why do i feel uncomfortable that my sisters and female friends are getting married?

[Enphery]

I feel uncomfortable that my sisters and older female friends are getting married. I feel weird that they going to have sex with their partners and then talk to me as if nothing happened, and I am supposed to behave as if its okay. I don't know if I feel anger or jealous or just sad. I'm asking this because I don't know how I should handle this situation. Sex is a new topic for me even though I have been exposed to it for a long time, having a real person do and live with that is different. I feel disturbed in some sense. Growing up I never thought of sex as something that feels good to girls and I was told that it brings pain and humiliation to girls. And with the videos I grew up with pretty much made me think that girls like that, and I couldn't wrap my head around it.. why would they like such a thing? I couldn't think of them as humans at some point because they don't think about the pain it brings to those close to them and care about them. Almost as if its a self harm for them and insulting thing to do to those around them. And then there's concepts of pure and impure things involved. It maybe has to do something with how weird I feel at the same time about girls who don't care about sex whatever and who ever they do it with doesn't matter to them, I.. just don't know. I don't want to think of them in that way.

[Sam W]

Hi Enphery,

I actually think the answer to the question in your title is a simple one: you grew up with a concept of sex that lead to you viewing women who engaged in it as less than human. Which means that, when you're confronted the fact that women you know and care about are probably having it, it makes you uncomfortable because you've told yourself that women who are sexually active are deliberately hurting themselves (and that in doing so they're insulting the people around them). To me, that's a recipe for being uncomfortable if someone mentions sex around you.

Now, how to unlearn the mindset that's leading you to feel this way is a bit of a trickier task, because you're going to have to unlearn a LOT of incorrect ideas about sex. Let's start with perhaps the biggest one: women, and indeed people of any gender, can and do find sex to be an incredibly positive, fun, painless, and pleasurable experience. Now, sex can be a negative experience too, for people of any gender; it really depends on a whole host of factors, including communication, what our bodies are doing that day, etc. But it's not automatically a good or bad experience, it's a dynamic experience that's shaped by the people involved in it. Do you see what I'm saying there?

Too, what other people choose to do in their sexual lives is, ultimately, none of anybody else's business. Those choices are between them and their partners and what feels comfortable and desirable to them. So, I think it would also help to adjust your mindset to one where you spend less time thinking about other people's sex lives overall.

[Enphery]

Hi Sam W,

Thanks, It is going to take a while for me and I do have to sit with that to fully come to terms with the biggest one. I think it did take influence from the fact that even the normal form of porn I have consumed has elements of maledom within it and not any neutral side of it and after being in a bad position as a child and somehow engaging with it with some older kid and realizing how much I hate it, has to do with it.

It does put my mind at peace to understand that it's none of my business what they do outside of my interactions with them.

"me wanting to do the same things with them that they do with others (and knowing that its
maybe or maybe not its wrong to think like that and I'll be reprobated (even though in reality I really wouldn't even try to do anything close to that))" is that weird to feel like that? Should I even feel like that? Is that normal? Is that jealousy? I don't understand what I am feeling there but I think just putting a word on it or knowing more about it would hit the nail on the head.

[Sam W]

Hi Enphery,

It may also be helpful to read up on the ways porn does--or, more often, does not--reflect people's day to day sex lives. These two pieces are great starting places for that: Making Sense of Sexual Media, Sex on Screen: Reality-Checking Mainstream Porn . Too, if you want to talk about what happened between you and that older child, that's certainly something we can discuss or offer support around.

If part of your reaction to your friends talking about sex is wishing you could be the one doing it with them instead of their partners, then yes, I would say jealousy is playing a role here as well. Jealousy, like any of our emotions, isn't normal or abnormal. It's just one of the many feelings we can experience when encountering something. What matters more is to recognize when or if it's happening, and figure out how to address that feeling in a constructive way, rather than taking it out on other people.

[Enphery]

