Abusive sexual relationship

[transfemandgay]

I’ve been in a lot of abusive relationships. 4 I’ve dated, one of which was sexual. 1 was a friends-with-benefits situation. And I’ve had a buuuuuunch of toxic friendships.

I know it’s normal to miss your abusers and stuff like that, but this is different. I keep thinking about the person I was friends-with-benefits with. I’ve long cut them off (last year) and I only knew them for a few months. We never did anything major together in person, only things through text and Discord video chat. I only met them once in person but I didn’t meet them online, this was a friend of my gf’s (they also cut them off). Unlike my longest serious sexual relationship with someone abusive (5 months), I’m still attracted to this person a lot. If given the opportunity to have sex with them, I know that I would take it, if not, feel incredibly conflicted.

I know they were a shitty person to me and that I should not even entertain the idea, but sometimes I think about reaching out to them again, absolutely without thinking of the consequences.

I’m grateful that my current gf of 1 and a half years is the person I had my first sexual experience with and lost my virginity to, and not the other 5. I want to say that since I’m in an open relationship that I feel desperate to just have another sexual partner, but I don’t know. I’ve always had a really high sex drive and I know I want to have multiple sexual partners and have sex very often. But I don’t know how to get over my feelings for this one person. It’s not even emotional attraction, it is purely physical and sexual attraction cause 1) aromantic and 2) abusive.

So yeah I don’t know how to get over this one person.

[Mo]

To some extent I don't know how easy it is to consciously decide to stop feeling attraction for someone, but I think there are some steps you can take to protect yourself, here.
I know you said you cut them off, but if you haven't blocked their number, blocked them on Discord, etc. I would go ahead and do all of those things. I don't know how likely it would be for you to run into them in person again, but removing as many avenues as they might have to get in touch with you is a good plan, I think.

It might be good, too, to take some time and come up with, or refine, your thoughts about what sort of sexual relationships or partners you want to have in your life. What do you want in a sexual partner, whether that's someone you have sex with once or someone you're in an ongoing relationship with? You probably have a lot of these ideals in mind already, but I've found that making an intentional list can be a helpful exercise when it comes to decision making. If you have it written down somewhere that you only want to have sex with people who you can trust to communicate clearly, and who respect your consent and agency, that might make it easier, if you're ever approached by this person or someone else you know to be abusive or disrespectful, to think "this person isn't what I want for myself" and say no.
This is also a helpful exercise for navigating open relationships, too, since often they require a lot of explicit up-front conversations with potential partners about what each person is looking for and it's great to come into those conversations already having had time to think about that question in detail.