Dear Bee:

You shared that growing up, your father emotionally rejected you (“My father was emotionally rejecting“), and your mother emotionally neglected you (“my mother was emotionally neglectful”). You were afraid of your father becoming violent. You “often felt a sense of defectiveness about my insides“, believed that you were unlovable. You criticized yourself “for making the tiniest mistake… for having feelings, wants, and needs“, fearing that if you expressed your feelings, wants and needs, you “ran the risk of being abandoned“. Growing up, you struggled to be on your own side and had difficulty “believing I have ‘goodness’ in me“. You were also “raised with the stereotype that ‘all men want sex 24/7’”.

At 14, you fell into a deep depression, and at 19, you moved away from your family and entered your first romantic relationship (I will refer to the person with whom you had your first relationship as A). You quickly got attached to A and you were very anxious: afraid that like your parents, A will emotionally (and physically) reject you (“they would realize they deserve better“), or emotionally abandon you (“I would be abandoned“). You were anxious, distrustful, jealous and clingy

To you, “sex was about feeling close“; to A, “sex was simply something you could do with someone“. Sometimes when you initiated sex, A “seemed more than happy to receive what I gave… did not express a desire to stop“. At other times, he rejected your initiative. When the latter happened, you “took the rejection extremely personally and withdrew internally“. At one point, A told you that A “felt afraid to say no” to your sexual initiatives, fearing to make you upset, and that it “‘was easier to go along with things’ than express themselves“.

This was news to you and you “felt absolutely mortified and sick” with yourself. The two of you stopped having sex while working on your communication, deciding that only A would initiate sex from then on, and you started working on your issues with a therapist. Several months later, A broke up with you “for other reasons“.

In the last three years, you “undertook a healing journey to ensure nothing like this happens again in any of my relationships“. Having reconnected with A later, A told you that A forgave you for everything. You apologized to A again, and A told you that “all is forgiven… there’s no need to feel bad anymore… (it was) very beneficial to have met” you.

Because A was sexually intimate with you at times when A “did not truly want to be“, you feel “sick with myself and dirty in my own skin… a sexual abuser, a rapist… utterly repulsive… There is some part of me that wishes me to suffer… because it is so very disappointed in me…  I do not feel comfortable being a sexual being. I feel unclean. I am deathly afraid of hurting someone…  In the past few days, I have even felt close to death from the shame I’m carrying“.

My input today: it is possible that you are guilty of absolutely no sexual wrongdoing in regard to A. If you sometimes initiated sex and A appeared pleased, but later told you that (A) was not pleased and didn’t really want to have sex with you, then you are not retroactively guilty.

Let’s say person 1, believing that person 2 is hungry, offers person 2 a sandwich. Person 2 accepts the offer and seems to enjoy it. Later on, after the sandwich was eaten, person 2 says to person 1: I wasn’t really hungry, I was afraid to say no, and I ate the sandwich just so to get along with you. In this scenario, person 1 is guilty of nothing but kindness. Person 1 is not retroactively guilty because person 1 believed that person 2 was hungry and had no reason to believe otherwise.

There is also another possibility in this scenario: person 2 may have been hungry before eating the sandwich, but later on, no longer hungry and regretting having eaten the sandwich (for fear of gaining weight, let’s say), gets angry at person 1 for offering the sandwich, and proceeds to lie (to himself, and/ or to person 2), wanting person 2 to feel badly (not an unheard-of real-life scenario!).

Continuing this scenario: after person 2 said what he said to person 1, if person 2 continues to offer person 2 sandwiches, pressuring person 2 to eat them (Green Eggs and Ham comes to mind, “eat them, eat them, here they are, eat them in a box, with a fox”, etc., but I am digressing), then person 1 is guilty of harassment.

Back to your situation: if you had no idea that A did not really want your sexual initiative before he told you so, you are not retroactively guilty. If after he told you, you no longer initiated sex and never pressured him to have sex with you, then you are NOT GUILTY.

* It is interesting that you didn’t think it relevant to reveal his reason he broke up with you. His reason or reasons may be relevant to the topic.

* Also, interesting that you stated that for you, “sex was about feeling close“, but for A, “sex was simply something you could do with someone” – interesting because I imagine there would be hurt and anger on your part about you having had sex with A so to be close to A, suggesting that you considered A special, while A had sex with you because you were… someone to have sex with, suggesting that you could have been anyone and no one special. Where is that hurt and anger, I ask myself.

“How do I learn to forgive myself?” – first, is there a need for you to forgive A for having sex with you because it was “simply something (A) could do with someone”?

Second: you cannot possibly be retroactively guilty, as I explained above.

Third: you shared that you have a long-term habit of criticizing yourself “for making the tiniest mistake“, it’s not a big jump from criticizing yourself for the tiniest real mistake to => criticizing yourself for any alleged mistake (a mistake that someone accuses you of doing, but one that you are not guilty of).

Fourth: growing up, you “often felt a sense of defectiveness about my insides” and had trouble “believing I have ‘goodness’ in me“. This is the origin of your self-hate that’s behind your motivation to condemn and punish yourself.

“When I condemn myself, I’m thinking about the people in the world who would condemn me and label me as a sexual assaulter, an abuser, a rapist…  I feel like a villain… I internalize what others say of me and struggle to be on my own side” – notice this: long ago, you internalized your condemning parents, and you took their side, meaning, you joined them in condemning you. So, within yourself, there is on one hand a group of people who are condemning you: your parents, yourself, and other people you fear will join this group (any time you make the tiniest mistake, or any time you are accused of a mistake), and on the other hand, there is this one single person, the accused.

There is a certain satisfaction in joining a mob of accusers and haters, it feels safer in that group, and there is a certain satisfaction in all pointing the collective finger of blame at someone outside the group… don’t seek this certain satisfaction anymore, switch sides, be on your own side.

anita