SEXUAL ABUSE AND OBSESSIVE CONTENTS

The connection between sexual abuse and obsessive content related to sexuality deserves further study. I will consider two different situations, the first concerning a gay guy who has been abused in childhood and who presents a gay sexuality deeply conditioned by the experience of the abuse, the second concerning a straight guy who has been abused in adolescence and has developed a gay-themed OCD (I will only deal with the case of a OCD that had already manifested before the abuse). The situations, despite their substantial differences, have a fundamental aspect in common: the identification of the victim with the abuser. Let’s start with the first situation.

1) A gay guy, who has been sexually abused in childhood, has a gay sexuality that in the first meetings with his partners does not present particular problems but, if the relationship deepens, the guy gets to confess to his partner that he has been sexually abused, nevertheless he does not tend to feel as the victim but almost as the co-responsible if not as the promoter of the abuse, he tries anyhow to involve his partner in his obsessive fantasies concerning the abuse with insistently (obsessively) repeated questions about the circumstances of the abuse, asking him what he would do if he found himself in similar situations; faced with evasive or patently disinterested responses, the guy seems incredulous and attributes the lack of interest in sharing that particular sexual fantasies on the part of his partner to an alleged moralism of the partner himself, however the insistence does not cease even in the face of an obvious lack of interest but becomes even more pressing, as if the guy wanted to obtain a confession analogous to his own. The obsessive insistence on the partner goes as far as to induce him, in more or less long time, to distance himself and interrupt the relationship.

It is evident that the memory of the abuse has become a sexual archetype from which it is difficult to get free, and here a mechanism characteristic of the abuse is triggered: the victim imagines himself in the role of the abuser, situations of discomfort even very strong are created this way, because the victim sees himself as a potential pedophile and develops pedophile fantasies in which he assumes, in an oscillating manner, both the role of victim and abuser.

Basically the projective identification with the abuser and his behaviors favors guilt feelings and strongly weakens the possibility of rationalizing the memory of the abuse and of living a sexuality not deeply conditioned by the abuse itself.

2) In the case of the straight guy with a pre-existing gay themed OCD, the abuse in adolescence creates objective complications that cannot be ignored because it does nothing but feed the OCD, even though it cannot actually destroy the guy’s straight sexuality. The mechanism of identification with the abuser, in this case, cannot lead to true gay sexual fantasies (because the guy is a straight guy) but only to obsessions and gay compulsions which, as is usually the case in the OCD, remain, at most, at the level of masturbation and, in almost all cases, never materialize in real sexual relationships. The gay-themed compulsions and obsessions are perceived as deeply disturbing compared to the true sexuality that is and anyway remains straight.

The identification with the abuser can however be more complex when the abuser is not really a gay man but he is a married man or a man who has children, that is when the abuser is or appears to be a straight adult, with whom the straight guy with OCD can easily identify on the basis of the following projective mechanism: ”He is straight because he is married and has children, but if he abused me it means he also had gay fantasies and could not refrain from putting them into practice, but I am straight too, because I have a girlfriend and I have sex with her, but I also have gay fantasies, so in the end I won’t be able to stop myself and I’ll end up needing to have sex with a man. How can I be with a girl if I already desire men and know that sooner or later I will betray her with a man? I am fooling my girlfriend into believing that I am straight, but it is not so!”

In this case the identification mechanism acts through different paths but it is no less disruptive than in the case of the gay guy and creates the risk, sometimes lived obsessively, but objectively not very concrete, to lead to the breakdown the relationship with the girl.

The deeper identification with the abuser leads to two closely related consequences:

1) the responsibility of the abuser appears to be much lighter;

2) even if in such situations it’s evident that in any case no responsibility can be charged on the victim, the victim himself overestimates his own presumed responsibility up to the point to consider his own behavior decisive, and consequently to experience guilt feelings objectively unjustified.

In the two cases presented, the most suitable conditions to overcome obsessive thinking are realized when the guys have their ”real” emotional life, that is:

1) in the first case, when the gay guy lives not a unilateral falling in love but an authentic love story with a guy with whom a relationship is created that is completely independent of the fantasies related to abuse, fantasies which can also remain but marginalized and spontaneously not shared, fantasies that are not considered as a taboo but are very rarely argument of conversation. In essence the stories that materialize or tend to materialize only or mainly in terms of more or less spontaneous sharing of fantasies linked to abuse are not true love stories and therefore do not contribute to the overcoming of obsessive thinking;

2) in the second case, when the straight guy lives a love story in which the girl knows that the guy has been abused and realizes that the obsessive thought linked to the OCD can cause the guy to question his heterosexuality. The OCD has a strong conditioning capacity in two cases:

a) when the girl tries to ignore obsessive contents, pretending that they do not exist;
b) when the girl emphasizes the obsessive contents and offers them a sound box that amplifies their effect.

OCD must be tackled with awareness but without dramatization.

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GAY SEX AND VIOLENCE

Hello Project, last night I told you in the chat something of my story and I liked the attitude you had, you have not shot judgments and you’ve been listening and in the end you also told me things that I didn’t expect, so I have rewritten my story, if you think it can serve something, let publish it, but I would still like you to read it and let me know by e-mail, privately, what you think, put it on the blog, on the forum, where you like, but don’t comment it, then I’ll explain to you why. Don’t get angry if I didn’t give you my contact, but I don’t know you well yet and I prefer to go slowly, but I thank you for giving me yours. Last night I felt more relieved. I think I will contact you again. If you want to publish this mail do it but anonymously. Please, before publishing it, correct the errors that I have certainly made. Thank you.

Letter signed with name and surname.

I’m a guy 22 y. o., call me Julius, it’s not my name but I like it. I’ve always been gay, since I remember something, let’s say 13-14 years old. I do not have a good relationship with my parents, they are good people and they think that I’m only a rebel, someone who will end up badly anyway, they really think so. My father at the beginning got angry with me a lot of times, now he doesn’t do it anymore because he thinks it’s completely useless. I feel like a rebel, sometimes I would like to break everything, I cannot stand hypocrisy and instead I have to live in the middle of hypocrisy. My parents know nothing about me, I’ve always been very aggressive with them, but I’ve never talked about my private facts.

Already at the age of 16 I left home for a while without my parents know, I got some money from my parents (I stole them in practice) and hitchhiked around. Then I came back home after spending all the money to have fun, to drink and more. When I got home, my father stayed there like an imbecile, I expected him to beat me but he didn’t, he was afraid, he behaved like a coward. At school it was a disaster, they sent me to an absurd school but I did not give a damn and I almost never went there, but at the age 20 I was able to take pass my graduation exams.

Even if I smashed everything and I was also violent I always dreamed that someone would take me with sweetness in spite of everything, to one of this kind I would have given the soul, but I found only people who screamed against me and chased me away badly. I was assuming the worst possible behaviors, just to provoke people.

