Moving Toward Healthy Sexual Behavior
My dysfunctional sexual behaviors make sense given the abuse. They helped me cope and expressed my pain. I honor them even as I acknowledge outgrowing them and cast them aside.
—A SURVIVOR
Without even being aware of the connection, we may still be locked into sexual habits and routines that relate to past sexual abuse. Deva, a twenty-five-year-old survivor who had been raped by her boyfriend when she was a teen, frequently becomes sexually involved with men who exploit and abuse her, much like her high school boyfriend did. Ben, a fifty-year-old survivor of father-son incest, compulsively masturbates to pornography, a habit he started shortly after his father began abusing him.
Had they never been sexually abused, Deva and Ben would probably not be engaging in these behaviors today. Sexual abuse can influence some survivors to replicate behaviors they were first exposed to in the abuse, whereas others engage in new—but also harmful—sexual activities in response to the abuse. Deva continues the pattern by choosing partners who victimize her. Ben turns to degrading pornography to compensate for the humiliation and powerlessness he felt when he was abused.
These kinds of sexual behaviors that result from sexual abuse can feel familiar and habitual, even if they harm us or hurt others. Cross-country skiers know that it’s easier to follow well-worn tracks than to blaze a new trail. But unless we dare to step out of old grooves, we can be sliding along in behaviors that make us feel bad about ourselves and emotionally isolated from others year after year. Many survivors do not take the first step to change until the pain of not changing outweighs the discomfort of forging a new path.
Making changes in sexual behavior requires a conscious commitment on the part of a survivor. For many of us, this is the most challenging territory of sexual healing. We need courage to look at the influence of abuse, and we need willingness to make new choices in behavior. We also need the commitment to stick with these changes, even in the midst of distress and insecurity. Though the prospect of change may seem overwhelming at first, over time these new sexual behaviors can become easy and familiar. It is possible to establish healthy, comfortable, and satisfying sexual behaviors free of the influence of abuse.
In this chapter you will have an opportunity to consider how your present sexual activities may relate to past sexual abuse. We will uncover reasons that survivors find it difficult to give up limiting and hurtful sexual behaviors, even when they consciously want to stop them. We will explore a variety of approaches and options you can use to help make the changes you want to make, when you feel ready. These options include stopping behaviors that are related to past sexual abuse, taking a healing vacation from sex, and establishing healthy ground rules for your future sexual encounters.
REALIZING HOW PRESENT BEHAVIORS RELATE TO PAST ABUSE
You have probably made some connections between your present sexual behavior and past abuse already (perhaps when taking the Sexual Effects Inventory in chapter 3 or when learning about your sexual attitudes and automatic reactions). By considering the following list, you can take a more detailed look at the many different kinds of sexual behaviors that can be a consequence of sexual abuse.
As you review this list, keep in mind that these behaviors can result from abuse in a variety of ways. Sexual abuse can introduce victims to many unusual and harmful practices: violent sex, child-adult sex, sadomasochism, pornography, prostitution, multiple-partner sex, and compulsive masturbation. And we may be drawn to certain behaviors because we feel bad about ourselves due to the abuse. Determining whether you have a serious problem depends on several factors: the level of risk and danger involved, the potential harm to yourself and others, the frequency in which you engage in the behavior, the intensity of the behavior, the context in which it occurs, and how it affects your self-esteem.
Although reviewing these behaviors may be upsetting or painful for you, you need to see your sexual behaviors clearly before you can make lasting changes. Put a check mark (√) next to any statements that describe behaviors you currently engage in.
BEHAVIORS THAT CAN RESULT FROM SEXUAL ABUSE
_____ I avoid or withdraw from sex.
_____ I fake sexual interest.
_____ I fake sexual enjoyment.
_____ I have allowed sex to be forced on me.
_____ I have unwanted sex (when you don’t want to).
_____ I usually have sex while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.
_____ I combine sex and emotional or physical abuse.
_____ I combine sex with emotional or physical pain.
_____ I engage in humiliating sexual practices (with animals, sadomasochism).
_____ I have sex while half asleep.
_____ I habitually use pornography.
_____ I use abusive sexual fantasies.
_____ I engage in compulsive masturbation.
_____ I engage in promiscuous sex (many sexual relationships at the same time or in a row).
_____ I engage in prostitution.
_____ I visit a prostitute.
_____ I engage in medically risky sex.
_____ I have anonymous sex (in restrooms, in adult bookstores, over the Internet, using telephone sex services).
_____ I have sex in relationships that lack intimacy.
_____ I have sex outside a primary relationship.
_____ I engage in secretive sex, which generates feelings of shame.
_____ I have sex with a person primarily involved with someone else.
_____ I have sex under dishonest circumstances.
_____ I have sex with near-strangers.
_____ I demand sex from a partner.
_____ I use pornography that features violence, humiliation, sex with minors, and/or other illegal or abusive activities.
_____ I commit sexual offenses (voyeurism, exhibitionism, molestation, sex with minors, incest, rape).
_____ I visit topless bars, strip shows, and/or adult bookstores.
_____ I often watch X-rated movies or videos.
_____ I make sexual slurs or regularly use hard-core sexual language.
_____ I make sexually degrading jokes.
If you find your present behaviors described in this checklist, you may be unconsciously replaying or mirroring sexual abuse. Sometimes referred to as a repetition compulsion, this instant replay can be a survivor’s unconscious way of trying to understand what happened and to resolve inner emotional stress by acting out the abuse again and again.
Staging replays may be a way of desensitizing ourselves to the shame, disgust, or pain we felt in the abuse. Replays may also be an effort to gain some mastery and control over even our worst experiences. “Shortly after the abuse, when I was twelve years old,” a survivor said, “I did a striptease in front of the picture window in our living room. I had no idea why I was doing it.”
Over time, replays can become ingrained, habitual, and reinforced by the pleasure of sexual excitement. We can be locked into the very sexual activities that first caused us anguish. During his abuse, Tyrone was exposed to X-rated movies; as an adult, he finds himself addictively drawn to watching the same kinds of movies when he masturbates.
Sexual abuse may have taught us to oversexualize our responses to affection and closeness. We may find it difficult to touch in our relationships without feeling sexually aroused, or without believing that touch will automatically lead to sex. And we may worry that an intimate relationship cannot possibly exist unless sex is a part of it.
Some of these behaviors may have developed as ways of trying to cope with deep emotions felt during the abuse, such as anxiety, rage, humiliation, and powerlessness. A survivor might have begun acting in a certain way in an effort to prove his or her sexual worth. A survivor who had been molested by her brother when she was a child described her behavior:
As a little girl I became preoccupied with my genitals and tried various experiments on them, like putting perfume on them. I was trying to make myself clean from the abuse as well as to make myself more attractive. After putting on the perfume I would masturbate. I think this was an attempt to use physical pleasure to resolve my emotional confusion. Masturbation became something I felt I had to do, rather than something I felt I wanted to do.
Some sexual behaviors may have evolved as ways of trying to avoid negative feelings and prevent automatic reactions to sex. Survivors may have begun using alcohol or pornography in conjunction with sex as a way to dissociate and blot out painful memories of abuse during sexual experiences. Similarly, survivors may avoid or feel drawn to certain sexual activities in an effort to mask sexual functioning problems such as arousal or orgasm difficulties that developed in response to the abuse (see chapter 11). For instance, a survivor may compulsively masturbate to avoid the possibility of feeling embarrassed by an impotence problem with a partner. Or a survivor may consciously engage in a disturbing sexual fantasy because it acts as a reliable way to boost sexual interest and facilitate orgasmic release.
Some sexual behaviors re-create relationship dynamics that survivors became familiar with in the abuse. A victim who was physically abused and sexually molested may unconsciously be drawn to physically abusive sexual relationships now. Hanna, a thirty-year-old survivor, told of her history:
When I was a little girl my father would beat and rape me repeatedly. Once I saw him bruise my mother’s breasts. Then, when I was sixteen years old, I married a man who often beat me and humiliated me sexually. On one occasion, when I was getting ready to go out with some friends, he saw that I looked attractive and tore my clothes off. Then he shoved me outside the house and locked the door. I was left huddling naked in the bushes in our front yard.
