Oh wow, this thread didn't die.
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Originally Posted by Bill3
With regard to the possibility of having been sexually abused: my reaction to the thread is that age five seems unusually early to begin to masturbate. To me, masturbation at that age is consistent with there having been sexual abuse.
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To be fair, I didn't know it was masturbation. Never thought of it as sexual, just a thing that felt good. I don't remember what gave me the idea - plus my, er, method is kind of strange. And for some reason too, I always knew it was something to be ashamed of, something intensely private I never wanted to be caught doing.
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With regard to the theory that overexposure to images of abusive sex: I think a relevant question would be: What brought you to those images and kept you returning to them?
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Usually I would run into them while reading about sexual health, or problems young women face (inappropriate advances from males in their lives) as they sexually mature. Sometimes it seems to me like being sexually abused in some way, up to and including rape, is just something every female goes through and something is wrong with me that I've never experienced it. Yes, I have weird guilt about this.
Nothing keeps me returning to them - they're everywhere, ubiquitous it seems. Like I said, it seems to be something everyone goes through.
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Finally, sex is a form of intimacy and therefore attitudes towards sex will be influenced by attitudes towards intimacy in general. How willing are you to share your personal thoughts in real life with appropriate other people around you? How much closeness do you allow to others in your life? If thoughts of allowing closeness to others sounds horrifying to you, then it is quite possible that those attitudes would spill over into an aversion to sex (whether or not there was sexual abuse in your past).
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There's this thing called the internet disinhibition effect. I summarize it as "I have no boundaries on the internet". While that's not totally true (there are some things I just won't say, even in this post). The internet is the only place I can ever be so open about anything, sometimes too open, it seems.
I've pushed other people away my whole life: I don't get close very often and I'm loathe to share thoughts, usually too ashamed for whatever reason. Even physical closeness makes me uneasy - I love the idea of cuddling, for example, but wonder if I could ever do it with someone without feeling like I was committing some horrible sin of invasion, or without it feeling utterly wrong. I'm also simply used to being alone. I'm an only child who had few to no friends growing up (I bounced around schools so much that being a loner made it easier), heck I barely knew my classmates names sometimes.
Online I'll talk about my deepest thoughts and feelings: IRL I can't even do that with a therapist, or a helpline.