on childhood sexual abuse and desire for bondage/submission

This is kind of hardto write about... but for about a dozen years of my childhood various members of my family (male) sexually abused me, my older brother mostly, who would tie me up and leave me suspended, beginning when I was 6 yrs old, in the little playhouse in backyard. As this went on and he drugged me, let his friends use me, etc., it became almost natural to have these rapes occur, usually about twice a week but sometimes more.

I've often thought I have the words "fuck me" written across my forehead for the amount of times I've been forcibly raped...even by a priest when I was in the fifth grade.

ok my confusion is due to my desire to be tied, and left, (just like my brother did, though he denies it ever happened now) and teased... as my Dom uses me for his desires...which in turn makes me feel whole, horny and in such a state of rapture.

I see a therapist weekly, but have not brought up this subject as I don't want a psychobabble response!

You are real people here, of whom I have come to trust and consider as friends. Does anyone think that this correlation between my early childhood abuse and sexual choice to be submissive is really disgusting? I'm new to my relationship in D/s and have been really thinking, trying to discern if I am in the "right shoes" so to speak.

Perhaps I am a freak, I don't know.

Anyone have thoughts on this? sometimes i wonder if i ought to really be a Domme myself, to have more of a sense of being the one running the scene and thus empowering myself.

I guess what I'm ultimately wondering is whether I'm taking the role of a sub because it is one that I easily slip into...and maybe that is something to fight rather than allow...but being a sub turns me on so much ......

the above post was written by me


gads I hate that....I was signed in, must have timed out...

luv,

cyn

cyn, while i have lots and lots of empathy for the scared, hurt, confused, abused little girl you were - and remain, someplace inside - i gotta tell you straightforwardly that your situation is *so* bound into a nest of interlocking issues that i wouldn't begin to know how to give you advice on this.

Nor would i be comfy doing so.

For this kinda stuff, honestly, you need someone who is trained in untangling the interwoven strands of your personal psychology. BDSM relationships, be they "just" friends like we are here or more intimate and emotional cannot undo or sort out or fix real hurts such as those you've described.

Only you can wade through your own experiences and picj k out what to keep and what to throw away.

Only you can decide what's going to linger from a traumatic childhood into your adult sexual relationships.

You and someone trained in such matters, anyway. I'm not trained in such matters and fear i'd do more harm then good, to be honest.

I think you might want to consider talking this whole heap 'o questions over in those weekly sessions you have going with your therapist, cyn. You might get a lot more then "psychobabble" - and if you don't, change therapists. Keep chainging until you find one you like, and who will take your worries and concerns and questions seriously.

I can tell you this much: you're not disgusting for having those desires. And I don't know that taking all the ugliness of early years and choosing to reshape them into something exciting and safe in a trusting, respectful, and controlled environment is a bad thing. Just make sure you're looking to redeem your past, not annihlate yourself. And if it takes therapy to reach the conclusions you need to reach, then so be it.

Be well.

Between the two of them, cym and Risia seem to have said just about everything I thought while reading your post.
All I can add to their wise words is to reiterate that you are among friends here, and you have no need to feel that you are disgusting.
You are very brave to post what you have here. My heart goes out to you.

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful responses...I guess the therapist is the one I ought to talk with, although putting this out to you has given me strength to do so, as writing here and having friends give feedback is amazingly worthwhile.

You are all just so smart and experienced : I feel like that baby fish swimming along trying to catch up with the "school" ahead! But there is always hope, and thoughts of peacefulness in the future...

Through the love and security my Dom provides while I serve him,
things will get sorted out, and everything will be ok.

I might even begin to enjoy life after all, as I feel my place has been found...I only wish to know the psychology behind it, and you're right, consulting a trained therapist is the way to go there.
But you, my friends, are right on and much appreciated!

