# How have you successfully overcome trauma in your sexual interactions with your spous



## Machjo (Feb 2, 2018)

Both my wife and I suffer trauma from past abuse. My wife enjoys sex but insists on only PIV sex (with usually me on top and sometimes her on top depending on her mood). Though I don't particularly enjoy fellatio, I'm willing to accept it if she enjoys it, but I don't think she cares much for it. As for cunnilingus, I enjoy it but my wife dislikes it so I don't do it.

Due to my own trauma, I've had to deal with submissive and masochistic ideation sometimes bordering on the macabre while my wife usually just wants Adam-and-Eve sex. Our sexual interaction also requires caution. Before I married my wife, any semblance of sexual coercion (even if only mild verbal or emotional manipulation) could cause me to suffer a panic attack. In fact, if my wife made any physical contact with me beyond taking my hand or if she conversed with me in a sexually suggestive manner, I would recoil. After my marriage, I was able to remove the barrier to sexual interaction with my wife by playing a mental game of sexual submission to her. My past experience has made me paranoid about doing anything that my wife could construe as sexual coercion on my part and so I can never start a sexual interaction with her. Instead, when I want sex, I'll express sexual interest by cooking her a meal, offering to give her a massage, or doing something else that is not directly sexual. If she then initiates the sexual interaction, I can proceed from there; otherwise we cuddle and go to sleep. This can make our sexual interactions somewhat ritualistic; but the ritual approach contributes to a sense of safety and respect for both of our boundaries.

The one thing that sexual abuse harms the most is a person's sense of control over his personal boundaries. His partner needs, absolutely needs, to help him redevelop his sense of control over his boundaries. Another boundary some people overlook beyond the physical is the emotional. For a trauma survivor, sex with a person he loves and cares about can make him feel quite vulnerable. After all, in many cases the abuser was a person close to him, a family member, a close friend of the family, a regular babysitter, or a past intimate partner. Also, abuse does not always involve physical force or the use of a weapon but can involve begging, nagging, pouting, threatening suicide or other blackmail, and a wide range of other forms of verbal and emotional manipulation instead that can be just as traumatizing. In some cases, the most traumatizing part of the abuse is the resistance itself. At the moment of resistance, the abuser and the abused find themselves in conflict and this can create an emotionally tense situation for the abused. The abused may acquiesce to the abuser to escape this tension; and if the abuse continues over a period of days and weeks if not years (and especially if the abused has suffered abuse in childhood too), he may eventually learn to no longer resist coercion as the easiest way to escape the trauma of resistance to the point that the acquiescence becomes a habit any time he faces coercion which further degrades his sense of boundaries.

This combination of the vulnerability of emotional attachment and the trauma of resistance can often lead to certain forms of sex addiction. Uninhibited sex with a stranger detaches the person from his emotions and removes the trauma of resistance, though granted it also numbs his emotions and makes him then depend on the physical pleasure of sex as an analgesic to modify his mood; and the further reduced sense of control over his behaviour can lead to further depression and so dependence on sex as an analgesic along a vicious cycle of sex addiction. Another less well known form of sex addiction follows the above pattern but in reverse: in the case of compulsive sexual avoidance (CSA), a person may feel uncomfortable interacting sexually with someone he loves or cares about due to the emotional vulnerability that comes with that. I myself suffer CSA which is not to be confused with free and willing abstinence. The difference lies in the compulsiveness of the former. That said, I can overcome CSA through a series of mind games that I play in my head when interacting sexually with my wife. In essence, I role play.

To satisfy my own needs without inconveniencing my wife too much, I've engaged in chastity play using a chastity device. I first tried to get her to accept the keys as the key-holder but she felt uncomfortable with that since she thought it too abusive towards me, so I sometimes engage in chastity play with myself by locking myself and leaving the keys at home. That's how I satisfy my own sexual needs.

When my wife wants sex, she interacts with me sexually by simply telling me directly that she wants sex and then letting me make the next move. She then invites me to interact with her sexually but always within her comfort zone that I'm not to cross.

In public, I will never physically display any affection towards my wife beyond taking her hand and she respects that boundary of mine too. I don't mind it in private, but I would feel uncomfortable with her doing more than taking my hand in public.

In spite of all of these challenges, and while I doubt either of us gets as much sex as we want mainly due to our cautious approach to sex with each other, I can say that we've more than compensated for it outside of the bedroom by cooking or cleaning for one another, walking or cycling together, chatting together, etc. We can also usually discuss sex openly until one of us is in the mood, and then the person in the mood suddenly starts to approach the other more cautiously to gauge the other's mood. As a result, we generally end up having sex once we're both clearly in the mood for it.

This pattern has worked for us for a few years now, and I'd be curious how others who suffer sexual trauma or whose spouses suffer sexual trauma have adapted to develop if not perfect sex lives, then at least sex lives that satisfy them.


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Just dispense with the busy traffic games.

Speed her home with your PIV.
As if you are stuck in snow.

Rock it back and forth using, first drive, then reverse.

When done, leave it in Park for a few minutes.

Then take your PIV to the car wash.


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## Notself (Aug 25, 2017)

Therapy. Individual and couple.


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## minimalME (Jan 3, 2012)

I don't know that I really have. I mean, I certainly never did in my marriage. It was sexless, and my ex didn't initiate or bring up discussions about sex.

In 2012, I was in school for a midwifery degree, and it was the president of my school who was teaching our class about sexual abuse and birth who pointed out that my anxiety issues were directly tied to the parts of my body that had been misused.

I tried breastfeeding with my first, but simply couldn't tolerate it and bottlefed from then on out.

I also have paruresis, which is an anxiety issue about urination and bathrooms. Different people have different quirks in this area, but mine was so bad that I couldn't even pee alone in my house in my own bathroom.

I went to the extreme of seeing a urologist who taught me how to use catheters so that I wouldn't be a prisoner in my home. I love to travel, and airplanes have been the hardest for me. This all started around 2003, and I discovered it was an issue on a flight to London. 

Fast forward to last year, and I successfully went to the bathroom on plane. First time in 15 years. It was huge for me.

And what it took was putting myself in public places, traveling a lot (unsure of where the next bathroom would be - we're talking rural Africa, etc.), and time. No meds.

In terms of sex, I think it'd be similar. 

I had one orgasm in my marriage with my ex-husband. 

It would be nice to find a man to commit to who'd be patient enough and loving enough to work through my discomfort. It takes me a long time to orgasm in the presence of another, and no one's really wanted to be bothered. I have amazing orgasms on my own, so I've just let it go.


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## Machjo (Feb 2, 2018)

I also found that abstaining from porn even if I must use apps to restrict my internet access helps too by taming my sexual expectations with my wife. And in an ironic twist, my wife's insistence on vanilla sex also helps to moderate my masochistic submission fetishes. At one point, these fetishes had become so extreme as to border on the macabre to the point that it was difficult to delineate between my masochistic fetishes and suicidal ideation. This was long before we married mind you, but they were still dangerous enough that, if anyone had actually consented to them, she could have risked causing me serious physical injury or worse.

I can only imagine how my sexual compulsiveness could escalate if my wife just consented to my every sexual fetish. In that sense, her vanilla expectations might even serve a somewhat therapeutic purpose for me. I still engage in submissive mind games with myself with the help of a cage, but my wife's disinterest in participating in them keeps these games if not within the vanilla category, then at least on the moderate end of BDSM.


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