A Survivour's Point of View: It's Not About Sex; It's About Trust & Intimacy! by Jo LeGall

If it's one thing I cannot stand, it is total unabused strangers trying to psychoanalyse me. Trying to explain to me how I feel and what I know about myself. That due to the past abuse I am now sexually stunted and must be spoken to about sex in small words and slower speech. As if I have lost all my intelligence. Well I have news for you, you condescending son of a bitch.

It's not about sex. It was never about the sex. It will never be about the sex. It's about trust and intimacy. My trust was betrayed by someone I let close. Someone I had an emotionally intimate relationship with. The closest you can get to a person without having sex or thinking about sex. A friendship. A best friend. A best friend who then betrayed my trust.

My thoughts were not about. "Will I ever have sex again?" they are "I don't want anyone to get that close to me ever again." Lots of people have sex with just a cursory amount of intimacy. They don't need much just a "Yes. Your place or mine." and never see each other again. So sex is easy; intimacy on the other hand is hard. You have to trust in order to be intimate and I trusted no one.

I did not trust my family. I did not trust former friends. I did not trust the strangers on the street. No one could be trusted. No one could get that close again to hurt, humiliate and torture me. No one. It was never happening again. I have kept distances between myself and others. Making many acquaintances, fewer friends and no intimate friends. I began to equate trusting with giving up control.

I had experienced being under someone's control for most of my early life and I wanted complete freedom. Friendship on my terms. I was so utterly lonely. I ached to have that kind of friendship again. Someone to share with, talk to, hang out with, laugh with and be free with. Safe. I would come close and then could not do it. I was too afraid to do it.

I created relationships where I exchanged sex for the intimacy I craved. My two ex-boyfriends before my abusive ex-partner. It wasn't true intimacy because we never shared personal information, just how the day went, or a movie we'd seen. One of them, ironically, was a psychiatrist who cryptically said I have no psychosis I simply need to be married. Which I got quite upset about because marriage is the ultimate intimacy and I am never ever going there.

That was a big step for me. Attempting to date. It took a long time for me to trust enough to accept I would not be hurt through physical intimacy. I missed hugs. I did not despise being touched. I craved it. I missed it. I needed it. I could not trust enough to accept it. The only thing that changed for me was my trust of people. I was so conditioned to expect a certain response from my expectation of being loved, such as ridicule, taunts, and physical abuse that even though I knew. I knew, this new person was not my abuser, my reaction was automatic.

If they reached out to hug me I would back away to protect my vulnerability. I would run all the possible taunts they could say to me in my head even though all they did was stand there with that hurt expression. I wanted to reach out. I could not. I would not. I would run what I wanted to say, the apologies in my head and my speech would be paralysed. They would see the pained look on my face and misinterpret it.

I would be yelling in my head "Say something. Say something. Say something you idiot!" and all I could do was moan incoherently as if unable to speak. Total loss of my vocal chords. I am not afraid of intimacy. I am afraid that it is not real. That it's just another diversion in a nightmare I tote around with me everywhere I go. It took a lot of time alone thinking, disassembling my life and looking at the individual parts so I could understand what I had evolved into.

How limited the thinking of everyone is to think that survivours have a mere distaste for sex where a little sex therapy and some sexual positions should cure it all up. If only it were that simple. Physical instead of psychological. There's not much physical distaste in believing that touching someone leaves you vulnerable and with them having some kind of control over you. Emotional vulnerability.

What does sex have to do with that? Sex is sex until intimacy is involved and then it's is open ended where you share the experience. There would be none of the fantastic sex everyone keeps talking about without full intimacy. Sexual trauma does not change who you fundamentally are. Trauma of any kind only changes your trust. Trust of horses, cars, planes, snakes, dogs, motorcycles etc.

It never changes anyone's sexual orientation just our trust in people. Our ability to form platonic and physically intimate emotional relationships. That's all that happens. Sex has little to do with it unless there was physical trauma, scarring and/or lingering physical debilitation. That is the only time where, after most of the emotional healing has occurred, you still have the physical trauma and it's emotional impact to deal with. Pain or fear of physical rejection.

I never had any physical trauma to deal with so it was not hard to be sex positive. It was hard to be people positive. To trust people again.