Hi,
It sounds like you are going through something similar to me. My relationship ended a couple of years ago but I still feel bad how I slept with and loved a man who used me, cheated on me, lied to me etc. I have low self-esteem too.
Im not sure how long its been since you broke up but time helps. Im alot better now than before.
Even people who havent been SA self-doubt and feel like fools after a bad breakup. everyone has had at least one bad relationship experience.
All we can do is learn from it and try not to be in that situation in the future. You deserve to be respected.
Try to distract yourself so you dont think about him. preoccupy yourself so that you dont sit around dwelling on him. He is not worth it.
I wish you all the best with getting through this. take care

Thank you sonyas77...for some reason, a lot of people just don't seem to understand why I feel this way. Almost as if they think I'm overreacting. But for me, it already takes a lot of trust (or used to be alcohol) just to be able to have sex. So knowing that I sold myself short, did things way beneath me, and compromised my dignity really affects things like my self-worth, value, esteem, etc. I don't know how to reconcile that. How do people reconcile these types of feelings?? I know with time it will get better, but I'm doomed to repeat the behaviors unless I find a way to deal. And I've avoided having to deal my whole life. Thanks for giving me the feedback. =0)

Many of us were judging ourselves without mercy since before we were abused. After the abuse begins, most of us feel shame and guilt because we think we caused it, or that we should have been able to control it or stop it. Personally I was told quite clearly that I should feel guilty because I enjoyed many aspects of it and did not want it to stop.

We also have a strong need to please people. We are taught that we can give pleasure to our abusers with sex. Therefore I think we become vulnerable to the beasts in our world who take advantage of that characteristic so they can fwel their own instant gratification. We are attracted to those people, particularly if we were close emotionally with our abusers. To us, that kind of a person just feels 'right'.

As an adult, I got around many of those feelings by changing my actions. I acted my way into more normal and healthy feelings about myself. I first spent time trying to figure out what was really important to me. I determined my personal values. I then set goals based on those values, and set up a system so I could see my progress toward reaching my goals.

At the end of each day, I scored myself, based on my performance that day. After a while, I was able to see I had been doing 'good' things each day. Good things which benefited myself or society. And, after a time, it began to be difficult for me to continue to believe I was worthless or weird. e I could not ignore the record showing I was doing mostly only good stuff. I then began to accept myself, and at the same time, I started feeling others were also accepting me.

We all were powerless over the abusers. At one time we were all also powerless over the effects of that abuse. However, for me, that powerlessness I felt was overcome by objective judgements I made about the actions I took each day. Today I know I have worth. Today I know I have value.

We expect so much of ourselves! We expect to be all-knowing all-seeing perfect people. When we are let down by someone, we cannot simply say "wow that was a bad experience" and give the other person at least 50% of the blame, no, we take 100% of the blame for the bad situation and find all the ways that WE caused it. We obsess over it. Even if it, logically, does not seem to be a good reason to blame ourselves we twist and turn it about until it sounds good.
A few years back I was reading something to do with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, because I was driving myself crazy, and it occurred to me how much this self abuse can be like a reverse narcissim or, (I hate to admit this to myself) very much like narcissim itself. Like "no one screws up in this world but ME" or "I am sub-human, therefore I must be absolutely perfect to allow myself to exist among humans."
Other people can make mistakes and we can understand, but if we do it, it is unforgivable.
I'm still shaming myself over something I said to another little girl in 5th grade that could have hurt her feelings. Thats how deeply this obsessive thinking gets for me.

I had to get to a place in my life where I could accept that I was just like anyone else and because I am human, I am going to make mistakes. I had to just say F---it. I did not feel like F---it but I pretended like I felt like it. Inner child work did help with this because I could finally stop being as critical as my parents were and make up my own mind how I wanted to "parent" myself. I decided to be a good parent to myself. I still give myself some hell, but it's not as bad anymore.

I was in my AA meeting tonight and a very attractive, older woman walked in and sat in front of me. She was wearing a sweater that came off her shoulders and she (very sensually) kept rubbing her neck. I could feel all the men in the room eye-balling her and feel myself start to tense up and become uncomfortable. She got up for coffee and even the way she walked seemed more like slinking across the room. A few people shared on the topic of change and it was a tag meeting, so when one person finishes speaking they call on another. A gentleman pointed in my direction from way on the other side and said, "I call on you". I couldn't tell if he was talking to me or her so I asked. He said, "No, you in the pink sweater." Of course...silly me. As she spoke, the men very attentively listened with broad smiles on their faces and I did some slinking of my own, in my chair, and not in the provocative way that she walked the room. I have this normal desire to be the prettiest girl in the room, as almost all women do, but yet I deflect and reject any expression of my own sexuality. It's totally irrational but yet makes perfect sense. The sexual part of me wants to be human, wants to feminine, and wants to be loved. The inhuman (as I'll now refer to it as) part of me wants to denounce my femininity and become as close to asexual as possible. It's hell. I sat the rest of my meeting in flashbacks of the aforementioned sexual shames and shuddered, sighed, covered my face, and squirmed. All because a pretty woman sat in the chair in front of me. lol

I cannot express how familiar your AA experience tonight sounds to me!
The same thing happened to me in Stress Management a few years ago. And a whole bunch of other places. College classes, traffic school, work...Geesh!