.
Jack’s views on sex began forming years ago. When he was twelve and out on a family picnic, a woman neighbor cornered him in the bushes, stripped off his clothes, and performed oral sex on him. He found the sexual experience overwhelming but also very exciting and intensely pleasurable. For years Jack masturbated to thoughts of sexual contact with controlling older women.
In therapy, Jack realized that what happened to him was abuse. His meaning for sex fostered his compulsive sexual activities.
My penis and my heart are disconnected. Sex is a way I reward myself when I’ve done well at work or console myself when I’m feeling depressed. It’s not a way I show my love. In fact, I feel like I cheapen Donna when I do it with her. I dislike the rituals that go with making love with Donna, like kissing and hugging. I feel controlled by them.
For Jack, and for Linda in the previous story, sex was learned in an abusive situation, devoid of intimate caring, safety, or relaxed fun. They came to see sex not as a sharing of pleasure but as something bad that is done to you or that you do to someone else. To resolve their present-day sexual problems, Jack and Linda need to learn new definitions and ways of thinking about sex that can foster sexual recovery and healthy sexual enjoyment.
As we move forward in this chapter, my goal is to help you explore how the sexual abuse mind-set may have distorted your own view of sex, and to help you acquire an intellectual understanding that sex can be something good, healthy, and positive. I will show you tools that can help you create your own meaning of sex, free from the influence of abuse.
To begin, let’s look at the sexual abuse mind-set more closely. In the mind-set, sex is seen in narrow terms and is confined to ideas that relate to sexual abuse. Survivors in this mind-set are unable to associate sex with healthy experiences of love and caring.
This is a damaging way of thinking. When survivors believe in the mind-set, they may be more susceptible to being revictimized or to acting in ways that could hurt themselves and others. This mind-set can be hard to detect, hidden from our own conscious awareness. It can be such a strong, ingrained belief that we fail to see it as wrong. Our deeply held beliefs can appear as truths when they’re not.
To complicate matters, the sexual abuse mind-set is reinforced by our culture. Sex is often portrayed in the media and in pornography as one person sexually dominating, manipulating, or exploiting another. Our society promotes the message that boys should be sexually aggressive and girls should be sexually accommodating. We are culturally exposed to the sexual abuse mind-set much more often than we are exposed to healthy ways of thinking about sex. The five conditions for healthy sexuality—consent, equality, respect, trust, and safety (CERTS)*—are seldom taught at home or in school, or reinforced in our culture.
To create this new, healthy meaning for sex we need to first cast aside our old, damaging ways of thinking about sex. This involves learning to identify, challenge, and overcome the ways we associate sex with sexual abuse. We must come to see ways that our thinking has been contaminated by the offender’s unhealthy view of sex and by the traumatic repercussions of the sexual abuse experience itself.
FALSE IDEAS ABOUT SEX
The sexual abuse mind-set is made up of five false ideas about sex:
1. Sex is uncontrollable.
2. Sex is hurtful.
3. Sex is a commodity.
4. Sex is secretive.
5. Sex has no moral boundaries.
Survivors are usually affected by some of these more than by others. As we examine and challenge these falsehoods, pay attention to any ideas that apply to your current thinking about sex. It may be helpful to ask yourself, What meaning do I give to sex now? Reviewing your responses to the Sexual Effects Inventory in chapter 3 may help you to evaluate your current perspective.
False idea 1: Sex is uncontrollable
As a result of sexual abuse, survivors may believe that sexual energy is a wild force that cannot be contained or controlled. Once unleashed, they fear it can’t be stopped. Angie, a thirty-five-year-old survivor of childhood incest, recently realized that her father, the offender, is still giving her the message that sex cannot be controlled.
Several months ago my father stopped by to visit me on his way back from the Philippines. He entered my home and said, “I haven’t seen a white woman in three months. You’d better watch out, I just might rape you. I might not be able to help myself.” Not only were his remarks threatening and blatantly racist and sexist, but they showed me how sick my father is in his thinking about sex.
Some offenders don’t admit they feel out of control themselves, but rather they project their feelings onto their victims. As an adult, Betty asked her father why he had molested her and her three sisters in the past. Her father replied, “I wanted to keep you from having to get your sexual needs met outside the family.” The implication was that the girls had uncontrollable sexual needs that he should control. The girls were three, four, and five years old when he began abusing them. Betty’s father had projected his own feelings of being out of control onto his innocent children and then had used his distorted thinking to defend his behavior. Victims like Betty who receive such a message may inaccurately conclude that their own sexual energy is uncontrollable.
