by Staci Haines
Combining Intimacy and Sex: Turning up the Heat
Being emotionally intimate with sex partners may seem like a given by social standards. We are taught that we should to be in love before we have sex, and that sex should lead to partnership. While sex is physically intimate, it does not necessarily involve emotional or spiritual intimacy. People have sex with people they love, like, and don’t know—and even with people they don’t like. Sharing emotional and spiritual intimacy are only two of many reasons people have sex. Being in a relationship is no guarantee of intimacy, either. It is possible to be married or partnered for years and have very nonintimate sex.
I like having sex with friends and other people I know I am not going to get involved with. It gives me room to explore and be playful, and I get triggered a lot less.
Rebecca
I don’t think I’ve had truly intimate sex, the gazing into each other’s eyes sex, with my husband for years. Our sex has become very functional.
Jackie
Intimacy requires feeling safe and being willing to be vulnerable and more transparent than usual. You can experience an instantaneous connection with someone you’ve just met. Lasting intimacy, however, is built over time and involves both conflict and ease as you come to know and be known in all of your most vulnerable and imperfect aspects. Intimacy is an ongoing process of risking and revealing as you share yourself with another. The experience of intimacy can be creative and generative.
I used to think I was great at being intimate and close; then I started healing.
A lot of that closeness was my survival cover, a way to feel safe and to try to
be loved and loving. A lot of me wasn’t there, though. I acted in a way I
thought the person wanted me to, trying to fulfill their needs. Maybe they felt
close, but I didn’t.
Rosa
Being intimate, really vulnerable with another person is the most terrifying part of my healing. Letting myself actually depend on someone again is a big, big risk.
Louisa
In my work with survivors, I find that intimacy intensifies the risk and the vulnerability of a sexual relationship. When we are intimate with a partner, we face a greater risk of losing her or of needing him, and even of being loved. As we feel safer, the unfinished business of our abuse will enter the relationship more readily. We tend to unravel more easily in an intimate relationship.
I can get deeply sexual, into my body—let’s go to it, babe—with someone until the emotional intensity of our relationship becomes greater than the sexual intensity. Then, my sexuality fades, turns off. I am looking for a time when those two will be seamless.—Akaya
The closer I get to my boyfriend, the more I want to have sex with other guys.
I want sex to be easy and light. I want to be in control of it and not feel so vulnerable.
Now that we are closer and I have risked more, our sex isn’t like that
anymore.
Shandell
For women who have been sexually abused by family members, having sex with someone who feels like “family” can seem incestuous. Making commitments, such as moving in together, can be triggering.
About four years into my relationship, my partner hit “family status” in my
heart. On the one hand it was great; I was letting myself trust more deeply than
I ever had. On the other hand, I did not want to have sex with my “family.” I
finally wanted to live in a safe house, with a safe family that I didn’t have to
have sex with.
Janet
It’s easier to keep the sexual abuse and triggers compartmentalized when you are emotionally distant from your partner. You may find it easier to be sexual outside of intimate relationships. You may find yourself having nonintimate or “checked out” sex with someone you are emotionally very close to.
Once I get close to someone, I start to go away when we are sexual. I feel far away from them, and wonder what I ever liked about them anyway. I want to get away to feel safe.
Laura
Sex is easiest with people I hardly know.
Lourdes
Just as masturbation is a good way to get to know your sexuality, intimacy with yourself is good practice for being intimate with others. Intimacy with yourself is not about isolation. Intimacy with yourself means accompanying yourself through all of your feelings, sensations, thoughts, wackiness, and imperfections. It is getting closer to yourself. The more you can be present with yourself, the easier it will be to be present with another.
Sensitive versus Intimate
Survivors can be amazingly sensitive and receptive to other people. We’ve been well trained there! When you were being abused, survival hinged on your ability to pay exquisite attention to your surroundings. Being sensitive does not necessarily make you good at intimacy, however. Intimacy means being able to be fully present with yourself and another at the same time. It does not mean abandoning yourself to gain another’s approval or giving up what you care about as you support your partner in his or her interests. Intimacy means being willing to experience conflict, and to use conflict to deepen your intimacy. It means risking trust with another at deeper and deeper levels over time. That part never really gets comfortable. The payoff is grand, but there is no guarantee of comfort. Intimacy after childhood sexual abuse means a commitment to grow and learn; in fact, it requires the same practices and tools as those you are learning in sexual healing: embodiment, consent, openness to emotions, healing through triggers, trust, and self-forgiveness. I encourage survivors to find a coach, therapist, or friend who is good at relationships and to learn from that person. Keep educating yourself.
