Healing with an Intimate Partner
Healing with my partner has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. We’ve learned to transform the painful times—when we feel stagnant, depressed, and hopeless—into opportunities to grow personally and strengthen our intimate relationship.
—A PARTNER
A number of years ago, when I was presenting a workshop for couples on healing the sexual effects of sexual abuse, I met Bill, a forty-year-old incest survivor, and Patty, his wife of ten years. During the lunch break, the three of us picnicked outside on a beautiful lawn. In low voices often cracking with emotion, Bill and Patty told me in detail of the problems sexual abuse had created in their relationship.
BILL: In the early years of our marriage, I felt emotionally distant from Patty. I rarely wanted sex, and when I did it was only when Patty would dress seductively. I couldn’t express my love for her and have sex with her at the same time. It was like sex and love were in separate compartments. I couldn’t pay attention to Patty during sex. I never kissed her; I just did the mechanics.
PATTY: I worried that I wasn’t sexually attractive to Bill. I thought his lack of interest in me was my problem. He seemed unable to see me as a person: I remember once telling him that I felt like a knothole. Bill wouldn’t talk with me openly or honestly. He would build walls. Both of us emotionally retreated from the relationship. We smoked marijuana and tried to forget our problems.
BILL: I didn’t realize that my problems had anything to do with sexual abuse until three years ago when I began dreaming of having sex with my mother. After awhile, I told Patty about the dreams because I felt sick for having them. She encouraged me to seek counseling, which I did, and eventually I realized that the dreams were actual memories of the abuse.
PATTY: I was shocked and surprised when Bill told me what his mother had done to him. I felt sad for what Bill had endured as a child, and I was angry at his mother. I also got angry with Bill. Even though I realized that his memories of the abuse had been suppressed, I still wished I had known sooner. It would have explained so much. For years I had blamed myself for our problems. Once my anger subsided I filled with anxiety. I feared what this might mean to our sexual relationship and the whole future of our relationship.
BILL: As I continued in therapy to resolve feelings about the abuse, our family life became even more strained. I needed more emotional separateness from Patty. I didn’t want to have sex anymore. I was afraid that if I did have sex I’d lose a sense of myself and my power. I’d never learned what it was like to have emotional or physical boundaries. If I wasn’t putting up walls, I totally lost myself in Patty’s feelings and needs. If she wanted a hug, I felt controlled, like it was a demand. I knew my yes wouldn’t mean anything unless I could learn to say no.
PATTY: When Bill moved into a spare bedroom, I was devastated. I couldn’t depend on him to be there for me in times when I needed him. And I did need him. My father died in a freak fire in his home. I had a miscarriage and underwent surgery for a breast lump. All that time, when I’d ask Bill if he still loved me, his response would switch from yes to no to I don’t know.
I began individual therapy and started attending a recovery program to address codependency issues. I realized that because of experiences in my childhood I had been contributing to our problems. I grew up in a family where I was emotionally abused. I do not trust easily—it’s all or nothing. I tend to focus more on Bill’s feelings than on my own experience.
BILL: Now we’re both working to develop a sense of separateness and inner strength.
PATTY: It hurts! I can’t just come up and hug or kiss Bill. I have to ask first. I often get rejected. My sexual expression feels squashed. Masturbation takes care of only the physical part; it does nothing for my need for closeness. I’m sad every time I put Bill’s clean clothes away in “his” room. I’m lonely when I go to bed at night. I don’t feel married and I don’t feel single.
I don’t know how long it will take for Bill to heal. I don’t know if it will be this year, next year, or five years from now. I hope I can last that long.
BILL: Our strength is that we’re both intelligent people who are willing to keep trying and learning. Eventually we should be able to get it, right?
PATTY: What keeps me going now is this deep feeling I have. Bill seems to have it, too. Even in the worst of times it keeps coming back. I think it’s a deep love and caring for each other.
The story that Bill and Patty shared describes a common scenario for couples who are experiencing a crisis in intimacy because of sexual abuse. Both members of the couple suffer because of abuse: the survivor as a direct, primary victim, and the partner as an indirect, secondary victim. Both are affected by the distress that abuse causes, and both need to work on healing to overcome the crisis and enjoy a healthy relationship.
For some couples this kind of crisis proves too much to overcome. Sadly, relationships do break up because of the aftereffects of abuse. In these cases the couples don’t heed the warning signs: they tend to stop communicating; they withdraw emotionally into their own worlds; the survivor doesn’t involve or inform the partner in the healing process; or the partner refuses to cooperate or participate in a way that fosters healing.
But for most couples the crisis they encounter proves to be temporary and within their power to remedy. They adjust to the reality of their situation, make important changes, and strengthen their intimate relationship in many ways in the process. Bill and Patty were able to do this. I heard later that their story has a happy ending: They learned to work together on healing and eventually were able to create an enduring and satisfying sexual relationship, and to enjoy a strong marriage.
The crisis in intimacy that can result from sexual abuse hits at the very core of a couple’s relationship. It disrupts the couple’s ability to enjoy emotional and physical closeness. A partner told of his experience:
Sexual abuse has thrown a wet blanket on our lives. It feels as though our freedom to enjoy each other fully, our ability to revel in the happiness of our love, the inalienable rights of our relationship have been stolen and violated. As a couple we have to clear some sexual hurdles that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
Couples may find their relationships strained in other ways as well while they work on solving their crisis with intimacy. Daily events, household responsibilities, and family activities may suffer as survivors and partners go through periods of feeling angry, depressed, or withdrawn. Couples may be additionally stressed by the time-consuming and often financially draining demands of obtaining outside support and professional help.
Enduring this kind of crisis can be as hard on couples as when they encounter medical illness, physical injury, or the death of a loved relative. When a man discovers he has a low sperm count, his infertility can intimately affect the life of his female partner as well. When a woman suffers serious injuries in a car accident and is unable to have sex during a long recovery, her partner’s sex life is also impacted. While one person in the couple may suffer the original trauma and pain, the daily happiness and expectations of both are affected.
A crisis in intimacy—whatever the cause—requires couples to acknowledge that the problems they are having are to some degree mutual problems.
HOW YOU CAN WORK TOGETHER IN SEXUAL HEALING
To overcome your problems you will need to develop a mutual healing strategy. You’ll need to work individually on individual problems and together on problems that have to do with your relationship. You will both need to be active and involved to overcome the effects of abuse and eventually to establish new, healthy, mutually satisfying ways of relating sexually.
You will only make matters worse if either of you adopts a stand such as “These are your sexual issues—leave me out of it—fix it yourself.” This kind of attitude ignores the reality of the situation, abdicates responsibility for healing, and only breeds more feelings of emotional distance and isolation in your relationship.
Similarly, you will both need to avoid tendencies to blame yourselves for the problems and stresses you are having. A partner might overlook the reality of the abuse and misguidedly blame himself for the couple’s sexual distress in the past. And a survivor might feel guilty for “bringing this horrible crisis to the relationship.”
Neither of you is to blame for the crisis you may now be experiencing. Your problems were caused by sexual abuse. They have surfaced now as a delayed repercussion of actions done in the past by the perpetrator.
In this chapter we will explore specific ways that couples can work together on sexual healing. We will find out how survivors and partners have each been affected by the sexual abuse and how they can develop an active team approach for creating new, positive experiences in sexual touch, enjoyment, and intimacy.
As you begin this process as a couple, you will need to accept a unique kind of partnership. Your individual needs in the healing process are not identical. Your roles in working toward healing will not be equal. Survivors, because of your need to control the pace of recovery from abuse, you must take the lead, for now, in improving physical intimacy in your relationship. Partners must be comfortable following rather than pushing. As a couple your roles will be complementary but necessarily unequal.
In this chapter I will sometimes speak to each of you individually, sometimes as a couple. It’s important for each of you to know about and be sensitive to the other’s needs.
While sexual abuse and sexual healing produce a crisis in intimacy, every crisis, no matter how upsetting at first, brings an opportunity to grow in positive ways. The skills you build in learning to work together in healing—empathy, honesty, trust, and communication—are skills that will benefit you as a couple for years to come. You can create something positive from your pain.
As we look at some specific ways you can work individually and as a couple, think of each one as an opportunity for change and healing. Although couples, like individual survivors, heal at their own pace and in their own unique way, we will work through these ideas in the order many couples experience them.