I’ve dreamed of having a boy since I was 14 but I’ve never had one, I fell in love with somebody but they got scared and they were not able to understand what I’m under the peel, because I think I can really love a guy in a very strong way. I live in a seaside area and not far from my house there is a campsite, they opened it four years ago and access in practice is free for anyone. I used to go there for a walk several times because there are often young guys at the campsite and I dreamed that some of them could fall in love with me. And then, I say it clear, I used to go there because I liked being among those people, a half were foreigners and at sea site they disrobed outdoors in an absolute natural way. These things made my blood boil.

I didn’t have any chance with foreigners because I don’t speak any foreign language, with the Italians sometimes I was brave and tried to approach. I am from the south, but between those of the south and those of the north I prefer those of the north, they are less nosy, they are really guys I like a lot physically. I’m dark haired and a little dark of general complexion but I like very much the guys from the north.

Going to the campsite and the beach, sometimes I happened to have interesting meetings. Three or four times they invited me to eat with them, we had a bath together, even without swimsuit, and then we were singing on the beach until late at night. These guys told me that I was very sweet and I liked it very much. I have dreamed so many times to be able to have sex with some of these guys but it never happened, with me they were casual, friendly, but maybe they were not even gay, even if I always put myself in groups where there were no girls.

Once I found a gay man and I thought that something could be done. I did something I had never done, I told him I was gay and he told me he was gay too, then I tried a very hesitant physical approach, but he told me he didn’t want to do that, he had a boyfriend in Mantua and that was the guy he loved. I told him that this guy was really lucky.

He gave me only a small kiss, then he left the next day, now we are still in contact on msn. It was the best thing that has happened to me in my life, even if it was a refusal. I admire the guys like him.

In the village people knew that I was doing only what I liked better, that I didn’t come home in the evening, and slowly a kind of legend of the monster was created. If you add that they had never seen me with a girl, I became the gay monster of the country, to the point that they really avoided me, the mothers thought I was going around rape the kids and when they saw me they ran away. I went on like this until I was 21. At the age of 21, they gave me a job in a warehouse of building materials, with a salary to die of hunger, but for me it was very much, I never had had any money.

The owner was a gentleman whom you could hardly see, he had a nice car and when he came he was very respected, he was about 45 years old, married with two sons, a 18-year-old boy, who was very handsome, and a girl 10 y.o.. The owner’s son’s name was Salvatore, I had seen him a couple of times, but he was the son of the owner I was the last of the keepers, so there was little to do. We exchanged a few glances and maybe that guy wasn’t absolutely at ease with his father, we even exchanged a few words but only a couple of times.

The first time the father had left do and we talked more, Salvatore was respectful to me, he treated me on a par, he told me that he was very uncomfortable with his father. I told him that I was gay and I saw that he had a flash in his eyes, he didn’t say he was gay too but I perceived clearly that he was interested. Then they called me to send me with a truck to unload and we broke up.

The second time, when he saw me he smiled at me, then his father came and called his son in such a violent way that I felt uncomfortable for him. The owner didn’t say anything to me but later I didn’t see either the father or the son.

For me, no love at all, not even sex, nothing at all, now there was no longer even the campsite, I had just to work as a slave from morning to night.

Once in the village a man began to tell false things against me offending and threatening me, one got in the middle and defended me. I really didn’t expect it. After a few days I saw him again, we talked a little, he’s married, he’s 41, but he was nice to me, he treated me well, on a Sunday he invited me to lunch outside. It seemed strange on his part to leave his wife at home to go out with me but I was glad, nobody had ever done such a thing. I told him I was gay and he replied that he knew it but that it didn’t cause him any problems. In short, it was not my type and I did not feel really attracted to him, after all I knew where it was going to end and basically accepted it.

With me he was kind, I felt loved. I do it shortly, because where it ends up is clear. One day he tells me if I want to spend with him Saturday and Sunday. Saturday and Sunday also meant the night together, I had understood very well, but for me it was the first time and the idea that maybe such an occasion would not have been created any more I had it. So I went there. He took me for dinner to a restaurant very far from where we live and then we went to his house in the country, a nice place very well arranged. It was obvious that we had to have sex there, we went there on purpose.

He starts to come forward but in a way that I don’t like at all, seeing him in that situation really makes me sick. I tried to tell him in every way that I didn’t feel like it. First he tried to insist with the good manners but given that I tried to avoid him in every way at the end he really beat me violently and forced me to stay there anyway, in practice I was raped by this man. It is true that I had somehow pushed him in every way but he didn’t have to behave like that. A couple of days after, I thought back to a detail that seemed to me very important to calm me down because I was terrified of the fear of diseases, when he decided to do what he did he told me in dialect: “You are a fagot of shit and you made the worst filth with all those like you, but I don’t want to take your ills … ” and he wore a condom.

It was a terrible experience, something I would not wish even for my worst enemy. When he finished he reloaded me into the car with violence and dumped me under my house.

I still carry inside me the sense of deep disgust I felt and I think I will never forget it. This was my first sexual experience with a man. For me it is like a kind of nightmare that always accompanies me. The man, after, has stayed away and did well, because if I had found myself in front of him I don’t know what level of violent reaction I could have put into practice, but surely I would react violently. Of this fact I spoke only to three people: to the guy I had met at the campsite, to a straight friend who has always respected me and to Project, and Project had the dignity of being quiet and not making comments. I feel like a fool because it was I the one who entered that mess without foreseeing where it would end up or, what is even worst, the one who accepted it as a fool, but when everybody leaves you and you don’t know where to bang your head you can do the most crazy things. I don’t know if I can ever accept gay sex as a positive thing but I think it will take me years and even when I’ll find a guy who really loves me, I’ll will be heavily influenced by the nightmare I experienced that made feel worse than a worm, and has deeply humiliated me, also because I’m a fool, it’s true, but everybody left me completely alone. That’s all.

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SEXUAL ABUSE AND GAY SEXUALITY

Hello Project, I read your manual Being Gay, especially the chapter on sexual violence and sexual harassment. You insist a lot on the problems that the guys who have been subjected to violence or harassment can have in recognizing their sexual orientation, this is clearly very important, I don’t deny it, but you don’t deal at all with another point namely the long term effects at of violence or harassment on the sexuality of the boy who grows up and then becomes an adult. I would like to tell you about my experience, which I think could be useful to those who have lived or are living similar experiences. 

 

Currently I am 31 years old (almost), when I was a child, I was eight years old, I repeatedly suffered harassment by an uncle, a married man, with children, an quite old man, dead for several years now. Even though I’ve thought many times about those things, I can’t even tell how it started. At that time, me and my family (only my father and my mother) went on holiday in the mountains in a small village in central Italy where my mother was born and where my maternal grandparents and my uncle still lived with his family (wife and two children, my cousins, a lot older than me, at that time 16 and 18).

