Lawrence.com

Posted by Dennis Dailey April 30, 2007 at noon

Date Rape

Q: I'm a 26-year-old woman and up until recently I've been denying to myself that my first two sexual experiences were very traumatic. The first time I had sex I was date raped, which I completely ignored until a year ago. The second time I was having sex with a friend who video taped us one night and shared it with his friends. I've began realize the impact of these two experiences on my relationships i.e. trust/commitment issues. I need to deal with it but I'm not sure where to start-can you help me? Thanks for your time. A: Let me begin by noting an important context for your question. Because so much sexual misuse (rape, child molestation, intra-familial sexual abuse, exhibitionism, voyeurism, etc.) is secret and unspoken, it is difficult to know for certain just how many women and men live with that as a part of their life journey. When I put together what we know from research, clinical observations, law enforcement reports, etc., the working numbers I use in my practice are: 35%, plus or minus 5% for women and 20%, plus or minus 5% for men. These numbers do not include sexual harassment because when harassment is included the numbers for women likely jump to 80% plus. This is not to minimize sexual harassment at all, as that can be a most frightening experience also. Suffice it to say you are clearly not alone in your experience of sexual misuse and further more it is not at all unusual that especially women can tell stories of multiple experiences of coercive sexual interactions. And because of the secret nature of so much abuse many loving partners of survivors of abuse have no idea that it is a part of their partner's life experience. The two experiences you describe are both examples of sexual misuse and illustrate a couple of central notions. The first experience of date rape illustrate how easy it was for you to "ignore" the experience and that is why I noted that so much sexual misuse is kept secret, both from others and from ourselves. Self-blame (frequently fostered in our society), confusion, ambivalence, etc. push survivors into denial and further confusion. I am just glad that you are able to name your first experience as date rape, as I suspect that is exactly what happened. When I taught sexuality classes I was always blown away by the number of women who finally named a past experience as date rape during our class session on sexual misuse. Now to the business about how this has impacted your relationships in terms of "trust/commitment issues." First, I think it is important to understand that these two experiences alone probably do not account for all of your struggles with trust and commitment. To scapegoat these two scary events as totally the problem will not allow you to examine other significant issues and will make the experiences themselves overly powerful. For example, your attitudes and knowledge about sexuality, your family and religious backgrounds, your internalization of the many sex negative messages about women in our society, your own self concept and self esteem, etc. all are likely to be important matters to understand. In other words, working this through will not be simply a matter of coming to some resolution of the coercive sexual experiences, while at the same time recognizing the painful consequence of such experiences. I suspect that when you talk about being able to trust or being able to make a commitment, you are talking about "trusting others" or "making a commitment to others." The problem is that if you wait around until you have some absolute evidence of someone's trustworthiness, or proof that if you commit to someone in a relationship they will never leave, you would never get into a relationship at all, or if you do, you would live with a constant sense of overwhelming anxiety. It is really not about whether others are trustworthy or whether you can count on not being abandoned. The real questions are: Do you have enough trust in YOURSELF to survive experiences of mistrustful others and are you differentiated and autonomous enough to survive should someone you love and care for reject or abandon you. So the work you probably need to do is directed at your own personal journey towards autonomy, which would allow you to survive (although sad and scared) mistrust and betrayal experiences. It would be pretty hard to escape them in life. Being in relationship is ultimately an unusual act of faith, a leap into the unknown, a basic risk of self. It is our personal autonomy that allows us to tolerate the faithful and risky business inherent in relationships. To say I am not going to be in relationship until I am sure I run no risks of coercion and no possibility of betrayal is to decide to be alone. You will likely prevent being hurt doing so, but you also won't get any of the goodies that come from being in relationships. If all of this seems to be too much to do alone, I would urge you to reach out to someone who has had experience with sexual misuse, who can guide you in your journey.