Trigger - Advice on Childhood Abuse and a New Relationship?

Hi, this is only the second time I've really talked about this to anyone. I don't really want people irl to know about my history.

When I was younger, I can't really remember how old I was, (10, maybe?) I was molested by an older cousin related by marriage. He wasn't over 18, but, iirc, he was in middle school or high school. Is it normal to not remember details? I know 'normal' is subjective, but in your experience, have you heard of it?

I don't think the abuse has left any sexual hang ups other than maybe the fact that I find it really hard to give a firm no if someone is pushing me to do something I really don't want to do and I'm not completely comfortable with them. That may just be a personality trait, though. I'm not sure.

My biggest issue is with myself. The marriage of my uncle and this person's mother broke up a long time ago and I haven't seen him regularly since before he graduated. I ran into him a couple years ago at a bar and I had this overwhelming feeling of wanting him to think I was cool. Like, what? Does that make sense?

I kept going back to this guy. We played "dogs" and it was during "bedtime" that stuff happened. I never told anyone and I never stopped playing with him when he asked if I wanted to. He was the cool older kid maybe. I don't know. Either way, I thought that if I just squeezed into a ball at "bedtime," then I could avoid the roaming hands. He never actually had sex with me, we were never alone enough for it, but behind the couch his hand roamed freely. I don't remember being scarred by it. I didn't like it, I didn't want it to be happening, but it didn't make me cry and I continually went back to him. He wanted to play with me and he was a big kid.

Is 10 old enough to do something through peer pressure? Is it peer pressure if no one except you knows about it? Is it normal to not really feel a fear of this guy? Anxiety and not wanting to be alone with him, but not terror. Maybe because it was so long ago and I haven't had to see him?

I had one other experience with an older uncle (also by marriage) who came into the room I was sleeping in while I was staying with a cousin and asked if I wanted to play a game. At first, naively, I thought he meant an actual board game. It became apparent that that's not what he meant. I started quietly crying and rolled over. I don't think he wanted anyone to be woken up, so he was gone by the time I got the courage up to roll back over. For a long time, I was terrified of him and I never went back to his place. The relationship with that cousin fell apart because I could no longer hang out with her without being in fear. If don't even think I was in middle school. Again, fuzzy details?

This is just something that's been weighing on my mind a lot recently. I've started a new relationship - intense enough D/s - and I'm not sure that I should disclose this. I don't think it's going to be an issue, but the only partner I've had since high school knew about the issue. It never came up during our sex, but we never really pushed any boundaries either. This new guy makes it really hard to say no. Not in anything he does, just in my own head. I'm afraid I'm going to push him away by hiding the fact and the possible motivation behind it, but I don't want to share the motivation if that's not really what is causing the issue. Does that make sense? Can molestation cause hardships with saying no to people you want to like you or is that a personality quirk that just needs to be worked through in therapy?

I'm bipolar. When I'm in a psychotic episode and hyper-sexual, the issue sometimes does come to a head while I'm tied, but it never has while I was "sane."

Any advice?

I think it's totally normal to want the approval of an older kid. He has some expertise and authority. That makes a younger kid listen and entertain an idea that what happened could be okay. You were an innocent child. Nothing you did was wrong. But he knew what he was doing was wrong and inappropriate.

When you ran into him later in life and wanted him to think you were cool, that was probably an echo of that younger person who looked up to this guy. You wanted his approval, which is probably at the root of your compliance as a kid -- But when I say compliance, I don't mean you were an active participant. You were a child. A child can't give consent. Again, he knew what he was doing was wrong.

I keep saying that because it's normal for victims of sexual abuse to think about what they did, not the perpetrator. You think about your actions, what you could have done differently, how you processed and reacted to the abuse -- in a way we do this because we're so used to blaming ourselves. This guy did something wrong and he knew it was wrong while he hid behind the sofa, just like your uncle knew it was wrong and didn't want to wake anyone up.

However you've dealt with this trauma isn't right or wrong. There's no blueprint to follow for when something that absolutely should never happen, happens to you. You were as innocent as you could be, and you were victimized by two people you trusted.

I read in The Courage to Heal that sexual molestation can make it hard to avoid unwanted sexual situations and that many women who were abused end up being revictimized as adults.

Look, I think you're incredibly insightful. I think you'd benefit greatly from seeing a trauma therapist and talking about these issues and your abuse history. I know it's hard. I never talked about it until I was 31 years old. I went to therapists for years and never told them I was sexually abused, partly because I didn't even recognize it as sexual abuse. That might sound weird, but I really didn't know how to label it. I try not to beat myself up about how I processed it and lived with it for so long.

::sending you strength and peace::

I have a similar backstory. For me it wasn't an issue until it became an issue. Sorry that is a complete unclear and vague sentence. What I mean by that was that I had a vague understanding that I had been molested a lot as child, except I never really considered it molestation because I never really saw myself as the victim. It was just more a matter of fact that it happened and it was just a routine part of my childhood. But I also had a lot of issues with anxiety, self-harm, and suicide from a very young age. When I was a teenager I just thought it was my mental illness when they diagnosed me with depression and BPD. Well 2 years ago I began having PTSD symptoms from the result of an abusive ex I had in high school. I went to therapy and I thought I was doing okay with that. I had started dating my, now, fiancé around that time. I was doing alright until about a year ago when I went to college out of state. I had a lot of change and stress all at once and it triggered PTSD wave 2, or as my psychiatrist told me a couple weeks ago C-PTSD. This time is was the childhood stuff and it was even worse than I imagined. I didn't realized how emotionally detached I was from all of the trauma and the abuse. There was so much more that I hadn't even remembered until it was triggered. I completely understand the "fuzzy" memories. Mine are pretty ill-formed since I was pre-school age. My memories are more like snapshots than movie scenes. My therapist helped me to put them in order a bit which helped me to understand the full picture.

I wanted to tell my fiancé way sooner than when I actually did, which was last month. He knew some, kinda, maybe? Early in our relationship I told him about my ex and that I had a s****y childhood. I also said I didn't want to have sex before marriage because my whole life sex had never been a choice and I wanted to wait until the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with to give consent. At that time however I wasn't experiencing any PTSD symptoms so I didn't think it was a big deal to not go into the full history. It wasn't until the last couple of months that he began witnessing my C-PTSD and he didn't have any context for what was happening. So one night he picked me up in the middle of the night (he knew I hadn't been sleeping) and we talked. It helped a little that I was a bit tipsy when we had the conversation. I think it really helped him understand.

As for your new relationship I don't know. I sometimes wish in hind-sight that I had told him before I developed C-PTSD because then maybe he would have had a better idea of how to help. But at the same time I don't think that's necessarily true because he still doesn't know how to help because I don't know what will help. However, I think it really helps him to know what happened. I think before he knew he was partially internalizing the helplessness he felt because he couldn't stop the pain I was going through. Now I think it helps for him to have someone to blame and know that there is something that caused this and it's not his fault (he feels guilty if he accidentally triggers me or thinks he did). It's hard for him to not be able to "fix" this. It's hard on our relationship. It wasn't an issue for us until it was.