Cyn, I too have past abuse issues that make me wonder often about who, what, where and mostly WHY. I have learn that blasting things out onto the WWW makes it easier for me to deal with and speak about these issues in R/L, and when I blast out some 42 page rambling jibber I am not really looking for answers I am more looking for the questions. When I read what I have written the questions I need to ask myself are much easier to find typed on a screen than rambling around in my own head. So I say if telling us things helps you find a way and the strength within yourself to speak about and deal with matters in R/L keep typing we are here.

There's an interesting article in the archives of D/s World on Abuse and Trust. It makes interesting reading--there's a lot to think about on this issue.
Here's the link:
Lord Saber's Abuse/Trust essay

In a community where people give a lot of credit to free will and personal choice, I'm a little shamefaced to admit that I do think childhood abuse has an effect on my desire for sexual submission. I would very much like to separate the two, since BDSM is loads of fun by itself, but it's difficult to separate the past from the present and the future.

Anyway, I think childhood sexual abuse left me (I can't speak for others) with a belief that my sexuality was my most effective way of gaining attention, love, etc. Although this belief is not a conscious one, I've had to try to alter it consciously. I tell myself that there are zillions of other good things about me.

However, the nagging little voice sometimes wins, convincing me that my self-worth is tied up primarily in my sex appeal, and that I'm no good unless someone notices it and is so irresistably drawn to me that he can't help but 'take' me. It's a fairy tale, I know, but it's the result -- I believe -- of my early childhood experiences of sex.

Only recently have I been able to imagine BDSM in a relationship without questioning my motivations. Usually I think to myself, "Why am I doing this? I don't care how much I like this, it's not healthy. I know better." But now I'm with someone because we know and love each other as people. He's not a Dom, so I don't know whether he and I will ever try D/s together. However, this is the first relationship in which I think I would feel comfortable doing so with any security in my own desires.

For all the people on the board who can live BDSM without the self-questioning that I have gone through, congratulations! It is good and right to choose your own actions sanely. I just fear that in my own experience, submission has often been an unchosen symptom of a problem, rather than an expression of something positive within myself.

Cyn,
My heart goes out to you. I was abuse both pysically and sexually as a child by several members of my family from early childhood up till I was 15 years old at which time I met a wonderful person who helped me to realize that what was happening to me wasn't my fault and that I had an out all I had to do was take it.

I took that step and found away to remove myself from the situation but it took me years to realize that although what happened to me was wrong it made me who I was. It doesn't shape who I am but its still apart of who I.

I spent a great deal of time hating myself, blaming myself, never finding anygood or anything I could like about myself, spent months and months in therapy, telling my therapist how bad I was, because I had desires i thought were dirty and made me as bad as the people who hurt me were. but it finally took admitting to myself that i wasn't to blame for what happened that I could love me for who I was no matter what others thought before I was free to be myself.

I'm not sure how helpful my post is. I just wanted you to know you weren't alone that there are other's of us out here who have been through what you have and feel the way you do.

i am submissive. i was sexually abused, mentally and phsycially, as a 9-13 year old child. It started in the mind and it filtered into physical form. For years, i was made aware of sexual things that i didn't understand. i was forced to keep quiet, mainly out of fear did i do so. What if no one believed me? What if he didn't stop? What if...what if...what if...

My silence was finally broken one night when i realized that i had no safe place left to hide. My mind snapped and i had no place to hide for he burst in through locked doors.

i felt for a very long time that my one real true attribute was as a sexual being. That's it. What happened to me stirred curiousities, imaginings, feelings that i didn't know how to express other than through sexual activity. However, it wasn't a positive thing. i gave it because i thought it was the only asset that i had that anyone would want, that it would somehow make someone love me.