1. Accept the fact of sexual abuse.
2. Learn about sexual abuse.
3. Cope with heightened emotions.
4. Reach out for support.
5. Challenge your unconscious projections.
6. Adjust to changes in touch and sexual relating.
7. Open communication.
8. Work together as an active healing team.
Accept the fact of sexual abuse
When a survivor tells a partner about past abuse, the disclosure can rock their relationship. Tanya, a twenty-year-old incest survivor, had previously told her young husband, Brian, that she had been sexually abused by her father. During a counseling session, she decided to tell him the details.
When Brian learned that Tanya’s father had fondled her breasts, had oral sex, and attempted intercourse over a period of five years, the reality of the abuse hit him hard. He leaped up, crouched on the armrest of the couch, and put his hand to his mouth. He then dashed out of the office and down the hall to the bathroom, where he threw up. When Brian came back, he announced that he felt like killing Tanya’s father. Tanya told him not to kill her father, because that would hurt her even more. Brian would become a criminal and be sent to jail.
Brian’s reaction was alarming to Tanya, but it also made her realize now how wronged she had been by her father. Individually and as a couple, Tanya and Brian had to resolve strong emotional feelings stirred up by the disclosure of the abuse and accept the reality of Tanya’s past.
When partners learn about the survivor’s sexual abuse history, they often feel shocked, unprepared, and unsure of how to respond. They may blame the victim, question the validity of the statement, or get upset and angry in other harmful ways. A survivor said:
When I told my partner I had been raped, he said I was making it up. I told him I wasn’t. Then he said it happened long ago and I could get over it if I’d only try harder. He made it sound like it was all my problem.
Resolving feelings from the disclosure. When partners react insensitively to learning about abuse, tensions can flare. Survivors may feel very hurt and angry. Unless these survivors resolve their negative feelings about the partner’s initial reaction, they will have difficulty developing a team approach to healing. Survivors need to realize that partners who respond in hurtful ways often do so out of ignorance and fear about sexual abuse.
In some couples the partner feels hurt by the news of the sexual abuse history. A partner in a long-term relationship may wonder, “Why wasn’t I told earlier?” Some partners fear that the relationship was founded on deception or falsehoods. Love, honesty, and trust in the relationship may suddenly come into question.
When the survivor reveals the abuse story at a crisis point in the relationship, it’s often accompanied by an admission that he or she has never really enjoyed sex or has found sex uncomfortable. The partner may feel betrayed that the survivor has had a secret world of feelings and experiences. The partner may wonder if he or she can ever trust the survivor again. A partner described her reaction:
Up until the night several months ago that my husband told me that he had been sexually abused as a child and was a sexual addict, I thought we had a good sexual relationship. I never realized what was really going on with him: that he felt ashamed when he was naked with me, that he felt sad when he climaxed, that he fantasized about other women continually, and that he had been having affairs. I feel like an idiot for not being more sensitive, and I’m angry at him for not telling me earlier how he really felt. I saw our life together as being the way it was only for me, not for him. I trusted him before, when he wasn’t being honest with me and didn’t deserve my trust. Now I’m unsure how to start trusting him again.
Unless the partners who feel hurt resolve their feelings, they will have difficulty working as a team in healing. It can help them to realize that it is often difficult for survivors to get in touch with memories of abuse, to recognize that an experience was sexual abuse, and to share their sexual secrets (see chapter 2).
There may have been many understandable reasons that a survivor would have withheld the information. Survivors may have been told they would be killed if they ever disclosed the abuse. Survivors may not have realized that the abuse could have a significant effect on their relationship, or perhaps they may have hoped that sexual problems would disappear on their own. In addition, these survivors may have feared that their partners would:
• Blame them
• Be disgusted with them
• Reject them
• Become overprotective
• Think there is something irreparably wrong with them
• Reject the survivor’s family of origin
• Be unable to comfort them
Acknowledging the pain of abuse. Partners who have difficulty resolving their anger and sense of betrayal may be trying to protect themselves from pain. It hurts to face the reality of sexual abuse. Survivors already know this. Partners may find it easier to feel angry than to move on and confront even more painful feelings like injustice and grief.
To many partners sexual abuse can sound unbelievable, unlike anything in their personal experience. The husband of a woman who had been ritually abused and sexually tortured by her mother and brother said that the most traumatic experience he could remember was getting hit in the nose with a baseball bat. It was difficult for him to fathom the terror and violence his wife had had to endure.
When partners do accept the reality of their survivor’s pain, it can trigger a spiritual dilemma. They may question the meaning of life and the existence of God. A woman who was dating a survivor was stunned by the story of the abuse.
It was hard for me to face the reality of the sheer evil that he described. I prefer to see my world in a much safer, gentler light: I have never been exposed to such horrors. I had to integrate his experiences into my spiritual reality. I pondered such questions as, “How can I trust a God that allows such evil to happen to innocent children?” “How can I feel safe in a world where such things are even possible?” Ultimately these are questions any aware person must face, but my closeness to his pain forced me to face them.
The acceptance of a survivor’s pain can connect the partner with a larger issue: Sexual abuse touches the lives of many innocent people in our society. When this sad reality reaches into our own homes, we can no longer ignore it.
Some partners empathize so strongly with the survivor that they feel directly wounded themselves. A partner said:
The night after she told me she had been sexually abused, I had a nightmare in which she was being abused and I couldn’t move to help her. The nightmare made me feel as if I was also being abused. Since then there have been times when my wife has talked about the sexual abuse and I actually felt pain and hurt inside myself.
Occasionally a survivor’s willingness to talk about abuse can make the partner realize or admit that he or she is also a survivor. In such a double-survivor couple each person has a dual role: as a survivor and as the partner of a survivor. Their complex relationship is like a double-exposure photograph, with their separate histories of abuse overlapping in their relationship. Both partners need to accept the reality of the abuse history and be sensitive of their dual roles. These partners can have more empathy for each other, but at the same time face more difficulty in healing together.
Building trust. Regardless of how they might at first respond to the disclosure of abuse, many partners are eventually able to offer the survivor compassion, understanding, and support. Their validation of the survivor’s abuse experience is a critical piece in the sexual healing process: it builds a foundation for trust and increases emotional intimacy. A woman survivor said:
It was hard at first to speak of the humiliating, shameful, and abnormal acts of my abuser, but my spouse responded intuitively and intelligently. Gradually we learned together. I am certain that being able to speak freely to him has helped me greatly.
And her partner said:
I always wondered why she was so unresponsive when we were having sex. But since I’ve become more aware of the extent of the abuse, I have a better understanding. Now we have hope for recovery.
When a survivor tells her or his partner about the abuse, it is often a sign that the relationship has reached a strong level of love, commitment, and trust. Couples should applaud disclosure whenever it happens.
Even though accepting the fact of the abuse may be difficult for a couple, most survivors and partners agree that it is better to have their problems out in the open, where they can learn about them and do something about them, than to keep them buried and festering. You can’t undo what happened to your partner or yourself in the past, but you can take charge of how you respond and support one another in the present and future.
Learn about sexual abuse
In sexual healing, as in many other endeavors, knowledge is power. The more a couple understands about sexual abuse and how to recover from it, the easier it will be for both partners to direct their energies in ways that will promote healing. Together you can overcome old, false myths about sexual abuse and discover ways that other people have worked through the damage done by abuse. You can create a common base of knowledge and share a vocabulary for talking about personal growth and recovery.
Learning together. Information can be obtained from a variety of sources. You may want to read books on sexual abuse individually or to read aloud to each other, then discuss what you have read (see the Resources section). Try underlining, with each person using a different colored pen, sections of a book that apply to you individually. This technique allows you to easily identify your personal concerns and learn which topics your partner finds sensitive.
You may want to attend seminars and workshops that address sexual abuse topics. Meeting other couples who are going through the healing process can help you realize that your situation is not uncommon. Perhaps you will gain helpful ideas from other couples.* You may also find helpful seminars on related topics such as sexual addiction or compulsiveness, dysfunctional families, codependency, relationship enrichment, and communication skills.
