Sexual Intimacy After Rape

 76. SEXUAL INTIMACY AFTER RAPE 

Hello and welcome back to Rape 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to stay to the end so you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

In post #75, I spoke about recovery in general from the traumatic violation of rape. I talked about what I see as my recovery looking like. This time, I’m going to focus on sexual intimacy in recovery.

Confidence with another intimate partner after rape is one of my main goals. However it’s also extremely difficult to achieve post sexual violence. Sexual intimacy is explicitly that, intimate. It’s making yourself and your trauma wounds vulnerable to another person.

I have spent many years of dealing with the horrifically brutal sexual trauma. And I have come to realise that making myself vulnerable is the only way forward in my healing journey. But vulnerable on my terms, not anyone else’s.

If I’m going to let a man share my personal space, it has to be my choice. A man suddenly sitting next to me in a doctor’s waiting room, can trigger my inner trauma boundaries with fear of being raped. In the early days of my healing, this was my frequent reaction.

It means that if I’m going to hold hands with a man, it’ll be because I want to. I’m going to be the one to reach out and take his hand. Not because I’m told to. Not because he’s grabbed my hand despite my protestations. It is going to be my conscience decision.

Hugging can be social, yet also very intimate. My trauma leads to my automatic personal assessment that I will be raped. I am overcoming this by taking the lead. For safety, I am practicing telling a man how I want to be hugged and where I want his hands to be on my body.

Like-wise kissing. I want to be the one to lean into the embracement of the man of my choice. Not forced. Not struggling to get away. Not dissociated. It will be my choice whether I give a simple peck on the cheek, full lips, or even a French tongue.

To prevent trauma reactions, I must lead and the man must follow. I have made progress this way, by having long and slow foreplay. This includes controlled “safe area” touching with my clothes on. It allows time for my brain to cope with more sensitive areas such as breasts and inner thighs.

At this stage some areas are still not ready, such as my nipples and vagina, let alone my clitoris. It’s important to note that this is despite the fact that my vaginal secretions are already flowing, which is not an indication of consent.

Some trauma affected areas will always remain off limits. An example of this is my anal area where I was abused, and the back of my neck where I was grabbed and pinned down. Hence the reason I need to guide the partner in foreplay and the physical sex act.

The most difficult part of being intimate for me, is being naked with a man. It’s beyond scary. It literally makes me tremble with fear and worry. What if I get hurt again? Will he stop if I need more time? I prefer to be the one to take my clothes off, to prevent the triggering of my trauma defences. A man suddenly pawing at my clothes is an automatic reminder of being raped.

Before we get to the penetration of his penis into my vagina, again I need a long period of controlled naked foreplay. This is where I will start to guide his hands to the “safe” areas of my  intimate body.

To repeat, just because my vagina is clearly wet and dripping fluids and my brain is screaming “yes, yes, yes”, these responses are not an automatic invitation for oral or fingering. I need to make the conscious decision I am safe to enjoy, and want that form of intimacy. 

What about you? Are you struggling with sexual intimacy? Remember that it is your choice as to how intimate you wish to be. It’s your body, so take all the time you need at each stage. And when you can do this, you’ll know you’re on your own journey to heal.

 The gem of positivity is an affirmation:

I can be safe and sexual at the same time.

And this explains intimacy well. I don’t have to choose either safety or sexual to obtain intimacy. They come hand in hand. Intimacy is the the result of these. I am learning this, one step at a time. That’s how I know that I’m healing. And you can too.

Thank you for joining me on a short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what intimacy looks like to you. Remember, sharing is caring. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and Recovery

 75. RAPE AND RECOVERY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a walk through my journey of healing from the trauma of abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end so you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

I must admit that I struggle in my battle to recover from the demeaningly brutal and cruel treatment by all those vile perpetrators. It has affected not just my body, but my entire being. This is a fact I face every day. It’s an hourly fight to win through the darkness of the toxic sludge left behind after being battered, sexually broken, and in constant fear for my life.

A good part of my recovery means spending a lot of time in therapy each week. There are actually many times I push my healing away, thinking it to be too scary. I suppress, deny and divert my trauma. Do you find that too? Do you sometimes sabotage your own healing and recovery?

That’s just what I do. That sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is so dim, it’s hard to tell if there’s a light shining at all. I do have some supports, namely Dr H and Dr Q, but they have lives of their own. I can’t expect either of them to drop everything for me. Nor do I really want them to, although in my most post-traumatic self-pitying moments I think they should.

Sometimes, though, the journey isn’t quite as hard. Through therapy barriers don’t feel as large and as challenging. Like a ray of sun is lighting my way, instead of a flickering candle. Don’t get me wrong, it’s never simple or easy. But then nothing worth doing ever is.

So what does my view of recovery look like? It looks like being able to eat without worry or criticism if someone is watching me. It would mean being able to be in public without the fear of encountering a perpetrator. It’s being able to have a fulfilling sexual relationship, which for me means not fearing the spectrum of intimacy. 

I want to hold a man’s hand without shaking. I want to hug him without pulling away or going tense with fear. I want to feel him cum inside me without numbness, pain, or dissociation from my body.

Recovery means something different to each and every person. What does recovery look like to you? My journey of recovery is one measured in years. Recovery is a process that takes time, effort, and patience. It won’t be easy, but mind, body and sexual healing is possible. And that is what I hold on to in my recovery. And you can too.

The gem of positivity this time is a quote attributed Leonard Cohen:

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in”.