Sexual abuse can leave survivors with the impression that sexual energy is impulsive. An offender may say, “I want sex and I have to have it now.” Many offenders act in sudden, unpredictable ways, pressuring victims and communicating the false idea that sexual needs require immediate fulfillment.
Because sexual offenders often become unreasonable, unreachable, and emotionally distant the more sexually aroused they appear, survivors may conclude that sex causes all people to divorce themselves from everyday reality and responsible concern for others.
Sexual abuse gives survivors the message that sex is insatiable. An offender may say, “This will be the last time,” and then come back to sexually molest the same victim again. Survivors may feel that sex is like an addiction: The more sex the offender gets, the more he or she craves.
Victims may also come to believe sex is uncontrollable because of the sexual feelings they experienced during abuse. A male victim may be shocked to get an erection, or a female victim may be shocked to vaginally lubricate during the abuse. Victims may feel that their own sexuality has turned against them. They may have difficulty understanding that their sexual reactions are natural physiological responses to sexual stimulation. Sexual responses indicate the body is functioning as it is designed to. The abuse is what’s out of control, not the sexuality of the victim.
When survivors believe that sex is uncontrollable, their sexuality suffers. Some survivors withdraw from sex, fearing that if they let themselves experience it a little, they might become “addicted” like the offender. They may become sexually anorectic, starving themselves from any touch that might arouse their own sexual appetites.
Similarly, survivors may pull back from sex with a partner, fearing that their partners will want more sex if they get a little. The thinking goes that it is better not to have any sex than to be overwhelmed by the insatiable, uncontrollable sexual needs of a partner.
Survivors may feel that sex will lead them to a state of helplessness and absolute lack of control. Confusing sex with sexual abuse, they may believe they will always be powerless in sexual relationships. A survivor expressed this belief:
Sex is dangerous. It feels like invasion and ownership of myself and my body by someone else. If I stay away from sex, I can stay intact; if I give in to it, I lose myself.
In contrast, the idea that sex is uncontrollable can lead some survivors to act in sexually self-destructive ways. They may figure since they can’t control it they might as well give in to it. Survivors may compulsively and aggressively seek sexual activities. Believing sex is uncontrollable, survivors may become sexually demanding or may give in to the sexual demands of their partners. They may ignore the need to use birth control or safe sex practices, increasing their chances of having an unwanted pregnancy or contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Sexual abuse—not sex—can be seen as an uncontrollable force. The offender’s actions were not due to a driving force to have sex but rather to a driving force to sexually abuse. The offender was addictively compelled to sexually abuse. Healthy sex is nonaddictive. In healthy sex, sex has limits. It is controllable and fulfilling. It doesn’t lead to feelings of shame, self-loathing, or regret. It enhances your self-esteem and increases feelings of safety and mutual enjoyment with a partner.
False idea 2: Sex is hurtful
As a result of sexual abuse, survivors may come to believe that sex is always physically and emotionally hurtful. Sexual abuse can be painful if it is violent and sadistic. But even when it’s gentle, abuse leaves survivors with the pain of feeling betrayed and used by the offender.
The sex in sexual abuse can hurt physically for many reasons. In violent sexual abuse, offenders use sex as a way to express feelings of anger, rage, and hostility. They may see sexual organs as weapons or targets of injury and pain.
Some sexual abuse involves sadistic practices such as physical restraint, force, torture, and bodily mutilation that are intended to cause the victim pain. Many offenders are sexual sadists who psychologically enjoy making their victims suffer. They may have hurt their victims as a way to become sexually aroused.
Forced sex and abusive intercourse and penetration inhibit muscle relaxation and lubrication in females. If we were children when the abuse occurred, our bodies were too small and underdeveloped for sexual intercourse and other forms of penetration. Abuse by a peer or sibling can also cause physical pain because child and adolescent sex offenders are often clumsy and have little understanding or regard for how hurtful their actions can be to their victims.
Survivors of physically painful abuse may assume that sex caused the pain they felt. They may have trouble seeing that it was the violent, sadistic, premature, or forced acts in sexual abuse that hurt them.
