Since many Survivors don't think of our abusers as lovers, people who do probably have a harder road toward healing. But I can understand in my own way.

For years I tried to equate my dad's molestation with love. I needed to think it was beyond his control. I needed to think my whole abusive family didn't really "mean it". But minimizing the truth put my healing on hold for years.

Maybe your obsession with penises comes from looking for the love your father didn't give you, and trying to find a substitute for that love (symbolically)? I can't know your thoughts. I just know that I Iost all love and respect for my father, and substituted promiscuity (which could loosely be interpreted as having power over a man's sexuality). I wanted to counteract how my father used his sexuality to take away my own power. It didn't work.

I hope you find/have a therapist who is non-judgmental, because it's very important to know that each of us experience our road to recovery in our own ways. Imo, working on one's unhelpful views of abuse is top priority.

I'm sorry... I can relate a little. I wasn't attracted to my uncle, but after he assaulted me, after about a year I was almost hyper sexual. This doesn't gain much sympathy either

I felt tremendous shame when I realized what incest is. I buried the secret deeply because I was terrified of the pitchforks coming to get me.

Our whole society is phallic oriented! I see penis everywhere.

Jimbobaronio,

It took me 40 years to remember and when I did remember I did not think of myself as my father's lover.

At first I wanted to think that he loved me in spite of what he did. I wanted to think that he was hurt inside and that's why he did it. I tried to make as many excuses for him as I could because I loved him. But, like whistleblower, by minimizing the truth I also put my healing on hold for years.

My insides are cold and quaking at this moment so I know this subject has hit a nerve.

Even today with much healing, I still want to believe that my father loved me--and maybe he did--but he also wounded me deeply. No, I was never his lover, but always his victim.

For me, Jimboraronio, at some level, I feel that thinking of yourself as your father's lover puts a different slant on the truth...it seems to soften the fact that he victimized you. Your father conditioned and shaped your sexual behaviors. The good news is that we can, with hard work, recondition ourselves.

Please forgive me if I have crossed any boundaries or misunderstood your post.

Best to you.
SuzA

I don't think I ever experienced those feelings with my sister. She was always telling me in later years that she loved me, but I remember that during my childhood I just felt exploited when she made her passes at me or pried into my emerging feelings of sexuality.

When you're eight years old and your eighteen-year-old sister is coming onto you sexually, you don't feel love. All you feel is insecurity and a feeling of being threatened...and revulsion.

As an adult those feelings of revulsion would keep getting in the way of relationships. I guess they never really went away...and that explains a lot about my chaotic sexual history.

Yet I still feel a normal brotherly love for my sister...which is very confusing. I don't think I've ever actually hated her for what she did. It's only recently that I've understood that so much of what she did as my sister was what is called grooming. Seems like she persisted in trying to seduce me.

Now I don't want to think about her at all. I just want to close the book on all of it. Whatever role my father played in all of this...that's hard to say. He seemed to know that my sister and I were "close". I suspect he may ultimately have been the source of it all because of some of the things he said and did...like making sexual remarks when he caught glimpses of me without clothes as an adult. That part of it I'll probably never figure out.

Maybe I should just let it all go and try to live with things as they are...as bad as that is. I really don't see how any of this could ever heal...too many things have gone too far wrong.

I think that in the end my family just didn't care. They did what gave them gratification and they didn't care about consequences for me or anyone else. Seems like the whole family was like that once you peel away all the fine words and all the self-righteousness.

I think you need to evaluate the term lover. lover implys willingness. just because you consented to avoid a beating or just because it may have felt good doesn't make him your lover. he raped you and used you

I've often read in articles about child abuse that ANY sexual interaction between an adult and a child is rape. A child cannot give consent, in fact they often have no idea what is going on. Their brain development and knowledge of sexuality haven't even fully formed yet.

So I agree that there was no love in what happened to us as children. If we were the object of sexual attention by the adults we trusted to care for us...we were used, we were betrayed, and we were raped. We are not anybody's lover, we are rape victims and the lasting effects of our experiences prove that.

I understand feeling like an adult's lover...but we really weren't consenting.
...In the two years between when my mom went back to work and my grandma moved in with us, I had more sex with dad than mom did-five nights a week, pretty much! And I was rented out too, apparently.
:(
Not consensually, though. I co-operated because otherwise he'd do it the hard way. Because saying no got me hit.

TW

All children crave love. Human beings need love, the way plants need water. When someone is having sex with you, you are the center of their attention. If it's not overtly hostile and contemptuous (and maybe even if it is) that can feel like love, especially to a kid.

Getting "love" with sex from a parent is like having poison in your water. Without it you will die so you take your poisoned water and then think you willingly drank the poison.

awesome responses - thanks.

I am a bit facetious in my description of "Lover".


I get he was a monster.

Somewhere deep inside though I want what can never be. A father/son relationship like "normal' people.

sigh...

I hear you. I always wanted a father/daughter relationship and still find myself wishing, at times, for what never was and can never be.

And when I find myself in that place of longing I know I am not living in the present moment. So, I choose...now or then. I am practicing over and over and over again to make the choice that brings me peace.

This is not denial, but a clear understanding of what's before me and why I'm making my choice. And one criteria, in addition to asking myself if my choice will bring me peace, is also to ask myself if my choice will increase or decrease my energy level.

When I fall into that place of longing it decreases my energy because it brings with it much sadness....sigh.

It's hard to heal. Still, I believe with all my heart that it's possible.

Be well,
SuzA

I totally understand that rape is not love. They are worlds apart. But how would I know? How would anyone be able to tell the difference when you've never been shown any real love?

I wonder if my abuser knew the difference. Does anyone else struggle with what I struggle with? I wonder if my abuser thought he was showing me love because that's all he really knew. Maybe it's unlikely, but is it possible? Did my abuser mean to harm me for his own pleasure, or could have possibly been so screwed up too that it was his messed up way of showing me love?

Is that even a possibility????

I think we've touched on a number of recurring themes in the tangle of dysfunctional family life here...the longing of the child for the love of a parent or trusted adult, the confusion when they're used sexually instead, the difficulty of distinguishing abusive interactions from loving relationships, the continuing quest of the adult for the love they were denied as children.

It's easier to talk about it in clinical language in the third person, but when it comes down to talking about what happened personally, I find it hurts...a lot.

Today I read about an abusive husband in a novel, and the darkness of my home life flooded back...shredding the rosy illusions once again. But the darkness is the truth, the rest is just delusions. I have what psychologists call selective amnesia...sometimes I remember the bad things that happened, sometimes I do forget it all and wonder if I'm being unfair in talking about my family life so critically.

Our legacy from those dark times is endless confusion. It's part of our tainted inheritance and in my opinion we'll never be clear-headed in our memories. Incest by its nature is all about confusion and pain.

To comment on Flowergurl's remark: First, disclaimer: I don't know it all, I just have opinions.

In my opinion, abusers neither love us or hate us. The truth is that they don't care about us either way - they don't even know us. They are driven to act out and we were just unlucky enough to be at hand. Anything else is just a fantasy bond.

Again, this is just my opinion.

the person above me has a point. we are nothkng to thrm