the beginning

This is the post I most questioned putting out there.  Not because I have not dealt with it but, because it might make others uncomfortable.  But I believe if I am going to share this journey of exploration with others then, pulling punches is not a part of the deal.

That being said,   if you don’t want to know, don’t read it.

I believe that my sexual behavior in the past has lessons to teach me in the here and now.  The more I understand my past behavior and experience, the more I can understand my Self and where I might find the truth.

My first sexual experience was the summer before I turned nine years old.  Yes, it was actual intercourse, no it was not rape, or forced, or coerced in the way people usually define those words (and yes I understand that sex with a child is by definition rape and I would take a sword to anyone who committed such an act if I knew about it but, being the child in question I never saw it that way).

The incident itself was not as traumatic as one might assume.  It was confusing and part of that was the response my body had to it.  It was pleasurable, even with the pain and the blood, I experienced sexual arousal (need?) and a sexual release (at least to the extent that a nine year old body is capable of).  As a result of those feelings I had emotional reactions as well, confusion being the foremost at first but resulting in shame, fear and rage. 

The most traumatic part came later.  The person involved was a family member, who was seventeen years old and more damaged than I could ever be.  In the year following, he experienced overwhelming guilt and self-loathing in addition to the desperate need to be loved that motivated the act itself. He made three near-successful attempts at suicide that year.

Meanwhile I was overwhelmed with confusion and rage and as nine year olds will do, I associated my feelings with his attempts at suicide.  Magical thinking is normal for children of that age.  They do not understand consciously the difference between feelings and intent.  I believed that I was responsible for harming him.  That being with me in that way had damaged him, had in fact wounded him, that there was something inherently dangerous inside me.  I believed that for the next 38 years.

The winter after I turned fourteen, I became sexually promiscuous and continued that behavior, except during my two pregnancies, for the next sixteen years.  The behavior was not necessarily motivated by arousal nor by the hope of release or pleasure but by the desire to prove to myself that my beliefs were unfounded. I hid in chemically induced oblivion much of the time as well.  It was also an attempt to keep the demons at bay, to chase them away for a while.  This was, to say the least, unsuccessful at best and self-punishing at worst. I set up people to treat me badly so that I would not care when they were hurt as a result of being with me.  I hurt some very good men that way (even some who genuinely cared and would not allow me to engage them sexually)

It is possible to pull your etheric/energetic bodies so far inside yourself during the act that the other person never comes into contact with them.  It is an instinctive behavior; you don’t even have to know consciously what you are doing.  That for me was the norm. I did not have relationships with the boys I had sex with, and the rule was, I never had sex with the same boy twice.  There were a few exceptions, one of which I ended up marrying.

My ex and I had a good friendship and sex was pleasant.  It was not for the same reasons as before but, it was not because of need or release either.  For a while cocaine was a regular part of my sex life because it is the only aphrodisiac that ever really worked.   I spent a great deal of time in a constant state of chemical arousal in an attempt to feel.  Trust me when I say that this is NOT a good answer.  I also spent all of those thirty-eight years wondering if I was actually capable of feeling, of arousal or release or of responding sexually at all.

My ex husband is a good man and he did his best to love me but, trust was not something I had learned before I left him and as it turns out, that is a necessary part of sexual arousal and ultimately sexual satisfaction.  Not to mention a necessity in a healthy relationship as well.