How to Build Intimacy
Practice being with yourself and with another at the same time.
Treat conflict as something that can build intimacy.
Communicate openly and truthfully.
Develop both clear boundaries and emotional flexibility.
Practice self-dignity and grant your partner self-dignity, too.
Affirm and acknowledge yourself and your partner regularly.
Build trust.
Allow support, pleasure, and conflict—all in the same relationship!
Practice embodiment, emotional sourcing, and boundary exercises.
Find a friend or coach to help you learn about intimacy.
Self-Forgiveness
Forgiving myself and being forgiven by a community of people who love me was
the most moving thing that I have experienced in my healing process. I feel like
I have permission to live now. It is all right that I made it out alive; in fact, it
is wonderful that I did!
Carla
Many folks think forgiving the perpetrator is the final step in healing from childhood sexual abuse. You may have been told this is the goal of your healing process. Forgiving the perpetrator may naturally arise as a by-product of your own healing, but in my experience it is not necessarily the goal. If you do feel forgiveness, warmth, and compassion for your perpetrator, welcome that as a piece of your own heart thawing. But keep in mind that your healing lies in feeling at least that much love, warmth, and compassion for yourself.
When I remembered, the first thing I said was, “My dad is lucky he has such a forgiving daughter. I forgive him. I am done with that.” That was my way of repressing the pain. I then spent the next two years in excruciating pain, wondering what was wrong with me, why I was so fucked up and miserable.
Janet
Forgiving yourself is paramount. Survivors internalize the blame for sexual abuse. This makes sense when viewed in the context of children’s developmental process. Children have not fully differentiated themselves from other people and so attempt to make sense of the world by relating outside events to their own behavior. To small children, the whole world is about them. Kids think they caused their parents’ divorce because they spilled their milk or wouldn’t go to bed
on time. This is the same thinking that goes into believing that sexual abuse was in some way your fault.
I spent most of my childhood trying to figure out what I could do differently to make the abuse stop. I was very, very good, trying to control all my behaviors, trying to do whatever my parents wanted. I figured if I could be perfect then he’d have no reason to hurt me anymore. The rules kept changing, though.
Naomi
The social system perpetuates the view that sexual abuse is the fault of the child. Too often, adults demand of children, “What did you do to make him do that?” or “Are you sure that happened?” Much like adult rape victims who face a criminal justice system that questions the length of their skirts instead of protecting women from sexual violence, children who report sexual abuse are often met with blame and disbelief.
Many women who were abused as children also feel survivor’s guilt. Why was I the one to survive? Why did I make it out when my younger brother didn’t? Why am I healing when my big sister is institutionalized? Why do I deserve to be okay? This can be particularly intense for survivors of multiple victim abuse and ritual abuse. Any abuse setting in which other victims either literally or figuratively didn’t make it can produce tremendous guilt for the surviving party.
I survived the ritual abuse and others didn’t. I have carried tremendous guilt for that. I wondered, Why me? Why am I the one who made it out?
Carol
Self-forgiveness is directly tied to how much pleasure, sexual expression, and intimacy you will allow yourself in your life. If you are punishing yourself for being “bad” or “dirty,” why would you allow yourself to delight in sexual expression? Self-forgiveness is the doorway through which you move toward what you want in your life.
Sexual abuse may have been your only source of affection or touch. We all need physical contact with other humans as much as we need water, food, and air. In the case of children who receive no other physical affection, any touch is a relief.
I sometimes hate myself for having sought out his touch. I was starving. I figured if this is the way I can get love and affection, I’ll take it.
Jo
Let Yourself off the Hook
You can take steps to forgive yourself. First, explore why you think you are at fault. Become familiar with these beliefs. You don’t have to contradict them or prove to yourself that they aren’t true. Just look at what you truly believe about the abuse. One survivor wrote, “I think that the abuse is my fault because I was sexy even at six years old.” Do you blame yourself because you didn’t fight back? Because you minimized the abuse? Include it all. You are probably not alone in your reasons for thinking the abuse was your fault.
Many survivors use their sexual desires as justification for their self-blame. One survivor wrote: “I think that the abuse is my fault because I like anal sex today; that is one of the ways I was abused, so I must have liked it then.” Another wrote, “I am into kinky sex. Maybe I am just as perverted as my perps.” Explore this for yourself.
