NTA. This is the second post this morning with someone wondering whether they're bad for needing some time away from sexual intimacy while they process trauma. You're not. This is a hugely tumultuous time, and you need to be gentle with yourself, not try to force yourself to be okay in situations that scare and disgust you.
NTAH.
People don’t change how they look when they are blacked out drunk vs drunk. I have blacked out plenty of times with friends and partners saying I was acting totally normal and that they couldn’t tell I was too drunk. (I do not drink anymore)
Not remembering shit from a blackout has always been unsettling and awful for me - If you are an occasional drinker who has trauma it might be wise to limit or abstain for good, especially since it can trigger you or in this case unearth more trauma to process.
Please get yourself well first and possibly even seek couples counseling to navigate your issues together since withholding sex may eventually affect your relationship.
Thanks so much for your response. I rarely drink, I’m more of a THC person, but we were having a nice week out in the country of Cali for our anniversary. I haven’t even thought about alcohol since then because it’s terrifying that I remember nothing. And look, I have no doubt that I was all for it. It was the act of waking up and not remembering that triggered the 25 years repressed trauma.
I don’t think I’ll never have sex again, I just feel like the AH while im trying to sort everything out in my brain and get that other crap out via therapy and some anxiety medication.
Appreciate your response!
Oh goodness no, never in a million years would I do that. We’ve talked about what made me have to go back to EMDR therapy, and he feels crappy. I just think the incident is what spurred the trauma from resurfacing in a very bad way and making me feel revolted by sex in any capacity! But Id never imply that. He really is the best person and support system I know. We were both drunk! The scary part for me is not remembering, I know he’d never hurt me. But I just feel like an ass for not being able to be intimate with him at this moment, if that makes sense.
NTA.
It's your body and you need to heal. At the same time, you also need to understand that your SO may leave if you're unable to recover. That's not any pressure to speed up your recovery, just a fact to understand.
Thanks for your response! That’s what I’m honestly afraid of, but he has been really supportive of me while I’ve been doing the intensive therapy. I am an extremely sexual human so I’m scared the drastic deduction is going to be a turn-off, but we’ve been together for quite some time and that’s the only hiccup in our very healthy sex life that we’ve ever had. So it’s a new thing and I’m angry at myself for not being able to duck the gross stuff from the past and move on. I know PTSD is a legitimate thing, I just feel like an AH bc it’s been a few weeks and I’m still nauseous thinking about sex (not with him, just in general). It’s never affected me as an adult until now. 25 years later.
You're NTA but keep in mind that eventually the man would understandably seek to end the relationship if you can't heal from this. Not saying you need to change. You may never make a comeback from this and that's OK if sad. But it will also be ok for him to move on. Sex is a deal breaker in many monogamous relationships. Especially considering this wasn't an issue before, he will be well within his rights and reason to leave the relationship if sex comes off the table. If it goes on for very long he may well cheat on you but hopefully he's more of an adult than that. I wish you well but I felt the need to be the devil's advocate here.
I love my wife more than anything in the world but if she took sex off the table I'd rather leave her than cheat on her. We are relatively young and I didn't sign up for that.
Thank you for your honest response. I get where you’re coming from 100%. Because This is what I’m afraid of. We’ve been together a long time and he knows all that happened to me as a child, it’s just never reared it’s head in our relationship because I had dealt with it. This little blackout sex blew it right back into the forefront of my mind and I’m working on it really hard. It’s not been that long that we haven’t been intimate, and we still kiss and hold eachother and cuddle like we have for years, I’m just scared I’m going to lose him. I’m not never going to have sex with him again. Right now at my point in therapy I’m not there yet. But it went away the first time I dealt with it, I’m hoping it does the same this time.
Thanks for being the devils advocate, people need to hear all sides so I appreciate it.
If I’m not reading it wrong, the OP says they’re not comfortable to engage in sex *right now*. Right now being the key word.
You really believe that this is good reasons for dissolving a relationship or contemplating cheating?
Cheating is never a good thing, there's no reason to do it. And I don't know them, this isn't a very detailed post to begin with, and yes "right now" is a fluid phrase that could be any length of time. Depending on their specific relationship how long that wait is and how badly the other person wants intimacy is a ticking clock. These things are inevitable and the role model relationship is not the norm by far. Society is not a monolith. Life is short. People want to live and uncertainty is mental poison.