Increasing your understanding. Learning more about abuse and related topics can help partners become more understanding and sensitive of the survivor’s needs in healing. Partners can learn more about the particular type of abuse the survivor experienced. Knowing about the rape trauma syndrome can be important information for partners of rape victims, and knowing about how sexual abuse affects family dynamics can aid partners of incest victims.
Education about sexual abuse can help partners understand why survivors may react in particular ways. After attending a seminar on sexual abuse a partner told me, “I learned that a violated person thinks, acts, and reacts differently from an unviolated person.” Another partner reported on his new comprehension:
I realized why my offhand comments about sex have had such a profound negative impact on my wife. Comments and gestures that might be acceptable to someone who was never abused are unacceptable to a survivor.
And the husband of a woman who was molested in her teens shared:
My wife told me that her older brothers made her act out scenes from porn during her abuse. Now I understand why she can’t handle me using any porn. Seeing her tears got me thinking maybe I should quit porn. I don’t want her associating me with those scumbags in any way.
To be more sensitive to their partners, survivors may want to read materials that pertain to the partner’s experience as a secondary victim.* For both of you, learning more about sexual abuse and recovery offers a concrete, and relatively painless, way you can do something to strengthen your ability to work as a team in healing.
Cope with heightened emotions
The sexual healing process can tax your strength, emotions, and relationship. To build and maintain a team approach to sexual healing, you need to understand one another’s needs and find positive ways to handle the extra stress that the healing process places on your relationship.
When one person in a couple becomes ill and needs bed rest, it puts a strain on the other person. The healthy partner must nurse the ill one, take care of his or her own needs, and do alone the work that the couple used to do together. This is difficult enough, but in sexual healing both of you are victims of the sexual abuse. Although neither of you is “sick,” at times you will probably feel as if you both are hurting at the same time. Your reserves may feel depleted. Your focus is on your own needs. You each need special care and may find it difficult to have anything left to give to your partner.
To learn how you can cope with and master this situation as a couple, you both need to develop sensitivity and empathy for what the other is experiencing. You each need to learn healthy ways to take care of your individual needs as well.
Survivors: feeling more emotionally vulnerable. It’s not unusual for survivors to go through periods when they feel very emotionally vulnerable. They may become depressed, angry, and sad; they may be preoccupied with recurrent thoughts of past sexual abuse; and they may suffer from crying spells and nightmares. These reactions are symptoms of post-traumatic stress, a temporary condition common to many survivors of abuse both before and during their recovery.
In the early stages of her recovery, Rose, a thirty-two-year-old survivor of father-daughter incest, wrote this in her journal:
In the last several days, I’ve been feeling lonely, scared, and terribly confused. My mind is constantly swimming and daydreams about the abuse come easily. I seem to be off in another world most of the time. I have the urge to cry, even when there is no problem. I am only aware of my strength when someone crosses me. Then, I’m quick to respond with anger. My sparks are easily set off. I sometimes feel that my love for my husband has been buried so deep it’s out of reach, or that it’s gone forever.
For Rose, emotional changes and outbursts give her an opportunity to release repressed feelings related to the abuse. It’s a good sign of her recovery that these feelings have surfaced. But Rose and her husband may feel confused and upset unless they both understand what is happening to her and why.
Ideally, when such feelings emerge survivors will have a safe emotional environment in which they can release and resolve them. Partners can help create that safe place by being emotionally supportive and caring.
Partners: experiencing new challenges. Although partners may intellectually understand the need to be more supportive, this adjustment can be difficult to make. Some partners may resent how they need to restrict and inhibit their own actions in order to adapt to the survivor’s recovery needs. Whereas they used to enjoy certain freedoms, now they feel they need to be extra careful of what they say and do. A partner who had been married for twenty-five years said:
My wife is much more vulnerable to my comments than I had ever imagined and more needy than I expected also. I find myself analyzing myself before I respond to her. Before, I just responded. Now I have less freedom and more guarded responses in our relationship.
Partners may be unaccustomed to giving the amount and type of emotional support that the survivor now needs. If the survivor had previously tended to care for the emotional needs of the partner, the whole dynamic of the relationship can come to feel reversed. Now the partner feels he or she must be in a more giving and supportive role. The relationship can feel imbalanced, with the partner expected to be supportive without asking for much in return. A lesbian partner told of her frustration:
My lover wants me to be there to cuddle, rock, and essentially mother her. But when I feel tired or needy, she says she can’t handle being there for me, in that way, now. I don’t want to resent her needs, but I don’t see how I can be expected to go on indefinitely like this.
These new dynamics can strain a relationship. The survivor feels especially vulnerable and wants extra care. The partner is asked to give more emotional support while suffering from a loss of old, enjoyable connections. Partners may feel they are walking a tightrope, balanced precariously between passive disinterest and active demands for change. Partners will find their footing by being supportive and encouraging, yet not dominating or domineering.
As a result of these new demands to be emotionally supportive yet patient in sexual healing, many partners feel powerless. They may feel like their hands have been tied, as these partners did:
I used to think that if I did this or that differently I could make things better. I felt tender and protective of her, she had been through something pretty awful, yet I wanted her to get going so we could be sexual in a more ordinary way. But as time went on, I realized that progress was out of my control. She could make changes only when she felt ready to make them.
I felt controlled by my wife’s need for me to empathize with the hurt and shame she was going through. I wanted to face the issue head on, solve our intimacy problems quickly, and get on with our marriage. I learned the process of sexual healing doesn’t work that way. The hurts of her sexual abuse were deeper and more profound than I had originally imagined.
It can be difficult for partners to realize that for now they have to sit in the passenger seat and let the survivor drive. They can’t change the past, erase the survivor’s present pain, or even make immediate changes to repair the damage. They are dependent on the survivor to initiate recovery and make it happen.
Without a sense of control over the recovery process, many partners begin to feel pessimistic about the future. One said:
I can do no right other than not leave, and I can commit numerous sins. The recovery process moves at a snail’s pace, and there is no apparent end to the tangential issues related to the abuse. I have no control over what’s happening. I have no idea that the healing is in fact going to occur at this point. I doubt that we will ever be able to return sexual freedom to our relationship again.
In response to these feelings of powerlessness, some partners may attempt to push, control, or dominate the healing efforts. “If you don’t heal soon, I’ll leave,” a partner might threaten, out of frustration. “You’re not trying hard enough!” a partner might shout in anger. These kinds of comments can hurt the relationship. Survivors may rebel and, in protest, stop sexual recovery work. Often these feelings of anger are only smoke screens for feelings of sadness and powerlessness that the partner finds more difficult to express. If you are a partner, look for deeper issues beneath the feelings you’re experiencing on the surface.
The challenge to partners is finding positive ways to overcome their sense of powerlessness. They may remind themselves that they have a choice to remain in the relationship. They can learn to express their feelings and fears directly but sensitively. Sometimes, if a partner can express his or her needs clearly, without blaming or coercing the survivor, the partner’s comments encourage the survivor to keep moving along in recovery. This is what happened for Susan and her partner:
After about six months of being patient and nonpressuring, I sat down with my partner [the survivor] and told her that even though I loved her I was having thoughts of leaving the relationship. I told her that lately she didn’t seem to be doing anything to promote sexual healing. The reality was that I couldn’t wait forever. The next day she called a therapist and began getting help. Looking back we agree that it helped that I told her honestly how I felt at the time.
Even the most supportive partners may occasionally wonder if they have what it takes to hang in there during sexual healing, as this partner expressed:
As I realize the tremendous grief and pain that my wife is enduring, and the toll this is taking on both of us, I begin to question my own abilities to deal with the abuse. Am I emotionally strong enough? Sometimes I fear that healing will require too much and that I’ll end the relationship, but I stay with it. I don’t want our relationship dissolving because of something done to her in the past!
Even when partners trust that healing can occur, they may suffer anxieties. They may fear that healing will take too long. They may battle with fears that the survivor will leave them once the healing is done. And they may fear what will happen if they share how they really feel. The crisis caused by abuse challenges both the partner and the survivor to talk openly and share their feelings in depth. It’s scary to talk about issues that cut to the heart of their relationship. While this crisis gives a partner and survivor an opportunity to grow together the growth process can cause them pain.