Sex in sexual abuse also hurts because it involves psychological betrayal and loss. Survivors may come to believe that it was sex that caused the loss of trust. “If it weren’t for sex,” a survivor of acquaintance rape said, “we could have stayed friends.” An incest survivor expressed a similar feeling: “If it weren’t for sex, Daddy would have been able to be a good daddy to me.” In both cases it really was sexual abuse that damaged their relationships.
Angie, a thirty-five-year-old survivor, was a teen when her father, an avid hunter, ordered her to undress in front of him one afternoon while she was working on a quilt in her bedroom. Angie noticed that her father looked at her with the same excited stare he showed when he was duck hunting. “His breathing became faster, his mouth opened slightly, he started salivating, and the tip of his tongue protruded between his lips,” she said. Turning around for him as he examined her naked body, Angie suddenly knew what it felt like to be prey.
I felt like the duck looked as it tumbled to the ground. After he left I didn’t want to look at or touch any of the things in my bedroom. I felt like I no longer had power over anything. I had lost the power of protection over my own body. My cut fabrics, my sewing machine, my stuffed animals, my books, everything I loved seemed humiliated and defiled too. Sex came to represent domination, emotional pain, and a feeling of spiritual death.
Sexual abuse hurts and destroys human closeness and trust. Healthy sex is quite the opposite. It doesn’t hurt; it is nurturing and fun. Healthy sex expresses and encourages safety and caring.
False idea 3: Sex is a commodity
When people are sexually victimized, they often learn to see sex as a commodity, something to give, get, or withhold. A victim of childhood sexual abuse may learn that if she “gives” sex she will be treated more kindly and shown more affection. Sex may have become, in her mind, a “ticket for love.” As an adult this same person may use sex as a reward to a partner for being nice or as a bribe to get a partner to be nice. Abusive sex teaches survivors that sex is a commodity that can be exchanged for attention, love, power, and security.
This commodity view of sex is also reinforced by our culture with phrases such as “losing your virginity,” “getting laid,” and “giving sex.” In this frame of mind people are reduced to sexual objects, and sex becomes no more than acts of physical stimulation and release. Sex becomes something to obtain, a skill to possess, or a commodity to “sell” to others. Prostitution and pornography thrive on this way of thinking about sex.
Many survivors were bribed with the promise of jewelry, gifts, money, or job promotions as a method of coercing them into sexual activity. They learned that sex could be exchanged for wealth or status. Offenders may have portrayed sex as an economically powerful commodity. A teenaged survivor of father-daughter incest recounted her experience:
When I was a girl my father would take me shopping. He’d point out a dress or a pair of shoes and ask me if I wanted them. When I’d say yes, he’d tell me if I did this and this and this with him sexually, he’d get me the things. Or he’d tell me if I did one sex act he’d give me such and such an amount of money, and if I did another sex act or let him take pictures of me, he’d give me more.
Another teen recalled a variation on this scenario:
When I was younger, my dad would always show me pictures of naked girls in Playboy magazines. He told me about the girls—who they were and how they lived. He told me he’d be my manager when I got older and wanted to get into Playboy. I didn’t know what a prostitute was then, but my dad would tell me that there were girls who would stand on street corners and sell their bodies and there were guys who managed them. The girls would get to live in fancy apartments and wear fancy clothes and buy fancy cars. He said all I’d have to do was what I was doing to him. He said he was showing me how to do it so I would be able to get ahead in life.
When sex is learned as a commodity, the pull to continue thinking of sex this way can be strong. Survivors may fear that without this view, they would suffer economically, feel bankrupt, or be deprived. A survivor who has thought of sex as a payoff for financial support from a partner may worry that she will be destitute if she begins to change her view of sex.
In the commodity view sex can also be seen as a payoff for love and faithfulness. I have to give it to him or he’ll want to get it elsewhere, a survivor might think. Survivors who believe sex is a commodity fear their partners will leave them if they stop being sexual. Jason, a twenty-year-old survivor who attends college, exclaimed, “I think every woman I date expects sex of me and will be angry if I don’t make a pass for it.” When sex is seen as a commodity, it can feel like a job to be performed.
In sexual abuse, sex is often learned as an obligation. When Eva was twelve, her mother went into the hospital for a hysterectomy. Her father informed her that now she was the oldest female of the house and in that capacity had to be his sexual partner.