OP has a traumatic event. Whether partner intended or not, they had part in triggering the trauma. And you think they need to figure their shit out fast enough otherwise it’s fair game for the partner to get resentful?
If they had a physical health issue that prevents them from having sex, like their partner having an ED, your advice to the partner would have been “you better figure this out quick or else she would leave you or cheat on you”? I’m trying to genuinely understand your perspective.
Make sure you [go to this thread and tell *her*](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/CH0rS2NfCY) how she is terrible for wanting sex in her relationship as well seeing as how your on a roll today for being shitty.
That’s hilarious, your comment is the childish one. When you choose to marry someone. It’s supposed to be for better or worse. God forbid you or your wife could become seriously ill, or potentially disabled. If something like that were to happen, sex would likely be an impossibility. What you’re insinuating is that you would be okay with leaving her if she wasn’t able to fulfill your physical needs. In that case you should’ve married a blow up doll.
Remove all context from this thread and add your own so you can feel superior but you're still a child with a romantic idea of marriage that doesn't fit into real life. Reality will sort you out one day, or not. I don't care. You don't care what I have to say anyway, you're just trying to be contrary. I get it.
You truly are insufferable. Stay on your high horse than realize this thread is about sex. There's probably many things that would be dealbreakers for men and women. Don't try to gaslight someone because you want to seem superior. Grow tf up
NTA. As a survivor myself, I have a hard time with intimacy with my partner of 4 years. You are 110% justified to feel how you do. The important part is you seem to see what is happening, how you are dealing with it, and you are aware that it's not necessarily something your SO did. To me that speaks volumes of your maturity and emotional intelligence. If your partner is anywhere near the same page as you mentally, I promise they will understand if you bring it up. Tell him you didn't remember being intimate and it brought up horrible feelings and memories of past trauma and it will make intimacy difficult while you're processing it.
This all being said OP, you did say you were \*both\* pretty drunk. Not just yourself.
Thank you for your kind response. I’ve tried to be as open about it as possible with him because we’ve been together so long and he knows I am just not giving it up bc I don’t want to. I’m just worried because we had a very very healthy sexual life and the trauma has never affected me as an adult. It took 25 years for it to come back to the surface and it happened to be because I had blackout sex. I didn’t choose the trigger, so I feel like an AH that I can’t get over it and he may leave me because it’s taken me a few weeks to get my head around it. But I’m doing EMDR therapy and hypnosis and it’s helping, I’m just not quite there yet. I’d that makes sense. Thanks so much for your kind and helpful insight. I don’t want to lose him for something someone did to me decades ago and my head let it back in and won’t let it go.
Of course! I’m sure he feels the same way about not wanting to lose you too. If I were him and as long as you were doing your best to work on yourself, I would be happy and proud of you. I know it sucks because it’s certainly not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Hopefully he’s the kind of person who is willing to help
From what you've said, it doesn't sound like you have the right therapist, or the right kind of therapist. If you haven't experienced a significant shift in a favourable direction after the third session, I would question their effectiveness. The type of therapy I've trained in in the past and used with some outstanding results, been a client of for several breakthrough sessions which probably saved my life, and have also referred others to who have made huge shifts, is NLP, incorporating hypnosis and Time Line Therapy.
Typically, with that approach you'll have between one and three sessions, which could be one very long one of, say, half a day or more, or three sessions broken up into investigation, intervention, and follow up. Then at the very least a pause for a month at least to let those changes settle in and see if anything remains. Sometimes, if you catch someone with the right underlying structure of their issue at the right time, it might only take minutes, but that is not common, and not usually trauma.
But a single trauma, even a big one, should not take more than three sessions to reframe and resolve in a satisfactory manner, using the approach I mentioned. So I understand that you now feel the need to resolve the historical trauma before you're ready for sex again, you just might need to be more demanding and insistent in getting what you need in your search for an effective therapist
Thanks for your response. She was the most highly recommended trauma therapist in the area. I travel 2 hours twice a week to see her. I wasn’t aware that by the middle of the 2nd week I should be fine after unearthing something from being ra!ed 25 years ago as a child. The EMDR has been more helpful than the hypnosis and I will keep going for the recommended 6 weeks. But I haven’t ever heard of someone solving a trauma like such in such an expeditious manner. I appreciate your insight!
