I’m so pissed that my abuser got away with it and that the people who knew/know or who suspected/suspect continue to bypass or ignore it, pretend it didn’t happen, or act like I’m crazy.

I’m pissed that I’m the only person in my life who has to deal with every single fucking aspect of having experienced this and that I have to keep living with it, all on my own.

I’m pissed that I’ll never just be normal. I’m pissed that I can’t date, connect, or be fulfilled with just any random person.

I’m just so, so angry at the fucking world tonight. Ughhhhhh 😩😩😩

Thanks for listening.

I (27f) don’t remember her molesting me. I do remember she didn’t behave appropriately with me when I was very young. She was fond of tickling me very close to my genitals, upper and inner thighs. Once, I tried tickling another child there (couldn’t have been older than six?) and they immediately got up to tell their parents, clearly upset. Mom pulls me aside to inform me that parents have special privileges, that even though she touches me there I may not touch other kids there. There’s a few different memories like that. Mom praises a certain part of my body or touches me in a certain place, I try to recreate that encounter with other kids or adults, I set off alarm bells, mom tells me our relationship works by different rules. Once I tried to expose myself to my speech therapist. I knew I had done something wrong because I failed to elicit her praise, and worried she was angry. My mother said that part of me was pretty. What did I do wrong?

I remember when I was around four or five years old my mom touched herself through her leggings to show she had no penis, which, she explained to me, boys had. I might be imagining this, but I swear she invited me to touch her down there so I could check for myself. I can hear her saying it. I can remember the feeling of the fabric on my right hand. I remember being hesitant to push too deep and feel her flesh underneath. I remember thinking that this was very strange, that I didn’t want to touch her there. She told me that I should not tell anyone we had this talk.

I had behavioral problems as a kid. Adults often had to redirect me from touching myself inappropriately or rocking my hips into my hands in that conspicuous way. My mother told me that if I kept doing that, people would call me a slut. I constantly spaced out. I remember thinking that I was not really inside my body, that I wasn’t really myself or that I was secretly someone else, that I wasn’t real, that I was dead or asleep and dreaming. These trances were so severe I was put into therapy, citing “attention problems.” I was preoccupied with sexual fantasies I had no way of making sense of but couldn’t help but obsess over. Thinking about them did things to my body that made me very upset and very ashamed. I used hostility to drive other kids away so they couldn’t see. All this was between ages six and nine. All this makes me worry that something truly awful happened that I cannot remember.

As I hit puberty, that shame crushed me and I was remorseful that I was ever born. I started cutting myself and pondered suicide in my early teens. My sexuality was very confused and dark and a constant source of shame. As I got older and became independent I reflected on what my mother had done to me and realized I would never treat a child that way. I am very sad for the childhood I never experienced and the mother I never had. We do not talk. All the while, I think “was it really that bad? Am I making this up? That must have been my fault. I was asking for it.”

I read stories here and mine is so tame. How is it possible I’m so bothered by it?

last weekend I was out with some friends and when I got back from the restroom a guy had ordered me a cocktail and I genuinely know it was stupid but he’s a guy I go to college with and a good friend of my friends and I didn’t want to make it awkward so I drank it. my memory is completely blank from about ten minutes after that until I woke up the next morning anyway nothing bad happened apparently I started throwing up and acting really drunk so two of my friends took me home and that guy came with but they all left together and they said he stayed out of my room while they got me changed. I know nothing happened but waking up in different clothes without remembering has really messed me up and I think it kind of triggered me or something but I don’t know do you think something bad happened to me that I don't remember? when I was a kid after | learned what virginity was I remember wishing | still had mine and hating myself because I somehow felt sure that | wasn't a virgin even though I don't have any memory of ever having sex. I don't know where that feeling came from I just know it was there and on my mind a lot. I started making myself throw up when I was 9 and was diagnosed with anorexia at 10 then at 14 | was diagnosed with major depression and anxiety and was self harming. I've also always had really exaggerated reactions to people touching me I had a complete meltdown when I got home from a party in college after a guy only started to feel me up over my clothes while we were dancing but | felt like | was totally breaking down. I hate the idea of having sex and I can't stop myself from starting to cry even if I get near to trying to talk about my fears about this. does anyone have any advice for how I should deal with this? I’m scared that I’m making myself upset over nothing because nothing actually happened last weekend and I don’t remember something bad happening before that but this has really upset me and I’m not sure what to do.

