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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Sex abuse that happened years ago

2 replies

Annaananna · 03/01/2018 23:24

I don’t know if this is the right place to post this? Happy to ask for it to be moved if someone can tell me where.
Regular poster but name changed for this.

I experienced some mild abuse as a teenager that I thought I had dealt with in counseling but a few days ago I spoke to another person who I thought might have also been abused by the same person. I’ve carried enormous guilt about not speaking up for years, thinking other people might also have been involved, and that my silence made me complicit.
Now I realize that it was in fact just me. Or just me at that particular time. I think there was someone else years before me but at that period of time, out of all the people that he could have chosen, it was just me.
Why me? I can’t get away from this question. What was it about me that made me a target? I feel as if he saw something in me? Like those feelings of worthlessness that I’ve spent years working through in counseling were right after all. That there is something very very wrong in me.

It seems so stupid to type this out. I feel like I could answer my own post. Of course it wasn’t your fault etc etc
But it doesn’t feel like that. I can say all this affirmative stuff but deep down inside it feels like an awful, inescapable truth. Why me? Why none of the others? What was it he saw in me?
I feel so contaminated. I feel like any moment my dh is going to see me as I am and recoil, like it’s only a matter of time before he sees through me.

OP posts:
BendyLikeBeckham · 04/01/2018 00:04

oh bless you OP. You were just unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time. it could have been anyone in the same situation. Abusers take opportunities. They don't always select and target their victims, as it's all about them, not you. You weren't human in your own right (in their eyes) you were just fulfilling their sick need.

You are therefore not tainted. There is nothing to see through. You are you. A wonderful human being who deserves to love and be loved. We all carry baggage of some sort based on bad life experiences in the past. But that doesn't and mustn't define us as who we are now, what our worth is, etc.

Can you access some further counselling and see if that helps you move on? Or some hypnotherapy to enable you to see your real worth and build your confidence. I can recommend someone if you are in London. Also the Paul McKenna books which you can get on Amazon and listen to the audio ast home.

Annaananna · 04/01/2018 10:56

Thanks for replying Bendy. Logically I know what you’re saying is true, but still there’s a mismatch with what I feel deep down.
The therapist I’ve been seeing is on holiday for another week and I know it will help to talk with her when she comes back. Just have to hang on in the meantime.
I think I’m just a bit shocked to find that I was the only one he targeted. And obviously that’s a very good thing for the others and I wouldn’t wish this on them. It’s just that my whole understanding of what was happening has shifted and I’m unsettled.
I’ve been reading research this morning about how the shared characteristics of victims and I suppose I fit the profile in a lot of ways - difficult home life, lacking confidence, vulnerable to attention and affection, etc. And the internalization of shame and blame seem to be quite typical too.
This is much easier in the daytime, particularly now DH is back at work. Lying in bed at night beside him is overwhelming. I don’t want to talk to him about this stuff. Him not knowing is a big part of what makes our relationship feel safe to me. Until now I’ve been able to keep this part of me and my life outside of us. But now he touches me and my skin crawls.
It’s all so frustrating and stupid and I want to give myself a good shake and just put this crap back in the past.

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