How to deal with relationships with SA trauma

This is about relationships that are sexual, but no physical details or abuse details.

I'm keeping this as simple as possible and asking just opinions or if you wanna share experiences or how things work for you or if you changed the way to deal with things what makes you happier

Scenario is when one has been abused and is not ready to deal with that straightly anyway, maybe therapy in general but no trauma work for that in any case at all or nothing too close to it. Is it healthier to

a) live in romantic/sexual relationship, because it's normal thing to do and safe person in one's life to have and all that there is good things in having a special someone in one's life. One has ability to kind of keep trauma away, by pushing it further and is able to have a sex life and be happy in it and about it, but it's by avoiding anything bad ever happened, like knowing it existed but denying it's true or like just keeping it away

or

b) admit one has trauma and not push it away, but it means no sexual interaction or romantic relationships or closeness relationship brings. Then it'd be clear like "decision", "I have sexual trauma, I don't do relationships." And one can admit there is trauma and doesn't have to avoid it all but avoid just triggers. It feels better in mind to not need to keep it all away all the time, but it's gonna ruin all chances to have own adult life

I don't know if I'm making enough sense, but it's like.. those are the options. Relationships means pushing away trauma and if one doesn't, one gets triggered by things that are normal in relationship and it's not possible. Is it more positive and normal to live more normal kind of life and have closeness or be true to oneself if it means one is then alone like that permanently?

I just hope thoughts from outside my head cause things are complicated in so many ways, other than this too. Tell anything you feel or if you wanna think just this scenario and it's not enough sense, it's fine to ask for more details. It's.. for me it's fine to talk about sex as a subject but no trauma. That's just like background info that there's trauma and it's not processed and it's not gonna be processed.

Please remember to use trigger warnings if needed, because there's no general one.

Hi Flo

There is option 3)
Platonic relationships, with or without co-habitation.
2 damaged people agree to not do anything sexual because of the trauma it trigers. But they live a chaste loving life together. They laugh together, cry together. They date. They may even build a home together.

I know of two men in our old parish that did this. they were closer than brothers. Everyone assumed they were activly homosexual but they weren't. they didnt even kiss. They had both been subjected to SA they knew each others pain and because of that they didn't need to explain why. Living together ment that they were not pestered by society to get a partner. And living together ment that they had someone to share their joys and to comfort them in their sorrows.

Option 3 is hard. You need to find the right sort of person. But it can happen.

Umm, no for us it's about relationship that's already there or been there. And if it's not anymore, I won't go looking for new one. If it's gonna go it's gonna go because I let it go to become more true to what's real. To feel more pure.

I'm Lucas. We're Lucas. We're blended and I didn't wanna sign. I'm sorry, I should've. It just doesn't feel it's so different to me because it's internal. I know it does to other people.

Ok Lucas /lucas blend

Sorry I miss understood your origanal post.

Fealing real, true to yourself is going to help. When I was training to be a nurse I was taught the person you have most responsibility to is yourself. If you injure yourself, make yourself ill or work so hard you start to burn out then the people you care for are going to suffer. Your needs, your health comes first in everything.

So just do what seems most true to you.

If things fall apart relationship-wise then that's sad but someone who truly loves you will understand that you need to heal and wont object to the relationship moving away from a sexual one.

Hope you are feeling less conflicted and ( less blendy) soon. >-@-< (that's a hug for those users too young to remember a time before big yellow emojis! )

Mo

To every problem there's always at least three possible answers.

Our next round of therapy the doctor is putting us in for before where we live will consider sending us to a specialist in DID is trauma therapy.

This means dealing with all the SA abuse. None of which we have covered in therapy. We dealt with daily psychological abuse and emotional abuse but not SA.

We have the concern that while all parts are now aware of SA they are not connected to them, do not feel it's theirs. This does enable reasonably normal sexual interaction, we may not follow usual patterns - sex drive for example or liking touch at all varies from alter to alter so it has to be a person who understands this. If there's trauma therapy specifically for SA then will this still be possible - to have a sex life at all.

The two options you state, there is always at least three options. So our plan is to let the parts who have been SA talk and process their trauma and contain it in therapy so other unaffected parts carry on as normal. We have done this with all therapy so far and managed it. This is obviously far more impactful, to us it feels more impactful at the moment but perhaps it will be equally impactful as the emotional and physical abuse we have processed - that was really tough - we are preparing for this to be worse.

Our hope or aim is the SA is processed by parts who already do not like to be touched at all but this is no guarantee. But we do see a third possible option, trauma is processed and sexual relationships become easier or fourth possible option our abused parts process what they need to process without damaging other parts but stat not wanting touch.

There is more than two options but I can't say what they all could be, only the other options we see as possible.

The doctor offered us some drugs to start before the therapy to take the edge off of the possible and likely very low emotions but we think we're still dissociative enough to manage it without life impact and a side effect was anxiety, the last thing we need is Beth to get anxiety again. She still stays in doors mostly but she doesn't have anxiety, it's more habit and she's only interested in writing.

After the trauma therapy of traumatized parts we will see how they are and decide about DID specialist. We have done this with every therapy and with adult trauma. We had a trauma as an adult and sent just Karen and Beth to therapy but the therapist had a breakdown, we functioned overall very well. Karen did "die" for three years and Beth became agoraphobic but overall life function remained. The trauma parts are not life functioning except Karen and we believe possibly she doesn't need to process, Beth held the emotions but they have been shared and moved to the internal desert so they can go where they need at the right time.

Our opinion - when dealing with therapy as a multiple person it's very important to plan and consider impacts, what you want from it, aknowledge the therapy is for a singleton and use it as a singleton for whatever your purpose is - that's how we have done it so far. Not how many people here do it but we have no access to a therapist DID trained currently so to expose ourselves more than necessary seems too risky. Our psychiatrist knows but we discussed and to be labelled multiple under our countries system means less support than we currently have so we're keeping our current diagnosis or he's changing to BPD, were not sure and don't care because to seek DID diagnosis means loss of support not more at present. So we plan to take the support offered, use it to the best of our ability and then as necessary seek DID diagnosis by whatever means available and necessary.

So SA trauma therapy is our next step. We are apprehensive as you are but it feels like a logical and natural next step.

Much Luck,

From us all.