Personal issues arising for partners. Sexual abuse and sexual healing recovery work can trigger personal issues for the partner. These emotional issues often relate to unresolved feelings from the partner’s past and may arise now because the partner feels vulnerable from the stress involved in sexual healing. A partner who felt sexually rejected in a previous relationship, for example, may be extremely sensitive to feeling rejected now.
The lack of comfortable physical intimacy seems to affect all partners to some degree, making them doubt their sexual attractiveness and adequacy. Even when they know intellectually that the survivor’s sexual issues relate primarily to past abuse, many partners have to constantly battle inner tendencies to feel that they themselves are personally being sexually rejected.
Many partners are also pained by witnessing the survivor’s emotional suffering and struggle. They may worry about the survivor’s mental health and physical welfare. In time partners may become more keenly aware that they are secondary victims of the survivor’s abuse. “I find myself absorbing a lot of the pain and ugliness of his abuse,” a partner said.
Partners themselves may have been physically or emotionally abused in the past. Many partners come from dysfunctional families, failed to get the support and nurturance they needed as children, or suffered earlier traumatic experiences. Now they may feel they lack knowledge and skills to respond to survivors in recovery. Or they may be lost in unresolved or unmet needs of their own. Partners may question their self-worth and wonder whether they will be accepted or loved for who they are.
Partners who were victims of sexual abuse may feel uncomfortable with the whole issue of sexual abuse. They may not feel motivated or ready to address sexual healing, for themselves or their partners. As Denise, a forty-year-old survivor-partner, explained:
Before, I had been reasonably content with being in a sexually unsatisfying relationship. I used to avoid sex and be glad if my husband went to other women for it. When we had sex I could divorce myself from my emotions and service him sexually. Things are different now. He has done a lot of healing and wants real intimacy in our relationship. He feels more capable of it and feels he deserves it. I feel I’ve lost my old buddy. I’m trailing behind. His recovery has forced me to look at my issues.
Jerry, Denise’s husband, believes that his progress in sexual healing is hampered by her unresolved issues. Excited about the changes he has been making, he finds it difficult to be sympathetic to her slower pace.
My feelings are opening up. They’re threatening to Denise. I’m becoming a much less defensive person, and I feel more desirable. Her issues are more repressed than mine. Here’s an example: I used to not take good care of myself physically. I wouldn’t bathe much. Denise used to say she didn’t want sex with me because of my hygiene. Now I bathe and shave frequently, but she finds other reasons not to want sex. I dropped a defense, and it threatened her.
As a double-survivor couple, Jerry and Denise both had personal issues that were raised by sexual healing. Not only did they need to challenge themselves as survivors to address their individual concerns, but they also needed to become more sensitive to each other’s feelings and reactions.
The survivor’s dilemma. For many survivors it hurts to acknowledge a partner’s pain. Survivors may worry about a partner’s ability to handle needed changes. Because of feelings of low self-esteem, some survivors may doubt that the partner would want to stay with the relationship. One survivor shared this concern:
It’s hard for me to accept that my partner would want to put herself through all this just to be with me. I feel like I’m asking too much from her. It’s like I’m saying, “I’m going to step out here in the void and things are going to get real strange, and you can come with me.” It doesn’t seem fair to her.
It can be a difficult yet important accomplishment for a survivor to realize that he or she is deserving of the patience, love, and support required of a partner.
Some survivors may be tempted to jeopardize their own sexual recovery to protect the partner from feeling further emotional pain. Consider the case of Paula, a forty-five-year-old survivor.
I’m sad that helping me recover has been hard on my husband, Richard. He doesn’t complain, but I know what he is going through. For him sex is something beautiful. I fear my continued celibacy is destroying something he enjoys.
Paula is in a bind. If she overrides her present need for celibacy to please Richard, she would neglect herself and in time probably feel resentment toward him. Paula needs to find ways to remain true to herself and her sexual healing program while still being sensitive to her husband.
Teaming up to cope together. Each of you in the relationship needs to realize that you are in a temporary crisis. This crisis can put you both under additional stress. You will each need to find ways to take good care of yourself and cope with the additional burden of stress. Eat well, exercise, and rest. The healthier you feel, the better you will handle the psychological challenges of sexual healing. Find activities that are good for you and pleasurable—playing a sport, going to the theater, doing a work project, or expanding a hobby. One partner reported that taking up Zen meditation was especially beneficial to him. A female survivor found that getting a weekly facial helped her relax.
During this time it’s likely that tensions will build and result in emotional outbursts. Each of you needs to be sensitive to what the other can handle. If you feel angry, talk about your anger rather than lashing out.
The time you have put into learning about abuse will help you be less afraid of these emotional outbursts. One partner said that when he learned to respect his wife’s anger he stopped expecting her to be over it completely. Once partners have learned that moodiness is common in survivors, they can take the survivor’s expressions of anger or rejection less personally. A partner said:
I’ve developed a sense of realism—I know the abuse is part of the past and that we may need to make appropriate adjustments to get through an occasional bad day.
Partners will only threaten the survivor if they put unreasonable time limits on recovery or erroneously suggest that healing can be done by an act of will. The reality is that healing usually involves a tremendous amount of unlearning and relearning how to be in a relationship and how to enjoy physical intimacy. Healing needs to go slowly, and couples must build emotional trust and safety before they attempt physical intimacy.
Since partners have a tendency to feel unloved and unattractive when sexual intimacy is curtailed, and survivors have a tendency to feel alone and guilty for pulling back from physical and sexual closeness, both members of the couple can help ease emotional tensions by finding new ways to express positive, loving feelings. You may want to tell your partner directly how much you love him or her, give your partner a special card, plan an outing to a place your partner enjoys, or get your partner a gift which symbolizes your understanding of the situation and commitment to the relationship. In one couple, the partner gave the survivor a stuffed animal and the survivor gave the partner a gift certificate for a therapeutic massage.
As you work together to heal, cheer for each other’s personal growth. Mention positive changes and progress. Share your respect for each other, and, when you feel it, share your optimism about your future together.
Reach out for support
Sexual healing is a time to reach outside your relationship for emotional support. Survivors may be too close to the issues and too preoccupied with their own healing to be able to give their partners the support they need, and partners may be too personally affected by the crisis to be the sole or primary emotional support person for the survivor. Either of you may want to pursue individual therapy, which would give you a private time with someone who is focused on your issues alone. A support or counseling group for survivors or partners can also help you find comfort outside your relationship.
It can be very powerful to learn you are not alone. Many others have survived abuse, and many other partners have experienced feelings similar to what you may be feeling now. One partner said counseling enabled him to let go of guilt he was feeling about sexual dreams and fantasies involving other people. The therapist explained that his fantasies were understandable, especially given his current lack of sexual activity. This partner realized the difference between having thoughts or fantasies and acting on them.
Focusing on your own issues can help you get clearer about your priorities. What is most important to you? How crucial is sexual relating to your overall happiness and well-being? What strengths exist in the relationship? Why do you continue to choose to remain in the relationship? With conscious values and self-awareness, you are better equipped to handle those times when you may feel pessimistic.
Obtaining emotional support may make it easier for partners to handle the temporary changes and adjustments demanded by their situation. At times your personal growth may directly help the survivor to heal. A survivor told of her husband’s involvement in her healing:
My husband started a support group for partners at a local counseling center, and already he’s more supportive of what I’m going through. When I feel he understands and supports me, I feel I can trust him to be here for me and not put me down anymore. He’s truly accepted not having sex, and that alone has made it possible for me to approach him comfortably.
If you are a partner who is also a survivor of sexual abuse, outside support can be critical to your relationship. Each survivor in a double-survivor couple needs to work on individual issues and to learn new skills for emotional and physical intimacy. Without the influence of people outside your relationship, you risk triggering each other’s fears and negativity. A survivor-partner described her experience:
Before we both got into therapy we felt stuck in a situation of the blind leading the blind. Neither of us knew what it meant to be normal. We didn’t know what healthy sexuality meant to us as individuals. I think we both avoided sexual issues by unconscious mutual consent. We would often collide in our fears of intimacy. Rather than pushing through like another couple might, we were happy to stay locked in our fears.
I believe that since we have both worked hard on these issues the commonality aids us in understanding what we each go through. We both know that sexual abuse is for life and that we have a recovery process we can put into effect if we slide back. We both understand the valleys and are willing to work together to get out of them.
