Jack– to YOUR KNOWLEDGE, how many of your pre-Jill lovers were abuse survivors? I don’t mean bad sexual experiences, but women who have come out of some form of abuse and thus needed extra TLC. How did you treat them differently?
(Submitted by Pagan Princess)
If I had to take a guess, I’d say that two of my former lovers were abuse survivors. Actually, that’s an understatement. If I’m being honest I’d say that the number is undoubtedly higher, as there was a period of my life where I seemed to attract women who were – you should pardon the expression – damaged, i.e. the products of broken homes, the victims of abusive parents, siblings, or significant others; or suffering from some variety of emotional or mental malady. But in most cases I simply didn’t know. I didn’t ask, or they didn’t volunteer. In some cases the relationship, to the extent that it actually was a relationship, didn’t last long enough for the subject to even come up.
The first time I dated someone who had clearly been the victim of abuse, I was around nineteen. I say clearly even though during the early stages of the relationship I had no way of knowing. Sexually she was a free spirit, pushing my youthful boundaries one minute, then throwing tantrums and reveling in her own petty insecurity the next. Her behavior was erratic, even dangerous, but being an idealist I was certain that I could rescue her. What I didn’t know at the time, and what I would never forget, is that you can’t fix someone who doesn’t want to be fixed. Although I quickly discerned that her home life was volatile, and that her parents – her mother especially – treated her poorly, belittling and infantilizing her, I came to find out that she had also been abused by most of the guys she dated before me. Although she denied it, I suspected that she was the victim of child sexual abuse as well, as she claimed to have lost her virginity at a very early age. I was torn between caring for her and wanting to run like hell from her. In the end, the negativity she brought into my life outweighed the positive. I was ill-equipped to deal with the drama she injected into my life, and we broke up.
The last person I dated long-term before meeting Jill was someone who had been similarly victimized. Though she wasn’t as young when she lost her virginity as the woman I mentioned in the previous paragraph, she was young enough for me to believe that she’d also been the victim of childhood sexual abuse. She eventually confirmed this fact, and during the early part of our dating relationship I also witnessed the domestic terror to which she and her siblings were exposed for years vis-à-vis her parents’ constantly volatile relationship. That she was as relatively sane as she was proved to be testimony to her strength of character. The positives here outweighed the negatives, and at this point in my life I was in a better place to deal with her issues than I’d been at age nineteen. I was patient and empathetic, encouraging of open communication, and far more conscious of my lover’s feelings than I might have been when I was younger. While this relationship wasn’t easy, it was rewarding. We dated on and off for a couple years, and our eventual breakup was amicable.
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