For little more than a year now, i've explored D/s. i've explored some emotions and images that i've carried around with me for years. A friend of mine sent me an article called 'The Healthy Female Submissive'. i found this vastly interesting as it answered a lot of my own questions. When i was being sexually abused, my will was taken, my freedom of choice was taken, my innocence was taken in so many different ways. In one aspect, submission, for me at least, allows me the control to give myself to someone, in all ways, rather than it being taken from me. My trust in my abuser was shattered during those years. Being submissive has allowed me to explore that issue of trust, has allowed me to explore trusting myself and trusting another with such intimacy that goes far beyond my physically and mentally sexual being.

All the negative that i felt, over the years, i have been able to turn around into a joy and celebration of being sexual and erotic and sensual and woman. i adore sex now for what it can be...and not what i was forced to think that it was.

i love being able to share my experience with others. There's power in numbers and healing as well. i have found that if i face head on something that was forced and find a way to change it into a positive choice, then i have succeeded in one more step towards becoming whole with myself.

i don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but...that's my two cents worth. ~smile~

belle

NemoAlia

In a community where people give a lot of credit to free will and personal choice, I'm a little shamefaced to admit that I do think childhood abuse has an effect on my desire for sexual submission. I would very much like to separate the two, since BDSM is loads of fun by itself, but it's difficult to separate the past from the present and the future.

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I don't think you should be "shamefaced." I think that what you're talking about needs to be talked about. I think you're brave for doing it.

I believe, believe that childhood sexual abuse - especially of girl children - is vastly more common, and more destructive than culture gives it credit for. Which is not to say it "destroys" its victims - please understand. Like everything in life, every terrible thing a person goes through - it can make you stronger, as well as cause problems for you later on in life.

i don't know if this makes sense to anyone, but...that's my two cents worth. ~smile~

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Thank you, Belle, for your two cents worth. That goes for Cyn, and Kirabeth, and others as well. I think you're very brave.


Sandia.

I, too, was abuse sexually as a child. Never raped, but molested. I also watched my mother being abused, not sexually but in all other ways. I was molested by 2 men very close to me for years. It took me close or more than a decade to be able to really DEAL with it, along with many other illnesses they came from it includng bipolar. I find myself unsure what I want to do, be a sub or a domme. As for the sub - I find it appealing, to give up freely something that was taken from me - control. All my life since then I fight to always be in control but still I'm victimized by others. Maybe this is for me... I can understand your questions because I have them every day in my mind. I even left a guy because I left nothing suring intercourse, whether it was me or him (though after talking to others, I think it was his selfishness to his own pleasure and not mine) I wanted more. There were other reasons to leave him but to leave him mostly around sex felt petty but I have a motto cyn.

The most important thing in life is happiness. It doesn't matter whether you love someone to death or not, if your happy for a long time, forget it, move on, cut your losses - marriage, relationship, whatever.

My point to all this is, I feel the same way and do what feels right to YOU. Forget everything else for happiness IS the key, truly.

I'm really tired,,and English isn't my native tounge so please have indulgence with my post.

1) I'd never despise someone for being raped. There are occasions when I think "rape" being too strong a word but that nothing to do with how I respect the persons involved.

2) Yes,,I do belive that your past has a great deal with your current.
My view is that every person has a core,,a skeleton on which the expereinces are covering up,,forming the personality.
Some,,like mine,,are are resiliant as steel...it becomes forged,,not broken...even so,,some events are so intense that they remold the core in some extent.
Others isn't more significant than a flower in the buttonhole...they show for a brief period,,then is discarded.

3) In summary,,what I learned in my short life is that we all have our bagage....to understand how you are you need to examine it.
That doesn't mean that you ARE your luggage.
If you react in a certain way to something and you don't understand it,,it is time to have a new check.
Find out what the reason is AND MOVE ON! If the reaction is comfortable to you after you found out why you have it,,let it be. If not,,take a new path.
It will probably take several years of concentrated effort,,but once you know where you come from,,you know how to go away from there.

Kind regards
/BP

Reading through the above posts made me realize that I really havn't experienced things as bad as they could have been.