For all couples, couples therapy can provide a time to focus on sexual healing issues that pertain to your relationship while giving you the extra support and guidance of a trained professional. You can concentrate on strengthening your relationship by building trust, developing empathy, and improving communication. Therapy sessions can give you check-in time for tackling any concerns that may arise as you proceed with developing new skills in relearning touch and improving sexual experiences. A survivor said:
I found long-term couples counseling the most helpful activity I participated in for my sexual healing. I learned that I wasn’t the only one who was hurting. My husband was finally able to understand how some of his actions were destructive to our sexual relationship. He learned what not to do, and that has enabled me to become freer.
Challenge your unconscious projections
Couples face a host of challenges in recovering from abuse. One of the more subtle ones is a tendency for each person in the couple to project emotional feelings really meant for someone in their past onto the present-day partner.
For example, survivors can unconsciously associate their current partners with the offenders of the past. A partner may also unconsciously associate the survivor with someone in his or her past, such as a former lover who was sexually rejecting, a parent who withheld physical love and affection, or a close acquaintance who was emotionally needy and self-preoccupied. Because these associations and projections can occur unconsciously, it is important that you each develop an ability to identify them and bring them out in the open so that you can relate to each other without being encumbered or misled by these unspoken feelings.
How survivors feel. I used to think that only survivors who were still in abusive relationships tended to subconsciously associate their current partners with the original offenders. I was wrong. It seems that to some degree all survivors tend to confuse the partners with the offenders. I’ve seen this happen no matter how loving and kind the partner is and no matter how different from the offender the partner is. The partner’s desire for sex and intimacy can often be enough to automatically trigger the response, as this survivor explained:
Sometimes my spouse becomes my abuser in my mind. The abuser completely used up my husband’s credit, like a stranger making withdrawals from your bank account. If my husband accidentally pinches me during sex, the pain feels exactly like the pain during childhood sexual abuse—his act becomes abuse. He can’t make any mistakes or act parental toward me without my thinking he is behaving just like my abuser and therefore is becoming my abuser.
Unbeknownst to them, many partners act in ways that remind the survivor of the offender. “When my lover strokes my face in a certain way, I immediately feel that it’s my father stroking my face,” Tess, a lesbian survivor of incest, told me during counseling. “I get angry at her and want her to stop touching me.” Although her lover may feel she is being affectionate in stroking Tess’s face, for Tess the lover’s behavior serves as a trigger for automatic thoughts of her past offender. Another survivor said, “My husband used to push sex on me when I didn’t want it. He was always nicer to me after sex, just like my father.”
Other factors may lead the survivor to associate the partner with the offender. A survivor may notice that the partner and offender have similar physical characteristics such as a hairstyle, common personality traits like being shy or outgoing, or similar habits such as smoking or drinking. One survivor’s boyfriend had a distinctive widow’s peak hairline—just like the offender’s.
Sensing any of these similarities, survivors may erroneously assume that the present-day partner is just like the offender, with the same ways of thinking and the same intentions to control, exploit, or harm. The survivor may assume the partner also sees sex as sexual abuse, just as the offender did. Therapists call this kind of association unconscious projection.
Without realizing it, survivors may often target their intimate partner to receive the anger and resentments they have about the abuse and about the offender. The partner presents an available, relatively safe person to release those feelings onto. As this partner described, a partner may be directly accused of actually being an offender:
I have become the target for my wife’s anger. In recent months she has gotten extremely upset and sometimes confused me with her abuser. She has become violent, accusing me of raping and killing her. I fear her anger and other strong emotions. I didn’t do it, but I suffer for it!
Many survivors also have a tendency to confuse their current partner with a nonoffending parent or caretaker from the past. One day Betsy, a twenty-seven-year-old survivor, screamed at her boyfriend, “I’m hurting and you’re not doing anything to help me!” Later, once she had calmed down, Betsy realized that she was projecting onto her boyfriend her own anger at her mother for not protecting her from her father’s sexual advances.
How partners feel. When unconscious projections happen, partners can become disturbed and upset. It’s painful for partners to realize the survivor they love thinks of them as an uncaring supporter or, worse, as an offender. “I feel nauseated when I think about how my wife interprets my sexual advances as a desire on my part to sexually abuse her,” said a partner. Some partners may feel trapped:
When I touch her even casually I never know whether she will accept me as her chosen mate or reject me as the reincarnation of her abuser. My attempts at foreplay are regarded as an assault. When we do make love, I worry that she feels like she’s doing me a favor rather then expressing and receiving love.
Partners can begin to feel strange about their own healthy sexual needs and desires. A partner said:
My own sexual wants now seem weird and demanding. I feel ashamed for wanting to mess around when I know how appalling the abuse was to her. I have to remind myself that I’m okay and not the problem.
As a result of this kind of projection, some partners may develop problems with sexual desire and functioning. They may begin to doubt their own healthy sexual drives and desires. “Maybe I am just an animal like she says I am,” a partner said. Partners may start to condemn their natural passions, and they may feel guilty for enjoying sexual release. As a result some partners may want to withdraw from sex.
Diana became afraid of her own sexual feelings. She believed that she had become the target of a sexual sabotage effort by her partner, Kate, the survivor of father-daughter incest.
When she was a little girl Kate learned to sense when her father wanted sex. If she couldn’t avoid him then, she tried to make his “sexual adventure” with her as awful as she could by doing things to interrupt his concentration or interfere with his orgasm. Now, though she doesn’t mean to, she does the same things with me. I have become apprehensive about feeling sexual, getting aroused, and reaching orgasm.
Partners often feel insulted, knowing that on some level they are being seen as an offender. They may feel their individual identity and good intentions have been ignored. Partners may feel they have been reduced to an object—a penis or a vagina—and are seen merely as horny and willing to do anything for sex. Most partners hope that their relationship is built on love and sharing; they feel sad when they realize the survivor believes their desire for physical contact is simply a desire for sex.
What partners can do. Partners need to remind themselves that their sexuality is good and positive. Talking about healthy sexuality can enable partners to explain to survivors how their ideas about healthy sex differ from an offender’s abusive attitudes.
Partners also need to stop any behaviors that might mimic sexual abuse or that might trigger a survivor to associate the partner with the offender. If a partner has taken time to become educated about abuse and to learn specifically about the abuse his or her own partner survived, these triggers and behaviors will be easier to avoid. Ask yourself if you are doing things associated with sexual abuse, such as:
• touching without consent
• ignoring how the survivor really feels
• behaving in ways that are impulsive, out of control, or hurtful*
If you are, your behavior might be slowing down or even preventing sexual healing.
I recommend that partners seek treatment for drug, alcohol, or sexual addictions if they have problems in any of these areas. These behaviors are so closely related to sexual abuse that they will surely undermine progress. Partners need good judgment and physical control during the sexual healing process. Either can be impossible when a partner is under the influence.
Survivors need to be able to control how much contact the partner has with the offender. If a partner has developed a friendship with the offender, it is best to stop or cool the relationship if it’s uncomfortable for the survivor. A partner who likes and associates with the person responsible for sexually victimizing the survivor reinforces the survivor’s tendency to see the partner as an offender, too. The partner can take an active role in diminishing these unconscious projections by the survivor.
Just as important, partners need to avoid making unconscious projections onto the survivor. Justin, a partner married to an incest survivor, described his experience:
The more my wife became involved in her sexual abuse recovery, the more I saw her differently. In my mind she went from being a warm and loving person to being cold and uncaring. I resented the fact that she was so focused on herself. It seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t please her and bring her loving attention back to me.
When I was eight years old, my mom and dad divorced. I lived mainly with my dad, because my mom got involved quickly with another man who had a family of his own. Although I never told my mom, I felt she had abandoned and stopped loving me. Nothing I did seemed to be able to get her to want to be with me more. She was all caught up in her new life and didn’t seem to care about me anymore.
In individual counseling I realized that my feelings toward my wife were related to unresolved feelings I had toward my mother when I was a child.
For Justin and his wife to continue to work effectively as a team in sexual healing, Justin needed to become aware of how he was tending to associate his wife with his mother. He needed to stop projecting his anger and fear onto his wife. Realizing what was being triggered for him, his wife was able to understand Justin’s reactions better. Her understanding helped her give him reassurances of her love and caring in ways she felt comfortable with during that time.
