Hi Engine81,

More than calling it 'commitment issues', you may want to call it 'intimacy issues' and you came up with the right conclusion, it's connected to your childhood sexual abuse.

I really, really recommend you read the book - The Body Keeps Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. I've read the book myself and while it is not self-help book, it would greatly help you be aware of why you are feeling what you are feeling and a few things you can try.

With what I've read in the book and remember, I would try to explain why you feel this way (again, would be helpful if you read and understand it yourself)

- When you experience something violent that threatens your peaceful existence, your brain sends you signals to help you get away from that situation. However, when you ignore that warning signal, your brain pretty much breaks down, in experiencing the trauma and not doing anything about it.

When your brain's system breaks down this way, while you may continue to function socially, your brain doesn't stop sending those warning signals and the whole world, become a place filled with triggers.
This is why sometimes even being touched lovingly makes one feel uneasy.

Either you continue to live in the world as if the danger is ongoing, or you completely go numb about it. The primitive part of the body continues to live in past. You need to make that part of your brain feel safe again. (May explain why you are having issues being intimate...and not just sexually, but physically, emotionally.....a part of your brain sees this intimacy as danger and not love.)

- Talk therapy helps in trauma, but only when your body doesn't feel hijacked by past (may explain why a therapist has not been able to help you so far). It's about accessing the part of your brain that still is seeing the world as a dangerous place and convincing it, that the danger is long gone. Only you'd know whether you feel overwhelmed by your abuse or have completely stopped feeling anything.

- Sometimes, even if a person may feel disgusted by it, they seem to go back to the past. This may be because we feel connected and energized by the last time we felt 'alive'
For a child, sex may be the most unique experience and when you are exposed to sex that early, it literally changes the way your brain develops after that. This may explain why you crave 'passionate love'...that was a unique and traumatic experience for you and you want to keep revisiting it, instead of making deep, loving, intimate connections....which normally an adult would want.

You have to make peace with your body, rewire your brain, or you'd keep going back to your behavior. The book talks about yoga, EMDR, neurofeedback, theatre and few such things which may help. The book kinda falls short in this arena, since a person maybe clueless about which direction to take (I am clear, but few may find it confusing), but it would really help you understand your situation.

I really hope this helps you. Good luck.