When we finally realize the connection between past sexual abuse and our present sexual behaviors, we gain a powerful tool to help us make positive changes. We can begin to understand why we are drawn to or avoid certain sexual behaviors. At first we may want to hold on to these sexual habits to satisfy psychological needs related to the abuse. But once we examine these hurtful behavior patterns closely, we can become more motivated to cast off the influence of past abuse. Then we can establish new patterns free of associations with the offender and of the trauma we suffered long ago.
All the behaviors in the last checklist are potentially damaging to you. They can generate feelings of unhappiness, loneliness, and self-loathing. They can prevent you from experiencing sex as positive and healthy, something that increases self-esteem and intimacy with others. Instead, these abuse-related behaviors tend to reinforce the sexual abuse mind-set in which sex is seen as a commodity, something uncontrollable, hurtful, secretive, and without moral boundaries. These behaviors can also perpetuate false and negative sexual self-concepts, leading survivors to continue to feel intrinsically bad or damaged, or to see themselves as sex objects.
Let’s look more closely at how several of these harmful sexual behaviors may relate to past abuse and how survivors can develop a desire to change the behavior.
Avoiding sex
As a result of sexual abuse, survivors may have learned to withdraw from situations that have the potential to become sexual. A married survivor might sleep in a different room or bed from her spouse. A survivor who does not have an intimate partner might refrain from courtship and dating. By avoiding sex, survivors may feel that they are protecting themselves from harmful sexual behaviors, from unpleasant sexual experiences, or from being sexually abused again. Rich, a survivor who suffered multiple forms of child sexual abuse, feared that he would become an offender if he allowed himself to interact sexually.
I have trouble getting close. I am very paranoid; I read into statements. On the slightest hint that I might get hurt, I bail out, I run. I have broken up with a number of women after sharing my feelings with them. I was afraid I would be hurt. I don’t know how to make sexual advances. I don’t even feel okay about advances. I’m afraid that if I make advances I’ll become a perpetrator.
In therapy, Rich realized that his sexual advances would not, in and of themselves, make him an offender. He learned to distinguish between conditions that create sexual abuse and conditions that create healthy and positive sex. He reassured himself that his sexual intentions and consciousness were different from an offender’s. “I’m not like an offender,” Rich concluded, “because I’m committed to not wanting to sexually abuse anyone.”
Social isolation can be self-perpetuating. Survivors can remain in a rut in which any social relating becomes more and more uncomfortable. Remaining isolated, they may fail to cultivate basic interpersonal skills. Feeling isolated, alone, and undesirable, survivors may turn to private sexual behaviors—such as cybersex activity, compulsive masturbating, or obsessive fantasizing about sexual abuse—that in the long run make them feel worse. While indulging in these sexual behaviors might allow for arousal and sexual release, it can also hurt self-esteem and interfere with the development of satisfying relationships. A woman survivor said:
After the rapes I became extremely distant from people. I isolated more, fantasized more, masturbated more, and had fewer real relationships. Now, however, I am seeing that these behaviors keep me locked into emotional pain from the abuse.
Survivors with partners may withdraw from sex to avoid unpleasant automatic reactions and outcomes. They may fear betrayal, flashbacks, panic attacks, or a repeat of sexual abuse. A survivor in a committed relationship told of her fears:
I am afraid of intimacy because it can lead to sexual contact, and sex remains too traumatic for me. I tend to avoid being alone with my partner and am hesitant to encourage or initiate touching. My partner and I are both hurting because we lack the intimacy that we both want so badly.
Survivors need to see that continuing these avoidance behaviors allows the abuse to cripple their ability to achieve healthy, positive sex on their own and with a partner. As we will see later in this chapter, and in the chapters in part three of this book, survivors can reach toward sex gradually, learning important skills and alternative ways of saying no to specific, troubling sexual situations. They can build healthy, intimate relationships while still protecting themselves from unpleasant feelings and reactions.
Faking sexual enjoyment
Monica, a survivor of sibling incest, used to pretend that she was having orgasms during sex with her husband. In the abuse Monica had learned to hide her true feelings. She became used to staying in a secret world, apart from the person she was relating with sexually. And she learned to squelch her own sexual needs and enjoyment. Monica feared that her husband would reject her if he knew that she wasn’t easily sexually satisfied. Faking enjoyment was one way Monica believed she could control the sexual interaction: her husband would climax and stop sex when she faked an orgasm.
Recently Monica realized that by hiding her true experience by pretending to have orgasms she was continuing the abuse:
It’s becoming clear to me that if I’m really going to get over the abuse I need to talk with my husband and stop faking orgasms—stop re-creating the abuse every time we have sex. I want sex to be for me, too.
Having sex when you don’t want to
Sexual abuse teaches submissive sex roles. Victims often learn that they will be assaulted and abused more if they assert their will. They may have felt terrified that they would be abandoned and unloved for not complying. One woman, who as a child had been forced to have sex at gunpoint, was irrationally afraid that her husband would kill her if she refused him.
Male survivors may have difficulty saying no to sex, fearing it will undermine their masculinity, which may have been threatened in the abuse. In fact, many survivors believe that saying no to sex is not an option open to them.
Katie, a twenty-eight-year-old survivor, realized that her recent involvement with a man who wasn’t kind to her was an attempt to resolve feelings related to her father, the original offender. She desperately wanted the love her father was never able to give her.
I was obsessed with this man even though he was unable to commit to a relationship and also was a sexual addict. I knew better, but I couldn’t say no to sex with him. I was in incredible pain, turmoil, and confusion. I began writing about how I felt and realized that, through this man, my father was verbally, physically, and sexually abusing me. It all came down to a belief that if I have sex with my daddy, he’ll see I need to be loved. He’ll stop torturing me, and he’ll love me. All of a sudden my behavior made sense. I decided I had to stop seeing the man.
Acknowledging the connection between her present behavior and her abuse was emotionally painful for Katie. She had to admit to herself that her father had been, and probably always would be, incapable of giving her healthy and caring love. Katie realized that she had to learn to give herself the love she had wanted from her father. Only then would she stop trying to get her need for love met through unwanted sexual behavior. “For me, having sex when I don’t want to is not a solution,” she said. “It’s the problem!”
Another survivor, George, was abused by an older woman when he was a teen. She teased him about not being “man enough” for her when he hesitated in the sexual contact. As George explained:
I used to feel that I didn’t have a choice about whether or not to have sex with someone. If someone wanted me sexually, I’d go along with it. To refuse to have sex with a woman seemed unacceptable. I thought it would mean that there’s something wrong with me. It seemed extremely rude and insulting. I was sure a relationship would end as a result. I believed that a man should never refuse a woman sexually. It wasn’t until recently, in group therapy with other men survivors, that I realized how every time I have sex when I really don’t want to, I am reliving the abuse and abandoning myself.
Like Katie and George, many survivors conclude that to break free from the influence of abuse, they need to learn to feel comfortable refusing sex. Many survivors find that being able to say no to sex during the healing enables them to say yes to sex later, when they feel ready and really mean it. Later in the chapter, when we discuss ground rules for healthy sexual encounters, we will talk about how to say no to sex when you need to so that you don’t continue to feel like a victim or a sex object or continue unwanted behaviors.
Combining sex and emotional or physical abuse
In sexual abuse, the perpetrator forces the victim into a relationship characterized by secrecy, domination, humiliation, betrayal, or pain. As a result survivors may unconsciously be drawn to relationships in which they are again victimized. A survivor described his situation:
I was married to a woman who would get angry with me because I didn’t want to have sex with her as often as she wanted it. She never let me choose when we had sex. She always initiated it. She’d drink before we had sex. Afterward she made fun of me and put me down for not being like her other partners.