What survivors can do. Survivors can help reduce unconscious projections by sharing their thoughts and progress with their partner. This talking helps survivors relate to the partner as a friend, not as an offender, and it helps partners reduce their tendencies to see the survivor as distant or uncaring.
Once survivors realize they are confusing the partner with the offender, they can use skills for handling automatic reactions (presented in chapter 7), such as stopping, calming, affirming, and acting to defuse the projection. Survivors can also reduce projections by learning to direct anger meant for the offender away from the partner. For example, they might write about this anger, engage in role-playing or talking with the offender in therapy, or confront the offender and express their feelings directly. Survivors who have dealt with feelings toward the offender through direct confrontation or other methods in therapy have often regained a feeling of strength and autonomy.
With these unconscious projections—by either of you—out in the open, you both can learn to respond to one another more effectively and can work to heal rather than hurt your relationship.
Adjust to changes in touch and sexual relating
You will never resolve physical intimacy problems by merely wishing things were different. As a couple you both need to work together to overcome automatic reactions, stop behaviors that mimic sexual abuse, follow through with a healing vacation from sex, and establish new ground rules for touch and sexual intimacy. These changes are major, and they can be difficult. Both of you will need to make adjustments. It can become frustrating at times. You may feel stuck or wish you could go back to an earlier time when sex and touch may have been easier for you.
When sex continues. When sexual intimacy problems that relate to sexual abuse come to the surface, some couples attempt to deal with the situation by continuing to have sex. They may hope that by making a few adjustments, such as becoming more sensitive to automatic reactions, their sexual intimacy problems will heal. Sometimes this works, but sometimes it’s not enough to foster healthy changes. For some couples, continuing to have sex when sex is problematic can produce negative consequences. “Sex has become associated with struggle rather than pleasure,” a partner said.
When sex continues some partners feel like they are walking on thin ice, trying to avoid triggers and automatic reactions. While they may see the value in becoming more sensitive to the survivors’ needs during sex, they may also feel their own sexual needs are being ignored by the survivors. Sexual activity may lose a sense of being relaxed and free. A partner expressed his dismay:
When I perform oral sex on her I might say something during a momentary passion that she finds upsetting. Suddenly her mood will change to a negative one. We have to stop sex. Experiences like these leave me feeling that I’m being more responsive to her needs than she’s being to mine.
It’s a rough situation. Intellectually partners know that survivors can jeopardize their own recovery if the focus is switched to meeting the partner’s sexual needs. Still, partners may feel left out in the cold. The lack of comfortable reciprocity hurts. When sex continues, restrictions on sexual activity may seem endless. A partner said:
We can be sexual only in bed, never elsewhere. I can’t use my tongue when I kiss her because she gets scared. I can’t joke about sex because she takes offense and feels scared. In the rare times when we do have sex, I have to be extra gentle, slow and easy, and never vary from this. Relaxed sex play is too threatening for her. She won’t participate after climax. We’re not able to carry over sexual arousal from other activities, like having fun or a close talk. Sex is isolated and not a part of anything else.
The idea of sex as fun, playful sharing, or an expression of love can get lost in power struggles over whether to have sex. The sense of mutual giving and receiving may seem lost as well. A partner of a survivor who withdraws from sex expressed frustration:
Sometimes we snuggle. Sometimes she pushes me away. No sex. She won’t rub or massage me, but she wants me to rub and massage her. I’ve thought about getting a lover, but it’s more than sex. I want the intimacy with her!
For healing to proceed when sex continues, the survivor and partner need mutual commitment and cooperation. Both of you need to make adjustments and accept changes. Both of you need to support and respect limits on touch and sex. Survivors need to respect these limits so that they can take their own self-worth seriously, enabling sexual healing to progress. If survivors keep breaking their own limits, healing will take more time and cost more frustration in the long run. Partners need to understand the importance of physical limits and not get angry when touch or sex is interrupted or has to stop altogether. The survivor is not being inconsiderate but is actively involved in healing.
Partners of survivors who compulsively seek sex may experience frustrations in other ways when sex continues, as this partner explained:
My girlfriend wants affection and sex more than I do. I feel like I have to put out more than I want to. I often end up feeling sexually inadequate because I’m expected to fill her every emotional need through the sex act. It never works.
For these partners, adjusting to the situation and helping to foster the survivor’s healing may mean that they will need to set limits on sex. It is unproductive for any couple to continue sex when it is constantly causing problems.
Because of the many problems and stresses that can occur, an individual member of the couple or both partners may reach the conclusion that continuing sex is not working at all or not working well enough to facilitate positive changes. Continuing sex may be generating negative feelings for both partners, or reinforcing behaviors associated with sexual abuse. A couple may decide, often regretfully, that for healing to occur, it’s best that the survivor take a healing vacation from sex.
During a vacation from sex. Probably one of the most difficult challenges for partners is supporting and respecting agreed-to limits on physical and sexual activity during a vacation from sex. While many partners understand the theoretical importance of a survivor’s healing vacation from sex (see chapter 8), the experience nonetheless throws the partner into a state of forced celibacy. The partner has to give up an important shared activity, perhaps be denied contact he or she believes is needed, and has to adjust to solitary sex. A great deal of emotional suffering can result, as a partner explained:
We now have no sexually intimate relationship. When the abuse came up, her sexuality and sex drive was put into a cold storage unit. While she knows some things she does not want—which is okay with me—she has no idea yet of what she does want. Her entire sexual history is dominated by the patterns she learned in the abuse. The challenge to me is to keep going with masturbation and close physical contact without sex.
As a result of the lack of sexual activity, some partners begin to question who they are as sexual persons, what sex means, and how important sex is to them. As mentioned before, they often find themselves questioning their attractiveness and sexual desirability.
Since traditional cultural roles portray masculinity as linked to sexual activity, some male partners have to revise their views of what it means to be a man.
I’ve had to reshape my self-image as a man and as a sexual person in adapting to my partner’s reactions as an incest survivor. We have learned to be companions and friends without much sexual intimacy.
Some partners make matters worse by erroneously believing that the survivor must not love them if he or she doesn’t want to be sexual with them. They may need to remind themselves that sex is just one expression of love. The survivor’s willingness to take major, often painful, steps (such as a vacation from sex) to eventually increase sexual intimacy and satisfaction is itself a significant expression of love for the partner.
Survivors can help by reminding their partners of their affection and attraction. One partner was delighted when his wife called him in the middle of the day to say she felt like having sex with him. They both knew they wouldn’t act on the desire, but hearing it expressed felt good to both of them.
Honoring the vacation. If a partner continues to press for touch and sex, even subtly, the survivor’s progress in sexual healing can come to a halt. Survivors whose partners are unable to respect limits on touch and sex during a vacation may themselves reach a false, self-damaging conclusion: I have to be sexual to be loved.
Even though they desire sexual intimacy, partners may need to assert the ban on sex at times. Let’s say you both agreed that it would be best not to have sex for three months. Two weeks later, your partner, the survivor, lets you know she senses you are irritable and feels bad you’ve been sexually deprived. “It’s okay if you want to do it, really it’s okay,” she says. Don’t fall for it! Tell her that you made an agreement and you intend to stick with it. If she starts to want you more sexually, that’s fine, but don’t act on it. When it comes to sexual healing, if in doubt, don’t proceed.
There are many reasons why a survivor might test sexual limits in this way. These reasons often relate to subtle views the survivor has of herself or himself as a sexual object and victim, you as an offender, and sex as a commodity. A survivor might be stuck in old attitudes and think: All my partner really wants me for is sex anyway. I have to give it to him or he’ll leave me to find it elsewhere. He won’t ever be able to last that long. If we have sex now, I won’t have to feel the pain of him not following through. The only way I can keep him is by giving him sex. I don’t feel loved unless we have sex.
Respecting sexual limits enables a partner to show the survivor that you can be trusted. You will protect your partner and not sexually exploit and abuse her or him. This helps distinguish yourself as separate from the offender. By refraining from contact, you allow the survivor to build a desire to have physical and sexual contact with you. The limits followed now will make your relationship more genuine in the future. You’ll know your partner wants to be relating with you out of desire, not duty, guilt, fear, or poor self-image.
