I have no idea what a proper relationship looks like :-(

[user1804]

I'm an old timer but have name changed for this.
Bit of history, I think I've started the majority of my relationships with sex.
My exh was sexually abusive and would sulk or bribe me into giving him sex or masturbate him.
Then I dated a man for 3 years who watched a lot of porn, the sex was good but it was never loving as he had death grip syndrome. Last year he sexually assaulted me and we broke up this year.
I met a guy through work (sort of), I got very drunk on a night with him, he raped me and left me on my bathroom floor covered in vomit & urine.
I'm not proud of that, I'm a professional woman and felt that I'd let myself down.

Anyway fast forward a few months and I've been asked out by a man. He's not my type, older than me, and doesn't fit any of my normal 'criteria'

He has made no dirty comments, kissed me on the cheek after our date, has asked to take me out to dinner.
He seems lovely, mature, kind and respectful which is all new to me!

So I guess my question is how to progress? It's clear to me that I use sex for affection and to seem like 'the cool girl' by doing things slightly edgy wrt sex.

I'm not sure when to have sex, or just how to cope with this apparently normal man

Thanks for reading

Have you had any support with the rape? I'm sorry you went through that.

Bump for the evening

Sorry you've had such a bad time OP. I have been for counselling and I think it's all very well to be self aware, which you clearly are, but it's a different thing to put what you've learned into practice.

You haven't really said how you feel about this man you're dating. Can you take things very slowly, just try and do things differently than you have in the past?

Honestly, I think you should stay away from trying any relationships (or sex) until you are ok in yourself.

I have had similar experiences, I feel like I have just been passed around by abusers to be used my whole life.

I've now been single for 7 months after reporting my last boyfriend to the police and it is lovely. Spend time and invest your love into you, not other people.

Oh I do love being by myself and I think the guy I went on a date with feels the same.
I like him a lot because he's respectful, I've known him over 6 months but even now there's been no sex comments, not even inuendo and I love that.

He seems to want to take things slowly and although his children are grown up he is mindful that I can't just drop everything and go out

I had no plans to date, I didn't want it but left the door open should it come along

I had counselling after my marriage broke down and it helped me work through - and identify - all the shit relationships I'd had and where they stemmed from. Please see your GP and ask to be referred, in my mid 40s I finally understood why I got into the relationships I did.
So sorry this has all happened to you

I have had counselling after my divorce
Maybe I need to go back

I met a guy like you describe and I finally felt so safe that I married him. My picker was still off. He turned out to be emotionally (and sexually) unavailable and we've been separated 4 years.

This guy might not be like that, I don't know, what I have learned through bitter experience is that using past men as a yard stick for future men just trapped me in a different type of abuse.

I suspect you are also using past men (abuse) as a yardstick to measure this man and he seems so attractive because 'he is not like....' this causes you to be blind to what he is like.

I do think counselling would help (and staying out of relationships till you find your own boundaries and not measuring men by the boundaries of the last one).

I yo yo'd from one rapey abuser to being single for two years but not healing myself into a short relationship with someone controlling and EA then straight into the marriage with the guy I thought was everything those guys weren't who turned out to be a different kind of abusive then straight into an awful relationship with someone who was so like the first guy (but even worse TBH) I constantly dreamed about him being the first guy the whole relationship.

I've made a massive effort to heal myself recently, I don't think another relationship will ever be for me, that's ok, but I know that definitely until I love myself and am ok with my boundaries getting into a relationship with anybody is going to turn out badly for me (and DC). Part of that process is reporting recent XBF and supporting police investigation fully. Doing inner child therapy at home, and eventually counselling after charging decision/court.

And the main reason I was so vulnerable to recent even worse guy is precisely because I am extremely vulnerable to sexual abuse. It is sometimes like I have this unconscious draw to people who are abusive. I think it stems from abusive childhood where I learned to equate love with pain.

I think there is a part of me that expects to be sexually abused by men. That just waits for it to happen, that when it happens, it makes me so numb and damaged that I lose the ability to get away. I feel I deserve it I think even though I don't think I do (now). I get paralysed.

I remember in the past I have been so very numb about it that I even said things like 'I don't know why people make such a big deal about being raped, it's happened to me loads of times, it's just sex' in a weird way that was me being more in touch with my feelings (though they are not the right way to look at it) than I have been for years.