too traumatized to deserve love

[Glides]

anyway so in today's episode, i continued to see that person for a month despite how blatantly they were disregarding covid safety and lying to me about it. and then we broke up because, as it turns out, i have severe traumatic responses to sex and they claimed they'd be okay with this but it only took them a week to get fed up with it.

anyway, i need sort of a confirmed possible way to stop wanting to date people for good. i can't keep doing this. every time i try to do anything physical i end up being in a state of near constant panic for days afterwards. i'm not allowed to enjoy the main reason to be a human being. there's no longer any point in even attracting people if you can't do the one motherfucking thing you attract people for. this is now four people in a row who have ended the relationship because they realized i wasn't kidding when i said i have sexual trauma.

i mean this is definitive proof that i am unloveable and undeserving of love. the only people who deserve love are those who can accept it with no fear.

[Enail]

I'm so sorry the person you were dating was so shitty, and also that your trauma is making it so hard for you, that sounds absolutely awful.  But come on, Glides, even if you feel unloveable and undeserving of love, you know rationally that doesn't mean it's true. Let alone definitively.

I think even most people without any related trauma sometimes have fear around loving and being loved; it's fundamentally a very vulnerable thing to do. And it sucks that having trauma can make it harder to get the love you want, but someone having a harder time at something is not remotely the same thing as them not deserving it.

And I give a serious side-eye at the idea that sex is the only reason to attract people, or that it's the one critical experience to being human. If you need to or prefer to steer clear of sex for the time being, there are people out there who are genuinely okay with that or actively prefer or require it themselves. I know that doesn't make it easier when you're not managing to find them, but at least you should know that it doesn't make you unloveable or undeserving.

[Hielario]

Near constant panic... What is it that you fear? Is it pain (physical? emotional? other kind?) Is it violence? Is it betrayal?

Do you fear it more than death? Do you fear it more than never enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with someone again, now that you know that people who actually want to touch you exist?

[Glides]

Near constant panic... What is it that you fear? Is it pain (physical? emotional? other kind?) Is it violence? Is it betrayal?

Do you fear it more than death? Do you fear it more than never enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with someone again, now that you know that people who actually want to touch you exist?

it doesn't come from a rational place. it took me a while to recognize that my longest relationship had ended with this person sexually assaulting me and that a lot of our relationship consisted of things that involved a lot of coercion and manipulation and that this person was consciously and intentionally doing those things for the two years we were together.

i also did not recognize how much of my past involved experiences that essentially were sexual assault. i did not recognize that a very brief experience with a much older woman when i was underage was assault. ironically that happened right around the span of time i started posting in this forum for the first time. i did not comment on it at the time because this "experience" happened while we were both fully clothed, so to speak, and thus i didn't think it "counted" (which, hindsight being 20/20, it did not). i don't want to elaborate further because i don't want to trigger anyone else.

so with this person, i realized that even though for all their faults, they were trying to get actual consent, a part of me goes into autopilot and refuses to say no whether or not i feel like doing something, because i feel obligated to do so in order to justify continuing to receive affection. it's not something i consciously think about. it's why i have to stop because i keep putting myself into unsafe situations, only to have the other person (especially this time, since at least my previous partners have showed some degree of concern) immediately take all of this as a personal insult and make it about themselves.

considering this person was either knowingly lying about covid safety or was so dense they just handwaved away my concerns, that did not help. so i reacted because i didn't want to do what i did, yet i also cannot say this person forced me to do anything. this has happened with every person i have dated since this abusive ex.

i don't really know how to explain it better than that. this particular person was initially receptive when i tried to explain how inconsistent my drive is, and then got blindsided and offended when i asked to temporarily stop engaging in physical activities, though initially pretending that this was okay. i think this person assumed they could magically "cure" me of my trauma and was very upset to learn that's not how that works. then they resorted to accusing me of gaslighting them so i could "hit it and quit it" which is the most patently absurd thing and even they knew that was a really irrational response and then took it back.