 

My uncle seemed to me very good-natured, quite big/fat, he had always treated me well, I played a lot with him, I climbed on his shoulders and he carried me on a horseback on his neck, I tormented him a bit, I pinched him and he laughed and let me do, he didn’t keep me at a distance. I don’t really remember how it happened, I thought about it so many times and I tried to reconstruct the scene, let’s say that the reconstruction, with all the limits it can have, is that we were alone and I touched him “there” and he let me do as he always did and then I continued and then I got the curiosity and I didn’t stop and I provoked him, he started to laugh and I teased him, then. . .

 

I don’t go into details, but we did oral sex, of course I to him, on the other hand he was not interested in me in that other sense, he just wanted me to do it to him. In the end he didn’t intimidate me to prevent me from telling other people what had happened, he knew I would never do it. The following day he avoided meeting m and I was very sad, nevertheless the following days what had happened the first time happened again and since then it happened every time we were alone together. I never said anything to anyone. At the time, perhaps I was already attracted to prohibited games or maybe I didn’t even understand what it was. I had not taken it as too important, it was a kind of game. I didn’t have a real trauma from this thing, which lasted more or less for a month.

 

I started to masturbate very early, at the beginning of the sixth grade, about 11 years old, and I had clearly gay fantasies, in my fantasies there were also, but not only, scenes similar to those that I had lived with my uncle, I made fantasies about guys well in flesh and on the kind of sexual practices I had experimented with him. Slowly I began to realize what it was what we had done, I asked myself a thousand questions, for example if I had to consider my uncle a delinquent who had taken advantage of me, or maybe I had so provoked him up to induce him to something like that, my brain often worked on these contents that always resurfaced in masturbation.

 

I’ve had several guys with whom I’ve had sex, I’ve been with men much older than me, I don’t know if this happened because I wanted to relive the situation that had lived with my uncle, but as an adult it’s completely different, even if it is with a man much older than me, there is a substantial parity, I like that they leave me free to do what I want even sexually, but we also speak, in short, it’s really another thing, we are two adults anyway.

 

I noticed that I don’t fall in love with men much older than me, I can have sex with them (a bit repeating the famous scene) but I lose my mind especially for guys more or less my age and when I lose my head I feel very bad because then maintaining a true relationship with peers is very difficult, with much older men, on the contrary it is much easier, generally (with some exceptions) they are not jealous and, contrary to what is thought, they don’t go mad for sex, they seek above all companionship and affection, but these things unfortunately cannot involve me too much.

 

I’ve never lost my mind for kids, and I’ve turned 30, I was afraid of losing my mind for some very young kids, but it never happened. The youngest boy for whom I lost the head was 18 and I was 19, but sometimes I think of watching a video that plays something similar to the famous scene with my uncle. But anyway I would not see myself in the part of the adult but in that of the boy.

 

I talked about these things with one of the adult men I have been with, but he told me that a pedophile looking for much older men is unthinkable and that all my talk on this point was nothing but the search for reassurance, that is the search for a moral approval or for some sharing or accepting and told me that fantasies are one thing and behaviors are a very different thing and that according to him, after what I had suffered as a child, the fact that I could make those fantasies was something almost inevitable.

 

It seems absurd that I am still looking for reassurance at the age of 30, but I think that’s exactly what I’m doing. I talked about these things even with young friends, about my age, but the reaction was much duller, they turned up their noses, because what they had heard didn’t fit their principles, one told me that I had to report my uncle to the police, another, after this speech, disappeared at all.

 

I notice that I tend to test the men I know by asking them what they would do if they were in a situation like that of the famous scene, on the part of the adult man, at what point they would stop, how they judge the whole thing. I always find a lot of embarrassment in these things on the part of the people I try to involve, but I need to understand how they judge those situations, namely how they judge me.

 

When my uncle died I had just turned 17, I felt a sense of terrible discomfort, not of liberation or similar things, I was just uncomfortable and for a very special reason, when my fantasy returned to what we had done I felt dirty, not for the thing in itself but for having done it with someone who was dead, a bit like putting sex and death together.

 

With regard to my uncle I always felt very ambiguous feelings, on one side, I cannot deny it, he abused me, and it was an unpardonable thing that had many consequences, but for the other, after many years, it also made me feel bad and sorry for him, because I think this thing oppressed him as a guilt till to the end.

 

I also feel a little guilty because, without giving any explanation to anyone, I avoided seeing him even when he was ill and I think if I saw him again and told him that I didn’t hate him for what he had done, he would have died more serene.

 

There is also another fact that gives me to think, sex is too important for me, at least I think it is, and it bothers me when I call one of the guys or of the older men I know to have a little sex and they are reluctant and always wait for me to make the first step, a bit like sex is less important to them.

 

Sometimes with much older men I notice a reluctance with respect to immediate sexual approaches, generally they don’t say no to me but I don’t find a real enthusiasm and then they have some attitudes as a teacher, as a father, that give me a little annoyance, I don’t speak of sermons or similar things, they don’t do such things, but attempt to always give me reason when I’m wrong, they attempt to find in me a lot of good sentiments and inclinations that there aren’t at all, as if they wanted to encourage or to console me. I do not know if all this rant has a logical thread, I send you this mail because I read what you wrote about intergenerational relationships. Those are certainly well-balanced things, but reality is often much more convoluted than theory and finding there a logic is not really possible.

 

Of my life, all in all, I feel quite happy, I don’t have a boyfriend and I miss him a lot, I only had one for a couple of years, then he became unbearable (jealous) and I didn’t bear him anymore, but I have some real friends (three) and with them there is also a bit of sex (one at a time), now I think that all three know this and it seems that it does not create problems, at least with two of them, with the third I don’t know, pity that he is the one I care more. I have long since stopped believing in the white mill gay family, there is only one value that I believe is very important in gay relationships and it is clear talking, honesty, not pretending. Until now I felt quite comfortable. Returning to the point, well the famous scene certainly produced consequences in my life but I think it went to me much better than it went to many others. Let me know.

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FEELING GAY AND REBORN

December 9th 2015 the day of my rebirth. And here I am, in spite of my shyness, to share my life with you all. 

Let’s start from the beginning, my childhood. Well, my childhood. What to say, a period totally “black”, a father with vices, who beats your mother and you look, 5/6 years old, and you are helpless, the worst thing is to look and not be able to do anything, and, despite all, my mother has always had a smile printed not to make me worry, to make me grow without hating my father or anyway to protect me in some way from everything that happened. 

But let’s leave this argument, now it’s an old story, even if sometimes when I least expect it, I think back to those images. At that time the only person with whom I could feel good, playing, was my cousin V., he was two years older than me, a brother in short, with whom I could play and not think about those moments. After that period has ended, one has started even worse. 

At 11 years during the period of secondary school, I had taken a lot of kilograms, because many times I used to take refuge in food when I was down. I have been a victim of bullying for 3 years, when I came home I had a sore body, they enjoyed pinching me where I had the “rolls”, but the strongest pain was due to the nicknames that bothered me. Even now while I’m writing, if I think back to those moments, I feel a great sense of suffering. I’ve always been one that keeps everything inside, never showing outside my emotions, and I didn’t talk to anyone about those things. 