Some victims learned sex was something they had to do to protect their own lives or the lives of others. One survivor said she had sex with her stepfather to keep him satisfied so he wouldn’t physically abuse her mother and herself, or sexually molest her younger sisters. A male survivor who was abused in satanic rituals was taught that if he didn’t participate in certain sexual acts, he would be thrown into a fire. Survivors who have survived these kinds of life-threatening experiences may unconsciously continue to believe that they will be beaten or killed if they don’t have sex.
Though it may be difficult for survivors to realize and to believe deep down, healthy sex is not a commodity. The kind of sex that is a commodity is abusive, unhealthy, and often degrading. Healthy sex is an expression of self-love and shared intimacy. Developing a new meaning for sex means moving away from the damaging view of sex as a commodity and toward seeing your sexuality not as an entity separate from yourself but rather as a part of who you are.
False idea 4: Sex is secretive
The sex in sexual abuse is secretive. Offenders often say to their victims, “Don’t tell anyone about this” or “Let this be our little secret.” An offender may threaten to do something hurtful to a survivor if the secret of the sexual activity is revealed. Some survivors may think they have to remain silent about sexual matters to survive.
Sexual abuse, especially in childhood, may teach that sex is exciting when forbidden and dangerous. Later, survivors may feel that if sex is open and approved by others, it isn’t as satisfying. Sexual arousal may have been learned in circumstances in which sex was secretive. Sneakiness may have become associated with heightened arousal or “better sex.” In abusive sex, sneakiness is routine.
Many survivors say secretive, compulsive sexual activity is the most intense and satisfying experience they know. Fear of getting caught may increase the adrenaline rush, fueling a chemical high in the secret sex. But like taking drugs, this high is a trap. To maintain the affair, the compulsive masturbation, the illegal sexual activity, the dependence on pornography, the survivor has to lie over and over. Viewing sex as secretive can make it feel shameful. “This must really be bad if I can’t talk about it,” a survivor may think. This kind of sex becomes self-destructive.
A secretive view of sex makes communication about sex impossible. You can’t speak about your real sexual feelings and needs. Because of the lack of open communication, survivors may feel the same as they did in the abuse—all alone during sex.
Seeing sex as secretive can have another negative consequence. Survivors may fail to get accurate information and education about sexual concerns. They may go through life with misunderstandings about their own sexuality, generating anxiety for themselves unnecessarily. “For years I worried that I had damaged my clitoris by masturbating as a child,” a survivor revealed. “It wasn’t until college when I talked to a sex education nurse that I found out I hadn’t. What a relief.”
Survivors who believe that sex is secretive may have difficulty understanding that sex can be private and personal but also a topic to be openly discussed at times when it is appropriate, such as with a partner or a medical care professional. Healthy sex does not promote secrecy and engender fear or shame. It is a good and natural human behavior of which you can feel proud.
False idea 5: Sex has no moral boundaries
In sexual abuse, sex is learned as having no limits. There is no right or wrong when it comes to abusive sexual expression. For the offender anything goes. A feel-good ethic pervades. An offender might think, If it makes me feel good, I’ll go ahead and do it, or, I’ll enjoy now and worry about consequences later.
In this view of sex, sexual fantasies are to be acted out, regardless of how hurtful their content. Pornographic material is to be acquired, devoured, and shared with victims no matter how abusive and humanly degrading its contents. Sexual offenders may ridicule people who want to put restrictions on sexual behavior as being uptight or sexually inhibited.
In sexual abuse, sex is like a game. Having sex means winning, even if it means someone else loses. That certain behaviors might be inappropriate, hurtful, and exploitive is seen as insignificant when compared to the overpowering importance of fulfilling sexual urges and desires.
Offenders do not consider the moral implications of what they do. They don’t think about how their actions could affect their families, their communities, and the whole of humanity for years to come. They don’t care if their victims are their own children, siblings, students, clients, or friends. They don’t worry about the disruptions they are causing to established relationships. Offenders don’t analyze what effect their behavior is having on their victims or what the long-term psychological or medical consequences might be—even if devastating. In all these ways, offenders teach a mentally, physically, and spiritually unhealthy approach to sex. Their actions threaten the whole human system that is based on mutual respect and trust.