My earliest childhood memories consist of being 'used' (I really hate using the words abused, molested, taken advantage of because it belittles the strength that I beleive (somtimes falsely)that I have). Ever since, I'm guessing around 6 or 7, my brother's friends took advantage of the fact that I was a naive little sister who spent too much time harrassing her brother. It starting out playing tag in the dark where you have to touch the person's face to find out who they are and if you guess right they become 'it'. Well, before long it was more then just my face that was being touched. Too scared and too ignorant to do anything I always just let it happen. Sometimes I brought a friend of mine downstairs to play these games (sometimes it was her idea, sometimes mine - however, I can distincly recall there being a feeling of NEEDING to go downstairs). There were a couple of boys (several years older then us) but the one in particular (we'll call him A.) that would try and start riverlies between us. Telling me what my friend was doing (making things up as we later found out) to make me do it.

Before long the charade of the game was over and as we came downstairs the lights would just turn off and A. would just come up to me. I remember trying to hide from him in the darkness but that he always knew exactly where to find me.

The 'life-altering' moment as I believe it to be was the one time that he tried to have sex with him. He was rubbing up against me and whispered into my ear "let me stick it in you". Absolutly mortified I got the courage up to say no. With that, he turned on the lights and started yelling and ranting about how he 'wasted a perfectly good condom' and so on. It's very hard to explain but as trivial as this all may sound it was quite disturbing for me to experience. I felt an emense amout of guilt and shame for turning him down - I felt like I was just a very bad person.

(I could go on about things that happend later, but it's pretty much more of the same).

I don't know, but I beleive it to be true (w/ out going to a pychologies for some 'pychcobabble') that A. is the root 'cause of some of my core sexual, shall I say, 'tendencies'.

I have now slept with just about all of my BROTHER's friends and I never really felt excepted by any of them until I f*cked them. If there is ever a time (it's rare haha, but it happens) that I say no to sex I get an encredible wave (it really does feel like a wave) of guilt. The longer and the more valued the relationship is to me, the worse the feeling is. Sometimes it gets so bad that I'll wind up crying, or worse hiding the guilt and 'change my mind' and just give in to advances made by people. I have often 'caught myself sleeping w/ someone just so I didn't have to feel the guilt and the self-hatred. I can't get passed the feeling that when I say no to men I not only dissapoint but ruin frienships....perhaps it is that I just feel like no one can like me, nor truely love me, unless they have had sex w/ me.

I'm 18, and I've now racked up 18 partners. Some have been relationships, some just casual f*ck buddies, and others just one nighters (or two what the hell). Always though lies the guilt and hatred for myself for saying no.

I've told a few partnerss about when I say No what happens to me and why I think it does - and most are seemingly understandable-but I can't help to wonder if some have taken advantage of that side of me.

......I don't know how you all feel about incest but I could go into why this part of my personality has resulted in 'relations' with a cousin and an uncle (married into the family - not blood). However, I don't think I want to right now......

I'm sorry if this was the wrong place to post this, but after reading what else was here I just had an urge to share. Thanks for listening to me.

Lady Godiva

ps....sorry this was so long - I hadn't intended it to be...

After getting through all of that, I forgot to include one of the most important parts. In the last couple of years...since I was 15 or 16 I suppose (the activities as above stated lasted until I was 12) I've been wanted, craving sometimes, to be dominated. I absolutly love a good spanking. In my fantisies I crave being used, tied up, spoken to with harsh words and language, being spanked, used by several men one after the next...and so on.

So I beleive that it is because of A. that I want these things. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's my best guess. So, I guess that's how this whole big story related to the board topic of "childhood sexual abuse and desire for bondage/submission" even though it was entirely abuse...or was it... im not sure anymore....

Tough One

There has to be a line somewhere...

First off, anybody that picks on kids is one very sick puppy. I know that Literotica posts incest stories and the like, and that is fiction. Real life is different.

