Below is an article written by a warrior of CSA about awareness of adult relationship patters for a survivor of CSA. She will be posting articles on my blog over the next few weeks.
I recently got hold of a resource on child sexual abuse. It’s a workbook designed for warriors of CSA to help them understand them better as well as identify aspects where they need help.
One of the first modules that I came across was about how CSA affects relationships. A warrior of CSA often gets into the same kind of relationships that resemble their childhood experiences. It a common occurrence for people to get into abusive relationships. This is especially true about romantic relationships. A person who has experienced CSA has five times the risk of entering into abusive relationships than someone who has not had that experience. The abuse element can be physical, sexual or emotional and each of them can be very damaging.
Over conversations with a few warriors, many admitted that they tend to recreate the same environment around them that is similar to their childhood experience. A example is to accept abuse from their partner. The other is creating an environment around oneself that leads to abuse. Many warriors tend to sabotage their relationships which take them back to their bad experiences. Constantly engaging in one-night stands, finding reasons to avoid sexual activity as well as being over controlling during sex, having a feeling of being used (even when that is not factually true) and feeling dirty after sex are a few other experiences that people often have. One needs to understand that these are normal responses to bad experiences.
The person however, is not aware of the pattern in these relationships while engaging in them. He/she tends to sometimes feel that this is the way all relationships are and sometimes they are affected badly by their poor self-image that is an outcome of CSA. These relationships remind the person of the childhood experience and are extremely damaging to a person.
A warrior needs to ask himself/herself if their present relationship makes them feel the way they did after the abuse.
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