Was I abused? Or is this normal?

I'm hoping and praying for some sort of answer on this topic, I feel so lost and I'm not sure what to do anymore. Allow me to give you my situation and brief history, thank you so much in advance for taking the time to read.

Most of this is incredibly embarrassing to admit, so please don't make fun of me... I hate myself enough as it is.

Now: I am a 20-year-old female who has never been in a real romantic/sexual relationship. Nothing has ever felt right. I have been with a few guys for a short amount of time, and every time we were doing something sexual I felt like I was just waiting for him to finish, to get off me, I felt bored or sick or stuck.

Then: When I was little, I remember playing a game with a friend of mine. We were under 10, both girls. It was something of a doctor / experiment with sexual feelings kind of game, which makes me feel ashamed. However the thing that really really bothers me is the context of the game... the whole time, it was always from the point of view of being abused. As in one of us was pretending to be a much older man, and the other one was a child. I remember that whoever was the "man" had to force the "child" and make them take fake pills and do things to "him". I don't know which of us thought up the game, only that we played it for a few months one year and it was almost always a situation of one of us forcing the other.

I also remember that I had another friend who HAD been abused, and she would constantly play very odd games with me. She would show me what her father had done to her, or tell me about it, or show me on a pillow. She would pretend that a group of guys was coming to do the same thing to me, and show me what they did. I don't remember being forced, but I do remember being curious about what she meant, asking her to explain or show me what happened.

Another thing that disturbs me beyond belief... sometimes now, when I masturbate (I can't believe I'm saying this) the only thing I can imagine is being the victim of an attack or abuse. Someone forcing me. It does "turn me on" so to speak, which disgusts me SO much.

Let me make this clear: I know how awful rape and abuse are, I would never, EVER support that actually happening to anyone, including myself. So WHY is this the "game" I played as a little girl before I even knew what I was doing? Why is this what I think of now?

My question is... what is wrong with me? Why am I thinking of such things, why was I playing them as a child? Do you think there is a possibility something actually happened to me once, or am I just kind of a messed up kid?

I don't know what to do. I want to feel like I can be in a normal relationship now, I want to feel attracted to people (I don't really, neither girls nor guys) and I want to feel happy. But all of this seems so hopeless and confusing and conflicted in my brain. I feel lost.

I don’t know what to tell you about the “games” you and your friends played, but if sex makes you uncomfortable maybe it is time to think about discussing this with a therapist.

FYI – the “rape” fantasies are very common http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/...t-do-they-mean

i agree, it may be time to get clarification on this-therapy.

Hi ~ I have to agree with both posters. I can't answer if you were abused or not, but it's a possibility and you need to explore this with a therapist. He can help you remember things, and what actually happened.

These thoughts would bother me too and I would certainly get help as soon as I could. Your doctor can refer you to a GOOD one. I wish you the very best -- take care & God bless. Hugs, Lee

I guess logically for 2 kids under the age of 10 to be playing abuse type games, one of them must have been exposed to it.

You did nothing wrong back then, you were a child and children mimic adults and use alot of fantasy in their play - sexual feelings are a bodies reaction to stimuli, in the same way we may automatically recoil from pain, so again nothing to be ashamed of, your body was just responding.

But I agree with the above posts, if you are having a problem with certain things now, then it may be really helpful for you to explore them with a T.

Welcome to PC by the way - this is a great place to be.

I am wondering why you feel no attraction towards either sex. It could be because you are asexual, or some other reason.

Thank you so much for your kindness and words, I really really appreciate it.

I am looking into talking about such things in therapy, I just have to get up the courage to talk about it.

And SophiaG: I've wondered the same thing. Technically I've never had sex with someone, so I have no way of knowing if it would work out... I've also never been with a female in a romantic, adult or adolescent relationship... so maybe I'm gay and just dont' know it? Its another thing that leaves me constantly confused and helpless.

Welcome to PC.
I agree with above reply's. I was a virgin till 21, it took me ages to work things out.
Games when in childhood can leave an impression. There is nothing wrong with you.
A T can/will guide on how to deal/cope with certain emotions.
Take Good Care.

we cant tell you whether it was abuse or not. only you and your treatment providers can say when something is abuse for you or not..

