Re: partner was raped as a child

hi there p31babii

first of all i think its great that you are reaching out for help yourself. your partner is lucky to have you!

i am a 'survivor' of childhood rape too. my story is different but many of the issues surrounding recovery and support are the same.

from my perspective, the best thing my partner did for me was listen. listen, listen, listen. not necessarily having a response, not suggesting a solution, not even offering sympathy, just being brave enough to hear terrible things coming out of my mouth and just to listen and be silent. that is a hard thing to do i think, but it helped me ever so much.

also, my partner was the first person in my life to believe in me. to have faith in me despite whatever problems i have because of my past he saw through them to the person i was inside. so that was amazing and very important to me too.

i think also letting your partner be in control in situations may be helpful too. let him come to you rather than the other way around. in this situation, maybe it is better to to be a 'safe person' and wait for him to reach out to you, rather than necessarily reaching out yourself. it will be a tense wait for you maybe, but if you have the strength and patience it means that when he finally does get the courage to trust you more, it will be on his terms which is oh so important for those who have been abused as children.

setting boundaries is important too. this may be a good thing for you to bring up in conversation (timing is everything! trust your instinct) as he might not have very good internal idea of what boundaries are. i know i did not even know what boundaries were until i actually got my head around the idea and started setting my own ones. i never had boundaries in my life before last year, and though my past is quite a severe case i am sure most people who have been raped as children will have this problem to some extent.

i know there is so much you want to help his pain, i can feel from your words, but it is time and patience that will do the trick i believe. it can take a very long time for someone with this kind of thing in their past to trust. i still do not really understand what trust is, that is no exageration. i am learning though but it is nearly two years into my recovery and i am 23!! being consistent and a stabilising influence on your partner's life will assist him to start understanding about trust.

you sound like a very caring person, and this will help you to help your partner. sometimes you may have to bite your tongue in an argument, put your own feelings aside even more than in a 'normal' relationship. and you will have to expect that he may not be able to do the same for you at this stage. it may seem for a time that you are doing an awful lot of giving and perhaps not getting much back. if you can endure this, and i think someone who really cares like you can, then you will get even more back in the long run. my partner can vouch for this, he always says how priveledged he feels that he is the first person i have ever trusted, ever allowed close to me - and it is a testament to his patience and caring. something like this requires you to go the extra mile, but will make the relationship extra special there is no doubt.

one thing my partner would say is try not to take things too personally! again, this requires superhuman strength and patience, and a good deal of rationalising, but if you can achieve this it will help enourmously. it will give your partner the chance to experience and express emotions that may not have been safe to experience before. if you can be a buffer it will help give your partner a 'safe space' emotionally to begin recovery work. there are a lot of intense emotions that happen during childhood abuse and rape that may get buried because the child does not have the ability or resources to deal with them. and they are complex emotions, which need time to fully unravel and make sense of. it will be a rollercoaster, painful, cathartic, even joyful at times, but whether up or down it will certainly be intense. hopefully your partner will be able to find some good psychotherapeutic help to do much of the trauma processing work, which will ease the burden on you in this respect.

that reminds me, it is important for you to have support outside of the relationship to get through something like this. if you can get your partner's permission (as it may require disclosure of things such as his history or current emotions/problems) then it would be extremely beneficial for you to have some sessions with a therapist too (not necessarily the same one as he is seeing but it is an option as a few joint sessions may even be helpful). in this case, it may be better to find a therapist rather than to rely on your own friends and family, just for the sake of not complicating things, though of course if you can agree with your partner whatever is most comfortable is best (my partner got support from a mutual friend who i didnt mind knowing about my past).

whatever you choose, there are a lot of complex emotions that you will go through as a support person which you will struggle to deal with without support. bear in mind that you will not be able to get support from your partner on these issues. it makes the relationship too complicated and your partner may have bad reactions to what you say (he may feel upset that he is 'making things hard for you' for example, at least i know this was a problem for me).

the best thing you can do for now, if your partner is not forthcoming in discussing things with you, is to find out about what an adult survivor of child abuse/ rape goes through, what issues they face emotionally, psychologically, mentally even physically. you may like to find some good resources on ptsd, trauma and dissociation. i will collect those that were most helpful to me and post them as soon as i can. there are some really great websites out there dedicated to supporters of those who have been raped/abused, and there are also great online communities where you can get support too. (i will post them soon!)

it can take time before someone is ready to go into recovery and start talking about their past. trauma processing is incredibly stressful and sometimes it is easier to let it stay buried until you are strong enough to deal with it, or until your lifestyle is more convenient to cope with the extra stress. so let your partner be your guide - he will be an expert on how to deal with all this, since he has been doing it all his life, so trust that he knows best and do not push him! my partner learned this the hard way! the more you can trust him, the more in control he will feel, and it will allow him to go at his own pace, in his own way. he knows best how to keep himself 'safe'. it is always a big issue for those of us who have been traumatised in childhood and although there is much we struggle with, keeping ourselves from falling apart is something we are experts at.

having said all that, maybe you have experienced much of this already firsthand. in that case, i hope that it will help you to see that you are not alone, and that it is normal to struggle with these things when you are supporting a loved one who has been abused!

phew! that was long! and probably there is so much that i havent covered. i hope you will ask any questions, i will be so happy to answer as im sure others here will. please email me if you want to do so privately. as i said i will be so happy to help.

ozone
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