Survivors may get involved and stay involved with abusive partners because of their feelings of fear and low self-esteem. Survivors might tell themselves, “No one else but an abusive partner would want me,” or, “I’m afraid someone better might want more from me than I can give.” Some survivors who continue to feel responsible for the original abuse might be drawn to abusive relationships to punish themselves. “When I want sex and try to initiate it,” a survivor said, “my partner always turns me down. He gets a kick out of seeing me suffer.”*
If you remain in a relationship with someone who continually puts you down, your behavior may be the result of a distorted effort to protect yourself from feeling the pain of betrayal from the original abuse. This is a damaging cycle: You try to prove to yourself you’re bad by having partners who tell you you’re bad; then you can fool yourself into thinking you caused the abuse. By blaming yourself you avoid thinking about the original betrayal. You don’t have to feel bad about how horribly the offender treated you—because you never admit to that pain. Allowing a partner to hurt us in the present can feel more acceptable than admitting our father, sister, or friend hurt us long ago.
When survivors decide to break free from abusive relationships, it often means they have stopped punishing themselves for abuse that wasn’t their fault. They acknowledge how horribly they were misused and betrayed in the past. And they start taking responsibility for protecting themselves from now on. A survivor said, “I realized that I’d never be able to feel good about myself so long as I was letting my boyfriend call me ugly names and threaten me with a beating. I had to set limits and spell out how he was to treat me if he wanted to stay with me—and I did.”
Having sex when not fully alert
Sometimes sexual abuse takes place when a victim is half asleep or otherwise not fully present. A little boy may have been fondled in bed at night when he was asleep and then may have pretended to stay asleep until the abuse was over. A woman may have been plied with alcohol and then raped. Some victims of repeated sexual assaults learned that they could temporarily avoid emotional and physical pain by drugging themselves before being approached again by their offender.
Pam, a thirty-year-old survivor of father-daughter incest, had very little interest in sex. She turned from her husband, Lonnie, when he would approach her to have sex at night. Sometimes when Pam slept, Lonnie would fondle her breasts and genitals until she was sexually stimulated and aroused. Pam would awaken during the fondling and be very angry with Lonnie for touching her, but she would not tell him she was awake or ask him to stop. Pam said:
I felt mixed about telling Lonnie to stop since it was hard for me to feel sexually turned on otherwise. But I was allowing Lonnie to treat me the same way my dad had when he would come into my room and touch me when I was a girl. I realized that even if it meant giving up rare moments of feeling sexually aroused, I had to stop this pattern. I didn’t want sex to be like that anymore. It felt like I was sexually abusing myself. I wanted to be able to relate with Lonnie honestly and directly, and to stop seeing him as my dad.
Not being fully present may have been functional, and even preferable, during sexual abuse. But to continue tuning out now, in nonabusive sexual situations, robs survivors of being able to control their sexual experiences, to enjoy sensual pleasuring while alert and open, and to create real intimacy with a partner. For sex to be healthy and unlike abuse, we need to be all there.
Using abusive sexual fantasies or pornography
Carol, a twenty-five-year-old survivor, realized that the strong attraction she had to pornographic stories of adult-child sex related directly to sexual abuse by her father.
I’m fairly sure that the sexual fantasies and books that I used to masturbate to while growing up were distinctly related to specific scenes with my father from the incest. Throughout my teens, my father and I carried on a secret relationship that involved sharing our pornography. He had a whole drawer of porn books in his room, and I had a drawer in mine. He would come take some of my books and exchange them for some of his. I’d use them for masturbation fantasies. We never talked about what we were doing. It was totally, completely unspoken.
The secret sharing of pornography was the primary way that Carol felt emotionally connected with her father. As an adult Carol found that when she stopped masturbating to abusive pornography, she also had to give up an emotional tie to her father. She felt trapped. Carol weighed the pros and cons of change.
Reading incest fantasy stuff over and over as a way of sexual stimulation was like continuing the abuse. It made me feel I could be sexually stimulated only in situations that were secretive—with married men, with people of authority. I realized that unless I stopped I would never heal. I would never have a regular, normal sexual relationship with my partner, so long as all my stimulation came from abuse.
In time, Carol threw out her pornography and curtailed her abusive fantasies. Although it was painful, she realized that her father was incapable of connecting with her in healthy ways. As she healed, she grieved the loss of never receiving the love and bonding she needed from him.
Relying on pornography and abusive fantasies may have evolved as a way survivors learned to avoid feeling powerless, threatened, and fearful. Survivors may have learned to use fantasy and pornography to dissociate and avoid focusing on their own emotions and sensations during a sexual experience. For a long time, Gina, a survivor, used pornography to distance herself from past abuse.
Pornography gave me an intense mental focus that kept my father out of my thinking. When my father intruded in my mind, I not only felt bad but lost interest in the sex.
Using pornography prevented one negative experience for Gina—the intrusion of her father’s image. But as time went on Gina realized that the pornography was keeping her locked into mental images of sexual exploitation and degradation. There were too many undesirable side effects to this way of coping with her father’s image. Gina decided to face her fear of her father’s image more directly. She explored her feelings toward her father in therapy and began shouting “get out” at his image when it would intrude during sex. These new ways of coping worked better for her because they didn’t inhibit her healthy sexual expression.
Some survivors use abusive fantasies as a way of punishing themselves. Because he still carries underlying feelings of guilt about the abuse, a survivor may fantasize that he is being whipped. Or a survivor may realize that her fantasies represent feelings that she is undeserving of healthy love and affection. A survivor described her abusive fantasy:
My most arousing fantasy is that my partner is fantasizing about someone else. It’s like a drug. It feels like I need it, and yet it makes me feel sad and lonely.
Some survivors realize they have been clinging to abusive fantasies because these fantasies offer opportunities for them to feel in absolute control of sex. In fantasy, survivors can design and change imagined sexual scenarios, and can attempt to compensate for feelings of helplessness and of being out of control that they felt during the abuse. As a survivor explained,
Abusive fantasies have helped me feel the power and control that I didn’t have when I was being abused. While this worked in the short run, now that I feel better about myself, I want to experience more in sex. I can’t do it so long as I keep spacing out into these kinds of fantasies.
Abusive fantasies and pornography re-create and reinforce the original abuse experience. In sexual healing, many survivors realize they need to curtail these behaviors.* Then as they move further away from sexual abuse dynamics and the influence of the past, they can think in new and healthy ways during sex, such as by focusing on pleasurable sensations or loving thoughts of sexual contact with a caring partner.
Engaging in compulsive masturbation
When survivors feel drawn or “addicted” to masturbating, this behavior reinforces the abusive notion that sex is uncontrollable and overpowering. Unlike healthy masturbation, which we choose to do as an expression of self-nurturance, compulsive masturbation feels dirty, urgent, and driven.
In therapy, Dave realized that his compulsive masturbating related directly to having been sexually abused as a child by his mother. When Dave was a boy his mother would regularly demand to see his penis to determine if it was “the correct size.” This led to Dave’s anxiety and fear about his sexual adequacy. Dave recalled his first experiences with excessive masturbation:
Sometimes when I was an older boy I’d walk naked into the backyard at night. I tried on my mother’s stockings and bras. I’d fantasize about seeing and touching my mom’s breasts. I began masturbating to images of being sexually controlled by women. Once I got so upset with all the masturbating, I burned myself with a lighter. The secretive activity was a turn-on because of the secretive relationship I had with my mother. The sexual thoughts of her gave me a nonreality, a weird feeling that made me want to withdraw totally from people.
Survivors need to realize that this kind of compulsive behavior mistreats their own sexuality as an outlet for emotional pain. By exploiting themselves, survivors stay locked into abusive patterns while feeling isolated, detached, and different from others. Until they eliminate this compulsive behavior, they hinder their chance to build real intimacy.
Engaging in promiscuous sex
Some survivors, struggling with unresolved emotional conflicts from the original abuse, may have many brief sexual relationships in a row or have multiple sexual partners during a particular period. Isaac, a twenty-six-year-old gay man who had been repeatedly abused by his brother and uncles, realized that the pain of low self-esteem had been igniting his desire for many sexual partners. Through this kind of sex, he was unconsciously trying to “prove” or “show” how bad and disgusting he felt about himself as a result of his abuse.
