It gets so bad that I cant even have the water in my shower touch my nipples... It's an every day dysfunction. I just wish it would go away. I was also "date raped" when I was under the influence recently and feel like it is my fault for me letting it happen... but I still feel like I was raped. I don't know what to think or feel about anything sexual.

I'm sorry you're having such a hard time. To start with, you are not to blame for being raped! that's entirely the abuser's doing. feeling to blame in some way is part of the effect of the rape, unfortunately.
I also have trouble with sex - but I've been through menopause, so maybe that's got something to do with it. I miss sex, but don't have a sex drive. I miss the closeness and sensuality. Sorry, I can't advise you except to say hang in there, and keep communicating with your partner. all the best. Maybe some therapy- I'm thinking for myself of going to see a sex therapist as I have a lot of shame around sex.

Nelliefay, I have been to therapy but have not yet found the right therapist to work things out with. I am in search of a new one atm. I'm not dating anyone right now, so I don't really have to worry about sex... It's just all that has happened to be keeps nagging on my mind almost every day.

I am a lesbian and I found that as the trust grew and the more I
that i worked at allowing touch the easier it became to stay in one "place" mentally. My partner was very helpful and patient with allowing me to become comfortable. I in my mind still struggle with it as for now I not with her anymore.. I find myself terrified of starting over. I don't have trust its a work in progress

trust is such a huge part in being able to enjoy sex! take things super slow and dont do anything you arent ready for. therapy may also work wonders! you should seek someone that specializes in sexual abuse.

There is only one person I have been with that I could actually relax around, and it isn't a woman, but a man. He was second person I was ever with (I waited until I was 18) and I was 19 at the time. We were together for 2 years and I just learned to somewhat relax around him... I've tried in other relationships but I have not been comfortable with anyone else, male or female.

I'm 23 for heaves sake! I want to be able to enjoy myself. :(

My personal opinion is that you have to go through therapy specifically for the abuse that you suffered as a child. When I read this very thing in one of Alice Millers books I could not believe it, but it ended up to be true. I had a shrink at the time and questioned her on not telling me I needed therapy for this, since we had discussed it about a month earlier. She said I had to be ready for it.

Shlay you need not be embarrassed. I will go first. I was sexually abuse by a live in nanny from the age of 7-14 and had told my mother twice and it never stopped. So as a child I accepted the acts as not only 'okay' but as acts of love, since they felt so good and the nanny was really like my mother. She would give me a back rub and it always ended with a handjob. I did not know what it meant, but it felt good. And my mother knew so it was okay (I thought). Hell, as I child I wanted it all the time, not knowing why it only happened when mom and dad were gone. At some point she let me fondle and suck her breasts. This really meant nothing to me yet psychologically I think it really fucked with me since it involved breasts and sucking nipples, more maternal then sexual. (I never realized this part until typing it now, yet I have told this many times in this forum, my story, so I am again reminded how it helps me to continue to share here). So at 14 she wanted me to have sex with her. She sent me upstairs to my parents room to get a condom. For some reason I knew it was wrong, just like years earlier I thought it wrong enough instinctively to tell my mother, so I went back to her quarters and told her I would not have sex. Wow. She shut me off physically and emotionally. That really fucked with me because I learned what happened when I said no not only to sex, but just said no and stood up for myself. I in effect lost my love, care and my pseudo mother. So it ended at 14.

For many reasons I had a lot of drama in my life until I was given a break at the age of 40 or 41. I was married (still am to the same and only woman who also suffered from sexual and emotional abuse, and three rapes as a young woman). It was explained later that my body waited till I had this break to allow me with the same memories of the sexual acts, to pause, put a timeline to it, and realize it was sexual child abuse. But that day when I remembered it as actual abuse, I just dismissed it as no big deal. I just got handjobs from the nanny. So what. I brought it up in therapy and it went no where. Then I real Alice Millers book and this started my 12 weeks of intense dream therapy and without it I would not have been able to move on, since I was emotionally stuck with those protective walls still firmly in place that we build as children to survive the abuse. That is when I seemed to gradually realize that I had put to rest one life and started another. Years later I can say this is really true.

