"I was a good husband and we had a good sex life together," Hal said. "Why shouldn't we? I serviced her."
As we talked for several minutes, he confided that he received little personal enjoyment from the sexual intimacy with his wife. While I was trying to figure out what he meant, he connected "servicing her" with his abuse. "My role was to give my perp pleasure and he rewarded me with money or gifts."
Hal had permanently pushed aside his own sexual enjoyment. I use the word permanently because it was his major coping method in childhood. By focusing on taking care of his perpetrator, he "learned" that his own needs were insignificant.
I'm not a therapist, and I didn't try to heal him. I did say—and meant—these words, "You have a right to be as sexually fulfilled as your wife."
I don't know the outcome of Hal's story, but he told me he reads this blog. So, Hal (or anyone else), this is for you:
We were born to give pleasure;
we were born to receive pleasure.
You deserve both.
2 comments:
I can relate to that, in an odd way, perhaps. Because of what happened to me, I always had the feeling that sexual intercourse of any kind was somehow dirty. I could never abandon myself to the beauty of intercourse with my wife because of that. What a beautiful thing God created and the evil one wants to pervert that beauty any way he can. That was a tragedy for me and is for many other men. I know I am not alone in this.
My former husband, a victim of sexual abuse, has made me feel used and abandoned and all he supposedly showed me in sexual intimacy feels dirty now and was only for his sexual pleasure. I can't believe his expressions of love were ever real.
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