Sexual abuse teaches that sex is something where anything goes and where anything can be gotten away with. Many offenders break laws and never get reported, caught, or punished for the sexual crimes they commit.
Associating moral neglect with sex can create many problems for survivors. Survivors may withdraw from sex, fearing it will lead them into moral decay. Survivors may act out sexually in inappropriate and hurtful ways without seeing the potential damage of their actions at the time. And, sadly, survivors may continually create abusive sexual fantasies and expose themselves to degrading pornography, thinking that these activities are sex when they are really extensions and replays of sexual abuse.*
Unlike abusive sex, healthy sex involves a strong regard for fairness in human relationships. The potential consequences of one’s behavior are kept in mind. Healthy sex encompasses a concern for the betterment of all individuals and humanity. Healthy sex is moral and just.
HEALTHY IDEAS ABOUT SEX*
“I grew up having absolutely no idea of what normal, healthy sexuality would be,” said one survivor. “I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a trusting sexual relationship between two people.”
Another survivor, after realizing her beliefs about sex were really about sexual abuse, expressed a sense of bewilderment many survivors feel: “If sex isn’t sexual abuse, then what is it?”
Many survivors have trouble conceiving of sex as something that encourages health and intimacy. This is understandable since little time is spent in our culture teaching people about healthy sex and its values. We may receive many messages about abusive sex on a daily basis—over the Internet, in television shows, movies, magazines, and jokes—and few if any messages about healthy sex.
To help you create a new concept of sex, let’s take time to consider six healthy ideas about sex:
1. Sex is a natural biological drive.
2. Sex is powerful healing energy.
3. Sex is part of life itself.
4. Sex is conscious and responsible.
5. Sex is an expression of love.
6. Sexual experiences are mutually desired.
Healthy idea 1: Sex is a natural biological drive
All animals have an inherent sex drive. Even among humans, this is a natural and normal part of being alive. Our sex drive encourages us to secure a mate and reproduce as a species.
The human sex drive is strongly influenced by chemicals in our bodies that respond to messages in our brains. In healthy sex this drive involves more than procreation. Sex becomes a means to experience self-love and pleasure, as well as physical closeness and emotional intimacy with a partner.
We are not at the mercy of our hormones, however. We can regulate our sexual urges and responses by how we think about sex. If we feel sexual desire, we can choose whether we want to act on it. In healthy sex we exercise control and choice over our sexual drives.
Sex can enhance our self-esteem and physical well-being. A healthy, happy sex life—by giving us warmth, closeness, excitement, pleasure, and release—can put us in touch with a range of positive feelings. But sex is not a need like food, shelter, or clothing. Our individual survival does not depend on it. Though it may be a little uncomfortable at times, nothing bad happens to us physically if we have sexual urges and don’t act on them. “Sex is a bonus in life,” a survivor said. “Sex is one possible way of expressing love. It’s an extra.”
Sex is not something we can expect someone else to give us on demand, whenever we feel sexual urges. Nor do we owe anyone sex. In healthy sex, each person assumes responsibility for responding to his or her own sex drives and for deciding when and with whom to share intimacy.
Healthy idea 2: Sex is powerful healing energy
Sex tied to abuse is experienced as a bad kind of power—a power over others, a power to restrict and control, to own and hurt. But sex in a healthy setting is experienced as a good kind of power—a power to create, a power to give birth to life and love. Theologian Frederick Buechner suggests that sexuality, in its tremendous power, is much like nitroglycerin: When used in one way it can blow up bridges; used in another way it can heal the human heart.*
Sex is an energy that feels good. It can be relaxed, fun, and pleasurable. In sexual arousal we experience warming, soothing, exciting, and nurturing sensations in our bodies. Sexual climax can release muscular tension and can enable us to feel alive and warm inside.
Being sexual can enhance and strengthen our self-esteem. It involves feeling attractive and likable. The comfort and closeness of intimacy with a caring, respectful partner can help us feel good about ourselves. One survivor explained healthy sex this way:
I now believe sex is a furthering of communication. It helps our relationship grow and be strong. For us sex is clean, innocent, pleasurable, and fun.