Hi Sam W,

It's been few weeks and after thinking through all of this, I have come to the conclusion that I am fine with sex as long as both wants it and its ethically sound.
So if only one of them wants it or they are forcing themselves on to other, that's not right. And if they have partners and even if they hate their partners and wants to do it with another and the other is willing, its not right.
I'm allowed to feel jealous that's okay.
The older kid was my brother, i was 7-8, he was 11-12. I had to give him blowjob and kiss him mouth to mouth. And he would give me blowjob. And i was getting beaten up by him all the time and sometimes forced into stealing money from parents and be constantly gaslit into doing things and be humiliated for everything i did. I remember liking harry potter and then he would show me them having sex and ruining it. If i don't do something he wants, he will tell parents that i stole from them or tell them about those stuff i was forced into. even the words he would say like "suck" or "girl" was triggering for me. They still are. Because i was compared to girls all the time, and forced into doing things for him. both of my parents worked so nobody was at home most of the time before 5pm. I remember being scared to even move a centimeter. And screaming and crying all the yelling for help. Until few days ago i didn't even realize how messed up it was for a second grader to think that they want to kill themself. Ofcourse i didn't die from holding my breath. My parents started to appear to me as if they are kids. I remember stuff like that happening and then my parents telling me "people go through worser things than you" as a moral to a midnight story. I thought I was at the worst point of my life. But then I started having sleep paralysis. And I was fighting for my life every night. I can't kill my brother, and running away from home didn't work. They found me the same evening. Dying was easier than to sleep another night. Getting beaten up or being forced into doing things started to numb me from emotions punching out of anger, crying or screaming just didn't do anything. He was heavier than me, stronger than me and i was just a kid. My punches didn't affect him at all. And I was scared that i'll kill him if i hit him at some nerve. But during all this, i beat him once. Because of sleep paralysis I was confronting something more scarier than him every night, and i started to think through things. fighting him was no longer with anger but it was chess, where we are reaching same position over and over. me being at bottom and him sitting on me and punching me. He stopped doing things and i started thinking how to never be in that place ever again, very weird thing was that i got addicted to masturbating few years later.

[Sam W]

Hi Enphery,

It sounds you have made progress in terms of how you feel about all this! I do want to say that if sex is happening and it's NOT wanted by one of the people involved? Then that actually isn't sex, it's sexual assault. And from what you're describing, that was something your brother chose to regularly do to you when you were a child. I'm so, so sorry that he made that choice, and that your home was so unsafe for you and that your parents did not seem to treat this with the seriousness it deserved. You deserved to have been safe from abuse in your home, and you weren't, and that is incredibly, deeply unfair.

Can I ask if you're still living at home, or if you still have to see your brother on a regular basis, even if the abuse is no longer happening? And did you ever receive any kind of support--from counselors, from friends, etc--around the abuse you suffered? Or have you not had a chance to talk about it or get support about it until now?

As an aside, I do want to say that it's not weird to have discovered and enjoyed masturbation, even with this trauma. Sexual abuse survivors can have all kinds of relationships to their bodies, sex, and masturbation (and those relationships can change throughout their lives, as is the case for anyone). Too, masturbation "addiction" isn't all that accurate a concept. Frequent masturbation is automatically a sign of addiction or any other issue; if it becomes the ONLY thing you're spending time on, or you're doing it without really wanting to but more from feeling like you need to (in other words, if it's a compulsion), that can be cause for concern. But just doing it a lot isn't an issue.

[Enphery]

Hi Sam W,

I am still living at home, I don't see my brother on a regular basis, but I had to for few years after that, I tried to talk about this with a friend years later, not very helpful, I visited a psychiatrist who listened to my story but he went on to treat a different problem I had at that time. I still sometimes talk to my brother because parents make me, and I don't ever want to be related to him. At max he is just a distant acquaintance since I can't completely ignore. It does bother me a lot that the way I end up in life is similar to how he ended up. (for example choosing the same subjects in school, or going to exactly same college) And there was a part of me competing with him, somehow I can't get over it. Anyway,
with masturbation, when I started to do it for 6-7-8 hours a day constantly without breaks, I quickly realized that this is getting too much, and I was actually not even aroused or anything. It was concerning at that time, until last year I was still doing that and struggling with doing anything. I was tired all the time and I couldn't even think properly, socially isolated because in a new area and later ending in 2 whole years after school of doing nothing and the more pressure and stress piled, the more I did and the worser position I was at. Thankfully I got out of that place and situation but, i don't think I am fully over or out of that.

[Sam W]

Hi Enphery,

Okay, so it sounds like masturbation functionally became a compulsion, or like it was almost trying to be a coping mechanism for other stressors you were facing at the time. That's one of the instances where frequent masturbation is indeed an actual issue that needs to be addressed and managed.

Given that, and the fact that it does not sound like you received any kind of support around the assaults by your brother, I think a sound next step would be to try and find a counselor or therapist who works with survivors. I say that in part because it's clear you're still dealing with the fall-out of the abuse, but more because you deserve to get real, thorough support around this, rather than it continue to be ignored or downplayed. If you'd like, we can do our best to help you locate resources in your area where you could find that kind of support. How does that sound?