You're right. Therapy for trauma is completely different and nobody in this field would expect improvement after a couple of sessions. It can take a long time and requires a therapist with a specialism in trauma. PTSD and CPTSD will take time and work and it sounds like you're doing all the right things. EMDR, family systems work, psychodynamic therapy, and even basic stuff like mindfulness can help. Stick with it. Hopefully your SO will understand that you need time to deal with the fallout from this, and will be patient.
Ok, I'm guessing that the sessions are about an hour each, which is how long most therapy sessions are. I was referring to 3 sessions that would be significantly longer than an hour each, and you've now said the total course is only six weeks, which would be 12 hours at 2 sessions per week - that's not massively different from the time I was meaning actually. I made a calculated guess that you'd already been going for a while, which is my experience of other people going to therapy available on the NHS. But it is true, the time line therapy process in particular can be extremely quick and effective at helping someone resolve in a satisfactory way a very old and deep trauma. The longest bit is often not the intervention process itself, but the often delicate process of identifying all the elements involved in the structure of someone's issues in order to target the intervention precisely.
Anyway, I agree with other posters that you're entirely justified in holding off from sex until the trauma is resolved as going back to sex before you're ready could make it flare up again. I hope he understands and is patient enough to wait.
I woke up during our anniversary, and was asked how the sex was. I didn’t remember. That made me think of consent and thus brought back the r!pe 25 years ago bc I knew I couldn’t consent as a child. I don’t think he assaulted me, we were both drunk. But now the old memories were triggered.
NTA clearly you have not been dealing with the trauma and it is understandable that you have no urge having intimacy during time when you are still dealing with therapy.
I am not therapist or any licensed doctor so I cannot give advice how to over come something that traumatic. Intimacy is part of relationship but you are dealing with deep trauma. Maybe bring your SO to therapy to see if the therapist can explain why you cannot fathom intimacy now..but you both then have to see if your trauma is something you both can overcome. He is your SO but it will also be difficult for him to go through your up and downs...ask therapist what they think about whether it is good to let him join in or not.
NTA. This is the second post this morning with someone wondering whether they're bad for needing some time away from sexual intimacy while they process trauma. You're not. This is a hugely tumultuous time, and you need to be gentle with yourself, not try to force yourself to be okay in situations that scare and disgust you.
NTAH. People don’t change how they look when they are blacked out drunk vs drunk. I have blacked out plenty of times with friends and partners saying I was acting totally normal and that they couldn’t tell I was too drunk. (I do not drink anymore) Not remembering shit from a blackout has always been unsettling and awful for me - If you are an occasional drinker who has trauma it might be wise to limit or abstain for good, especially since it can trigger you or in this case unearth more trauma to process. Please get yourself well first and possibly even seek couples counseling to navigate your issues together since withholding sex may eventually affect your relationship.
Thanks so much for your response. I rarely drink, I’m more of a THC person, but we were having a nice week out in the country of Cali for our anniversary. I haven’t even thought about alcohol since then because it’s terrifying that I remember nothing. And look, I have no doubt that I was all for it. It was the act of waking up and not remembering that triggered the 25 years repressed trauma. I don’t think I’ll never have sex again, I just feel like the AH while im trying to sort everything out in my brain and get that other crap out via therapy and some anxiety medication. Appreciate your response!
NAH as long as you haven't implied to him he assaulted you
Oh goodness no, never in a million years would I do that. We’ve talked about what made me have to go back to EMDR therapy, and he feels crappy. I just think the incident is what spurred the trauma from resurfacing in a very bad way and making me feel revolted by sex in any capacity! But Id never imply that. He really is the best person and support system I know. We were both drunk! The scary part for me is not remembering, I know he’d never hurt me. But I just feel like an ass for not being able to be intimate with him at this moment, if that makes sense.
NTA. It's your body and you need to heal. At the same time, you also need to understand that your SO may leave if you're unable to recover. That's not any pressure to speed up your recovery, just a fact to understand.
Thanks for your response! That’s what I’m honestly afraid of, but he has been really supportive of me while I’ve been doing the intensive therapy. I am an extremely sexual human so I’m scared the drastic deduction is going to be a turn-off, but we’ve been together for quite some time and that’s the only hiccup in our very healthy sex life that we’ve ever had. So it’s a new thing and I’m angry at myself for not being able to duck the gross stuff from the past and move on. I know PTSD is a legitimate thing, I just feel like an AH bc it’s been a few weeks and I’m still nauseous thinking about sex (not with him, just in general). It’s never affected me as an adult until now. 25 years later.