After I first came out, I had numerous sexual encounters in bookstores, bathhouses, and restrooms. I used to try for large numbers—an even dozen encounters in a day. I was trying to cover for feelings of loneliness. Later I did massage for a living, which was basically masturbating men. I also made sadomasochism movies. It was good money and made sense at the time. For a while after the whole AIDS thing came out, I continued to practice unsafe sex. I remember thinking it was a real thrill that the sex could be what does me in. Since I’ve stopped those behaviors, gotten off drugs, and been in incest recovery, I can see now that what I was doing was acting out all my abuse stuff—keeping it alive while slowly killing myself.
Isaac’s promiscuous behavior was a way of punishing and hurting himself for past abuse, like a child who bangs his head against the wall when he feels bad about himself. He had turned feelings of anger and betrayal meant for his offenders inward on himself.*
Because of the AIDS epidemic, survivors who realize the connection between their promiscuous behavior and past abuse, and who then decide to do something about it, may actually save their own lives and the lives of others.†
Having sex outside a primary relationship
Having “love” affairs may be a survivor’s way to replay the lost trust and the human betrayal inherent in the original sexual abuse. We may cheat on our partners, just as our abuser may have cheated on someone else or betrayed our trust. We may be dishonest about our actions, telling lies to our partners to maintain the behavior, just as our abusers told lies to us and others. The abuse may have taught survivors to feel addicted to the excitement of illicit sex. We may not admit how hurtful our actions may be to others, just as our abusers did not admit how they hurt us. Affairs can be miniature re-creations of the abuse. Like abuse, an affair is often a tantalizingly secret, “forbidden” sexual liaison. Many survivors conclude that they have to stop having affairs because affairs both keep them locked into patterns of deceit and secrecy and cause harm to others.
Acting in sexually demanding or exploitive ways
The repercussions of sexual abuse can lead a survivor to act in sexually aggressive ways. Survivors who act in these ways may not even consciously realize they are doing to others the same hurtful things that were done to them. This aggressive behavior can be overt, such as when a survivor commits incest or rape. It can also take on more subtle forms. Being nice to someone, sleeping with him, and then ignoring him is subtle abuse. So is demanding sex from a partner, using hard-core sexual language around people who don’t want to hear it, and buying sex from a prostitute or sex worker web site.
Sexually abusive behaviors may be unconscious attempts to align with the power that the survivor assumed the offender possessed. If I’m not doing it to someone else, then someone else will do it to me, a survivor might think, or, The best defense is a good offense. These behaviors hurt survivors by jeopardizing their legal, ethical, and moral integrity; they also deny survivors real intimacy and self-respect. You won’t be able to feel genuinely good about yourself if you are treating other people as objects or betraying their confidence and trust.
Survivors may resist admitting that they have been acting in sexually abusive ways. They may be so focused on thinking of themselves as victims that the idea they are hurting someone else may never have occurred to them. But once reached, this kind of awareness can pave the way for change. “It hurts me to realize that I have treated my wife as a toy, a machine whose orgasms could make me feel that I’m a man,” a survivor said.
Once we identify the ways we replicate past abuse, we can begin to reduce the mystery and power our impulses have to control us. As we better understand the challenges specific behaviors may present, we can work more effectively toward lasting changes.
BREAKING FREE FROM ABUSE-RELATED SEXUAL BEHAVIORS
Sexual healing involves recognizing sexual practices that are associated with past abuse and then learning new ways of behaving that foster healthy sexuality and intimacy. Here are three different avenues survivors can follow to make changes in their sexual behavior:
1. Learn methods for stopping specific unwanted sexual behaviors.
2. Take a healing vacation from sex to develop a new orientation for integrating sex into your life.
3. Establish healthy ground rules for sexual encounters to improve self-caring and intimacy in sex.
I describe these avenues in a progressive order. They are complementary and can be combined and integrated with each other. For instance, a survivor may choose to take a healing vacation from sex to help him stop a specific unwanted behavior. Or a survivor may want to establish new ground rules for sexual encounters as she resumes sexual activity after a vacation from sex. You can decide to journey on each one to whatever degree you want, or you can travel them one at a time in the order they are presented. As with the rest of your healing journey, you need to create a program that fits your needs at this time. Become familiar with each of these avenues; you may want to take some steps now and plan others for the future.
Avenue 1: Stop specific unwanted behaviors
Once you’ve identified one or more specific sexual behaviors you want to stop, don’t be surprised if you feel anxious about actually stopping them. Giving up old behaviors can seem overwhelming, even impossible, at first. This is natural. After all, your present sexual habits have probably become ingrained over many years. Even though they may be bringing you chronic unhappiness and reminding you of the abuse, you still know how to do them, and you know what happens when you do them. It’s difficult to consider changing a behavior that feels familiar and secure, even if it’s wrong for you. For no matter how a specific sexual behavior may be harming you, it may also be fulfilling some emotional needs, delivering pleasure, and providing temporary stress relief.
Certain sexual behaviors give a survivor a sense of power and control. A survivor who retreats from sex may feel that this behavior helps her avoid unpleasant automatic reactions and potentially embarrassing sexual experiences. Stopping this avoidance behavior would mean developing alternative ways of self-protection and power. These might include building skills to handle automatic reactions and learning skills for communicating with a partner.
In contrast, another survivor may feel his aggressive sexual behavior gives him a sense of control and power in sexual situations. Stopping this aggressive behavior would require developing skills for feeling powerful and in control while being nonabusive and respecting the rights of a partner. Learning how to assert his feelings and needs directly and to build emotional trust with his partner may be the new tools that could replace aggressive behavior patterns. If you balk at losing something familiar, remember that you are gaining something much better.
Even if harmful, a particular sexual behavior may make you feel safe. Letting go of it will mean facing new feelings of vulnerability. Roxanne, a date rape survivor, was terribly lonely and wanted to date and be sexual again, but the thought of initiating social contacts made her shrink in fear. She worried that she would be abused again. Jake, a survivor who used abusive and degrading pornography to become aroused, desperately wanted to stop this habit, but he feared that giving up this behavior would make him vulnerable to sexual functioning problems. Jake described his dilemma:
To eliminate my sexual fantasies would feel like getting out of a box. But it’s hard for me to imagine anything being as stimulating as the fantasies. I worry that without the fantasies I won’t be able to maintain erections and will humiliate myself with a partner, or that if I can still get erections, sex might become just plain boring.
Roxanne and Jake weren’t able to stop their harmful sexual behaviors until they allowed themselves to take risks. Change involves accepting our intrinsic vulnerability.
A particular sexual behavior—even one you know is harmful—may have been serving a psychological function for you by keeping you from a painful realization about the abuse. When Roberta, a thirty-year-old survivor of father-daughter incest, began to take steps to stop promiscuous behavior, she ran right into an awareness that forced her to reevaluate her image of her father. Roberta realized that if she admitted she was capable of gaining control over her sexual impulses, her father must have chosen not to control his sexual impulses when he abused her. Finally Roberta realized that her compulsive sexual behavior had been sheltering her from feeling rage about being abandoned by her father. Roberta had to accept and mourn the fact that her father had intentionally abused her.
Some survivors are discouraged at the thought of stopping harmful sexual behaviors. Perhaps they tried to stop before and didn’t succeed. Enthusiasm became disappointment, and they felt even more entrenched in their damaging behaviors.
Like quitting smoking or drinking, stopping old sex practices creates stress. You may fear that first day without the behavior, just as a soon-to-be ex-smoker dreads his first day without cigarettes. You may also wonder what repercussions stopping the behavior will have for you in the long run.
Because of all the resistance and fears, stopping a harmful sexual behavior will probably require a continued, long-term, concentrated effort. Keep in mind that the challenge is different depending on the kind of behaviors you decide to change: Survivors who retreat from sex need to continually challenge themselves to overcome their fears and to develop new skills to protect themselves during touch and sex. Survivors who are drawn to compulsive sexual behaviors need to continually challenge themselves to wrestle down and relax their desire for old behaviors, clearing the way for openhearted, whole-body sexual experiences in which they feel good sexually, emotionally, and ethically, all at once.
Here are some suggestions for how you can help yourself stop a particular sexual behavior that you have realized you want to stop.
