Does anyone know about how childhood trauma can affect sexual attraction?

Enough-Introduction · 2020-06-21T09:30:37+00:00

A very sad consequence of being abused as a child is that as an adult, the sense of sexuality is distorted in several ways. There is shame around feeling pleasure with your body because as a child, your body was one of the causes of your pain - e.g., you were shamed for how your body looked, or to the contrary you were only praised for how it looked but nothing else. Sexual abuse also includes a very subtle sexualization of the child by the parents, that might have expressed as gazes that made you feel uncomfortable, or slightly inappropriate touches, or other subtle behaviors that you might not recognize as abuse now, but which made you feel alienated from your parents as a child. One survival strategy as a child is often to kind of dissociate the body from one‘s identity - e.g. as a teenager, they become overly sexual because they try to empower themselves by reaffirming that their body is only for others, as they felt in childhood. However, if you are disconnected from your body, you cannot feel non-threatening pleasure, because you kind of cut the connection to enjoying your own body when you were younger. Instead, the only way to feel bodily pleasure is by experiencing punishment of the body at the same time, as in rough sex. In addition to this form of punishment, there is also another process at play: reenactment of the childhood trauma. During the trauma itself, a dissociation from the body takes place, which is often the only way your psyche and soul survive the terror. The immediate result is that you do not feel all the overwhelming emotions while the abuse takes place, instead they are locked up deep in your subconscious. As adults, however, the dissociation begins to stop, we begin to tap back into our body - which opens the doors to all these horrible feelings. One (unhealthy) way to cope with this is to go back into the dissociation by experiencing abuse again. This is why you will find many people with sexual trauma in the BDSM scene. And this might be why you find it hard right now to access your feelings of pleasure in a safe environment, with a loving man.

This is a serious topic and I advise you to seek professional support and read books about childhood abuse. If these are too triggering, please discuss with your therapist which other resources are available to you.

Lastly, please know that the way to healing is NOT by forcing yourself to have sex with someone you like but don‘t feel pleasure with - just as it is NOT the way to have pleasurable sex with a person that threatens your sense of safety. My personal recommendation is to refrain from relationships for a while, to regain inner balance.

Please know you are loved and whatever happened was the adults‘ responsibility, who failed to protect you. It was not your fault.

gutsandgorey · 2020-06-21T08:06:43+00:00

A therapist would know. And they would be able to help you process and get over that trauma so you can have a happy, satisfying sex life with loving men instead of abusive ones.

HungryExamination · 2020-06-22T05:35:47+00:00

A piece of advice I saw recently from a therapist was that those who have traumatic backgrounds can mistakenly interpret chaotic/toxic situations as sexual chemistry. Healthy romantic connections can feel 'dull'. Google CPTSD

Title	Does anyone know about how childhood trauma can affect sexual attraction?
Author	QueenLevelUp
Upvotes	35
Comments	50
Date	June 21, 2020 7:00 AM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/hd2gb5/does_anyone_know_about_how_childhood_trauma_can/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/does-anyone-know-about-how-childhood-trauma-can.695950 https://theredarchive.com/post/695950

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