I put a trigger warning on here because some of what is in this post may trigger others.. talks of sex, preferences and bodily parts.

in general though I can say--

It is normal for kids to play doctor in the way you describe. from a childs point of view what is a doctor and who are the doctors - primarily men and doctors do force medications and other treatments upon children when they are sick or needing treatment. And the doctors from a childs point of view are a heck of a lot older then children. we dont take children to see children who are doctors we take them to adults who are doctors. next time you are around somewhere where there are children and adults for example a park look at the size of the children in relation to the size of the adults. children are quite perceeptive when it comes to things like this person is bigger than me, or has to be mean sometimes like doctors are. when I was a kid stores had dress up kits for playing doctor with a plastic thermometer plastic stethoscope,and I cant remember what else. but where my childhood friends and I are from the thermometer goes in the behind and doctors do exams of the private areas as well as other bodily parts. and our towns Doctor was like gray haired and old., and had to force us to take yucky tasting meds, So our playing doctor was was a reproduction of what our doctor was and did. the person that was the "child" had to take off their clothes, be examined including all parts of the body and including placing the thermometer in the right location. today kids play doctor differently than when I was a kid because now the doctors are much nicer and prettier and dont always have to be the ones to force the child to undress, be examined and dont always have to force medications.

you werent even 10 yet and you are 20 yrs old now, that means what ever went on for you 10 yrs ago during playing with your friends is now probably way out of context of what was normal and typical for when it happened. right now its easy to look at things from the past using the perceptions of whats normal and considered abusive today..

but take a moment and look at this in time context of how things were 10 yrs ago for children and doctors and how children played doctor 10 yrs ago. when you do that you can clearly see it was just normal childs play based on you and your friends perception of the doctor child relationships of that time frame was.

something else that may be a consideration here - parental reaction - I dont know about you but my parents would have raised holy h. e double tooth picks if they walked into kids playing doctor the way we had when I was a kid. not because what we were doing was wrong but because of our social standards where I grew up. I remember this one time my mother walked in when I was pulling my shirt down back over my belly and she went up one side of us kids and down the other about my showing my friend my belly button was different than hers. hers poked out and mine didnt. theres nothing wrong with two kids showing each other their belly buttons but I was 25 before I ever felt comfortable again having my belly button exposed. no bikini bathing suits for me, no tank tops nothing that would show my belly because to me it felt wrong. it wasnt wrong it was just my perception of it being wrong because of how my mother had reacted when I did show my belly button to a friend.

if your parents reacted strongly or you are from a location where social norms dictate things like they did where I come from I can see why you would feel normal childs play is wrong and still feels wrong to you today.

the other situation with a friend playing out what happened to her thats also normal. in fact theres now a therapy where children are encouraged to play things they experience in their lives. its called play therapy. acting out things that we experience is part of how the brain processes things we go through. adults even act out things that they have experienced when they were kids, through roll playing with their partners, wives, husbands, doctors, therapists.

10 yrs ago it was perfectly normal for kids to act out the abuses they have been subjected to. and it is normal for children to play this way today.

the masturbating - guess what - your normal. people do have their own things that turn them on and they masturbate fantasizing those thing. some people fantasize they are doctors, nurses and patients, others fantasize they are having an affair, others fantasize they are being abused, or bound, slap and tickle... heck theres all kinds of things that turn people on.

everyone has their own likes and what will turn their erotic buttons. just like everyone has their own things that will quickly anger them.

fantasizing and masturbating to what ever you daydream, fantasize is perfectly normal including daydreaming / fantasizing you are being abused.

some locations and parental views may dictate otherwise which can influence how we have formed our own core beliefs. I used to think and feel I was disgusting for having such thoughts and others that turned me on too because back when I was growing up sex was between a man and a woman, in missionary position and the woman giving in any time the man wanted it. now look at the standards today we have men having sex with men and women having sex with women and same sex marriages. what used to be wrong is now turning into perfectly acceptable.