I’m finding this to be true. I can see my life and goals with more clarity. And this has only become possible, thanks to the healing happening from the trauma I have experienced. So I’m heading towards the light of healing from the abuse that wounded me in the first place. Don’t you want to, as well?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what recovery means to you. It just might help someone else out there in their own journey of healing to recovery. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape: Healing From Broken

 74. RAPE: HEALING FROM BROKEN 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me on a short walk in my journey of healing from the trauma of sexual abuse and sexual assault. Don’t forget to stay to the end for you to enjoy my gem of positivity.

Have you ever dropped something precious on the floor, and watch it smash into fragments? It’s not a good feeling. You look at the broken pieces and just think it can never be put back the way it was. Well, people can be like that. I know; I’ve been broken too.

After my virginity was cruelly stolen from me at the age of four, something inside me seemed to just snap, like the shattering of a favourite piece of porcelain. Then there was each and every further vile and horrific beating, and savagely brutal gang rape. Degrading actions by depraved perpetrators. It kept snapping that precious piece up into smaller shards.

However, after I was free from the physical bonds of those reviled men, that feeling of being broken didn’t go away. Because I picked up where those perpetrators left off. I told myself I had deserved to be treated the way I had. Chink. I wasn’t worth any better. Crack. I believed it was some fault in me that made men act that way toward me. Snap. Smash.

I was completely broken. In pieces so small I thought there was absolutely no way of healing all those small bits together again. But there’s one protective trait about me that made me still want to glue my life back together again. I was (and still am) a fighter. And that has been the best glue of all.

I had to fight put my life back together. And that meant I had to stop breaking myself any further. Those ruthless men had broken me enough. I didn’t need to continue the cracks they had already made. In fact, I didn’t need to stay broken at all.

I won’t fool you. The journey of healing isn’t easy. In parts of my life I now find that the original piece that had been broken off, just doesn’t fit anymore. And that’s okay too. Not every piece will fit into the life I am creating by healing. But it is still a valuable life, with a beauty all of its own. And that’s worth healing for.

What about you? Do you feel broken and shattered by the evil crimes inflicted on you? Even now, you can start to piece your life together again. No, it won’t be the same life you had, or even what you think it would have been. But it is still a worthwhile new life. As you put those pieces of yourself back together, you will find yourself on your own journey to new growth, just as I have.

The gem of positivity this time is simply one word:

Kintsugi.        

This is the Japanese craft of mending broken pottery with gold, to make the original piece of more value. I was that broken pot. In fact, there are days I still feel completely shattered, like there is no point in putting any effort into my healing at all. But as every time I do make progress in healing, I’m finding that my life can still be just as  beautiful as it would have been. And I am healing myself into someone even more precious than I already am, and ever would have been. That is the pot of gold in my journey of healing. How about you claim that gold for yourself, too?

Thank you for joining me on this short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to leave a comment on what is one piece of gold helping you to heal. It might help someone else in their own healing. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby.

Rape and Negativity

 73. RAPE AND NEGATIVITY 

Hello and welcome back to Raped 25 Years. At this time I invite you to join me in a short walk in my journey of healing from sexual trauma. Don’t forget to stay to the end so that you can enjoy my gem of positivity.

There is one thing that I’m finding to be similar in the other experiences from sexually traumatised people who have shared their own stories and struggles with me. That one thing is negativity. Let me try to explain how it is for me.

After the childhood sexual abuse, I became extremely emotionally sensitive. I’m told that before the abuse by pedofiles, I had been an outgoing, happy, cheerful child. But afterwards I changed, and my family couldn’t understand why. I became what they called “the ultimate Negative Nancy”. 

In my mind, there was no possible way of any given situation having a positive outcome. I was sure that if something could go wrong, it would. That negativity has carried over through all aspects of my life.

After the horrific sexual assaults as an adult, that negativity was then reinforced onto myself. I couldn’t think or feel, or even say enough negative things. These were, and in many ways still are, negative thoughts and feelings about myself.

If I dropped something, as we all do from time to time, I wasn’t “just a bit clumsy”. I was a “clumsy stupid slut who wouldn’t know how to not drop something if my life depended on it”. That’s how I talked (and sometimes still talk) about myself. I was a slut; a whore; an evil demon. I even turned something Dr Q said around on myself so that I wasn’t even counted as a human being.

This negativity drove me to the darkest places within myself. I honestly thought that there was absolutely nothing positive to say about me. If given a compliment, I always turned it into a negative. If someone said I looked good today, my autocorrect would say “yeah, I thought I’d be a bit different from my usual ugly self”.

But all of that negativity didn’t help me to heal from my tortured past. In reality, it actually helped to keep me trapped with my toxic perpetrators. You see, I was in fact blaming myself for something I hadn’t done. All my negativity was just hurting me, and I’d already been hurt enough.

Even to this very day I battle with my feelings of negativity. My thoughts still always jump to the negative as a matter of course. It’s a long hard fight each and every day. Unfortunately most days, my negativity wins. But no longer always. And each time I do win over my negativity, I’m beating those perpetrators. Little by little, thought by thought. I’m getting there.

And what about you? Do you struggle with your own negativity too? You don’t have to. You deserve to live your life to the fullest, without the baggage left behind by your past traumas. And that includes all the negativity. To heal, the negativity needs to be left behind. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Just like me, you can start to heal too.

This time, the gem of positivity is a quote widely attributed to Simon Sinek:

“People who say the the glass is half empty or half full are missing the point. The glass is refillable.”

This is so true of negativity. I don’t have to keep myself in the half empty glass. I can refill my life with good memories and positive thoughts. That’s how I know I’m on the road to healing. How about joining me?

Thank you for taking the time to walk this short while with me in my journey of healing. Don’t forget to leave a comment on how you are refilling your life. And until next time, just breathe and believe.

With love and care, Ruby