The only one who had noticed my behavior was V., I felt better when he was talking to me, but then, one day, when I reached the peak of sadness, and I needed him, he gave me the coup de grace. We were in his room, I state that I had not seen any kind of pornographic magazine/site, and even less I knew what masturbation was. He tells me “Undress, I want to give you a massage”, I didn’t see it as a strange thing because he used to massage me when I was stressed, but that day was different. While I was lying down, he slipped my panties off and abused me. 

I know it may seem stupid to talk about abuse in this case, because you could tell me “Ok, you were there, you liked it maybe, so what do you want?”, But at that time I needed a person to help me because I was mentally fragile, and at that moment I felt nothing, I felt useless, lost. Since that day I have no more been in contact with him and I have started to close more and more in myself. 

And here we are at the beginning of high school, same story, shyness and closure due to my outward appearance, I could only relate to someone if someone spoke to me, otherwise I stood in the corner, in silence as if I were a shadow. I began to feel good when I saw people approaching and chatting with me, but after a few months I realized that they were guys/girls who approached me only to get help in some subject, because I was a nerd, then after getting a good grade in that subject they didn’t consider me anymore. 

Good. Finally a positive period arrives in my life, so if you have suffered with me while you were reading the first part, I hope you can breathe a sigh of relief. In the third year of high school my class has been dismembered, and I ended up in another classroom. New classroom, new companions, new isolation. Within the classroom, most of them had a schoolmate, before the desks were all occupied, I threw myself on the first empty desk I found. And N. comes to sit next to me, short red hair, fair complexion, smiling. He sits next to me and immediately introduces himself, and starts talking to me as if we’ve known each other for years. 

At the beginning I started eggshells, I said to myself “But he will be the umpteenth guy who tries to cheat me with a little smile to use me in some way”, as V. and the others did. In the days to follow, however, I saw that he behaved like that with everyone, he was sincere, outgoing, he gave me attention and in the evening forced me to go out with him and his friends (since I had never left home until the age of 16). 

I believed in him when during the fourth year trip to Budapest, we had to go with the whole classroom to a spa. The world collapsed on me, I had to undress in front of the whole class? I rather shoot myself. He squeezes me that day, looks at me and says: “Listen, now you prepare and come, do you think you are obese? That is, you weight 100 kg, is this for you to be obese? You are going to see people who are in the spa that weight about 200, I want to see what you think then. And, listen, if you don’t go there, I don’t go either.” 

So I went there, and in the locker room he tried to act as a barrier so that other classmates could not make fun of me in any way, and he was close to me for as long as we’ve been in the spa. After that trip, the doubts began, the questions, the malaise; because when he was absent from school or I became aware that he had a girlfriend, I was jealous. A morbid jealousy, so much to be angry with him and fight, and of course I realized that I was exaggerating. I spent sleepless nights wondering, “Why do I think of him? Why am I so jealous? Why do I go to school in the morning only to see him?” And I also started to get excited when I thought of him. 

At that moment, the deepest part of me, perhaps, already understood that I was homosexual, but my mind refused to believe it, perhaps because I was thinking about the pain caused by obesity? I don’t know. But my mind went into a self-defense mechanism, let’s call it so, to find answers (excuses) to these questions. Anyway maybe I think because he was the first to consider me and therefore I considered him like a brother, and somehow like a part of me, our story went on. 

The diploma arrives, for me the terror. Why? Because I knew I would never see him every day, how would I have done? Luckily in the following months he had enrolled in the gym, and he invited me to register with him, so I could see him 3/4 times a week. Everything lasted until he found a girlfriend, after he got engaged our relationship was waning, and I’ve been sick for months, because I knew I couldn’t see him anymore, by the way the year after he left for the military service. So I slipped into a huge emptiness, yet another hope destroyed. 

There were two girls, my classmates, and one of them had a crush on me, which I realized after quite a while since I didn’t pay attention to her ways to tell me “Look, I like you!” At that moment I thought it was time to get engaged, after all I was 19, my best friend was engaged, so I took the opportunity on the fly to organize a couple of occasions to be with her. 

In this period, further doubts and uncertainties have arisen, because I noticed that when I kissed my girlfriend I didn’t get excited, I didn’t think about sex, I didn’t feel anything. As for sex, fortunately she didn’t want to do it because she was a virgin, otherwise I don’t know how I would have done it. After 8 months we broke up because she told me that she didn’t see a bit of love towards her, but only affection. I felt sick, because, as those bullies had played with my feelings, at that moment I seemed to have played with the feelings of a friend of mine, having deluded her. 

The University begins, new environment, new companions, on the one hand happiness, on the other, the umpteenth fear due to my appearance. Same behavior as in the high school, as if I hadn’t matured in those years. As usual, aloof from people who had already created small groups. After a few minutes M. sits next to me, an extrovert guy, solar, brown and with a little belly (eh eh!). In short, we begin to talk and somehow I see N. in him, but M. seemed even better. 

We were so close together that that we saw each other in the morning, the afternoon we studied together or at my home or at his, we went out in the evening. Even with him fraternal relationship, I managed to talk more, to trust in myself, and he also talked to me about his intimate problems, many times he asked me for advice and told me that I was a good listener. 

We created a small group, and we spent our evenings in bars, discos, between alcohol and entertainment. In “their” case, even girls, because they went to the disco with the intention of courting girls, I instead just to change, prisoner of my shyness, I was just trying to have fun. 

Last summer, summer 2014 (I will never forget it!), my parents go on vacation for a week and I send a message on the whatsapp group that we had in common: “Guys I have free house, if you want to come here to sleep, we organize some alcoholic evening or we give ourselves to meat cooked on the barbecue and wine, in short, use my home as a hotel!” M. took me seriously, got his suitcase and moved to me for a week. Woe to me that I sent that message! 

That week was overwhelming, we were walking around the house in our underwear, going out of the shower and staying naked for a half hour, we slept together and when we were in bed sexual talks were usual. I had to go continuously to the bathroom to lessen my excitement. 

After two days I confessed to him that I was happy that he had come, because I never had brothers and with him I could talk about everything and I was fine. After those words he hugged me, and in the following five days when I least expected it, while watching TV, while I was on the couch, he came and hugged me. When the seven days ended and he went away, I felt like crying. Take me for crazy, but for two weeks I couldn’t set foot in the room where we slept, I thought of him, it was something stronger than me. 

Perhaps at that moment the hidden part of me was about to come out. But a few days later, in addition to having engaged with a girl, he shoots a very ugly sentence. He has always been a bit racist, but I have never seen anything in his attitudes that was against gays. Sorry if I write to you this sentence, if you want, you cannot even read it, because in my opinion it is really very aggressive, and at that time I considered myself hetero, you can figure out how I can take it now. 