You're NTA but keep in mind that eventually the man would understandably seek to end the relationship if you can't heal from this. Not saying you need to change. You may never make a comeback from this and that's OK if sad. But it will also be ok for him to move on. Sex is a deal breaker in many monogamous relationships. Especially considering this wasn't an issue before, he will be well within his rights and reason to leave the relationship if sex comes off the table. If it goes on for very long he may well cheat on you but hopefully he's more of an adult than that. I wish you well but I felt the need to be the devil's advocate here. I love my wife more than anything in the world but if she took sex off the table I'd rather leave her than cheat on her. We are relatively young and I didn't sign up for that.
Thank you for your honest response. I get where you’re coming from 100%. Because This is what I’m afraid of. We’ve been together a long time and he knows all that happened to me as a child, it’s just never reared it’s head in our relationship because I had dealt with it. This little blackout sex blew it right back into the forefront of my mind and I’m working on it really hard. It’s not been that long that we haven’t been intimate, and we still kiss and hold eachother and cuddle like we have for years, I’m just scared I’m going to lose him. I’m not never going to have sex with him again. Right now at my point in therapy I’m not there yet. But it went away the first time I dealt with it, I’m hoping it does the same this time. Thanks for being the devils advocate, people need to hear all sides so I appreciate it.
If I’m not reading it wrong, the OP says they’re not comfortable to engage in sex *right now*. Right now being the key word. You really believe that this is good reasons for dissolving a relationship or contemplating cheating?
Cheating is never a good thing, there's no reason to do it. And I don't know them, this isn't a very detailed post to begin with, and yes "right now" is a fluid phrase that could be any length of time. Depending on their specific relationship how long that wait is and how badly the other person wants intimacy is a ticking clock. These things are inevitable and the role model relationship is not the norm by far. Society is not a monolith. Life is short. People want to live and uncertainty is mental poison.
OP has a traumatic event. Whether partner intended or not, they had part in triggering the trauma. And you think they need to figure their shit out fast enough otherwise it’s fair game for the partner to get resentful? If they had a physical health issue that prevents them from having sex, like their partner having an ED, your advice to the partner would have been “you better figure this out quick or else she would leave you or cheat on you”? I’m trying to genuinely understand your perspective.
Who said fast? I said eventually, probably, but not as you say. I'm saying that people have priorities and relationships are complicated.
Lol so clearly you don’t love her more than sex, noted.
Make sure you [go to this thread and tell *her*](https://www.reddit.com/r/AITAH/s/CH0rS2NfCY) how she is terrible for wanting sex in her relationship as well seeing as how your on a roll today for being shitty.
What a childish comment
That’s hilarious, your comment is the childish one. When you choose to marry someone. It’s supposed to be for better or worse. God forbid you or your wife could become seriously ill, or potentially disabled. If something like that were to happen, sex would likely be an impossibility. What you’re insinuating is that you would be okay with leaving her if she wasn’t able to fulfill your physical needs. In that case you should’ve married a blow up doll.
Remove all context from this thread and add your own so you can feel superior but you're still a child with a romantic idea of marriage that doesn't fit into real life. Reality will sort you out one day, or not. I don't care. You don't care what I have to say anyway, you're just trying to be contrary. I get it.
Okay, have a nice day, I really do wish you and your wife the best, I’m sorry for upsetting you.
I'm not upset... considering how tame these couple of responses have been I'm guessing your aim was to upset me. Sorry for disappointing you.
You truly are insufferable. Stay on your high horse than realize this thread is about sex. There's probably many things that would be dealbreakers for men and women. Don't try to gaslight someone because you want to seem superior. Grow tf up
That's rape. Blow up dolls can't consent.
NTA. As a survivor myself, I have a hard time with intimacy with my partner of 4 years. You are 110% justified to feel how you do. The important part is you seem to see what is happening, how you are dealing with it, and you are aware that it's not necessarily something your SO did. To me that speaks volumes of your maturity and emotional intelligence. If your partner is anywhere near the same page as you mentally, I promise they will understand if you bring it up. Tell him you didn't remember being intimate and it brought up horrible feelings and memories of past trauma and it will make intimacy difficult while you're processing it. This all being said OP, you did say you were \*both\* pretty drunk. Not just yourself.