Get clear on why you want to stop. Spend some time evaluating the particular sexual behavior you want to stop. Examining the negative behavior closely can help you remember why it’s important for you to stop it and why stopping it is worth the time and trouble it takes. The exercise below may help you.
Serge, a survivor who was able to curtail compulsive masturbation to abusive magazine pornography, did so partly to protect his personal integrity. He realized that if he were to die suddenly, his family would find his stash of sadomasochistic pornography hidden in the garage. That possibility bothered him enough to help him change his behavior.
GETTING CLEAR ABOUT SPECIFIC SEXUAL BEHAVIORS
Review the abuse-related behaviors you checked at the beginning of this chapter, on pages 166–67. You may want to examine each behavior or focus on one or two. Then answer the following questions.
1. How does this behavior represent a way of thinking about sex in which sex is seen as sexual abuse?
2. How does this behavior reflect a false or negative view about myself as a sexual person?
3. How does this behavior reenact the relationship dynamics I was exposed to in the abuse?
4. How does this behavior hurt me?
5. How does this behavior hurt others?
6. Why is it important that I stop/change this behavior? (Consider the consequences if you continue this behavior: Could you lose an important relationship? develop a sexually transmitted disease? cause an unwanted pregnancy? be accused or convicted of a crime? lose a job? suffer years of loneliness, alienation, and remorse?)
You may want to expand on your answers in a journal, talk about them in a support group, or discuss them with a therapist. You may also find it helpful to write your answers to these questions on a card and keep them with you at all times. Refer to them frequently to remind yourself of the sound reasoning behind the changes you are making.
After you have thought through your own reasons for wanting to stop certain behaviors, you may want to rank which behaviors you want to stop first. Some behaviors—criminal sexual acts, medically risky sex, or degrading sexual practices—must be addressed immediately. Continu-ing any of these practices puts you and others at risk of serious harm.
Get support to stop harmful sex. Because stopping harmful sexual behavior requires long-term dedication, it is helpful—and probably essential—to have the support of individual counseling, therapy groups, or other recovery programs.* Without such help we can easily lose perspective on what it takes to change, unnecessarily blaming or shaming ourselves if we falter. A survivor said:
It has been critical for me to find others with whom I can talk honestly and openly about my sexual experiences, feelings, compulsions, and attractions. I have been able to truly feel normal by just hearing that others have thought, felt, and done the same things I have, and by hearing about what had helped them to recover.
Survivors often need other types of support in stopping old behaviors. Taking classes about sex, obtaining social skills through training, learning how to control anger, and developing assertiveness and communication skills can help you strengthen the personal resources that can assist you in making changes. In many ways, you are creating a new life for yourself out of the shadow of abuse. Changing your sexual behaviors will also probably entail relearning and redefining many old habits and attitudes—from how you view yourself to how you interact with the world around you. Realize that this is a big task, and find support to help you on your way.
Develop a realistic approach to stopping negative behavior. Nurture yourself. Have compassion for yourself. Expect this healing process to take time.
You can’t force yourself to stop fearing sex and withdrawing from it. Withdrawal is a protective shield that you let go of as you feel safe in other ways. Conversely, making yourself be sexual when you don’t want to is abuse of yourself. Take gradual steps. Focus on feeling safe and comfortable, asserting your needs, and handling your automatic reactions. You will stop withdrawing by slowly moving forward with other safe behaviors, such as exploring nonsexual intimate touch, communicating feelings and needs, and pacing sexual experiences. Proceed gently.
Stopping compulsions and addictions may require you to take a tougher approach. Survivors need to be alert to their tendencies to deny that their actions are problems. Denial sabotages our own sexual recovery. You may hear yourself making statements that rationalize and validate compulsive behaviors. Confront these statements. “Just one more time won’t hurt,” we may say, even though we know better. But you will always have another decision to make. We must find a way to say no each time. Because of the tendency to deny addictive and compulsive sexual behavior, support groups, twelve-step programs, and therapy may be essential to your recovery. We can’t deceive ourselves so easily when we share our feelings with others who understand.
People make changes differently. You will need to find your own path. One survivor might stop having an affair all at once and never have another. Another survivor might find he has better success by gradually phasing out negative behavior.
One survivor caught in a pattern of sexual compulsion found that she was able to make progress by giving up her harmful sex habits one by one—easiest first, hardest last. One success encouraged the next.
Sex had been a free-for-all. I had no boundaries to my behavior. I knew I needed to get control over my situation. After I decided I wouldn’t sleep with anyone I worked with, I decided to have no more secretive sex. I had to have sex in the context of the relationship I was in or tell my partner about it if I was having an affair. That limited things quite a bit, which was good for me—I needed limits! Later I gave up affairs altogether.
If you choose to go slowly and gradually, don’t fool yourself by making real goals too distant. In the movie Uncle Buck, actor John Candy plays the lovable uncle who talks about his five-year plan to stop smoking. He plans to first switch from cigarettes to cigars, then cigars to a pipe, then a pipe to chewing tobacco, then chewing tobacco to nicotine gum, and then to give up the gum. How likely is it that he’d ever succeed?
Abusive fantasies pose a different challenge. They function like automatic reactions, occurring spontaneously with sexual arousal. Don’t expect your fantasies to stop completely even if you do stop harmful behaviors. Fantasies often persist, but survivors can stop feeling the shame and thwarted intimacy that often accompanies such fantasies. A survivor told of gaining control of her fantasies:
I spent several years trying to stop my abuse fantasies during sexual intercourse. I was able to tame them down a lot, into less and less degrading images. But I was still frustrated and angry that I was drawn to them at all. They can so quickly pop into my mind. I got to a point where I stopped feeling bad about them. I just accepted they would sometimes be there. When they come up now I shift my mental focus away from them as much as possible. I ground myself in the present, think about loving myself if I am alone or loving my partner if I am with him. I don’t let the fantasies interfere with liking myself or feeling close with my partner.
Expect to feel some mixed emotions when you stop engaging in negative sex. You may feel excited and encouraged one moment, discouraged and sad the next. Keep going. Don’t quit.
Letting go is always a loss, even when you let go of behavior that hurts you. Cry about loss, but let go of the damage.
Learn how to prevent relapse. In Alcoholics Anonymous there is a well-known saying, “Relapse is part of recovery.” This is true as well for survivors wanting to escape from bad sex. Recovery isn’t steady. You walk. You fall. You get up and walk again.
Some relapses are preventable. Ask yourself, What need did this behavior fill? What is another way I can satisfy this need? If abuse-related sex relieved stress, try relaxation training, exercise, or meditation. If harmful sex connected you with others, join a club, play sports, meet for lunch with a friend. Developing healthy alternatives reduces the tendency to see the old behavior as your only available response.
Relapses can be minimized and prevented when you establish certain guidelines for your sexual behavior. If you are stopping yourself from getting sexually involved too early in a relationship, you can limit your early dates to daytime settings with a group of friends. If you are stopping having sex when you are half asleep, you can discuss the situation with your partner and both agree that sex is not okay unless you make eye contact and verbally consent first.
We can reduce the likelihood of relapse by improving our self-esteem and releasing ourselves from shame. Acknowledge your accomplishments. Indulge your healthy desires. Develop a lifestyle that balances obligatory demands and satisfying activities.*
Another way to prevent relapse is to identify your triggers (see chapter 7). When a physical setting, a partner’s behavior, or something else reminds you of sexual abuse, you may be aware by now that you are likely to react by withdrawing or behaving compulsively. By being aware you can control how you react.
I counseled a couple once in which the survivor, who had been withdrawn sexually, was making good progress. She was gradually feeling more comfortable with physical intimacy with her husband, making sure that she only had contact when she really wanted to. Then on the night of their fourteenth wedding anniversary, she began to feel guilty that she hadn’t been overtly sexual with her husband for a long time. Without realizing it, she had begun to pressure herself to have sex out of a sense of obligation. She took their kids to her mother’s house, bought a bottle of champagne, put on a sexy nightgown, and seduced her husband when he came in the door. Midway through the sexual act, she withdrew, emotionally distant and depressed. It took months until she felt like exploring any kind of physical intimacy again. Looking back on the experience, she could see that feeling guilty and acting out of obligation had triggered her relapse.