If a survivor tests the limits, a partner might respond, “I want you to want me sexually because you want me, not because you think I want you.” When limits are secure and consistent, the survivor gains an opportunity to learn to reach out for sexual intimacy.
To cope with long periods without sexual contact, many partners turn to masturbation for sexual release. They may worry that they will be condemned for masturbating. Survivors can help partners make this adjustment by learning to respect the time and privacy partners may need for self-sex. Survivors need to see masturbation as a healthy way to cope with the situation, and they need to remember that the partner’s sexual feelings are healthy.
Even without sexual intimacy, couples can find an infinite number of ways to express physical affection and emotional caring. Survivors can initiate touch that does feel comfortable, such as a back rub or foot massage. Together you can come up with ideas for nonsexual activities that would bring fun and pleasure to your relationship now. Work on a project together, go to the theater, ride bicycles, go out to eat, or just spend relaxed time being together and enjoying each other’s company.
During this period remember that you’ve put sex on vacation—not retirement. Physical intimacy will eventually return to your relationship. Continue to see yourself and your partner as loving and sensual even though you may not be having as much contact as you did before. A healing vacation can be an opportunity for both of you to find out more about yourself sexually—your sexual feelings, your insecurities, and your ability to accept and respond to your own sexual needs.
Open communication
Communication is the key to healing together. So many of the problems and difficulties that couples encounter can be remedied by talking out feelings honestly and brainstorming ideas for change together.
Communication neutralizes the effects of sexual abuse. It runs counter to the dynamics that existed in sexual abuse, such as silence, secrecy, shame, and victimization. When you’re talking, what you are doing is not secret like the abuse was. You are asserting aloud what is important to you. Shame doesn’t have a chance to build. A male survivor told of his progress:
Talking has helped me tremendously. I told my new partner how I felt uncomfortable being naked. She was understanding and said she had similar fears. We kept talking about this and experimenting with taking off our clothes with each other. Now we take showers together regularly. This is the first time I feel good being naked in front of a partner.
Communication takes survivors out of the passive victim role, where things are done to them without their having any say in the matter, to an active position where they are setting limits, directing actions, and negotiating with a partner about how things will proceed. You both are important. A lesbian survivor said:
My partner and I tell each other how we feel about things. She respects my feelings; I respect hers. We avoid power struggles. Instead of manipulating each other in a way to try to get what we want, we put forward what we want and we negotiate. It’s healthy and very supportive.
By communicating, you build emotional intimacy with your partner. This is a prerequisite for healthy physical intimacy as well. Author-therapist Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse explains:
Intimacy is a basic human need, and it shouldn’t be confused with the need for sex. Sex can be an important aspect of intimacy but sex is not the only—or even the most important—kind of sharing. . . . Before we can find and maintain sexual satisfaction with a partner, we must develop our ability to achieve and maintain “emotional intercourse.” . . . It grows from the desire to connect with someone else—to learn what that person thinks and feels, and to share, in return, your innermost self.*
You can use communication to help you maintain a strong sense of yourself as you pursue emotional and physical closeness with your partner. A survivor said, “We strive for open communication: It leads us to safety, which leads us to positive sexual encounters.”
Communication can also strengthen your sense of being part of a healing team. “When we talk, we share the experience—we are together,” a partner said.
Listening to learn. Because communication is so important to sexual healing as a team, both partner and survivor need to learn to do it well. You and your partner will need to create a climate in which communicating feels safe. Many resources are available to help you establish good communication.†
Remember that sex and sexual abuse are sensitive topics. The types of issues you will be discussing are very personal. Many people fear that their partner will judge them negatively or reject them if they share honestly in these areas. They may believe that their feelings and experiences are unique or abnormal, when in reality many people are in similar situations and feel the same way. Your sensitivity to how vulnerable your partner may feel will allow communication to move forward.
Here are several guidelines for how to make communicating with your partner safe and productive.
• Find a mutually good time to talk.
• Focus on one topic at a time.
• Start discussions from your own experience, stating “I feel . . .” rather than making statements about your partner (“You think . . .”).
• Avoid blaming, name calling, and labeling.
• Listen actively. Don’t interrupt.
• Repeat back what you hear your partner saying.
If you don’t understand your partner, ask for clarification. Major difficulties in communication can arise when you assume you know what your partner is feeling or thinking. When I was in college a marital studies professor of mine used to quip, “When you ‘ass-u-me’ you make an ass out of you and me.” The message to couples: Don’t assume—ask.
Listening can be improved when you and your partner understand that you are both “in process.” This means that your feelings, perceptions, and ideas reflect how you feel at this point. Nothing is fixed. You can develop a new and different sense of a situation as time goes on.
Although these guidelines enable communication to proceed more smoothly for all couples, they are especially important when partners discuss sexual healing (see box).
Applying what you learn. Partners need to know about the survivor’s experience so they don’t feel isolated from what’s happening during healing. When they are unaware of the progress that is going on, their feelings of anger, despair, or powerlessness may worsen. Communicating is one way the survivor can help keep the partner informed and involved.
Knowing details about the abuse can help a partner know what to do to help the survivor feel more comfortable with touch and sex. A survivor said:
Since I told my partner exactly what happened in the abuse, he understands why certain body areas and types of touch can trigger reactions in me. He doesn’t touch my breasts without being careful to ask me first, and he remains sensitive to my feelings and responses.
Many partners complain that they don’t know what to do to be helpful. They need instruction and direction. Survivors can help by telling partners specifically what they do and don’t want them to do.
I suggest couples talk at least several times a week about progress or setbacks in their healing. How much you share and what you share is up to you. A survivor explained her situation:
During the beginning and middle stages of my healing, most of the changes I made went on in my head. My behavior stayed pretty much the same. Though it was hard, I would explain to my partner how my thinking was going through major changes.
The survivor can’t assume that the partner will be aware of progress. Changes may not be apparent to anyone but the survivor. Survivors may want to share such things as: what issues you are dealing with, what short-term goals you are working on, what you are feeling better about, and what your concerns and hopes are for the future. This type of sharing helps you avoid tendencies to withdraw from your partner in secrecy, silence, and private pain. Remind yourself that your partner is also affected by the present situation and can benefit from knowing more about what’s going on. Share even when you are afraid. Silence is your enemy.
DISCUSSION TOPICS FOR HEALING TOGETHER
Here are some ideas for topics you might want to discuss with your partner to improve your teamwork in healing. Remember to follow the previous suggestions for good communication to ensure that your efforts will be productive. The goal is to develop trust and understanding. If the idea of face-to-face communication seems too difficult at this time, you and your partner may want to write your responses to each other in letters. This process can be a step to communicating more directly in the future.
Take turns asking each other these questions. Focus on only one or two at a time. It’s okay to skip a difficult question and come back to it later.
1. How do you believe the sexual abuse has affected you personally?
2. How do you believe the sexual abuse has affected our relationship?
3. What is your greatest fear of what will happen to us in the future?
4. What does sex mean to you?
5. How would you like sex to be for us as a couple?
6. How do you feel about yourself as a sexual person?
7. What do you need from me to help sexual healing go more smoothly for you? (Note: A good way to respond to this question is by beginning with the phrase, “It would be helpful to me if . . .”)
Remember that there are no right or wrong answers. Your goal as a couple is to learn about one another’s needs, whatever they may be, and plan together for future intimacy.
In these regular discussions, partners can ask directly—but without pressure—about the survivor’s experience and how they could be more helpful. Partners often have valuable insights and awareness about the survivor’s family of origin, past experiences, or present behavior that can be of help to survivors in sexual healing. When a partner has some insights to offer, it’s best to share the information when the partner knows that the survivor feels ready and interested in hearing it. “I have an idea about that,” a partner might say. “Do you want to hear it now?” Following this format in offering information respects the survivor’s need to control his or her own recovery process.
When the survivor feels ready, he or she needs to learn more about the partner’s feelings and needs. Partners often bottle up their feelings. They may fear upsetting or bothering the survivor with them, even though this holding back often increases their own feelings of isolation. When partners don’t communicate their feelings, they run the risk of feeling not only physically rejected but also emotionally rejected.
