Reconnecting with Intimacy and Sex after Sexual Abuse

Sexual Abuse is the term that indicate some harsh social cruelties, like sexual assault and rape. Sexual abuse or sexual trauma causes a hurdle in reconnecting with intimacy and sex. They deeply impact your sexual life. But with the help of a loving and caring partner, one can enjoy their closest relationship once again. 

What is the Impact of Sexual Trauma on Your Relationship?

Sexual abuse like sexual assault or rape can affect anyone at any age. Sometimes, it doesn’t stop at a singular abuse and may be repeated many times. Sexual abuse can affect anyone’s life in their childhood, adulthood or both.

As sexual abuse is a destruction of your emotional and moral state, it is a;so known as sexual violence. Sexual violence is a crime because in this situation any person can disregard your consent and will. They do not care for your moral and social values. This is the most disrespectful behavior that can ruin your mental and physical health. 

Studies show that people react differently after sexual violence. Some may get into the phase of sexual trauma while some may go in emotional hibernation and stop feeling any emotions for others. So its obvious that when you experience a sexual abuse you lose your self love and also lose interest in making sexual relationship with others. Although, the definition of intimacy has different meanings and every one takes it in different ways but still as a human you want to make connections. Because intimacy and caring sexual relationships provide a source of vulnerability,pleasure and trust for you. But these things are not found in a relationship that is known as sexual abuse or sexual assault.

Experts of sex life opened up more about sexual trauma, according to them, after a sexual assault, your body behaves differently. Most of the victims of sexual abuse experience traumatic symptoms such as dissociation, anxiety, and hyper-vigilency. Their life also affected by panic attacks, flashbacks or nightmares. And when these people want to move on and start new intimate relationships, their flashbacks or traumatic nightmares become insurmountable obstacles. Single people feel anxious and scared of making a dating relationship, worried about living alone with someone else and afraid of isolation as well. 

As a partner of someone, you may feel an aversion to having a touch and afraid of engaging in sexual activities.

Challenges to Rebuild Intimacy after Sexual Assault

Your life post-assault is full of challenges. You may experience the harsh reality of social stigma. Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and triggers make your life miserable. Strong stimuli like similar sounds, smells and words remind you of your abusive  moments. As a response you get into a phase of emotional and physical trauma. These scary symptoms can  ruin your daily routine and especially spoil your intimacy and sex life.

Challenges after sexual abuse may include:

Religious and Social Hurdles: You may experience some hetero normative religious or cultural expectations after an assault. For example, when you try to regain your self-respect and are engaging in reviving your social status, your family may demand not to discuss your assault to anyone. They do this because they may have fear of affecting their reputation in society. Sometimes, your religion or culture acts as a great obstacle because according to these, sex or sexual desire is a sinful act. According to some religions you are equally responsible as the person who did this crime.

Being Afraid of Sex: After a sexual abuse, you may got frightened with the name if sex or intimacy. You may feel tired and irritated when someone asks you to get engaged in sexual activity, even if they are your loved ones. You often prefer to sleep alone. You show a frightening racton when your partner touches you as a gesture of intimacy. Frightening may be recognized as stomach pain, vomiting, extreme sweating, nausea or trembling. So many of survivors exerience such scary feelings and responses in theyr body after the sexual assault. And all such emotions make their life miserable.

Experience Orgasmic Problems: Sexual assault often causes physical torture and pain in delicate sexual parts. After a sexual abuse, you ,may experience difficulty achieving an orgasm, vaginal pain, or erectile ejaculatory difficulties. These symptoms of feelings are not only embarrassing but you may also feel ashamed about it.

Being Triggered by Flashbacks during Sex: Flashbacks are common during post-assault life. The flashbacks not only cause night mere but they also make you frightened, embarrassed, and out of control especially during sex with a new partner. After sexual abuse, when you try to engage yourself into a new sexual relationship, the flashback triggers cause you to feel frozen, out of control, panic, hyperventilative and dissociate during sex.

Intrusive Feelings of Shame: A sense of shame surrounds your mind when you get through a sexual assault. As a noble person, you always want to make a living in a sexual relationship, but when you get into a situation of sexual violence your mind doesn’t accept to be controlled by someone forcefully. Then your body responds and after sexual violence, you try to prevent it happening again in future. Your mind focuses on the events that became the cause of this shameful act. You may feel shame for the brutal violence that you had experienced. 

Difficulty on Building New Dating Relationships: Sexual assault is actually a violation of your will. it not only disrespect your consent but also ruin the trust you have on others. This is why you feel difficulty in making a new initiative and trusting others. You avoid making contact with new people. These actions make you an anxious and misfit person in your social circle. You behave oddly in a new environment or in new people.