He said, I don’t remember exactly in what context “But … the fags? All sick people, they should get treatment, because it’s a disease … if it were up to me I would reopen the ovens of Auschwitz, just to burn them all.” So, you know, when you put someone on a pedestal and then it collapses? Here it is. 

In February, this year, out of curiosity I get on the scales and see “130 Kg”, I said to myself: “Well … there are people I saw on TV who weig 140/150/160, and cry, despair because now that they have understood the gravity of the situation they can no longer make a movement and everything is much more difficult. Why do I have to wait for that moment too? It’s very easy to get 20 kg. Why do I have to be sick? I have to lift my ass and get busy.” 

I start the gym. Well, what about … I noticed that in the locker room I had pleasure in seeing guys undress and take a shower. And I always tried to look at the guys in question in full, maybe if I was about the last exercise and there was a guy I liked, I calculated the time it would take for him to go undress and get into the shower, so I could see it. Just to masturbate then thinking about the guys seen that day. 

Obviously the time came for the “Why I do it?” And here again the twisted mind, with the self-defense system told me: “Anyway I definitely enjoy looking at the naked guys, because I’m obese and I like to see lean or athletic bodies.” I think after reading these things, you smiled or said: “What problems does your brain have? Seriously!” Unfortunately it was so, I gave myself these stupid answers. 

In November I reached 85 kg, obviously I was very happy, also because relatives or people around notice your change and your willpower and congratulate. Then, finally, I had destroyed the barrier that had prevented me from dealing with people for years. Everything seemed perfect. But instead … But no. Mid-November, new feelings of emptiness, as if something were missing, and I saw that I continued to be attracted by guys. Has it become a habit? 

I made the decision to go to a psychologist, I told him a little bit about my life. I noticed that at every session he always asked me the same question “Are you okay with your sexuality?” And I, like a stupid: “Yes yes, I’m fine.” After that question strangely he changed the subject. After 5/6 sessions he told me “I don’t see anything unusual in you, because we talked for a long time, and you are convinced that everything is okay, I cannot do anything else.” 

Now don’t ask me why and how, but 8 days ago, December 9th, I’m assailed by the umpteenth doubts and thoughts. I type on google “Test to understand if you are gay”, and I come across Gay Project test (thankfully). I conclude the test and I have a positive result. I thought “Ok, it’s just a test”, and I started out of pure curiosity to read stories of guys who understood they were gay, right here on the forum. At one point while I was reading, I take my head off the pc, I look out the window and in a loud voice I say, “I’m gay!” At that time I needed a writing that would come out of the computer maybe capitalized “Oh finally, and what the hell, and it took all this time?” 

Overwhelmed by the thing, I turned the computer off and went to bed. At that moment I thought back to my whole life, from childhood. That’s why I was sick without N., I was in love with him. That’s why I felt nothing for my girlfriend, not because she was like a sister to me, but because I didn’t feel love for girls, but just deep affection. That’s why I was fine with M., and I even felt like crying, and collapsed when he made that statement. That’s why at the gym I was excited looking at the guys. The day after I felt reborn! 

December 9th 2015 is perhaps a date I will not easily forget. On the one hand very happy, on the other a little less. Because at first I said to myself: “But what the heck, after finally managing to throw down the wall of obesity, now I have to face this other situation!” I know that this will be a difficult path full of obstacles, but ok, I accept it. It took me 9/10 years to fight obesity. Ok, it will take as many for this thing!” 

But who knows …, as long as I’m quiet with myself, I’ve discovered my real self, I’m reborn and I’m optimistic. Now I just want to create friendships, because unfortunately in my city people are strongly homophobic, they don’t reach the level of M., but still don’t joke. So doing a C.O. it would be destructive, at least for the moment. I hope to create many friendships here, and to find out more about this new “world”, because I’m totally unaware of some terminologies or sexual behaviors among gays. 

I THANK YOU for the time you have spent reading my story, because that a person who doesn’t know me should devote me 5/10/15 minutes of his time, it is already a gift. So I thank you for your time. I hope my story can give some confidence to all who are bullied, who are suffering, and who have suffered. I only tell you not to give up, to force you. Cannot you do it alone? I am at your disposal, from today on I will be in chat or here on the forum. Excuse me for any grammatical errors, it is 3.40 in the morning and I sincerely don’t want to read all the papyrus I wrote, in case I will do some changes. I hope I have written things in an orderly manner, because sometimes I tend to go from one thing to another. Thanks again and have a nice day!

Greetings from your Little Wolf! 

_________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion of this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-feeling-gay-and-reborn

HOMOSEXUALITY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN A BOARDING SCHOOL

Hi Project,

I don’t know if you are a real person or a group of people, I will do as if you were a person. Meanwhile, thank you for creating the blog, but I must tell you now that gay things for me have a strange taste, I’m quite full of complexes about these things and even now, as an old man, I’m upset by a lot of strange and absurd thoughts. I don’t know if I’m really gay, I don’t even know if I want to be gay, I’m sure that in the things of sex I lived the life of a pathological case, a neurotic man who never managed to find his balance. That said, you certainly didn’t understand anything, so it’s worth it to tell you what happened. I would like you to put my story on the blog, but if you don’t want it I can understand you. In any case I would like to receive your answer.

I was born in Northern Italy, in Veneto, and then there was really hunger in those places. My parents were farmers and I was the only surviving child. My older brother had died in the war and after the elementary school in the country, my parents had to decide whether to send me to the middle school (with Latin and aimed at the continuation of studies) or to the job placement school (allowing immediate access to work without continuing education). My parents had little money but they made a huge effort to send me to the middle school, to make me study and give me more possibilities. I thank them for this because my economic tranquility of today is the result of their choice.

I did the first and second class of the middle school in a town near my country. I had to get up very early in the morning to get the bus, my mother washed and stretched my shirt every day, because I only had two shirts and at school I had to go well dressed, she also polished my shoes, dad lined my books and made me find good things to eat, which were chestnuts or figs, according to the season. There was the Latin in the middle school and for me it was a big obstacle, but there was the parish priest, Don Antony, who gave me lessons in the afternoon and had me do all my homework. The other guys in my classroom were all from rich or at least middle-class families, but then I didn’t realize it. When there were meetings with the professors Don Antony went there instead of my parents, and I didn’t understand why, but my parents didn’t show up for fear of making me look bad, because they didn’t speak Italian well and their hands were ruined by the work in the country side. My dad had only finished elementary school and my mother hadn’t even finished it.

Despite everything, at school I did not have serious problems of adaptation, the professors were very demanding but I had a certain desire to study and with the help of Don Antony, who had half a mind to send me, later, in the seminar, I managed to I pass quite well.