When lovemaking is mutually desired and joyous, it brings peace. Partners feel spiritually connected to each other and to the good energy in the universe. Rebecca Parker, a theologian, writes
Sexual intimacy can serve as a resource for healing and transformation in our lives. Through it we can experience a restored sense of intrinsic joy in being, elemental goodness, personal power to affect and be affected, intimate connection with all of life, and creative potency. . . . When it functions this way in our lives, making love is a means of grace.*
From a healthy sex perspective, sexual energy has the power to bring individuals together, to express love and caring, to create life, and to fulfill our longing for unity and wholeness.
Healthy idea 3: Sex is part of life itself
Sexual experiences, whether they are alone or shared with a partner, can connect us with broader life energy. “Sex is the vital life force,” say John Travis and Regina Ryan, authors of the Wellness Workbook:
[Sex] is the energy of our aliveness. Sex is also the preservation of life—a type of communication in which the entire organism attempts to unify itself with another. . . . “Well-sex” is freely chosen, conscious of consequences, respectful, erotic, playful, expansive and unifying.†
Sex is one of the natural rhythms of the universe. Orgasm is like a wave: building strength, reaching a peak, spilling onto the shore, and then receding in calmness. Or sex can be viewed as a flower: starting as a bud, opening up, reaching a state of fullness, releasing beautiful scent, its petals falling off, the flower fading away. Building tension and releasing it in the pleasure of sex can nurture one’s body and spirit.
And sex can be seen as sharing one’s essence with a beloved, trusted partner, feeling the momentary pleasure of union, like the pleasure of dancing together as one. A survivor described her thoughts:
I used to view sex as a thing separate from myself that arrived like a package when two persons’ genitalia joined. Now I see it as an experience I can design and create myself.
Sex is more than stimulation, sensation, or sexual acts. Sometimes it’s expressed as a warm stirring inside—the pleasure of being happy and safe with someone for whom you feel an attraction. Especially in the context of sexual healing, we need to remember that sex is much more than intercourse or orgasm.
Our sexuality is a significant part of who we are. It exists within life, rather than outside or apart or secret from other experiences. Like the feeling of a breeze on our faces, the warmth of the sun on our skin, or the touch of a hand in ours, sex is part of a whole, large continuum of human touch. Sex is a way to tune into our aliveness.
Healthy idea 4: Sex is conscious and responsible
Sexual urges and attractions are normal and healthy. Whether and when we act on them is another story altogether. Sexual activity needs to be entered into with an awareness of possible outcomes and effects. We need to be sure that we ourselves, our sexual partners, and other people in our communities will not be hurt as a result of what we do. Sex involves ethical and health care responsibilities.
Sex means being aware of what is happening in a sexual encounter. It means sharing feelings, thoughts, and needs with a partner, and listening and being listened to. The focus of sex is on the relationship, the emotional intimacy, rather than on any specific sexual act.
Healthy idea 5: Sex is an expression of love
Sex is not a way to get love. It is an expression of love that emerges out of a relationship. We don’t do it to someone or even for someone, we experience sex with someone. Sex is a way of showing caring and respect for another person. It is a physical expression of something that already exists in a relationship. It is not essential to a relationship, but it’s one possible outgrowth of a relationship. When partners care about each other, are friends as well as lovers, the sexual experience can be a varied, continual renewal of their sense of unity. A survivor said:
I now view sex as a very loving, caring act. Sex is one result of love, instead of the other way around. As long as I have sex in a healthy way, there is nothing wrong with it. I prefer to love someone first before having sex.
When sex is an expression of love, sexual arousal and pleasure can become personally associated with one’s partner. The love we feel for another in our hearts is translated into warm, tingling sensations in our genitals. Sex becomes a way to express how happy we are to be with a partner. The editors of the New Age Journal write:
Sex is our most intimate form of communication. At its most intense, communication becomes communion—a mutual opening and meeting beyond words and concepts from our deepest and most vulnerable parts. Such communication is only possible when there is openness, honesty, and regard for your partner as an equal. This may seem obvious, but it is the most fundamental aspect of sex, and one that is too often forgotten. Sex reminds us of our interdependence and oneness.*
Author Anaïs Nin said, “Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”
Healthy idea 6: Sexual experiences are mutually desired
Sexual relations require full informed consent and equality between partners. If a relationship is lopsided, undermining, controlling, or dishonest, the sexual relationship will also be.
In healthy sex, partners don’t impose their sexual needs on each other. Rather, each person in the relationship takes responsibility for his or her own sexual urges and release. “If either one of us doesn’t want to make love, the other person doesn’t pressure or complain. We just accept that’s the reality for now,” a partner of a survivor said. Healthy, positive sex needs a healthy, positive context for it to exist within.