What happened to me early in my life after the abuse was over, and when I was married (in my late 20's and into all of my 30's until I did my therapy) was that whenever my wife and I had a fight, or I felt wronged, or I felt like a victim to my wife (and it was for the smallest of things) I would call any woman advertising the happy ending massage. Really these had just started making their way into the mainstream. There had always been prostitutes and brothels and massage parlors, but women started to advertise on their own these massages at their home or apartment. It was the love I was seeking, the mothering, the care that I associated with the handjobs. Interestingly, this new form of prostitution of massage with the happy ending was EXACTLY what my abuse was. So it hit my sweet spot of need, especially the psychological need I had that I did not know was tied to my sexual abuse as a child. I felt shame which I needed to feel from the abuse. These women did not need a name, phone number or ID, so I was anonymous, and in most cases it was with different women. I needed the shame of exposing my most vulnerable part of being, me naked on a table, the woman clothed, telling me lies (all good things I needed to hear) me paying and leaving. I felt nothing from them, no guilt, no excitement when it was over, it just fulfilled a void, a psychological need from my abuse. I became compulsive with it since I now found that motherly case that I had lost as a child. I would not be able to rid myself of this till I had therapy with a good therapist, and I had a good one. Once the therapy was over and we continued on in therapy with what all the dream therapy brought up, it was really like magic, that compulsion not only went away, I had no desire for those humiliating sessions any more.

And with my wife, all through our marriage, I was always the passive one. I needed to know she wanted sex. For the most part she needed to initiate sex or at least let me know she wanted sex. In marriage counseling and my therapy and her individual therapy this improved. With my wife's past sexual abuse and rapes her own issues came into play with her needs to be dominated, and she found self esteem by men finding her not only attractive but sexy. It was always a sexual thing. In a way we all suffer from similar things but all of our situations are so different and unique not only to our own experiences and abuse, but also by who we received it from, how it happened, and in my case the length of time being 8 years.

Okay, I am done. I just felt it necessary to tell you this whole thing. I am a survivor like you and all of us here, and I am convinced that the terrible things that we all endured have to be dealt with, brought out in our own type of openness, before we can ever move on. Some people are not able to do this. My brother is seven years younger than me and oddly, when the nanny stopped with me when I would not fuck her, she started on my brother who was then seven. He is now in his early 40's and in his 20's suffered a nervous breakdown and is now not able to function in society. How I slipped through who knows. I do know that we are all here as survivors and getting better little by little in our own ways. I hope some of this helped you, I know it helped me. :)

Know that you are not alone. I took it the other way though, I became sexually active at a young age trying to feel loved. The one thing we have in common, I can't pleasure myself either. I have had people suggest devices, but nothing works. I hope you are able to find someone who can help you through this, so you can experience and enjoy a deeper relationship with your partner.

Took me years to be able to have my skin touched without flashbacks. Maybe something simple like someone brush up against my arm or touch my back would throw me back into childhood. (I have PTDS, which it sounds like you may too.) And If someone touched me sexurally, well, lets just say it often did not turn out positive.

My theripist says that the cells in your bady can remember the tramam. And similar touch can trigure those memories. I am not a little girl any more. I am 30 something years old. Through the years I have been trying to treach my cells new memories: The feel of soft flower peddels, fluffy fir of a puppy, nice hugs, holding hands, any positive touch really. And I focus in on the details: Tecture, softness, imperfections, etc. Then for days to come I will remember and try to recreat those feelings tring to embed those new memories.

It has helped a lot. Know when my skin is touched, maybe my cells will draw from one of those positive memories. Unfortunatly, sometimes it doesn't and I still get flashbacks but way far less. So it does get better. Maybe this trick would help for you? Maybe it works for me...because I want it to work? I dont know. But find something that works for you.

And look into PTSD. Flashbacks are a big simptom. The longer you waite for treatment, the longer it takes to work. At least for me. It took me 9 years wonder what the h___is wrong with me? Why do I have these problems? why do I always have flashbacks? Why cant I be in a normal relationship? Why do I have the sexual hangups? When I finally saw a professional and was diagnosed with PTSD, it made things clearer and easier to deal with. Getting treatment for PTSD helps A LOT.

Best of luck to you.