The survivor needs to check with the partner, asking questions like, “What feelings has this healing work brought up for you?” “What are your fears?” “What are your concerns?” “What are your needs?” As you listen to your partner’s response, remind yourself that your ability to hear what your partner has to say is more important than responding in a particular way. You may not be able to fulfill what your partner needs and desires right now, but your attention and concern are gifts in and of themselves.
Robert, a partner, was extremely concerned that his wife, Jane, was letting her father, the offender, come to visit their home when he was not around. Robert worried that the father might interact in manipulative or abusive ways and that he would not be able to intervene and stop the father. But he hesitated telling Jane about his feelings and asking her to do things differently. Robert feared she would think he didn’t trust her to protect the children or herself and that he was trying to tell her what to do.
As his anxieties increased, Robert realized that to take care of himself he had to share these feelings and needs with Jane. He talked with Jane, making sure to focus on how he was feeling and what he was needing, rather than on Jane’s behavior. Though Jane was at first a little defensive, she was able to see that this was a personal need of Robert’s based on his insecurities as well as his positive desire to protect his family from possible harm. His request was not an effort intended to control her. She checked in with herself to see if responding to his request would infringe on her own recovery in any major way, and she decided it wouldn’t. Together they agreed to let her father come to the house only when Robert was there also.
In time, effective, open communication helps a couple bridge their gaps in understanding each other. The more able partners are to listen to one another, without either blaming themselves or giving up principles, the more freely each one will be able to share things honestly and directly. Communicating becomes the main way to bond in the relationship. Later, sexual relating can become another intimate way for the couple to communicate.
Work together as an active healing team
Survivors and partners can actively work as a team on certain key areas in sexual abuse recovery and sexual healing. These include resolving feelings related to the abuse, developing new attitudes about sex, handling automatic reactions to touch and sex, and developing a new approach to physical intimacy.
By actively working in these areas, healing is more likely to proceed smoothly and consistently. If partners do not cooperate and support each other, emotional distance can grow in relationships, and survivors’ healing attempts can get stymied. Many survivors attribute their success in sexual healing to the special relationship they were able to establish with their partners. Because the crisis creates problems for both members of a couple, both the survivor and the partner benefit from participating in the solutions together.
In many ways partners can help only as much as survivors allow. Survivors have much to gain when they invite the partner to become more directly involved in the recovery process. Working as a team provides the survivor with an opportunity to actively challenge any unconscious tendencies to view the partner as an offender and helps offset the partner’s feelings of frustration and rejection.
Partners do themselves a favor and their relationship a service when they become involved in sexual healing in a positive way. Involvement can help partners overcome feelings of powerlessness, frustration, and depression. Involvement can foster greater intimacy and caring.
Resolving feelings related to the abuse. Partners can become involved in helping the survivor resolve feelings related to the abuse. They can create a safe, supportive, nonjudgmental atmosphere so the survivor can risk talking more freely about the abuse itself, relationships with members of the survivor’s family of origin, feelings toward the offender, and sexual behavior that stemmed from the abuse. By listening openly and compassionately, partners validate the survivors’ perceptions and thoughts. The survivor is comforted by the healthy love that exists in the present relationship.
Partners can also do special things for survivors to show their support during times when the survivors are immersed in abuse issues and feelings, such as offering words of encouragement or preparing a meal. One partner cleaned the house to show support when his wife felt vulnerable after talking with her mother about the abuse. He knew his wife always felt better when the house was clean. His wife was delighted.
Confrontations. When survivors want to disclose the abuse to members of their family of origin or confront their offenders, partners can help.* While it’s up to the survivor to initiate, design, and control disclosures and confrontations, partners can listen to the survivor’s concerns, accompany the survivor to a meeting with the family member or offender, wait nearby, and be there afterward for emotional support. The quiet, calm presence of a partner during such a stressful time can be extremely important to building trust and intimacy in the relationship.
Developing new sexual attitudes. Survivors and partners can work together to develop new sexual attitudes. A couple may want to share materials—poems,† stories, or articles—that present a healthy model for sex, in which sex is based on consent, equality, respect, trust, and safety. As a couple you can avoid talking about sex with words or in ways that reinforce a sexually abusive way of thinking.
Partners can help survivors develop a more positive sexual self-concept by reminding the survivors that their basic sexual self is good and healthy. Kent, a survivor who had engaged in compulsive sex practices since being molested as a child, told his wife that he “felt like dirt” and that he couldn’t believe anyone would really love him. His wife replied, “You can go on feeling that way about yourself if you choose. But I want you to know that, regardless of your past and regardless of your present tendencies, I think you are a beautiful person, and I sincerely love you.” While Kent was not able to take in all that his wife told him in that moment, her words helped him to heal in the long run.
Handling automatic reactions. As we discussed in chapter 7, partners can help survivors identify triggers to automatic reactions that relate to the abuse. Together the couple can plan ways to handle automatic reactions, such as panic attacks, flashbacks, and dissociating. Couples may want to work up a list of strategies for handling automatic reactions that will inevitably occur. This might involve discussing what the survivor needs from the partner during a flashback: to be held, to be talked to, to be encouraged to express feelings, and so on. Couples can creatively brainstorm ways to avoid or alter triggers.
One survivor said she and her boyfriend developed a plan where he would stop sex and talk with her as soon as he noticed she seemed “off in another world.” This encouraged the survivor to stay present and maintain feelings of emotional closeness during sex.
Another partner, after talking with his wife about triggers and automatic reactions, said, “I’ve learned a great deal about why my wife was so sensitive to certain sounds and touches, and about what I can do to promote sexual intimacy in gradual stages.” His wife responded, “My husband is helping me learn that touch can be good and that enjoying touch is a key to overcoming my sexual problems.”
Relearning touch. Partners can help the survivor learn that the focus of touch is not sex. Touch can be pleasurable by itself. A partner said, “I make it a point to cuddle and hold my boyfriend, without sex as the end result. I want him to know that sex is not an ulterior motive.”
As a partner you can support and become involved in relearning touch and sex exercises, and in helping the survivor overcome sexual functioning problems. When survivors need to do exercises on their own, partners can help by creating a secure, quiet, private time and place for survivors to work on healing. You might protect the survivor from interruptions such as phone calls and children. Later, in the exercises that are done with a partner, you can join the survivor in building new skills and creating positive experiences with touch and, later, with sex. Your support gives the survivor both permission to explore new territories and a loving partner with whom to explore them.
In double-survivor couples, working together on healing can trigger feelings for each of you about your own sexual abuse. Progress can seesaw if one partner’s healing puts pressure on the other. These couples need to be especially creative in finding healing activities both feel ready to work on together.
THE REWARDS OF WORKING TOGETHER
Sexual healing can build a deep emotional bond between the two of you. The skills you build to heal are the same skills that help relationships thrive. A partner reported on progress that had been made:
Sexual healing has been a challenge for us, to say the least. We have grown stronger as a couple because it has forced us to be honest with what we want in an intimate relationship. We communicate openly. We respect ourselves. This has been a lesson in mutual understanding and trust.
The results of being involved in sexual healing can be individually rewarding. As a partner said:
I have been able to make a distinction between intimacy and sexuality, and I have realized that I used sex as a vehicle to achieve “wholeness.” It was difficult, but I learned not to take this all personally and to remind myself that I’m okay. I learned not to get angry with my girlfriend for withdrawing and feeling disgusted when I’m opening myself and being sexually vulnerable. I have developed patience, trust, and self-confidence.
“Maybe this whole thing has been a blessing in disguise,” another partner said. “We now know for sure that our relationship is not based on sex alone.” Sexual healing can have many positive side effects. It can help both partners improve self-esteem. It can teach you to work more effectively as a partnership. And it can bring richness and depth to your relationship. A survivor related her experience:
Our situation has been one of mutual change. We read, write, and talk with each other about the abuse and its effects. We experiment with touch in a slow, gentle, and accepting way. There’s open understanding and kindness on both sides. We offer each other a safe place to share ourselves and a fertile ground for healing and love.
The challenges facing couples are indeed great during sexual healing, but the changes you make will benefit your relationship long after healing has been accomplished.
Now, as you learn to rely on your partner for understanding and encouragement and to involve your partner more in recovery, let’s move on to some specific techniques and exercises you can do to promote sexual health, pleasure, and intimacy.