CHANGING YOUR ATTITUDES ABOUT SEX
Once you learn about the difference between abusive sex and healthy sex, you may be amazed at how deeply you have believed in an abusive view of sexuality. For some survivors, the prospect of letting go of the sexual abuse mind-set and replacing it with healthy sexual attitudes may seem extremely difficult.
Changing our sexual attitudes makes us challenge our old assumptions about people and relationships. “I have always assumed that all men were just like the offender—wanting to hurt me, cause me pain, and make me have sex with them,” a woman survivor said. “To change my views about sex and stop thinking of it as abuse, means I have to stop thinking men are uncaring, insensitive, and just interested in sex.”
Survivors who were victimized by female offenders may have difficulty letting go of similar misconceptions about women. “It’s hard for me to consider that a woman would really enjoy sex and not merely use it for her own purposes and gain,” explained one survivor.
Survivors may also find it difficult to imagine that sexual relationships can ever be equal. As a result of abuse, they may believe that sexual relationships are inherently imbalanced, with one person dominating and the other submitting.
For some survivors the thought of changing their sexual attitudes can be frightening. They may worry that with new attitudes they will pressure themselves to give up certain harmful sexual behaviors they like to some extent. Making changes can involve facing some harsh realities and stepping away from what is harmful even if it is familiar. The fear comes from making a change, not from losing something that could be hurting you.
Changing our sexual attitudes takes time. We first develop a new intellectual understanding of sex and then need to translate and integrate this new understanding into our sexual behaviors. For awhile, even once we realize they are wrong, our old beliefs may still control our reactions at a gut level. One survivor recounted the slowness of the process:
Once I saw how much sexual abuse was influencing my attitudes about sex, I couldn’t just switch to a healthy perspective on sex right away. It took me months and years to stop acting based on my old attitudes. I needed lots of time to test out my new ideas and put the new meaning I’ve created for sex into practice.
As you work to change your sexual attitudes, you may need to constantly remind yourself that there is a difference between abusive sex and healthy sex. You may need to challenge one by one your old, negative beliefs about sex. Two lists that compare abusive and healthy outlooks on sex follow. You may want to refer to this summary table as you progress on your sexual healing journey, to measure how your sexual attitudes are changing.
SEXUAL ATTITUDES
Sexual Abuse Mind-set
(Sex = Sexual Abuse)
Sex is uncontrollable energy.
Sex is an obligation.
Sex is addictive.
Sex is hurtful.
Sex is a condition for receiving love.
Sex is “doing to” someone.
Sex is a commodity.
Sex is void of communication.
Sex is secretive.
Sex is exploitive.
Sex is deceitful.
Sex benefits one person.
Sex is emotionally distant.
Sex is irresponsible.
Sex is unsafe.
Sex has no limits.
Sex is power over someone.
Healthy Sexual Attitudes
(Sex = Positive Sexual Energy)
Sex is controllable energy.
Sex is a choice.
Sex is a natural drive.
Sex is nurturing, healing.
Sex is an expression of love.
Sex is sharing with someone.
Sex is part of who I am.
Sex requires communication.
Sex is private.
Sex is respectful.
Sex is honest.
Sex is mutual.
Sex is intimate.
Sex is responsible.
Sex is safe.
Sex has boundaries.
Sex is empowering
Unfortunately, you can’t magically erase your old thinking and replace it with a healthier mind-set. You must learn to integrate changes in your thinking with changes in your sexual reactions and behaviors. You’re involved in a process of relearning how you think about sex. Give yourself time to reinforce what you are now learning, gradually molding new ideas with new behaviors.
Here are some suggestions for ways you can facilitate making changes in your sexual attitudes.
1. Avoid exposure to things that reinforce the sexual abuse mind-set. Avoid television shows, movies, books, magazines, web sites,* and other influences that portray sex as sexual abuse.
