To add to that, it may push them to wonder if they’re really gay. It’s as if they say, “If I was normal, it wouldn’t have felt good.” We need to admit that when we were sexually assaulted it felt good. Of course it did.
I still recall the old man running his hands around my body telling me how soft it felt, and I enjoyed this touch. All of us have skin hunger, and no one in my family ever touched me—or if so, I don’t remember.
Everything the old man did to me felt good. In retrospect, I felt shame for responding to a natural, normal act—the human touch.
An online article stated that three of four Americans suffer from skin hunger. I don’t know how they arrived at that statistic, but I accept it. Our perpetrators used that unfulfilled human need and we suffered because of it.
I was an innocent boy who needed loving touches;
my perpetrator exploited a basic human need.
3 comments:
My brother watched as he encouraged me do painful things to myself sexually. I was 4 or 5; he was a teen. When I told him I was feeling pain, he responded, "The more it hurts, the better it is.
I was the type of kid who screamed his head off and went running to mom whenever I had even a slight scratch. But in this case I believed my brother. My young brain must have rewired in that moment to endure the pain and thus keep his approval by reinterpreting the pain as pleasure.
Although intellectually I know otherwise, on an emotional level I still struggle to accept that the pain I felt was not good and was not something that I wanted.
I've started telling myself, "The 'pleasure' I was told was my own was actually his twisted enjoyment from encouraging me to hurt my body."
Mark, although your story is different, it's also the same for most of us. To admit the pleasure in our molestation isn't easy.
One reason I called the blog "Shattering the Silence" was to help ME open up to the things I didn't want to face and thus encourage other men to do the same.
That's part of how we experience healing.
Cec
Yeah, it felt good. But on several levels for me. I hungered for touch as any 10 yo boy would. My father never really wrestled or played games with me. When I became aware he was coming to my room and touching me, I felt frightened at first, then realizing it felt good I immediately interpreted it to mean he did love me and wanted me and wanted to have some kind of 'special thing' with just me and him. I loved the touch and the feelings it brought but also the fact that it was dad and that we had finally found something we could do together.
I may not have articulated that in my 10 yo brain but I can see now that is what happened. Later I interpreted it to mean if you really care about someone this is what you do. I knew it was a no no to do this with girls so I logically assumed it was ok to do with my own sex. This led to a lot of confusion over my orientation. It took decades to unravel this and get to a place of accepting who and what I am.
This kind of early and inappropriate sexualization I have found is extremely destructive to understanding one's true nature and the ability to relate in healthy ways to women and other men. Regardless of what abusers and psychologist say, sex with underage children is VERY harmful to all parties involved and should never be condoned or tolerated.
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