Warning: Triggers (male/male incest)

It took several years of psychotherapy before I revealed this abuse to my therapist, and that was almost 10 years ago now. Sometimes I think I've made my peace with it, and sometimes I think I'm still suffering from being abused. Most often, though, I have a hard time seeing it as 'abuse'. I could sure use some thoughts and insights from people who've been where I've been, or at least in somewhat similar situations....ok, here goes everything.....

I'm an American male in my mid-40's, and grew up with both parents and one brother, 4 1/2 years older than me. At some point when I THINK I was around 9-11, my older brother initiated me into gratifying him sexually. I don't remember very much of the the early times, just that he was sexually mature and I wasn't yet. While I don't have a lot of memories, I don't recall ever being 'forced', 'coerced', 'threatened', or even physically harmed (he never tried to penetrate me). While it was definately the horny teen using his younger brother to help him get sexual relief/satisfaction, I do remember that he always hugged me afterwards and would often try to pleasure me as well. Eventually, I assume as I began to mature, I realized that what he was doing to me felt really good, and I felt good knowing that he was getting good feeling from what he wanted me to do to him.

Still with me? Kind of a long story - thanks for persevering!

Time went on and by the time I was 13 or 14, not only was I not minding doing what he wanted me to do, and enjoying what he was doing to me, but I began to sometimes be the one to seek him out at night and try to initiate our activities. I also accepted that my sexual interests were very clearly bisexual and that played out in my pattern of relationships with girl and boy friends.

Eventually, my older brother went off to the college dorms but was close enough that he came home for ocassional weekends and summers. By then, if it wasn't that we were brothers, we were engaging in fairly 'normal' homosexual sessions that would be nothing special if written up in cheap literary porn - I was almost an adult and he was a legal adult, I sought him out as often as he sought out me. we were both free to say 'no, not tonight thanks'. There was no coercion, no force, no pain. There was also a never-ever stated but very clearly understood pact between us to never say anything about it to our parents or friends and, in fact never talk about 'IT' at all, even to each other, even just before, during or after THE ACT itself. The games eventually stopped as first he, then I became wrapped up in other things, finishing school, jobs to pay for apartments, serious hetero relationships, marriage, and kids of our own.

Flash forward - When I first sought out therapy (with my first major depressive episode almost 14 years ago), I knew that one of the main issues I needed to deal with was my history with my brother, although it took a couple of years of work before I was willing to risk uncovering that to my therapist. She, the therapist, was excellent at being open-minded, impartial, and even admitted that she believed that there could exist certain individual incest situations that weren't automatically bad/wrong/evil, etc. At the same time, she worked very hard to get me to realize, accept, and label my brother as an abuser and his actions in initiating me into sex as abuse. Even though I knew that that history was a large part of what drove me to depression in the first place, I had a very difficult time agreeing that we were talking about what he and I did as abuse from an abuser. To be brutally honest, I still feel that it wasn't abuse and automatically wrong at least 50% of the time I think of the story of my brother and me.

So now I spend most of the time thinking of my past history as certainly a 'non-traditional' but physically enjoyable introduction to recreational sex.......and then a couple years ago I attended a men's retreat where, in the safe and supportive atmosphere that was created by amazing professionals and a group of truly wonderful men, I touched a rage inside of me that had me outside with a plastic baseball bat, attacking the pile of firewood and seeing each chunk of wood I assaulted as my brothers genitals, until I physically could no longer lift the lightweight bat, and screaming at 'him' in pain so that I was voiceless for several days aftewards.

So where am I now? Other than having a tendency to be very long-winded when describing things(!) I'm really confused and wonder if I should be trying to keep working on this in therapy (I've never had any luck bringing back any more memories of the early times), or just chalk it up to something I've done some inconclusive processing of, and dropping it.

Thoughts?

Kind regards,
Gwydion