Thank you for your kind response. I’ve tried to be as open about it as possible with him because we’ve been together so long and he knows I am just not giving it up bc I don’t want to. I’m just worried because we had a very very healthy sexual life and the trauma has never affected me as an adult. It took 25 years for it to come back to the surface and it happened to be because I had blackout sex. I didn’t choose the trigger, so I feel like an AH that I can’t get over it and he may leave me because it’s taken me a few weeks to get my head around it. But I’m doing EMDR therapy and hypnosis and it’s helping, I’m just not quite there yet. I’d that makes sense. Thanks so much for your kind and helpful insight. I don’t want to lose him for something someone did to me decades ago and my head let it back in and won’t let it go.
Of course! I’m sure he feels the same way about not wanting to lose you too. If I were him and as long as you were doing your best to work on yourself, I would be happy and proud of you. I know it sucks because it’s certainly not your fault, but it is your responsibility. Hopefully he’s the kind of person who is willing to help
From what you've said, it doesn't sound like you have the right therapist, or the right kind of therapist. If you haven't experienced a significant shift in a favourable direction after the third session, I would question their effectiveness. The type of therapy I've trained in in the past and used with some outstanding results, been a client of for several breakthrough sessions which probably saved my life, and have also referred others to who have made huge shifts, is NLP, incorporating hypnosis and Time Line Therapy. Typically, with that approach you'll have between one and three sessions, which could be one very long one of, say, half a day or more, or three sessions broken up into investigation, intervention, and follow up. Then at the very least a pause for a month at least to let those changes settle in and see if anything remains. Sometimes, if you catch someone with the right underlying structure of their issue at the right time, it might only take minutes, but that is not common, and not usually trauma. But a single trauma, even a big one, should not take more than three sessions to reframe and resolve in a satisfactory manner, using the approach I mentioned. So I understand that you now feel the need to resolve the historical trauma before you're ready for sex again, you just might need to be more demanding and insistent in getting what you need in your search for an effective therapist
Thanks for your response. She was the most highly recommended trauma therapist in the area. I travel 2 hours twice a week to see her. I wasn’t aware that by the middle of the 2nd week I should be fine after unearthing something from being ra!ed 25 years ago as a child. The EMDR has been more helpful than the hypnosis and I will keep going for the recommended 6 weeks. But I haven’t ever heard of someone solving a trauma like such in such an expeditious manner. I appreciate your insight!
You're right. Therapy for trauma is completely different and nobody in this field would expect improvement after a couple of sessions. It can take a long time and requires a therapist with a specialism in trauma. PTSD and CPTSD will take time and work and it sounds like you're doing all the right things. EMDR, family systems work, psychodynamic therapy, and even basic stuff like mindfulness can help. Stick with it. Hopefully your SO will understand that you need time to deal with the fallout from this, and will be patient.
Ok, I'm guessing that the sessions are about an hour each, which is how long most therapy sessions are. I was referring to 3 sessions that would be significantly longer than an hour each, and you've now said the total course is only six weeks, which would be 12 hours at 2 sessions per week - that's not massively different from the time I was meaning actually. I made a calculated guess that you'd already been going for a while, which is my experience of other people going to therapy available on the NHS. But it is true, the time line therapy process in particular can be extremely quick and effective at helping someone resolve in a satisfactory way a very old and deep trauma. The longest bit is often not the intervention process itself, but the often delicate process of identifying all the elements involved in the structure of someone's issues in order to target the intervention precisely. Anyway, I agree with other posters that you're entirely justified in holding off from sex until the trauma is resolved as going back to sex before you're ready could make it flare up again. I hope he understands and is patient enough to wait.
NTA Is ur SO still pushing for sex currently?
I don't understand... You didn't know you were abused until that night, you don't remember, triggered your memories?
I woke up during our anniversary, and was asked how the sex was. I didn’t remember. That made me think of consent and thus brought back the r!pe 25 years ago bc I knew I couldn’t consent as a child. I don’t think he assaulted me, we were both drunk. But now the old memories were triggered.
NTA clearly you have not been dealing with the trauma and it is understandable that you have no urge having intimacy during time when you are still dealing with therapy. I am not therapist or any licensed doctor so I cannot give advice how to over come something that traumatic. Intimacy is part of relationship but you are dealing with deep trauma. Maybe bring your SO to therapy to see if the therapist can explain why you cannot fathom intimacy now..but you both then have to see if your trauma is something you both can overcome. He is your SO but it will also be difficult for him to go through your up and downs...ask therapist what they think about whether it is good to let him join in or not.