There’s a level of intimacy, trust, and love required to be able to share those kinds of things with another person, especially if that trauma had a large effect on who you are as a person. RELATED: 4 Subtle Ways Childhood Trauma Affects You As An Adult (Even If You Think You’re Over It) One woman shared her trauma with her boyfriend and didn’t get the reaction she would have hoped.
Her boyfriend told her that he wasn’t attracted to her anymore after telling him about her childhood sexual abuse.
That’s not the kind of reaction you want to hear when telling your partner about your history of sexual abuse as a child. She elaborates in her Reddit post on “r/TrueOffMyChest” that she didn’t even go into detail, just that “it happened and it’s something that I have to heal from.” “He sat me down the next day and told me he was disgusted,” she wrote. “He said every second girl has a sexual abuse story and he’s sick of hearing about it, and then he told me his d–k was turned off and that he wasn’t attracted to me anymore.” This reaction reads like a million red flags and struck a nerve with all users who 1.5k commented on the post. YourTango expert, Nancy Carbone, is a licensed Psychotherapist and counselor who has worked with cases like this woman’s before. “As a therapist, a lot of women I see who have been abused end up being with a partner who abuses them in some way,” she says. This woman’s boyfriend’s reaction could be cataloged as a form of verbal and emotional abuse, especially when paired up with the other things she’s “gotten in trouble for.” “How my voice sounded croaky on the phone, how I dished up my dinner when I asked how to turn on his gas stove cause I’d weirdly never used a gas stove before,” she said, “When I told him that I was weaning off meds and it was making me a little tired.” RELATED: If You Had Something Terrible Happen To You As A Kid, Here Are 4 Big Ways It Changed You About the medicine, he started to gaslight her, saying things like “why the f–k would you tell me that? I don’t want to know about it. So, you’re a drug addict? There’s always a sob story with you.” Carbone says that this woman has likely pushed down her trauma and her pain because she wants to hold onto the love and safety that she feels or needs from her abuser. “They can be vulnerable when they learn not to trust themselves,” she says, “deny their own reality, and ignore all the red flags of abuse in subsequent relationships because they’ve completely switched off from themselves.” This man is a narcissist whose ideal version of the girlfriend he wants is unobtainable, causing him to gaslight and abuse her. “If you don’t meet their sexual needs then you are devalued or discarded and they will feel disappointed,” Carbone continues. “If you are deemed as ‘broken’ in the narcissist’s eyes, you are no longer someone they can idealize and therefore you might serve no need for them anymore.” Which is exactly what happened. The pair broke up, and she mentioned feeling “the most emotionally damaged I’ve ever felt leaving a relationship” and saying “I can’t bring myself to tell anyone else about it.” Another YourTango expert, Larry Michel, Relationship Restoration Coach and Founder of Genetic Energetics weighed in on the man’s reaction as well. “The mistake she must not make is to take his level of immaturity and repulsion and make it her own. His behavior lacks the maturity to have such a conversation. It was not about her,” he said. The worst mistake she could make is placing his faults onto her own experience because it wasn’t her fault in the slightest. Not everyone is mature enough to handle a conversation like that, nor is everyone understanding enough, it’s just unfortunate that she was in a romantic relationship with this man and it ended the way that it did. RELATED: Why Trauma Bonding Keeps People Stuck In Abusive Relationships Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Follow him on Twitter here.