Some survivors plan ahead of time what they will do if they start to relapse. This might include getting out of a risky environment, talking with a support person, writing in a diary, or relying on a variety of alternative, positive behaviors.
When relapses do occur—and they probably will—remain positive. Relapses yield information that can help you. Ask yourself what triggered this relapse and how you could have prevented it. This hindsight can help you have fewer slips in the future. Don’t hate yourself for slipping. Learn and get yourself back on track quickly.
Stopping your damaging sexual behaviors can bring about many positive changes. You become active in creating your life as you want it to be, instead of reacting to what others have done to you. You can protect yourself from unconsciously assuming the role of victim in your relationships. At this point in your life you can assume responsibility for yourself and your future. When you become accountable for your actions, you accept and welcome your strength and power. Tom, a survivor of father-son incest, said:
For most of my adult life my sexual expression was tied up with a desperate need to have someone love and approve of me. I had sex to get close. Later I felt used. I was sexually out of control.
Lately I’ve been liking and trusting myself more. I realize that what I do, and have to give, is important. I’ve been setting limits for the first time.
It’s time for me to take charge of my life and to heal. I want to slow things down and learn to deal with my own reactions and needs by myself. To recognize my human value, I need to stop being sexual for awhile.
Many survivors feel a similar need to abstain from sex temporarily, to give themselves time to fully heal, and to learn new ways of behaving. Once you feel you have the skills to stop harmful sexual behaviors, you may want to take a vacation from sex. Just as a break from work can help you regain perspective and renew your energy, a vacation from sex can give you a chance to change the way sex fits in with the rest of your life.
Avenue 2: Take a healing vacation from sex
The emotional wounds of sexual abuse, like physical wounds, need time to heal. But like wounded soldiers who go right back into battle, many survivors never take an opportunity for rest and recuperation. Their wounds continue to ache. Survivors may feel opened up and raw, realizing how much they were hurt.
You need a healing rest, time to process your feelings and tune into your own being, apart from sexual demands. Slowly you can learn to trust, feel, and enjoy your sensual self.
A vacation from sex can free the emotional energy you need to heal from sexual abuse. During a vacation from sex you no longer have to feel anxious, threatened, or controlled by sex: You get a reprieve. Energy that was reserved for worrying and obsessing about sex can now flow into your sexual recovery.
Create your own vacation. There are many different ways of taking a healing vacation. You will need to design a vacation that fits your pres-ent needs and situation. Here are some options to consider in planning your healing vacation:
1. Refrain from all sexual activity and intimate touch.
2. Refrain from sexual activities that involve genital stimulation, such as masturbation and intercourse, but allow other forms of intimate touch, such as kissing and hugging.
3. Refrain from sex with others, but allow self-stimulation.
4. Refrain from only some types of sexual activities. For instance, if you have an intimate partner, you may not want to be touched sexually or to be expected to touch your partner sexually. But perhaps you feel comfortable holding your partner while he or she masturbates.
Your healing vacation should last as long as you want it to last. While some survivors feel satisfied with healing vacations that last only several weeks to several months, I find that many survivors typically need at least three months of vacation to start to feel the benefits of the break. I recommend taking three months to one year. Some survivors, especially those who endured severe and highly traumatic abuse, may need more time.
Some vacations put the survivor completely in charge—no physical intimacy unless they initiate it. This can help survivors who feel overwhelmed when anyone tries to hug, cuddle, or kiss them. These survivors may have felt that all touch leads to sex. They need the vacation to learn to feel physically safe, in control, and relaxed.
Survivors who are not currently in a relationship may choose a celibate life for awhile. If you’ve associated dating with having uncontrolled sex, it may be best to refrain altogether from dating during your vacation. A single survivor of child molestation and date rape described her experience:
I was celibate for eleven months after the rape while I first began to deal seriously with abuse issues. This time gave me space to release myself from the critical judgments and voices that had acted like boulders around my feet. I treated myself to only the touches I wanted. I began to consciously appreciate my own sexuality and to own it as part of me.
Survivors in committed relationships need the cooperation of their intimate partners for the vacation to work. Because of the impact a vacation can have on an intimate relationship, survivors need to talk with their partners about their desire and reasons for taking a vacation from sex. Obviously, the idea of stopping all sex for awhile can scare and upset a partner. Partners may fear the vacation will mean that their sexual problems are going from bad to worse. Will we ever be sexual again? a partner may worry. For a partner who is already feeling sexually rejected, the prospect of months and months of sexual inactivity can seem miserable.
But the partner need not feel forgotten during your vacation. The partner’s role during this time is extremely important to sexual healing and to the establishment of future sexual intimacy. In the coming chapters we will look closely at the partner’s feelings and examine how survivors and partners can work together on healing during a vacation. You will also learn a variety of progressive exercises for relearning touch and solving sexual problems. You can start practicing some of these during the vacation. Although taking a vacation may sound passive, it isn’t. This can be the most active and productive period in your sexual healing.
If the vacation idea terrifies you, ask yourself why. Your answer may also help you understand your possible fears or addictions. When you compare three to six months or more on a vacation to your lifetime’s suffering, it won’t seem so long. Many survivors I have worked with tell me that a healing vacation has been the most important step they have taken to further their sexual healing.
How can a vacation from sex help you? Let’s consider some of the healing that can go on during a vacation from sex and why the break from sexual activity makes this process possible. Here are three main tasks that can be accomplished during the healing vacation:
• Healing your sexual self
• Resolving issues related to the abuse
• Learning new approaches to relationships and touch
HEALING YOUR SEXUAL SELF. Survivors who were abused in childhood may not be able to recall a period in their lives when they were not sexually active. A safe and innocent childhood is a birthright you may have lost. By taking a vacation in adulthood, survivors can create an age of innocence, an experience they never had. It’s a way of actively reclaiming a lost part of childhood, a way of putting sex into healthy perspective.
Rhonda, a thirty-year-old single survivor, was abused by her stepfather from the time she was eight until she was twelve. Since then she had been involved in one hot and heavy short-term relationship after another. She slept with men within days, sometimes hours, of meeting them. Sex was the main focus of her encounters. When Rhonda first considered taking a break from sex, she was terrified. It took her several attempts until she was finally able to do it. Six months into her vacation, something special started to happen: Rhonda started to feel sexually innocent. As she explained:
I feel fresh and new. I think of myself as a virgin now. The other day I wore a white dress and white pearl necklace to a party. I felt special and good about myself in a way I never knew before. I’ve even started using extra-virgin olive oil for cooking.
Virginity is more a state of mind than body. It has to do with seeing yourself as presexual, pure, wholesome, curious, exploring, and self-protective. Regardless of your past abuse and experiences, with a breather from adult sexuality you can reclaim the experience of virginity for yourself.
Taking a healing vacation from sex creates an opportunity to repair the damage done to your social and sexual development. When children are not sexually molested, they typically go through stages in their growth that prepare them for relationships and future sexual contact. These stages include feeling physically safe and protected from overt sex, feeling loved for themselves, enjoying touch and sensations, developing sexual curiosity, initiating social relationships, and establishing meaningful friendships and nonsexual forms of intimacy. Later in life they can choose to have sex from a place of readiness, choice, and healthy excitement.
Healing vacations from sex can allow survivors to learn to protect themselves sexually. This is a good time to take assertiveness training and self-defense classes. Survivors get to know their personal needs and desires, and they can assert healthy boundaries that secure their autonomy. Survivors also learn how to slowly remove the unhealthy walls of fear they’ve hidden behind.
Healing vacations allow us time to become our own nurturing, protective inner parent who is capable of setting limits out of love and respect for ourselves. As one survivor discovered:
My first relationship has to be the one I have with myself. No one can make it up to me—what I went through. I need to learn to love myself and appreciate my sexuality myself.