As you face what you believe is your fault, check in with people you trust. Do your close friends think the abuse was your fault because you liked getting attention? Or because you’re doing better than your little sister? This reality check is essential in developing a reasonable set of expectations for the girl that you were. People will want to use arguments to convince you that the abuse was not your fault. The experience of self-blame is profoundly deep, however. You can understand intellectually you are not at fault, but that may not change how deeply you blame yourself.
The sexual abuse was my fault because…
Here’s what some survivors in a workshop came up with:
• I was too smart.
• I wasn’t smart enough.
• I had an orgasm.
• I like kinky sex.
• I asked for our “special time.”
• I abused my little brother, so I am just as bad.
• He didn’t really mean it; I am blowing it out of proportion.
• Women don’t really sexually abuse kids.
• He was abused, too, so it doesn’t count.
• I’m gay.
• I liked the attention.
• I didn’t say “no.”
The next step is to begin an active process of forgiving yourself. To do this, you don’t have to believe the abuse was not your fault. Self-forgiveness is granted, not earned. You can believe you are to blame and forgive yourself. “It’s my fault because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to make it stop, and I am forgivable.” “I asked my dad to touch me, and I can forgive myself for that.” Look at your reasons for thinking the abuse was your fault. Point by point, practice forgiving yourself. Say aloud to yourself, “X may be true and I forgive myself. I am so sorry this happened to me.” Write these phrases down and post them on your bathroom mirror. Grant yourself self-forgiveness.
The final step is to ask a trusted friend to witness you in this process. Ask your friend or therapist to listen as you list all of the aspects of your history that you feel are unforgivable. What is it like to feel another person witnessing you? Does this person hold you responsible? Does this person forgive you? Are you forgivable? I can assure you that everything that you have done to survive is forgivable, no matter how terrible it seems to you.
I Am Different from My Perps Because…
You are not your perpetrators, no matter what you enjoy sexually. Make a list of all the ways you are different from those who abused you. This list can assist you in seeing yourself and your choices more clearly. Start with “I choose to heal.” Most likely, if your abuser had made that choice, you would not have been abused.
My brother would give me choices as to the ways that he would molest me. I
had to pick whether he would touch my vagina and put things in it or put his
penis in my mouth. He would end up doing whatever he wanted, but I felt like
I picked my own demise.
Donna
The hardest thing I have had to face was the unforgivable act of molesting a
child that I baby-sat. I couldn’t stop what I was doing. I felt so out of control.
I thought I was going to die facing this. How could I have done this when I
knew how horrible it was for me? I am beginning to have compassion for
myself. I’m wondering if I will try to find the girl to apologize. I don’t know if
this will be helpful or not. What has helped me the most is talking to a few very
close people about what I did. They felt the pain with me, and helped me feel
compassion for myself and the trap I lived in.
Danielle
Self-Trust and Compassion
How can you learn to trust yourself, your decisions, and your sexual energy? You can rebuild trust with yourself by acting on your own behalf over time. If you need to forgive yourself for not taking care of yourself, do so by learning how to take care of yourself now. If you do not trust yourself to have sexual boundaries, say so. Acknowledge that this is a problem and learn how to develop sexual boundaries that serve you. Self-trust involves the intention to do right by yourself, consistent action to back that up, and the capacity to know how to take that action.
A childhood of sexual abuse does not prepare you well for life. You may find yourself lacking basic skills to take good care of yourself. That you survived to adulthood is both a blessing and a challenge. You may feel like a little girl, but as an adult you are now responsible for your own well-being. Survivors are very creative people when it comes to staying alive in spite of trauma. Now is the time to channel this creativity into learning to live well.
This is where compassion for yourself comes in. Even if all your survival skills now prove self-destructive—skills like denying your desires, checking out during sex, or avoiding intimacy—give yourself credit for developing these skills when you needed them. And give yourself a break for not knowing what you don’t know. What ar
e the problem areas in your life? What things can’t you manage? You may not know how to make friends, maintain sexual relationships, find employment that nurtures your creativity, or have an orgasm. What skills do you need to learn? Whom can you learn from? How about a book, a friend, a workshop, or a teacher? You are not deficient for not knowing how to do even the “simplest” things. If you do not know how, it is because you were not taught. You can learn how to take care of yourself and to build the life you want.