Dear Agatha,
I need your help. I am an adult female who got married six months ago. I was sexually abused as a child at age 12 by a close family friend. I never told anybody not even my parents. Ever since, I have kept it within me.
Due to this, until I met my husband, I never had anybody friend because I felt the only interest of any man in a woman is to have sex with her.
I am now married and each time my husband wants to make love with me, I tense up. I have tried severally to put this feeling of sexual abuse behind me but can't. I just feel the same way about men. What can I do to forget it so I can enjoy lovemaking with my husband?
Your reply will be appreciated so much.
Blessing.
Dear Blessing,
It is indeed a pity but the first step is to go back into your past. Go back to the scene of that incident. There is no way you can mend if you don’t have the courage to go back to the scene of the crime.
In your mind’s eyes, the scene has refused to go away. You feel betrayed by the very society who is supposed to help you. You lost confidence in friendship. It wasn’t just your body that was violated that day, your mind, trust as well as belief in every good thing the society stands for were violated along with your innocent mind.
Besides, you also feel dirty and secretly blame yourself for being responsible due to your inability to stop the brute that took away your innocence. These are all normal feelings for any woman who has gone through the horror of violation.
The major advantage of going back to that day is to help you put things in proper perspective. Do you think there was something you could have done to avoid it? Sincerely, no matter how many times you have blamed yourself since then, the man that raped you was a predator whose intent was unknown to you and hidden under the cover of friendship to successfully carry out his desire. Even if you had wanted to prevent it, at 12 you were too young and naïve to.
At that age, the law places you strictly under the protective custody of every adult around you including this man who took advantage of the situation to defile you. There was no way you could have avoided him at this age. Besides, you didn’t have the experience to read the signs of his lust for your innocent body. Your parents and all the other adults that were supposed to protect you weren’t there to help when this happened. So, pointless for you to hold on to guilt you had no power to prevent.
Stop blaming yourself and allow the guilt and sense of dirt you have bottled up inside of you ever since come out in the open by discussing it with your husband. Like I said, there was no way you could have prevented what happened.
Your husband has to know why you aren’t enjoying intimacy with him; he has the right to know to enable him know how to softly berth you into enjoying the act with him.
If you insist on dealing with this issue alone, it will eventually destroy your marriage because very soon your husband will begin to notice your lack of involvement in the act. When it happens it sets the stage for him too to begin to doubt your feelings for him and to ask questions about your loyalty. At this stage, it may be too late for you to try to get him to listen, because all the while he patiently waited for you to tell him why you seem not to like making love with him, you refused.
It is too late to do anything about the past, but everything can be done by you to change the present as well as the future.
The tragedy of holding on to this is, you keep yourself as victim of a situation caused by a man who has since forgotten all about it. The man who caused your pains is enjoying his life while you continue to give him the power to hurt you. I appreciate you will never forget the incident but it is also pointless to continue to give this man through what he did to you back then power to hurt and dictate the melody of your life. It is too much power to give to an individual over your life hence you must allow the love and tenderness of your husband replace this very bad memory from your mind. It is called the power of positive thinking.
Look at the extra qualities in your husband, the reasons you married him and how supportive despite your obvious lack of enthusiasm to him has been.
You need to know that not all men are brutes or want a woman for the pleasure of her body only. That your husband agreed to marry despite your seeming lack of warmth to him is an indication of the goodness in most men. This guy that violated you is an exception.
Discussing your past with your husband would not only thaw the tension inside of you but would also help both of you know move your relationship and marriage forward.
In addition, you must also appreciate that as a married woman, you have to understand the value of lovemaking in a marriage. The man who raped you had sex with you, pure simple lust. Telling your husband about this dark past will help him teach you the other side of the act; lovemaking, an experience you need to erase all the pains and memories of all these years.
It is also pertinent you read books about lovemaking. Being married it is within your rights to learn more about the subject to help your marriag7e going. Don’t be ashamed to ask for help when you have to. And if you live in Lagos, please don’t hesitate to visit our office at Block 5, Plot 7D Wempco Road, Ogba, Lagos, to see me.
Good luck.
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