In the summer of 57 I lost both my parents because of a typhoid fever that the doctor couldn’t cure and I found myself, at 13, practically alone in the world. I was entrusted to a brother of my mother, Uncle Battista, who lived in a small village in the mountains and had the animals in a mountain pasture. If I went to stay with Uncle Battista, who was also old, widower, and had no children, I could not continue to study. The uncle told me that I could either go to the seminary in Vicenza or go to boarding school in Rome, in a school that Don Antony knew. I didn’t want to go to the seminary absolutely and chose to go to Rome, where I had never been. They signed me to school and Uncle Battista took charge of paying the fee, which should not have been so low, because I would have eaten and slept in that boarding school.

Don Antony accompanied me to Rome and introduced me to the Rector of the school, to tell the truth a little shabby, but clean, it was a convent of friars, there was the church, but there were few friars, no more than seven or eight, all old. The boarding school was run by the prefect friar, who was hardly ever seen, all the internal organization was entrusted to young people, university students, whom we called little prefects, they were guys who were in college without paying because in practice they were working with us, paying attention to us, they were the ones who followed us during the hours of study and they made us do our homework, they watched us in the afternoon, during meals, and at night they slept in their small rooms, one next to each dormitory, to control the discipline. In general, they didn’t care so much about us because they had a lot to study for their university exams.

I was new in the boarding school, my comrades had known each other for two years. The school was not bad, all professors were laymen, basically retired teachers of state schools, they were all old but good and they spent their souls to make us learn things. I still remember some professors. The professor of mathematics to which I owe my interest in this subject, in which I was very good, the professor of Italian and Latin who told us the stories of Iliad and Odyssey reciting as in the theater and also the gym teacher who practically made us do premilitary gymnastics, as at the time of fascism. The first days I was fine and I wrote it to Don Antony, who sent me a letter every week, but as early as mid-October I began to see strange things.

There were some boys who disappeared from the study hall and no one knew where they ended up and then they came back half an hour later, I was totally naïve at that time, I didn’t know anything about sex, I had not yet discovered masturbation and they could tell me anything that I would have believed it. The other boys, who didn’t know me, tended to put me aside and keep me out of their secrets, but it did not take me long to realize that in the boarding school there was an invisible, underground life.

For an internal rule, the dorms were distinguished by years of school, so as to keep the children of different ages separate. We saw the students of the sixth and seventh grade only at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner and on special occasions, for example in church, but the recreation was done for separate groups, so in practice I could only get familiar with the boys of the eighth grade.

At the time I was a nice guy for my age, but I was very delicate and very polite. After the first weeks of school one of the boys, one of the most respected little bosses, began to call me “man-woman” and to make jokes that at first I didn’t even understand, like; “You are a man, not your sister!” Then the idea that I was the man-woman began to spread among all my comrades.

One day, during the hours of study, one of the boys approached the little prefect for an explanation of mathematics, the little prefect told him that he was studying letters and that if he wanted to, he could go to another little prefect who was studying engineering in his room. The boy came back to the study room after about half an hour all blushed and disheveled, it was there that I had the first suspicion that the half hours of absence of some boys were not dedicated to receive school explanations. But it was only an impression, I said nothing and everything went on as before.

One evening, before going to sleep, when the little prefect was not there, the little bully boss, who was called Silvan, approached me and gave me a caress and then put his hands in the middle of my legs and said: “it’s just to see if you’re a man or a woman!” I felt my face burn, I wanted to go to the little prefect to report it but Silvan told me: “Go go! So he also will give you a good check!” And laughed.

Over time they told me that one of the little prefects, the one of engineering, in practice the one of our dorm, had sex with the boys of the eighth grade. With me he never tried such things because I didn’t give him confidence, but according to the stories of others, with those who gave him rope he let himself go right. He was a nice guy, I wanted, maybe, that it happened with me, but at the same time I was afraid and nothing happened.

The first really bad things happened to me just before Christmas holidays. The boys were abandoned to themselves, the little prefects were almost all gone for Christmas holidays, except our little prefect, the one of engineering. I make it short because, even if so many years have passed, such things cause me a little repulsion. In short, four guys block me on the bed, they lower my trousers and pants, and Silvan tries to penetrate me, let’s say he makes the move, I scream, but they put a handkerchief in my mouth and then they are four guys and I don’t have the strength to oppose. There was no penetration but the humiliation was terrible. Silvan told me: “Now you understand what will happen to you if you don’t do everything we want!” At that moment, if I could I would have killed him.

After that I keep them at a distance, I show myself as little as possible, but things cannot go on like this. If I had not done anything I would have become the laughing stock of Sivan and his gang and the violence would have been repeated.

I think about it a lot, but in the end I have no other solutions, I take the courage in my hands and I go to talk with our little prefect (the one of engineering), who listens to me, he’s frightened above all by the idea that I go to speak with the Rector, and it’s evident, he tries to reassure me and then we come to a compromise that I never expected from him but that, at the same time, put me safe and exposed me to the worst insults from my classmates. In practice, the prefect would have slept in my dormitory bed and I in his, in his locked room. This whole thing happened, obviously without the true prefect of the college knowing anything about it and the boys had to tolerate everything, if they had not done so, what they had done to me would come out. Then, to keep quiet my comrades, who would kill me, I ended up accepting that the little prefect would come to sleep in his little room too. Of course, afterwards, my comrades considered me just as a whore.

About the engineering little prefect I heard the worst things: that he undressed the boys, was competing with them to see who had the biggest dick and used to beat them to get sexual performances and similar things and some guys swore it was true and that it had happened to them, but the little prefect, with me had never tried such things.

One day, while I was in his room I start to rummage and between the mattress and the bed base I find a package with some letters, I read them, they are directed to a guy but they are love letters and also hot. I think then that all my comrades say about him is true and I start to be afraid.

And here I did something I’m still ashamed of today, I told one of my comrades about the little prefect’s letters, and he tried to push me to steal the letters to have him in hand and maybe to take them secretly to the Rector. I didn’t do this thing, it seemed infamous and then I liked the little prefect and I didn’t want him to be fired or maybe I wanted to have him in my hand. But now another boy knew about the letters and soon everyone would know and the letters would have been stolen by others, then I entered the little prefect’s room, I took them, and I hid them somewhere else (in church).

When the little prefect came back I said I had to talk to him and I told him that the boys knew about his letters, I saw him paling at that thought, but I also told him that I had made the letters disappear and that they were hidden in a safe place, where no one would find them. He wanted them back but I didn’t give them to him and I told him I had read them. He looked at me petrified but I told him that he had nothing to fear because he had behaved well with me, then I told him about all the things I had heard about him and asked him if they were true. He admitted having done some sex games with the boys but only consensual things and he swore it to me. I told him about what Silvan and his gang had done to me and he told me that they didn’t do it for sex but only to inflict a terrible humiliation on another boy, and then he asked me if I liked guys, I thought about it and I honestly replied that I didn’t know it and he told me: What a pity! Then he realized that he had said something stupid and apologized and after many hesitations asked me where the letters were and I told him but I asked him to leave them there because they were safe, maybe he could go and see that there they really were, but I wanted him to leave them there and he did so.

