The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz

Author:Wendy Maltz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Acting in sexually demanding or exploitive ways

The repercussions of sexual abuse can lead a survivor to act in sexually aggressive ways. Survivors who act in these ways may not even consciously realize they are doing to others the same hurtful things that were done to them. This aggressive behavior can be overt, such as when a survivor commits incest or rape. It can also take on more subtle forms. Being nice to someone, sleeping with him, and then ignoring him is subtle abuse. So is demanding sex from a partner, using hard-core sexual language around people who don’t want to hear it, and buying sex from a prostitute or sex worker web site.

Sexually abusive behaviors may be unconscious attempts to align with the power that the survivor assumed the offender possessed. If I’m not doing it to someone else, then someone else will do it to me, a survivor might think, or, The best defense is a good offense. These behaviors hurt survivors by jeopardizing their legal, ethical, and moral integrity; they also deny survivors real intimacy and self-respect. You won’t be able to feel genuinely good about yourself if you are treating other people as objects or betraying their confidence and trust.

Survivors may resist admitting that they have been acting in sexually abusive ways. They may be so focused on thinking of themselves as victims that the idea they are hurting someone else may never have occurred to them. But once reached, this kind of awareness can pave the way for change. “It hurts me to realize that I have treated my wife as a toy, a machine whose orgasms could make me feel that I’m a man,” a survivor said.

Once we identify the ways we replicate past abuse, we can begin to reduce the mystery and power our impulses have to control us. As we better understand the challenges specific behaviors may present, we can work more effectively toward lasting changes.

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