Covert Sexual Abuse: The Promiscuous Prude

MEET SAMANTHA.  On the outside, she looks like she has it all together.  A successful business owner, with a loving husband, lots of friends, and a beautiful home.  She appears healthy and happy…on the outside.  Inside, she’s hurting all the time.  She experienced attachment wounds in childhood that led to being vulnerable in romantic relationships because she was so desperate for love.  Samantha married the first man who asked when she was 20 years old with the hope that he would love her and fill the void in her heart left from childhood.  

Dating and marrying to fill a void never works.

Samantha found her husband to be anything but loving.  In fact, he became sexually demanding and gave her a “sex quota” that she had to meet each week.  Sex was no longer about love, but about control.  Samantha believed that it was her wifely duty to meet his demands, so she learned that sex was about obligation, not about love and pleasure.  

CONTROL IS NOT LOVE.

Samantha had no idea that what she was experiencing was abuse.  She didn’t know that sexual abuse and rape happened in marriages, because well, you’re married, right?  Wrong. Sex is not a duty or an obligation or a responsibility.  It is meant to be an expressive act of love that is not coerced or forced, in any way.  Any sexual act without consent, in a marriage or not, is considered abuse.  

Samantha eventually mustered up the courage to leave the marriage, but not without significant trauma wounds.  She didn’t know the extent of the damage until she found herself sleeping around - finding men in bars, dating low caliber men, and generally losing all sense of self and identity.  Samantha didn’t know that she was acting out of the sexual abuse and was trying to regain her own sense of power and control.  She grew up with conservative, faith-based values, so her actions made no sense to her and she became filled with shame. Shame told her that she was a mistake and not good enough and kept her stuck in a negative feedback loop.

“Shame is the warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” - Brene Brown

She hated the life she was living and sought out counseling to figure out why she was exhibiting these behaviors.  Samantha learned through EMDR and ego state therapy that she was acting out of her trauma and that she could rewire her brain, develop new and healthy beliefs about herself, and nurture and heal parts of herself who were hurting to become whole, again, and fill the void in her heart.

SEXUAL ABUSE CAN LEAD TO PTSD.

Samantha also learned that she had developed PTSD.  She had nightmares and flashbacks and began counting sexual encounters in her new marriage for fear that she wouldn’t meet her “sex quota,” even though her husband was kind and loving and never demanding.  Samantha worked through her trauma in EMDR and was able to see that she was safe in her new relationship and she had a voice.  She learned why she was exhibiting those out-of-character promiscuous behaviors and learned that she was allowed to say no to sex and was allowed to experience pleasure.  

DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN SAMANTHA?

Begin Adult Trauma Counseling in Columbus, Ohio.  You don’t have to suffer any longer.