(09) There must be something wrong with me

My girlfriend and I had our first couples therapy session and it went really well but I’m kind of rage-typing this right now because it brought up a lot for me afterwards. A LOT.

Whyyyyyy does the sex talk still fuck me up and bring me back to everything that happened when I was a teenager until the day I finally stopped sleeping with men? I guess when I write it out like that, it’s a lot of years of shit 😂

Nothing THAT BAD happened. I don’t know. Was it kind of bad? Probably. Could it have been worse? Definitely. 

I was sexually assaulted when I was 12, but it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t. I used to not even be able to call it a “sexual assault.” It felt like I was blowing it waaaay out of proportion. It wasn’t that bad. I don’t know how to feel about it. All I know is that it’s making me feel something. Is it bad that I’m still downplaying it? Telling myself it wasn’t that bad? Even as I feel this tightness in my chest and fight the urge to cry? There’s something wrong with me.

When I go back and think about what happened, it was with someone I didn’t know very well. Another fucking child (a 12 year old boy) who didn’t know his head from his ass he just stuck his fingers inside of me and pumped a few times, pushed me down on a bench at the beach, and sort of tried to kiss me. In the dark, under a bright blue moon that made everything glow, I remember sitting there after he left. Alone. Wondering why none of the kids who spent their summers on Fire Island wanted to be my friend; it was my first time there, and I figured there must’ve been something wrong with me.

I have really really really vague memories of anything else besides the intense shock of that interaction. I’ve talked about it in therapy once. It didn’t really help. Maybe I need to go back to the beginning…to that place? To all the places where sexual interactions were scary. To figure out why I have a fucked up relationship with sex? 

My next sexual experience was when I was fifteen with a guy who was five years older than me. That was ok, nothing super bad happened for a while. He really wanted to have sex. It was allll he could think about. He really wanted me to touch his dick even the first night we hung out. The first night. I was nervous as fuck and he was coaxing and coaxing and it was dark, and I was nervous and excited but mostly nervous. Anxiety is welling up like a knot in my chest as I’m writing about it. 

I got so many UTIs that summer my parents thought something was wrong with me. They took me to the doctor because they figured I just wasn’t emptying my bladder all the way when I peed.

One time he really wanted to try anal. I was too scared and asked him to stop and he got very angry. He yelled at me. I don’t quite remember anything else after that. Maybe we were at a hotel? There was pain for sure. I let him down and at the same time was so confused by what was happening. There must be something wrong with me.

That relationship was all about sex. He wanted to marry me. I was obsessed. I don’t even remember the sex, actually. Did I orgasm? As I sit here and really think back on sex with him, what rises to the surface most is pain. Physical and emotional pain, yes, but also this constant pressure to make sure we had enough of it. What the fuck. I didn’t know any better.

We were long distance for most of our relationship, and we would talk on the phone all the time. I spent all my babysitting money flying to go see him instead of being a normal high school kid making friends, playing sports, giggling about who we had crushes on, being innocent. Nope. I was on a plane to see this dude as often as I could who was definitely cheating on me. 

In college I was still tangled up with this long distance guy from high school, but that ended fast when I started drinking and hanging out with new people and I somehow found this guy on the soccer team that I couldn’t get enough of.

Maybeee if he really wants to fuck me, everything will finally make sense.

Maybeee if I get drunk enough and have sex with him and then hook up with his friends I’ll be enough and I’ll be cool and he’ll think I’m enough and never look elsewhere.

Maybeee if I get drunk enough I’ll black out and not remember both him and his friend fingering me when I was pretty much passed out on the bed.

And I tried and tried and tried and tried to be exactly what it was that he wanted me to be because then he wouldn’t go find what I was lacking elsewhere. 

Because all of my emotional and physical self-worth, at the time, was tied to the sexual approval of men. If I could turn myself into their version of perfect, then I’d finally be enough. I’ve done it. 

Finally, I ended it with the college guy after five years. Five years of a lot of cheating, a lot of pacing in my apartment because I wasn’t getting text messages back which meant he was definitely cheating on me. A lot of overthinking and freaking out about how being alone means I’m completely unlovable. Five years of continuing to go back because I didn’t know how to be by myself or stand up to him or think I was worthy enough to be selfish and say what I wanted and needed. I was so incredibly anxiously attached it was debilitating.

The last straw (LOL 🤦🏻‍♀️) was when we were traveling in Panama together and I found out that he was fully with someone else. I finally quit that bullshit as he gaslit right up until the end. “How could you not want to talk to him anymore?” “How could you just end us like this over Facebook Messenger.” 

For the record, he would NEVER commit to label our relationship boyfriend-girlfriend. Not that it mattered. I haven’t talked to him since. 

Do I really need to go back and dig through this in couples therapy? DO I? Should I? Will I be stuck here forever? Really??? It pisses me off so fucking much that I’m still affected by this bullshit. I’m an adult. It’s been years. Have I never actually faced the root of it all? Just kept shapeshifting through different versions of the same unhealthy patterns with sex and relationships?

Lola, James and I were talking about this recently, which offered a helpful perspective. Healing doesn’t actually happen through time alone. People love to say, “just give it time,” but the truth is, it’s not time that heals us. It’s new experiences that teach our nervous systems a different reality.

When you’ve been through trauma, heartbreak, sadness, regret, whatever, your body starts to expect those feelings. It learns to brace for rejection or danger or sadness even when it’s no longer there. Basically, self-protection slowly turns into self-sabotage. You start anticipating hurt, and by doing that, you end up recreating it. It’s like a self fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe what we need is new input? New experiences that help retrain the body and show it that safety and connection can co-exist. A sexual experience where you stay connected to your body instead of dissociating. Those are the moments that start to rewire you.

This resonates so much for me. You can apply it to all kinds of healing, not just sex! The nervous system doesn’t learn through time; it learns through repetition and contrast. It needs to feel something different, over and over, until it finally believes that something new is possible.

It’s also a conscious choice. If I believe I’m different this time, finally ready to do real work, then I fucking am. Logically, I get it. Progress isn’t linear and patience matters. When we’re in it, it’s hard to see anything else. No up or down, no light at the end of the tunnel, just kind of floating, reaching, grasping at nothing..

♡ Anna