Second, it ain't your fault. (Pardon the grammar.) If it happened to you, it wasn't because of something that you did "wrong".

Third, if you need help, go find it. And if the first therapist is a dweeb, or you don't like them, find another one.

Fourth, if talking about it in this forum helps, come on. I have seen some good insights here, and also confessions of others with similar experiences. Just watch out, as I have seen some folks say things that might make life harder.

I never saw any sexual abuse as a kid, but my old man was pretty free with his fists. Until the day came that I was big enough to hit back. I've been trying to forget that day ever since.

I've read enough here to wonder if perhaps it might be time to hang up the flogger and the restraints for a while and think about life.

Take care,

Tiestheknots

Have you ever really been domed?
spanked as an adult woman?

I am trying ot understand how much of your
thoughts are based on adult experence
and how much is fantasy?

BTW I am glad you are posting

re

i can't speak for bedroom submissives, but as a natural 24/7 submissive, i know i was born this way, just as i was born with brown eyes. i was also physically and sexually abused as a child...and in my later years was abused/raped countless times by men. i too thought there was a "fuck me" sign on my forehead, can very much relate to that feeling. for many many years, i thought that was my only purpose on this planet. all i was good for. however i don't think any of those things was a cause of my being in the D/s (or rather M/s) lifestyle now. users and abusers are attracted to the very vulnerable...and there's no one more vulnerable than a natural submissive. yes, any woman/man can be raped, or cruelly abused as a child. however i think when there is a pattern of it throughout one's life, that being a submissive can be one of the factors. i very much NEED a Master...not simply for love, growth and learning...but for protection and care. i can not take care of myself...were it not for my Master, i'd still be being regularly raped and tortured by various men i run into along life's path. that doesn't happen now, and i don't want to ever go back to that life, that level of total vulnerability and helplessness. i am finally safe now.


edited to add, i do realize that my childhood abuse probably had a great deal to do with some of my sexual "habits" now, certain things i need and certain things i have difficulty with (bondage is very hard for me because i was bound by my abuser)....but my being submissive?? that was always there.

Being born submissive

I can relate to this and feel empathy with some of the posters here on this subject.

On being born a victim though. Several posters seem to be serial victims.

Are these two things connected?

Is there a level of degree or scale? Are people submissive in increments and are the same increments there for "serial vivtims".

How do abusers single out these (victims) people?

What is the process going on here, if there is one at all?


lots to think about and much internal stuff to work through i guess

off to study my navel for a few weeks

H

Richard49 said:

Have you ever really been domed?
spanked as an adult woman?

I am trying ot understand how much of your
thoughts are based on adult experence
and how much is fantasy?

BTW I am glad you are posting

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Hi Richard,

I don't think I could honnestly say I've ever really been domed. I had one very negative experience when I was 16 who took some role playing too far and I got scared. Yes, I've been spanked as an adult women and I really do enjoy that. Most of my thoughts are based on fantasy. However, fantasies that I want to explore.

BTW I am glad that you are responding.

Dittoing Pierced Boy's thoughts and questions.

I think that it's OK to have issues and do SM in ways that touches them. HOWEVER, as a Domme, my next question will always be "what are you doing for yourself?"

Therapy is a very encouraging answer. If you find yourself rejected by the therapist, if you don't like the answers you are getting and they feel like "psychobabble" you give another therapist your dime, it's that simple. I've gone through that process before.

Let me express my sympathy for all of you who have had rough experiences, and my hopes that you are able to find some measure of happiness in your current life.

Richard49 said:

Have you ever really been domed?
spanked as an adult woman?

I am trying ot understand how much of your
thoughts are based on adult experence
and how much is fantasy?

BTW I am glad you are posting

Click to expand...

Good God, Richard. Can't you confine your predatory antics to people who are at least aware of what is going on???? In my opinion, for you to come on this thread and prey upon people who are new to this, and discussing past abuse is just more evidence to support my position....that predators abound on this site.