Up until recently it was socially morally wrong but now I can say it here in NY state - Im a woman, my partner is a woman and we recently got married and honeymooned at Niagara Falls, NY, what we do together is now recognized as being ok in the state of NY. no more having to disguise / hide that fact from my family or others. I dont have to mentally remind myself to call my partner my "boyfriend" husband what ever fits the moment in order to be socially morally right. I can now call it what it is.

go ahead call it what it is.. you like millions and millions of other human beings ( including me ) masturbate and do so to the tunes of what turns you on. for you its being abused for me its being spanked for my partner its hair pulling. it is what it is. people enjoy all kinds of things for some its softer things for others its rough stuff, for some its even spankings, being bound, pinned down and gosh knows what else.

It is what it is and it is normal to think and dream this way.

:love

What a great response. I am an MD and concur with every point you made in your description of normal behaviors. I also agree with seeking a therapist if these worries continue and interfere with daily life or prevent normal relationships with members of either sex. Not having had a sexual relationship by age 20 is NOT abnormal!

Same with me actually, so don't worry too much. exploration of these things is normal

I had a lot of concerns when I spoke with my last therapist... Well my second to last therapist. I worked up the courage to tell him something I had never told anyone in my life. Still haven't told any one else but him. I hated myself. I forced myself to forget the memories but every now and then they would slip out and cause a lot of self hatred and anxiety. I thought I would never be able to live down the shame and never be able to be normal.

He made me see that when you are a child, even if you act out the entire sex act with another... It's not anything to be ashamed of. If you put yourself back in the past, during the time that the abuse is happening, you can see that from a child perspective, sex wasn't what it is to adults. The real desire, real urges, real feelings of sex don't come until much later on. From a childs stand point it's a game. Something more or less common for adults to do. A way others show love, or a way others show anger... Depending on your situation. But to a child, sex is not sex. It's play. You seem to be looking at the games from an adult perspective and in order to be able to heal from it, you're going to need to look at it from a childs stand point.

I can't tell you if you have been abused but I can tell you that I too feel a lot of the feelings you have described. I was however abused and my life story is a winding road that's all twisted and knotted. But for me.. The fantasies I have, much like yours... I believe stem from the fact that as a child the only men who had shown interest in me were men who wanted me for their own reasons... This being said I believe that the desire comes from a desire and self belief that unless there is pain involved, men wont want me. I know this not to be true but none the less it's how you feel. Can't help how you feel no matter what facts are presented to you sometimes.

I've also dealt with the lack of attraction to any sex. I find women beautiful and I find men very handsome but it takes a heck of a lot for me to be interrested in them because the appearance doesn't give much appeal if that makes sense. I have to have a deep emotional connection with the person, no matter who they may be, in order to feel any sort of physical attraction. Another thing I believe that stems from my childhood.

But the fact is, that these things are pretty common. Them being common makes it a little more difficult for people to give the reason behind them without knowing the entire story. Like how your parents were when you were a child. If they were distant and mainly your father showed a lack of interest in you, or the opposite, it could cause the same effects. The desire to feel needed and loved through abuse because it's all you knew when you were a child or the desire to be needed and loved through abuse because you never felt the love from your parents and wished they would show at least pain or something... It depends on your life and who you are in general. Something a therapist can help you with.

My belief is that every thing that has ever happened in your past, whether it be a boring hour online playing solitaire or a year at a college, it makes you who you are today. Every moment from this moment on makes you into the person you are going to be. It doesn't mean if something terrible happens that you're going to be a terrible person. A lot also has to do with how you react to the situation. Either way, every moment adds up to who you are right now. Even if you think it's a small, unimportant moment, years later you may realize those breif seconds changed who you were completely. The best of luck to you in your search for a therapist!

I'm thinking you've got some repressed memories. I don't think you'd have issues with sexuality and strange memories of "games of abuse" if you didn't. It might be a dark path trying to get to the root of it but you'll have to weigh if figuring that out is worth it.

I believe I keep trying to respond to this and I either do it wrong or it doesn't go through. Anyways I am so grateful for all your responses, thank you very much!