During the vacation from sex, survivors have an opportunity to learn a new approach to touch. Touch can be explored in gradual steps. The techniques and exercises presented later in the book are designed to help you. Survivors can learn that touch can be pleasurable in and of itself, and not something that automatically leads to sex. Survivors can learn how to express their feelings through touch and can receive nurturance from the caring touch of others, as this survivor recalled:
Once I was secure that I didn’t have to touch, I began to want to explore physical touch gradually with my partner. We started with simple things like holding hands, sitting close together, hugging, and cuddling. Then later, once I felt comfortable with these activities, we exchanged massages, did some kissing and petting. With each step I felt present, really there, expressing love and receiving it too. As I continue with exploring touch I know I’ll need lots of time and plenty of patience.
The vacation gives survivors who have withdrawn from sex an opportunity to get in touch with their innate sexual drive and urges. No longer feeling constant pressure for sex, no longer having to defend against it, survivors can tune into warm and tingling genital feelings and healthy sexual fantasies that naturally come and go. Some survivors realize for the first time that they have sexual urges. They learn to identify their experiences as signs of healthy sexuality. Often they discover a world they’ve never known. A survivor of sadistic ritualized childhood sexual abuse who had been on a sexual vacation for a year explained how it helped her:
Yesterday I saw a man and woman riding bicycles together out in the country. It was cold and rainy, but they were smiling as I drove past. My mind wandered into a fantasy of how nice that would be if my husband and I were to bike together like that and then come home, take a shower to get warm, and then cuddle. The thought surprised me. That was my first positive sexual fantasy, ever.
The vacation can also provide a safe time to learn about sexual urges in a different, nonabusive way. Survivors who have been stuck in compulsions find they don’t die without sex. They learn that sexual urges can be felt without being acted upon.
RESOLVING ISSUES RELATED TO THE ABUSE. Taking a vacation from sex provides a good time for working on other issues related to the abuse. Without constant worry about having sex, some survivors find memories about the abuse surface more easily in dreams and therapy. It’s as though the unconscious mind is no longer on guard—it can relax and let past sexual abuse experiences surface.
Strong feelings such as betrayal, anger, sadness, and grief often surface while survivors are resolving general issues related to the abuse. Survivors may become deeply depressed, want to hit things, cry a lot, or have nightmares. They may feel especially vulnerable. The vacation from sex enables a survivor to access and release these powerful emotions more easily. Later, when sex is resumed, survivors are then more capable of enjoying intimacy.
Because the survivor feels safe and protected during a vacation, this can also be a good time to learn to deal with triggers and automatic reactions. Knowing that you don’t have to be sexual may give you the peace of mind to confront and analyze the triggers that may have upset or terrified you during sex.
Nonsexual healing work done at this time can also be essential to a survivor’s long-term sexual recovery. When feelings from the abuse aren’t resolved, they tend either to get turned inward on oneself or to be projected onto a partner, slowing down progress in sexual healing. If a partner continues to push for sex, the survivor may unconsciously confuse the partner with the offender. Anger meant for the offender may be directed at the partner. If the partner is willing to refrain from sex, the survivor may stop unconsciously thinking of the partner as an offender.
LEARNING NEW APPROACHES TO RELATIONSHIPS AND TOUCH. In the safety and security of a vacation from sex, survivors can take a new turn in their sexual healing and start a rebuilding process. They can develop skills to approach touch and sex in a new way, and can learn how to replace the harmful sexual practices they’ve stopped with new, healthier behavior. As you enter this new phase in healing, you are in effect reinventing yourself. You are shaping new attitudes, new behaviors, and new responses. You want to be careful as you proceed that your new sexual self will be strong and sure. This time around, you get to be the person you want to be—not who the abuser said you were or who you came to believe you were because of the abuse. You also have a chance now to establish and nurture the kind of relationship you want.
I asked several survivors to describe their ideal relationship. Their wish list included love, laughter, tears, respect, friendship, trust, nurturing, and support. One survivor said, “I need to be treated gently.” Another said, “I need a partner who is committed to personal growth and can share his problems, too. I don’t want to be the ‘sick one’ in the relationship.” Going beyond wishing, another survivor offered this:
I feel that I’m in an ideal relationship now. My partner is loving and supportive. He is willing to hold me and listen while I talk of sad or painful things. He has stayed with me through my ups and downs as I work on healing. He has accepted my needs for aloneness and space. He has learned about abuse and healing. He has told me he loves and respects me more because I became the woman I am despite what I went through.
What would your ideal relationship be? During your healing vacation, take time to imagine the kind of relationship you want, and know that you are helping yourself make it a reality.
A healing vacation provides survivors with time to build relationships slowly and carefully. We can establish friendships first and avoid the problems that arise from rushing into physical intimacy. Whether you are single or already in a committed relationship, you need to get to know people as friends before even considering having sex with them. The healing vacation gives you time to do this.
In healthy, nonabusive sex, intimate relationships are always based on friendship. In a friendship, the focus of relating is on such things as common interests and a sense of trust. You get to know someone for who they are, and you let them know you for yourself. In friendships you learn to be vulnerable and share your feelings and thoughts candidly, without the added pressure of worrying whether you will still be seen as “attractive,” “feminine,” or “manly.” Being able to feel relaxed and comfortable around others often involves feeling good about who you are and getting out from under the inhibiting influence of sex role stereotypes that were learned or reinforced in the abuse.
If you think that you easily fall victim to sex role stereotypes and other social prejudices, that they prevent you from “being yourself around a partner,” you might want to try an exercise I call putting on blinders (see box below).
PUTTING ON BLINDERS
You may have noticed that the horses who draw carriages often wear black blinders to keep them from looking sideways. Let’s imagine that we have blinders, too. Our blinders prevent us from noticing what sex we are and what sex another person is when we converse with them. Our blinders help us blot out sex bias, so we can express our thoughts and feelings directly. We learn to listen to others for what they have to say, rather than focus on the gender of the person talking. When we speak to others we express our individual ideas and values, not the fact that we are either male or female.
You might put on blinders when you meet someone for the first time. Imagine you are a heterosexual woman who has just been introduced to an attractive man. Instead of getting lost in how good he looks and the image he projects, you can put on blinders and listen to what he is saying, and watch what he is doing as a human being. Ask yourself: What if this were a 60-year-old woman? Would I agree or disagree? Does this person respect my ideas and feelings? Do I like how this person relates to me and others? Is this a caring and responsible person? Do I feel drawn to this person for the values and ideas he represents and expresses?
Putting on blinders helps us to be ourselves and see others for who they are, separate from sexual stereotyping. Try this exercise in your next conversation.
Relating with people as humans, instead of as objects or stereotypes, helps us feel better about ourselves. A survivor said:
I am much more aware of what goes on in my head and my emotions when someone wants to get to know me. I can stop myself from tendencies to come on to people in sexual ways. Sex today is something I am in control of. I am able to direct my actions toward appropriate expressions of affection, friendship, and love.
Having friendships first lets us create relationships based on equality and mutual respect. A man who was abused as a child by his mother described his experience:
I used to be nice to women to get sex. Now I have women friends. I can express my need for love and closeness nonsexually. I feel equal with women and that makes me feel a lot better about my sexual self. In the past I saw women as healthy and myself as not healthy. Now I see women as fearful and needy too, as well as healthy and adjusted.
Friendship is a good basis from which an intimate relationship can grow. Without the confusion and expectations often generated by having sex, you can find out if another person accepts you as you are and feels comfortable with himself or herself. As a woman survivor said:
In the beginning of our relationship, my present boyfriend and I got to know one another through social functions with friends. Then we spent time jogging on the beach, watching movies, walking dogs, and doing other nonpressured, fun activities. We let things happen on a solid and mutual basis as we got to know each other better.
Once you have developed a friendship, you can use your vacation from sex to give yourself permission to date and enjoy a period of nonsexual courtship. Whether or not you are already in a committed relationship, dating your partner without even considering sex can be important to your sexual healing.
For survivors in long-term, committed relationships, “dating” again now, during your healing vacation, can give you an opportunity to build a romantic context for future sexual relating. Even in the best-adjusted couples, individuals and circumstances change. Couples need to find out more about each other’s contemporary thoughts and feelings. Dating your intimate partner—even if you have known each other for years—creates a special time alone together without the pressures of household tasks and parenting.
