SEX, TOUCH & LOVE

Sex is a topic I steer away from. Sex? Yuck. Yet I find myself leaving comments on sites, almost like a confession. So even this last dirty secret isn’t a secret, and if dirty, it lay at the hands of my brothers; not mine.

I left this comment with Amy Jo, a very brave, honest, open blogger:

My young body wasn’t left to develop sexuality naturally, with an innocent kiss, then on down the line, each touch associated with a peer my own age and reciprocal, associating touch with love or liking someone. My body learned arousal during the course of being attacked. Though I fought at first, (and not everybody does, it’s still an attack) fighting made it much, much worse, as if I’d die from suffocation. So I feigned sleep, hating every second. Just be done with it. During the course of the ‘attack’, my body betrayed me but all the rest of me, mind, spirit and soul, despised what he was doing and was sickened and disgusted by him, and that thing hanging between his legs.

My body became aroused by certain touch despite my revulsion, especially in my breast area, though I didn’t have breasts yet. I hate what they did to me, taking away the natural progression of sexuality, where I could be with a partner and love the feeling of being touched, of being loved and making love. The idea of being forced, held down, and raped has always been associated with sexual touch. It’s how it was introduced, and the associations made were beyond my control.

So I learned to find arousal by going with that. My husband loves me, but instead of responding with his loving touch that I assume most people would naturally do, I could only respond by imagining being forced. Until I came up with a solution or an idea that allowed me to use the associations my body had learned- love and force-, sex was cold and uncomfortable. I didn’t like it at all. Yuck. The only part I liked was cuddling afterwards.

I refused to have that taken from me too. I came up with a fantasy that I was drugged. And though being cajoled, manipulated and taken sexually against my will, the drug allowed me to respond. I think I was brilliant at doing this.

My guess is that others touched inappropriately in childhood, also had their sexuality hampered, that it matured differently than what the natural progression would have been. What was taken is irreplaceable. Too much was stolen. Yet the human spirit persists, and I found a way to enjoy the basic right of touch and intimacy despite what they did.