i think a lot of people (this person included) have learned the "language" of therapy and social justice and now use it to steamroll over other people so that they and cater and contort a person to fulfill the specific fantasy they are projecting. for this person, they had just ended a ten-year marriage with an abusive spouse and had just left an extremely rightwing fundamentalist church (not quite a cult, but almost there) and so were projecting onto me the way they wished their spouse had treated them. so they are coming from a place of immense pain as well. but considering my actual abusive ex was from an even loopier church (though had left it for longer), that's reminding me of them.

this person, despite feigning concern, clearly did not give one solitary shit about how i felt and was incensed at the idea of me taking a long time to learn how to trust them.

like, i understand this person is not actively malicious in the way my ex was (who, after we broke up, gleefully bragged about the ways they were harassing and abusing their next partner in even more harmful ways they did to me, not going to elaborate). this person just has piss-poor emotional regulation that's even worse than the worst i showed on this forum, and is basically incapable of validating themself despite putting the outward veneer of confidence and competence. they've got a long journey ahead, i was their first new partner in over a decade, and that instability is just not something me or most people would have the patience for. what's ironic is i have a friend who only just lost his virginity a couple months ago, has had only one experience, and overall apparently handled himself really well, and this really sexually experienced person acted the way people accuse adult virgins of acting like. so i guess that stereotype has been officially shattered lol

so here's to my friend who apparently rocked this other person's world his first time out of the gate despite never having even kissed someone before that point. if any human being deserves to have mindblowing sex and have the reputation of being an incredible lover, it's that guy.

all this to say: this is the worst it's ever been, because even the three people i was with before them were at least somewhat sympathetic even though they all ended the relationship because they wanted someone who could, you know, actually enjoy sex. and those experiences were horrific enough even without me having to be someone else's emotional anchor without my permission or consent.

because what's the point of trying if i can't even do this? the worst part is that it's changed: i used to just have panic attacks during and it would stop, now i can fully get "business" done on "autopilot mode" and then it starts several hours later. so the person thinks things went well, i think things went well, and then i just begin to panic.

so there's no point in trying. i know other aces exist, i have no goddamn idea where to find them, and how would i know if i even like them? i like to be intimate, and the problem is that i can still eventually have a drive. so it's a lose-lose. i'm not ace enough for the aces and i'm not horny enough for the normal people. i magically exist in a "nothing" category when it comes to my sexuality (i'm not even sure who i'm attracted to anymore), and i don't know my gender, and i still don't know anything. and i'm almost fucking thirty. i should know all of this shit by now and yet i know even less than when i was seventeen.

so now all that' left to do is either figure out how to hypnotize myself into no longer pursuing romantic attachments period, or find a way to get a lobotomy.

[Enail]

There's not no point in trying. If you stopped trying on everything you've ever said - on this forum alone - that you'd never be able to do, you wouldn't have done at least half of the things you've done and succeeded at.

Your trauma response will change over time, and the more you give yourself permission to not do things you're not comfortable with and room to feel safe being present with a partner, likely the easier things will get. There are other people in the realm between "never ever wants to do anything sexual" and "hurry up and have sex ASAP with any given partner." And even couples where neither has trauma and both are confident they're allosexual still have conflicts about sex, so it's not something rare and terrible or something that's always guaranteed to destroy relationships if your drive or desire for intimacy shifts or is mismatched with a partner. Of course having trauma makes it more fraught, and mismatches are something that can destroy a relationship, but it's not hopeless.

Unless you're the sort of person who never questions the status quo and isn't interested in deep self-knowledge, life is pretty much a process of learning how little you know, sorry. There's people in their 80s still realizing their gender or sexuality. Yeah, having a straightforward answer to sex and gender is convenient, it makes it easier to communicate who you are to others, but it's not mandatory. Don't pressure yourself so much! Give yourself time to pay attention to your feelings and reactions in interactions with others; you'll tell yourself if you like someone, as long as you're listening and have space to feel things safely.

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