It was my mother. I don’t remember what she did to me. I feel like I couldn’t have even been that bad. But whatever it was it made me upset and made me feel weird/good/gross. I was six.

Other kids did bad shit to me too but they were the same age as me and we were both so young and I was so passive and easy I was a useless stupid slut and I was asking for it just like I was with my mother. I just wish someone would finish the job and rape me and dump me in a ditch. I’ve wanted to die ever since I was twelve years old and I don’t understand why I wasn’t pretty enough to just get snuffed out. Why did no one help me? Fuck my life I guess. I don’t want to live anymore. I want it to be over. I don’t belong here I’m an animal in a human body. I’d be happier as a dog.

M(21) queer with an attraction to older men. I was SAd when I was a kid and now I’m dealing with depression and I’ve been on meds for a year and a half and I still feel like it didn’t do much for me. I always find myself looking for attention from other men and I tend to look at them as a father figure. Then I just end up feeling sad at myself for being so pathetic. Idk what to do idk how to deal with it and idk how long I’ll keep going on before I collapse again ( the last time I fell in depression I lost approximately 60 pounds and took a year off my academic career to focus on survival after I became completely dysfunctional) the uncertainty is killing me.

Is it just me or have other survivors of S/A and molestation link BDSM to the trauma you’ve experienced? This is a very legitimate and important question

It feels so uncommon. My female cousin started abusing me, and I let it happen for years because I was afraid that I wouldn’t be believed.

I don't really know how to explain. I mean, he's always been my best friend and the one person I can turn to no matter what but I just don't understand why so much has changed.

Ever since it started he keeps telling me how much he needs me and does things that make me feel so confused all the time. And I've tried to tell him it's all too much and that it's really overwhelming for me but then he says what a good job I'm doing and that I've been helping him so much. He always works so hard and does his best for me all the time so I really try my best to be there for him too.

I just love my dad so much and don't want to lose what we've always had but it's so different to the way things used to be. I really don't know what I'm supposed to think anymore.

Wow, i think he abused me. I cant believe im just falling. Ive been doing trauma therapy for a while and we discussed abuse, violence, but it didn’t feel real. It felt like i was robbing the words “sexual abuse” and put it on my story while i still felt the line between what happened to me was very thin or invisible between “normal” and “abuse”.

I think im just realizing this because, i couldnt understand how my perpetrator could find any sexual pleasure on careesing my body, specifically because i didnt feel any pain and the confusion carried till today because i couldn’t distinguish if it was normal or wrong. Specially because i didnt see him aroused, he didn’t have a boner, he was just touching me while asking me questions and that distracted me from what was happening (multiple times). I knew touching a private area was wrong, but it was so casual, caressing, that it didn’t feel abusive.

But, now im thinking it this way, what if he didn’t feel sexually attracted to me or my body, but instead to the powerness and control he had over me as a kid? Its an horrible mindset but im trying to understand, i dont think i ever will understand thought. But i find some kind of peace if i can finally put a name to what was done to me and believe it, and not feel like im robbing it from someone else.

This kind of situations were done to me not only by him but by my mom too, and its so confusing. Because i am not sure if any of them felt any sexual gratification of what they done to me, but they ignored my pain, my pudor as a child, they ignored when i cried and scream, they put pain on my body, they humiliated me, they sexualized me when i didn’t wanted to and when i couldn’t consent to it, i couldn’t scape, i couldn’t say no. They hurt me and my sexuality was involved. I think that’s sexual abuse, it is not clear and i cant fully understand it and i still doubt, but i wish someday i can be sure and believe myself instead of doubting myself and what was done to me. I’ve had tons of consequences that multiple professionals told me were normal in child sexual abuse cases, i couldn’t understand why i didn’t remember, i think i do remember, i just still cant understand it. Its still hard.