Feeling Absent Minded during Sex: After a sexual abuse, your mind and body do not ready to accept the new sex life at once. You have to try hard to begin a new life. You may find it difficult to engage in sexual activities once again which you have enjoyed in the past. This cold response affects your relationship with your partner. Your partner feels your absent mindedness during sex and gets offended. This lack of connection between you and your partner makes you dissociative and numb. Sex now has become something like a burden that you’re doing for another person. It is not a more enjoyable activity for you.

Feeling Difficulty in Trusting Someone: Your sexual trauma has a great impact on your life after assault. You may experience challenging feelings after sexual trauma that affect both you and your partner. During your fight for revival, you may ignore your partner and feel emotionally distant from your partner. Both of you feel hesitant when you come close to each other and you may feel that they are not interested in understanding your feelings of insecurity. You just want to have some space to get out of this situation.

Experience Feelings of Disgust, Guilt or Anger: After sexual violence, you body get triggered by the stimuli common to that traumatic event. your body associates some things with that event, including smell, words, types of psyche touch and intensity of light. Your partner’s physical touch that once made you happy, now makes you uncomfortable. You may experience intense emotions of anger, disgust and guilt which makes you scary and disorienting.

Low Arousal or Hyper-Sexual Activity: Studies show that many survivors of sexual violence come with a complaint of feeling of low arousal afterbeing assaulted. However, there are also some examples of experiencing hyper- sexually active after an assault. This may be due to lack of care of your body after assault.

So the factors or challenges described here are actually supporting the truth that after a sexual violence both you and your partner experience severe difficulties in making a intimate relationship once again. However, you and your partner can defeat these challenges by providing support while one is processing the post-assault experience. You can find the healing methods and tools by understanding how sexual trauma has influenced your body and mind. There are many sources through which you can get through the journey of healing from trauma.

Tips to Reconnect with Intimacy and Sex after Sexual Violence

Finding coping skills is not a hard job but you have to be patient and calm. Although, you have no clear road-map to  find the ways to heal yourself after sexual violence by giving yourself time and space can contribute a lot in your survival and revival as a normal person. The healing journey of every survivor is unique because everyone is a different set of emotional distress. The most authentic way to move on from the emotional distress is to address what you’re experiencing and getting support from therapists, your family members and friends. However, there are many things you can do yourself to reconnect with intimacy and sex.

First of all you should focus on why your body reacts in a certain way. Try to understand the way your body is trying to protect you. Take your time to heal from trauma. Engage yourself in activities that bring patience and resonance to yourself. 

Most effective ways to reconnect intimacy and sex after sexual abuse are jotted below:

Tip 1: Cope with Your Triggers

Traumatic events never go out of your mind. Its flashbacks are always present in your back memory. Specific sounds, sights, and situations act as catalyst to provoke an emotional response in your body and mind. 

Second step is to learn how to cope with them. Understanding and coping with triggers is a great achievement through which you feel more connected to your body and have control on your emotions and actions. To enlist the triggers for better working on them, you should learn about some techniques, including grounding techniques. Here Are two types of grounding techniques that can help you cope with the triggers.

Try to control your breathing rate. Take a deep breath and count ten  to a certain number, hold for sometime and then release. This may slow down your breathing rate and calm your nervous system.

Drink water to slow down your breathing rate. When you feel overwhelmed due to a rigger, drinking water can help regulate your breathing.

Tip 2: Reconnect with Your Body

When You lose control of your body and cannot reconnect to your body, your sex relationship gets spoiled. After an sexual violence, most of the victims fail to reconnect with their body. If you are one of them, try to find ways to feel comfortable and safe with your sex partner. Healing journey can help you regain interest in intimacy.  To connect with your body you can try some techniques, including:

Self-Care: Recovery from sexual trauma can be easy if you keenly take care of yourself. Take time to engage yourself in setting slime self-care boundaries and realize that you’re a person who should be treated with love and care.

Body Scans: Engaging your self i a body scan meditation can help you focus on different body oats especially thise were hurt during sexual abuse. Your care and care can help your body to get well soon. Healing of injured parts of the body can help you regain your lost interest in intimacy.

Trauma-Healing Yoga: This type of yoga practice is an effective way to release some harsh and painful memories out of your mind. Engaging yourself in such healing procedures can help you to reconnect with yourself. The yoga practice may also help you bolster your sense of empowerment and feeling safe within your boundaries. 

Conclusion

As a survivor of sexual abuse or sexual assault, you experience many challenges while trying to reconnect with intimacy and sex. Because the sexual violence impacts your mental and physical health dangerously. You lose interest in sex and control on your body and emotions. You need time and space to cope with the triggers that remind you of that traumatic event. 

Along All these you also need support from your new partner or your loved one. Because caring and loving behavior of your close ones can help you regain your interest in life activities including intimacy and sex.