The story of the little prefect however ended badly and perhaps it was my fault. The boy to whom I had talked about the letters, went to report the matter to the Rector. The little prefect denied everything, I was called as a witness, I swore the false and said that my comrade had invented everything. The facts were not proven, but the Rector didn’t want to know reasons and the little prefect was kicked out, or rather removed for reasons of opportunity, a few months before his graduation exams. Before he left, he secretly took up the letters and warned me that he had taken them.

The new prefect was an emeritus imbecile. In the last months before the exams I suffered from the gang of Silvan harassment and violence of all kinds, and this time, since they had to avenge on me that I had been the “favorite of the fag” I really suffered sexual violence by Silvan and another boy. [- omissis -] The feeling of repulsion was total, I will not tell you how I felt after, I still carry inside myself the memory of that scene because that was not sex but only violence like the beasts and even worse. My classmates were 14 years old and in the end I cannot hate them or wish them death, because they didn’t even understand what they were doing.

In short, afterwards I was obsessed with those memories for decades and my sex life was ruined. The memory of the little prefect instead was positive, then I understood: he was really a gay guy, and I liked him well, he had not behaved like an asshole, but the idea that I could be gay just because of the violent initiation I suffered, ruined my life. I’m not married and I don’t have a partner, I’m alone, and absurd as it seems, gay sex seems repugnant to me, but I don’t know, don’t really know, if this happens because of the violence suffered, but I think so.

Anyone who uses sexual violence on another person kills that person inside, kills the dignity, the certainties of that person, dirties his/her sexuality forever. The boys should receive a serious education and learn the true respect of others, but unfortunately, even if fifty years have passed, we are still very far from all this.

Thanks Project, at least I vented a bit.

__________

If you want, you can participate in the discussion of this post open on the Gay Project Forum: http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-homosexuality-and-sexual-violence-in-a-boarding-school

GAYS AND DAMAGES OF PEDOPHILIA

It happened to me many times over the past 10 years to write about the sexual abuse of minors and about the consequences that these abuses entail in the lives of the victims. I would like to dedicate this post to clarifying some fundamental points. I will start from the concept of abuse to illustrate the most typical situations in which the abuse takes shape. I will then stop on the effects of the abuse on the victim’s sexuality in childhood, adolescence and later in adulthood. I will focus in particular on the concrete risk that those who have suffered sexual abuse may in turn perpetrate child abuse and on sexual addiction as a result of the suffered abuse.

A premise is a must, my speech is based on the experience gained in Gay Project and, of course, only deals with situations where guys have come to speak explicitly of the suffered abuses. Basically these guys have already a rational awareness of what they have suffered and, at least in a relative way, they are able to objectify it, so they are guys who have already followed an important individual path and have overcome many of the conditioning induced by abuse.

Let’s start with the concept of abuse. Sexual abuse is distinguished from sexual violence because, unlike this, it almost never presents itself with violent or intimidating methods and, very often, at the beginning, in the future abuser there is not even a clear desire to make an abuse.

The collective imagery depicts the abuser as a perverse-minded maniac who, after having spotted casually the child, consciously conceives a project of abuse and stubbornly completes it, but things are objectively very different.

The abuser, in the vast majority of cases, is not a stranger but a close relative of the child or a family friend who habitually frequents him and who has considerable familiarity with the child.

It should be emphasized that a child generally doesn’t have inhibitory brakes and his childhood play has an immediate physicality that is difficult to understand for an adult. The beginning of the path, often long and non-linear, which leads to abuse, lies precisely in the familiarity between the adult and the child. This familiarity also means at least relative freedom of language, freedom of play and often physical contact.

Since statistics make us aware that a high proportion of abusers are adults who in turn have been abused, it is easy to understand that if an adult who was abused when he was a child is in situations similar to those in which he has suffered abuse, he can, more or less consciously, remain conditioned. The temptation to play the role of the abuser can become very strong and the ability to resist this temptation can reach the breaking point.

Generally when the abuser is an adult who has been abused in childhood, the initiative of the new abuse is really of the adult, even if the path towards the abuse is very gradual and goes through stages of advancement and regression. On the other hand, if we consider an adult who has never been abused, things often develop with much less awareness, without a predetermined scheme and almost spontaneously.

The adult grants the child too much freedom without understanding in advance the risks that this behavior may entail. The adult underestimates, or better, is led to underestimate the seriousness of the abuse, and commits some typical errors of evaluation induced, or rather self-induced by a need of justification. He believes that since the boy is very young, he will take the thing as a game, he will not understand the sexual implications and above all he will forget very easily that experience, but evidently these three hypotheses are totally unfounded, and are destined only to fuel the irresponsibility of the adult. The adult who ends up accepting a risqué sexual game with a child pretends to find a justification in sentences such as: “the child was consenting” or even: “I did nothing but play his game”. It is evident that these two formulas, which may make sense to legitimize free sexual behavior with an adult, cannot absolutely apply to a child, because the child is objectively unable to understand the long-term consequences of what he may have also sought.

It is evident that sex education should aim, among other things, also and in particular, to make adults aware of the severity of the consequences of pedophilia, also making it clear that in many cases people slip towards pedophilia very gradually, and often have no awareness of it, and when the awareness arrives, the damage is now irreparable.

It should be noted that one of the fundamental parameters for quantifying the harm produced by sexual abuse on a minor is the duration of the abuse. When the abuse occurs in a single episode, it certainly leaves much less traces, especially if the abuser is not a family member, but if the abuse is repeated and becomes routine and is accompanied by threats such as: “Don’t tell no one, if not, you don’t know what will happen!” creates a state of subjection and real compulsion, that is, becomes a true form of violence.

Anyone who has committed a single abuse of a child would do well, if he has a minimum of conscience, to go and live in another city to avoid that his presence can help to consolidate the memory of the abuse. The behavior of the adult who starting from the assumption that “since now the damage is done”, thinks it is worth to make the abuse become a habit, confuses two totally different plans, that of the abuser and that of the abused. In legal terms after the first abuse one is guilty of a serious crime, technically of a delict, and there is the risk of being denounced and prosecuted, even if the continuation of criminal conduct over time aggravates the crime, the termination of those conducts does not cancel the crime anyway, and the adult who transforms the abuse into a habitual fact starts just from this reasoning; but from the point of view of the child, the repetition of the abuse can really create years after very dangerous situations, as forms of self-blame, interruption of dialogue with parents resulting in a progressive isolation of the guy, and above all can represent for the guy a sexual imprinting able to affect his whole life, creating addictions and heavily interfering in the formation of sexual archetypes and therefore in his sexual orientation and related preferences.

If the abuse is not violent the victim may not immediately notice the danger, but after years, when the level of awareness will be adequate, the memory of the abuse will work in the depths of the guy’s conscience. Most of the damage resulting from non-violent abuse occurs within adolescence. When the boy’s deep and innate sexuality awakens; if it is a straight sexuality, the boy, although deeply suffering for the memory of what happened, in going to (hetero) adult sexuality will also feel a sense of release from the memory of the abuse suffered, in essence the memory of the abuse will be completely separate from adult sexuality.