Ive read a hundred times online and on therapy that a big part of child sexual abuse is confusion, and that survivors can take years to realize what happened to them was abuse. I thought that because i am already definitely old enough to know what sex is; then i would have already noticed that that one touch was wrong, if it EVEN was wrong.
But it’s much more complex than that. Its confusing because the situation was dressed as something else, he was supposedly healing me when i was sick, as my doctor (and my step-parent), he was asking me questions about my health while he put his hands under my clothes. Thats what made it confusing, because it was care and it was normal, and my mom let him, and at the time it didn’t feel wrong, but then, as i got a lot more older and started healing other things on therapy, i feel touching someone else’s private area is not okay or normal, but again, because there was no pain or hurt, and he didn’t look aroused, it didn’t feel bad enough to call it abuse. At the very least i could call it weird, or something i wouldn’t ever do personally.

I don’t think any conscuences of sexual abuse came out of this situation, at least i guess i was desensitized to the fact adults could ignore my consent about my body. But there were other situations were pain was involved, pain in my private areas, and it was again dressed as “care” or higiene if so. I feel those situations had more last and effect on the trauma, because my pain didn’t matter and my consent was clearly not respected. I am just falling now that voyeur of my body to other adults is also child sexual abuse, because i didn’t want to be seen that way, i explicitly told it and expressed it, and they didn’t care. I feel those situations were more emotionally traumatic than the “caresses”, but im not fully sure.

I know i have trauma from many sources in my life, but im trying to figure out where the sexual part comes from, i am sure i wasn’t ever violently assaulted, but theres a lot of situations during my childhood and teens that felt between the limit of sexual abuse and normal and i still cant understand if thats what affected me so much or if theres something else im not remembering.

To all this i wanna add, am i overreacting? Is this really abuse or am i being influenced by social media? Why do i feel so hurt?

Can anyone else relate? It's been near twenty years for me since it happened and granted it happened numerous times but I don't think it ever ate away at me like it does now. Maybe it's cause I was a kid when it happened to it was easy for me to file it away alongside all the other miserable shit that was going on with me at the time. Wasn't til I was an adult that I would remember it and get a chill up my spine. But it's only recently when I started seeing a therapist that it's gnawed away at me to the point that I don't even want to use my phone out of fear of seeing some news of similar experiences or scroll down on this sub cause it just makes me feel terrible seeing what you lot have to go through.

Struggling with hypersexuality at the moment. Finding it hard to ignore, I just want to be normal.

I know it wasn’t my fault. I know it’s not my fault it happened… but the after effects, the things I deal with now, I feel like I should be able to get past it. I hate how hypersexual I am. I hate that I need the pain. I hate that I think of him when someone touches me. All this therapy, for what?? I disgust myself.

Parents are divorced and I’ve always gone between my mom and dad’s house. What’s an excuse to use to stop going over to his house without telling my mom everything?

I (m) was abused by my younger cousin (f) for years, until I finally moved away. I hate that I miss her, I have no one to talk about this with.

I was molested for years by the couple who raised me. They used me regularly. They taught me that I existed for pleasure. They also had daughters, and they taught us all that we belonged to them, and to one another. One was older than me, and one was younger.

I’ve never known how to process that, the way it made me feel then, the way it’s (all) impacted my sexuality since, the way it makes me feel now. The ripple effects echo through my entire life, and I’ve never really been able to talk about it all, openly.

I thought I’d put it out there, because it feels good to just put down.

So for context I am 17F and I have a ton of sexual trauma, mostly online. I won’t share it right now but if you are really that curious just look at my previous posts. I already know I was molested when I was 5 but believe I was molested again when I was 14-15. What happened was that I was in the first couple weeks of 10th grade. I was walking to school when an extremely religious man around 50-60 came up to me. He started saying how I was beautiful and made in gods image and to save myself for a man. He then started to point out how pretty I was and what parts of me was pretty. He talked about this for like 5-10 minutes when he randomly hugged me tightly and put his hands on my waist and butt. He then invited me over to pray after school at his house but I never ended up going. Was this possibly an assault?