Dating allows single survivors an opportunity to find out more about a potential partner gradually, in progressive steps, over an extended period. It takes many encounters with another person, under different kinds of circumstances, to determine if he or she would make a good partner for you. We can easily be fooled by our first impressions. Again, the healing vacation gives you time to build your relationship carefully.
Though it may sound like a long time, I suggest that single survivors invest at least several months on dating before they consider overt sexual activity with a new partner. This gives survivors time for building trust, establishing open communication, and developing comfort with touch. You can mention your abuse history a little at a time, when it feels appropriate, and see if the potential partner has the capacity to be emotionally supportive about sexual abuse issues. Together you can find out if you share similar long-term goals for a future relationship, and whether your new partner can respect your needs to control the pace of and set limits on physical intimacy.
Single survivors should also be cautious because of our dangerous times. These celibate months can allow time for testing for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Find out whether the person you are dating cares about sexual health.*
Concluding the vacation from sex. Healing vacations end when survivors feel ready to explore sex as an expression of self-caring and nurturing, or intimate sharing with a partner. You will need to go slowly and take gradual steps toward sexual intimacy. By going slowly you give yourself time to integrate new sexual experiences with other learning from sexual healing, such as developing a positive meaning for sex, improving your sexual self-concept, dealing with automatic reactions, and stopping old, harmful sex behaviors.
Sex needs to emerge from a growing desire to get emotionally closer to your partner. Liking who your partner is, enjoying touch with your partner, having fun when you are together, being able to discuss sexual issues and use of contraceptives and protection from diseases—all these are good signs that going to a deeper level of physical intimacy would be appropriate for you now.
It would be unrealistic to expect that things would go well if you jumped into full-fledged sex after having little or no sex at all. After a vacation from sex, it’s best to ease into lovemaking gradually, taking one small step at a time. Don’t push or rush. Start with simple, nonthreatening experiences, such as hand holding, hugging, and kissing. Work up to experiences that are more directly intimate and eventually sexual.
Vacations from sex can be repeated later if the need arises. At the conclusion of a vacation from sex, survivors may notice considerable differences in how they approach relationships and sex. Several survivors shared their experiences:
Before, I viewed sex as essential to my attracting and keeping a partner in a relationship. I thought sex was the key to intimacy. Now I believe it is essential to build the relationship before getting sexually involved. I see sex as the fruit of intimacy and intimacy as having many dimensions besides those that are sexual.
I used to pick my boyfriends first on how we did in bed together and then on if I liked them. That has changed. I’m willing to be with people I like and not be sexual with them until I get to know them better.
Sex is much less important to me now. I once thought that if I were unable to have sex for the rest of my life I wouldn’t want to live. Now I enjoy emotional closeness more.
I place a different value on my sexual activity. I view sex as a way to communicate feelings. I separate sexual tension from the need for companionship, because I have enriched my relationships with friends to get the love I need rather than “sell” myself for attention.
Eventually, vacations from sex can lead to enjoying sex in a very different, much healthier context.
Avenue 3: Establish healthy ground rules for sexual encounters
Another way that survivors can make positive changes in their sexual behavior is by establishing new ground rules for sexual encounters. These ground rules can be a key to creating lasting, healthy behavior changes for survivors who have stopped specific, harmful behaviors or who have taken a healing vacation from sex. Ground rules establish limits so that you can feel safe in sex. They can be implemented at any time.
Here are some suggestions for healthy ground rules. (Feel free to add to or modify the list to suit your needs.)
Have sex only when you really want to. Examine your reasons for engaging in sex in the first place. Ask yourself why you want to have sex. If you get an answer like, “Because I should want it,” “Because I have to have it,” or, “Because my partner has waited long enough,” then it’s not the right time. You run the risk of rekindling old, negative behavior if you have sex while feeling pressured, responsible, or guilty. Sex when you are not ready can lead to anger, resentment, and shame.
Take an active role in sex. You need to be able to control your own sexual experience and initiate the kinds of sexual activities you want. When your partner initiates sex, let him or her know what you feel comfortable doing. While some people may worry that talking could ruin a sexual experience, the truth is, for survivors, talk is always better than silence. Silence is what they remember of being a victim. We need to talk and make love, make love and talk.
Survivors need to take an active role in sex every time. Make sure you stay involved in a sexual activity only as long as you feel comfortable being involved in it. Direct how the experience goes, and end it how you want, when you want.
Some survivors benefit by imagining a sexual encounter before they engage in it. Perhaps a woman wants to engage in sexual petting without wearing clothes. She first might imagine the time of day and the place she would like to have this experience. Then she might imagine taking off only the clothes she feels comfortable taking off. Then she might imagine herself stroking and petting parts of her body and her partner’s body. She thinks about how she is comfortable being touched. She considers how long she would like this experience to last, then she pictures herself hugging and cuddling with her partner at the end of their encounter. Now that she has an idea how she’d like it to go—from start to finish—she can talk with her partner. They can plan together.
While having an idea of what you want to do can help create positive experiences, it’s important not to become fixed on a particular outcome in sex, such as you or your partner having an orgasm. In sexual healing, making orgasm the goal can easily lead to feeling pressured and to losing intimate contact with your partner. Focus instead on feeling warm, comfortable, close, and loving, whether or not orgasm occurs. With this approach sex is established as a way to nurture yourself or to share special time with your intimate partner.
Give yourself permission to say no to sex at any time. Sex needs to be your choice—not only every time but also throughout each encounter. Many survivors feel that once they’ve consented, they have to go through with it, all the way. “It wouldn’t be fair to my partner to stop in the middle,” or, “I said I would, now I must,” we think. This is wrong. Survivors worry unnecessarily that it will physically hurt their partners or themselves to become sexually aroused and then stop. Denying yourself the freedom to say no to sex at any time will only hinder your sexual healing, rekindling all the old feelings of obligation or compulsion.
Remember this rule: You can’t say yes to sex until you can say no to sex at any time. Let’s say a male survivor is having intercourse with his girlfriend and realizes that he wants to stop, but he senses his girlfriend is moving toward having an orgasm. He needs to be able to give himself permission to gently get his girlfriend’s attention and let her know what’s happening with him. His girlfriend needs to be responsive to his need to stop.
You can follow this ground rule more easily when you and your partner both believe that agreeing to have sex means you are expressing your willingness to explore sexual possibilities, not your commitment to have sex from start to finish. Decide with your partner ways to stop that would make the experience of stopping easy and smooth. One couple told me they would shift into a gentle embrace whenever they needed to stop sexual activity.
By making changes in sexual behavior, sex can become a completely different experience than it was for you before. The before and after picture can be striking. After a year of sexual healing a survivor described improvement:
In sex previously, I didn’t assert my needs. I didn’t touch my partner, and I approached sex passively. We hardly ever talked during it. I felt disrespected, humiliated, and used. I thought of my enjoyment of sex as bad, making me bad.
Now I keep my partner informed of how I’m feeling and what I need. I initiate touch and ask my partner to be passive at times so I can safely experience touching. I can stop and interrupt sex when I need to. I keep myself conscious of my partner’s love and respect for me. I experience my enjoyment as something natural and positive. These changes have been freeing: They have allowed me to feel better about myself and to establish a new and deeper closeness with my partner.
Healing involves the active support and involvement of an intimate partner. In fact, the partner’s role becomes more critical as healing progresses. Until now we have focused primarily on the survivor’s experience and needs. But for survivors involved in intimate relationships, the abuse has affected another person as well. In the next chapter we will look at how partners become secondary victims of the sexual abuse, and we’ll examine ways partners can join with survivors to work together on healing. As an intimate team you and your partner can overcome the damage sexual abuse has caused to your sexual relationship.
For survivors not currently in a relationship, chapter 9 offers useful information about the dynamics that might arise in a future relationship. If you are a survivor who has seen relationships falter in the past, perhaps chapter 9 will help you understand what went wrong and show what you can do differently in the future.