On the other hand, if adult sexuality were to manifest itself as gay, things would become complicated because gay feelings would be strongly conditioned by the memory of the abuse to such an extent that the guy would think he is gay only as a consequence of the abuse and this would mean that an atmosphere of negativity linked to abuse would be automatically extended to the nascent gay feelings. What I have just written is not a theoretical discourse but it is what I have seen practically in gay guys who have suffered abuse. But there’s even more: the negative light cast on the nascent gay dimension due to the contamination with the memory of the abuse often provokes attempts to escape towards heterosexuality (the so-called escape-heterosexuality) destined to end up miserably and sometimes in long times, leaving behind feelings of frustration and depressive thinking.

It should be immediately clear that the negative effects of the abuse are practically always extended to adulthood. The memory of the facts, especially if they were systematically repeated for long periods, becomes obsessive, the guy, now grown up, often reviews the scene of the abuse that becomes the core of an obsessive-compulsive disorder and as such, despite being substantially an intrusive and disturbing thought, ends up taking on more and more attractive characters. The guy tries to recreate in his current life situations similar to those of the abuse, in some cases creates more or less unconsciously intergenerational relationships in which however the genuine sexuality is very intimately mixed with the obsessive thought of the abuse, and slowly, the abused guy, becoming an adult, begins to wonder how he would behave if he were on the side of the abuser, and here often moments of deep crisis come, because a grownup man realizes that the abuse has not only conditioned his sexuality but may have transformed him in a potential pedophile, that is, in turn, in an objectively dangerous person.

In their sexual life, adults who were abused when they were children tend very often to reproduce sexual behaviors and practices corresponding to those that were the object of the abuse. The compulsion to repeat those behaviors can be close to addiction. In essence, an adult comes to the awareness that the abuse has literally ruined his life and has marked his sexuality in a very negative way so much so that he becomes a potential pedophile through obsessive fantasies of that type.

We will now try to understand how an adult who has been abused in childhood tends to build an emotional and sexual life. Obviously, here the speech will be restricted only to situations concerning adult men abused in childhood by men. When I say adults, I intend to refer to people aged at least twenty. It should never be forgotten that those who come into contact with these adults don’t know their story because even in the context of an important emotional relationship, the adult who has been abused in childhood, if he arrives to talk about these things with his partner, what is not to be taken for granted, will do it only after a long time, when the affective relationship will be well established and it will be reasonably foreseeable that a clear discourse will not undermine the relationship itself. The fear of not being accepted that seen from the outside seems to be connected right away to the abuse, actually hides a much deeper and more consistent fear linked to the fact that adults abused in childhood can have and in fact often have sexual fantasies concerning minors, and at this point the partner may feel deeply uncomfortable.

It should be added that often, when not exclusively, the adult who has been abused as a child tends to create intergenerational relationships, and in these relationships the oldest partner is afraid of being accused of something, in some way, akin to pedophilia. In these cases the older partner tends easily to marginalize the younger because this one is a carrier of more or less sporadic fantasies about minors, and because he realizes that the intergenerational relationship tends to be a repetition of the abuse scene. It is obvious that the adult who has been the victim of abuse, let’s call him an adult A, tends to keep the subject for himself, but in doing so he realizes that the relationship is deeply conditioned by unspoken things that are still very important. It sometimes happens that the adult A tries in a more or less transversal way to share with his partner fantasies about minors, which for him are sometimes true obsessive thoughts; this serves to probe the ground without arriving at explicit discourses.

When the explicit speech arrives, the partner’s reaction is fundamental. Every rejection reaction is particularly traumatic for the adult A, because it attributes to him a fault that he does not have, turning in fact him into a potential criminal, who is in reality only a victim. At the statistical level it is practically impossible for the partner to share the fantasies of the adult A about children, also urged and solicited by adult A, the partner should not respond by complacency stating to share those fantasies, at least partially, but must tell the truth in the clearest way, remembering that adult A is not asking him for a sharing of fantasies that he himself would not want, but in reality he is asking him if the more or less obsessive presence of those fantasies can be able to undermine at the base the relationship itself and he is also asking (if it is an intergenerational relationship) if the fact that the relationship is “also” a way of reliving the moments of abuse can destroy its actual affective interpersonal meaning.

If the partner who does not share the fantasies of the adult A about minors is really interested in maintaining a strong emotional relationship, he must make it explicitly understood. The most irresponsible behavior of the partner is to pretend not to have understood or worse in minimizing, because to speak clearly on these issues, for the adult A is at the same time very difficult and fundamental. The most reassuring speech on the part of the partner is to make clear some elements: 1) Having fantasies about minors and putting them into practice are two very different things. 2) The fantasies, especially the obsessive ones, are not easy to be controlled, but if an adult A has a sense of responsibility, those fantasies remain only fantasies and never turn into acts harmful to others. 3) If an intergenerational relationship may have been established “even” to reproduce a situation similar to that of the abuse, it is still a totally different thing precisely because in that relationship it is possible to talk about the abuse, because now the sexuality has a profound emotional value.

An adult A needs above all emotional stability, to be able to trust and to be himself with his partner, without hiding his neuroses, his obsessions and his most intimate thoughts. An adult A should not be accepted only as an adult but specifically as an adult A. The partner must be fully aware that the memory of the abuse will always be present at the bottom of the personality of the adult A, and that being able to talk about it is liberating. Often, unfortunately, attempts to create serious affective relationships by the adult A, clash with moralistic resistance and prejudices that lead to blame the adult A and to his marginalization. It would always be useful for two ex-partners, once the relationship is over, to maintain a friendship, bearing witness to the fact that the relationship of mutual esteem has not failed, this is all the more useful and necessary in the context of couples with an adult A.

For the adult A there are also other consequences of the abuse, consequences of a more general type, such as the decline in average levels of self-esteem, the easy tendency to discouragement and the lowering of resilience when one becomes a victim of the aggressiveness of others. From the outside it could be mistakenly assumed that the abuse leaves no room for recovery but it is not so. Generally adults A show a peculiar characteristic: they don’t abandon relationships with people, they demonstrate a very strong emotional fidelity, even if not always accompanied by a corresponding sexual fidelity within the couple, and above all they try, when possible, to keep the dialogue absolutely authentic and truthful, far from social rituals or habits.

Relationships with an adult A, when born from mutual acceptance, even partial, but authentic on both sides, have an emotional solidity that leads them to resist over time without losing intensity. Obviously adults A can have highly diversified individual personalities, beyond the experience of abuse, but it should never be forgotten that that experience remains a heavy conditioning that must be understood and accepted for what it is, any mental reserve on what the experience of abuse can cause, even after many years, is a very heavy mortgage on any kind of relationship involving an adult A.

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