Recently started coming on this sub to read the support and advice cause this shit has really started gnawing away at me now near twenty years after the fact. But seeing some of the stories on here just makes me think to myself that my shit is so tame and harmless by comparison and I shouldn't be whining.

For some context I was always a timid and bullied kid, the type to hide behind the lockers to cry and go home hungry cause I'd give away my lunch and money to the people picking on me for them to leave me alone. I suppose this one kid saw that as a sign that I was an easy target. I don't even remember how it started but I eventually found myself fondling him and giving him a handjob. This went on for months throughout 6th grade at every opportunity he could find. The bullying was so bad that sometimes I'd even prefer he got his hands on me cause he always somehow found a good hiding spot and in my troubled head at the time it was at least just this guy and at least he wasn't humiliating me and even seemed appreciative.

Maybe I'm being dramatic but reading all the other stories on here makes me feel like I don't deserve support for it cause like I said my shit sounds so damn tame and I fucking hate myself for it and I don't know if what I'm feeling is right. I'm terrified of talking about this IRL with someone with similar experiences out of fear they'd kick me to the curb for "whining".

There is no magic panacea…no single method is going to work to enable your recovery. Think Bio-psycho-social recovery.

The person you were before the abuse is gone. Welcome you and learn to live with the new you.

The right partner helps so much. Not just someone who doesn’t judge, but also is open minded to your new normal needs…whatever they are.

Stay away from vanilla people they will only make it worse.

When I was in high school a student teacher groomed me and ultimately had a several months long “relationship” with me where she would have me come over to her apartment and go down on her. I have never been able to share what happened with anyone but it certainly led me to be a “people pleaser” and being submissive and eager to go down on and please my girlfriends in college and in my 20s.

Since I met my current partner though she isn’t interested in oral, which was a blessing at first because it allowed me to escape that cycle. However, over the past few months I have been getting almost compulsive urges to relive the experience of being “forced” to go down on a woman. I have tried to approach the subject without explaining the cause or just how extreme I want the situation to be but my wife isn’t interested and I respect that. I even “joking” send her tik toks about couples making jokes about the husband being good with pleasing his wife like that. She just rolls her eyes. I don’t think I can tell her what happened, I worry about her reaction to me having kept a secret like this for so long.

I know from reading about others responses to being groomed and molested that the desire to relive it isn’t uncommon but does anyone have suggestions on how to deal with that urge when they don’t have a partner who is comfortable with the underlying activities that caused the trauma?

let's talk abt because the same ppl who were supposed to run to is the same ppl hurting us why and how do we have grown men and teenagers lusting and sexualy abusing women lil girls and newborns yes flipping newborns we have people who literally! sleep with own pets when will be enough to wake up people J's because its not happening to you doesn't mean we can't stand for what's right this not ppl in power who have money how are doing it's people we know most of the time the abuse comes from family the family that is supposed to procet and love you we have fathers , brothers , uncles , cousins doing these sick things and we stay quiet for what for who to protect the people who is doing the Haram we are blackmailed made to feel ashamed as woman for doing anything in this life just for a man or person to tell you it's your fault because you were dress that way or men have need how abt men put there needs in check we have men out here who think that anything is sexable yk how crazy that is we have men who leak ppl nudes or create AI images of them to use against them to be control because they can't handle no people die because they say no and try to walk away so no it's not a joke to talk abt ppl being raped or anything close and if you otherwise block out my life because I wouldn't want a monster enable this behaviour in my life someone has to make a change and if we don't things will get worse and as women we've spent our whole life fighting for rights to be equal when is the war gonna finally end change doesn't happen overnight but it's better to try then turn a blind eye because if we didn't have the change we deserve woman wouldn't be able to go to school they wouldn't be able to work or anything luxury you have no some woman still don't have that because of where they live or realgion and it's ashame so strat talking and make change enough is enough I'm tried of the stories and being one of the statistics we are more then pretty faces were smart were kind and were more then our bodies so men get in line and no means no and if you can't handle that check yourself into a mental hospital unit end of story