Pornography can be harmful to sexual healing in many ways. It conveys the idea of unlimited sexual access to women, children, and men. Pornography exploits the people who act in it as well as the public who buys it. It uses sexual stimulation to make money, reinforcing the commodity view of sex. Pornography evokes strong emotions, such as fear and shame, and encourages sexual arousal to abusive ideas and images. Pornography often depicts sex from the perspective of someone who has unsafe, impulsive, compulsive, and extreme sexual interests. It frequently perpetuates destructive and false impressions about sex. People are reduced to objects that are used for stimulation and that can be controlled by other people. Staged scenes in porn can make sexual violence and humiliation appear pleasurable, increasing our tolerance of coercion in sexual relationships. The sex in porn is typically devoid of genuine affection, respect, responsibility, and connection. And without these pillars of healthy sex, it tends to reinforce a type of sex that can never fully satisfy.
Though they may not be as easy to find, many movies, books, and magazines use sexual stories and imagery without being abusive.† I call these positive erotica. The sexual relationships they describe exist in a healthy sex context, with consent, mutuality, respect, safety, relaxed fun, and so on. Unlike abusive pornography, these erotic materials can increase awareness of our sensuality and pleasurable connectedness with a partner.
In sexual healing, we can replace “hard-core” sex with “heart-core” sex.
2. Use new language when referring to sex. The way you talk about sex influences how you think about it. Change your language so you refer to sex as a positive, healthy experience you have control over and can make choices about. Avoid slang terms for sexual contact, such as fucking, screwing, banging, and getting a piece. For many survivors these terms reinforce the sexual abuse mind-set. Instead, use terms such as making love or being physically intimate. Stop using words for sex parts such as prick, dick, boobs, tits, cunt, and asshole. In general, these terms are degrading and reinforce the idea of people as sex objects. Instead, use unloaded, accurate terms such as penis, breasts, vagina, and anus. After changing her sexual language, one survivor remarked, “I no longer think of sex as a four-letter word.”
3. Discover more about your sexual attitudes. Spend time in activities that can help you change your present sexual attitudes to healthier beliefs.
• Imagine how your views about sex would differ if you hadn’t been abused.
• Write about what you believe sex is or want it to be.
• Draw a picture or make a collage using pictures cut from magazines to show how you have viewed sex in the past and how you would like to think of sex from now on. You may want to use symbols to represent abusive sex, such as a knife, a hammer, fire, a dollar bill, or a teardrop, and other symbols to represent healthy sex, such as a heart, a happy face, a flower, a peace sign, or sunshine.
4. Discuss ideas about healthy sexuality with others. Talk about sex with your friends, partner, therapist, or support group members. Discuss the difference between healthy sex and abusive sex.
Bob, a thirty-year-old gay survivor of multiple forms of child sexual abuse, gained a new perspective on sex by talking with his partner.
My partner told me that sex is a way he shows me that he loves me. Kissing and hugging are just as important to him as a specific sexual activity. For him to enjoy sex, it needs to be tender and caring, an extension of loving touch. Talking with him about sex has helped me trust him more emotionally. When we have sex, I feel it more centered in my chest rather than centered in my genitals.
Another survivor found discussions with her therapist helpful.
I used to feel I had to earn love by being sexual. I learned that loving is something that just is.
5. Learn more about healthy sex. Because our society tends to expose us to an abundance of abusive ways of thinking about sex, to make changes in your sexual attitudes you will need to actively work at exposing yourself to ideas and images that teach sex as healthy and positive. Read books and articles* that can help you educate yourself more about healthy sex (see the Resources section). You may also want to attend classes, lectures, or workshops at which healthy models for sex are being presented. These educational events can jog your thinking and encourage your progress, as one survivor explained:
In a talk on spirituality and sex, my minister referred to sex as “beautiful.” For days I couldn’t stop thinking about what he had said. The words sex and beauty felt like opposites to me. I made myself a sign saying “Sex is beautiful” and posted it in my bedroom. I thought about the phrase daily. It took many months, but eventually I began to feel deep inside that this could be true.
Remember, it takes time to create a new meaning for sex separate from the influence of sexual abuse. Perhaps the most you can accomplish at first is to become more conscious of your previously held sexual attitudes and beliefs. You will not acquire a new meaning for sex overnight.
Once you do acquire an intellectual understanding of healthy sexuality, do not expect your behavior to change suddenly either. Expect to make changes gradually, one at a time, reinforcing your new attitudes about sex. These new attitudes will form the foundation for future growth.
Now that you have begun separating sex from sexual abuse, you are ready to redefine your sense of who you are apart from the influence of past sexual abuse.