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Question:
I am 41 and my new girlfriend/fiance is 32. She has been in and out of an emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship with the same guy since she was 15. He was a big jock (pumped up on lots of steroids) and was always trying to get her to have sex with him and his friends. She tells me she never did it, but at one point she was gang-raped by 3 of his friends (when she was 22) in what she thought was an attempt to break down her resolve against the group sex. Although leaving him at that point for two years, she later tried working out a relationship with him several more times because they had children together. She said she totally repressed that whole event, and did not and has not spoken to anyone about it until she told me about it recently. She is now leaving the relationship for the 5th or 6th time, and she tells me she really wants a healthy relationship with me. She has several MAJOR problems, which I assume are results of this previous bad relationship. At the same time, she tells me that these same problems were at the heart of the breakdown of the relationship with her ex. I feel like I am just the guy she needs to give her the patience and understanding she will require to get her back to emotional & sexual health, but I'm not sure exactly how to go about it. Besides being untruthful and not communicative of her feelings and emotions, she's not affectionate at all (unless she forces herself to be) and she is unable to have an orgasm. She tells me that she's certain she's had a number of orgasms in her sleep before, and she once had one with her ex when he fingered her for a long period of time (like 45 minutes), but that was only 4 years ago. She says she feels too uptight, too tense, and she feels herself fighting it when we are intimate. So she's not been able to orgasm on purpose in the 4 months that we've been sexually active. Per her request, I shaved her for the bikini season, and she told me that she had an orgasm while I was shaving her. Other than that, it's been pretty frustrating and it certainly makes me feel selfish and ineffective to say the least, to continue having sex with her when I know she's not getting off. At the same time, she says she does enjoy the sex and the closeness when we are together. I feel like her problems are from this past abuse, but don't know how to go about helping her. While she appears to everyone to be very happy, emotionally she's totally disconnected. Are there workbooks, guides or exercises that I can use to help her find her way back to emotional & sexual health?
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Answer:
by Wendy Maltz: (06/07/2004)
It’s obvious you care about your new girlfriend and want her to become emotionally and sexually healthy. That’s great. Keep in mind, however, that her recovery is only possible if SHE is personally motivated and directed to examine her past and make changes on her own. You can’t fix her. It’s up to her to act for herself. Ideally it’s best if a person in her situation fully leaves the previous relationship, does some sexual abuse recovery work and perhaps some sexual therapy (for the inorgasmia) BEFORE considering a new relationship.
Intimate partners of survivors, like yourself, need to watch out that they don’t slip into an unhealthy “care-taker” role in which they focus so much on wanting to help the survivor, that they overlook caution and their own needs. You describe your new girlfriend as untruthful, noncommunicative, and non affectionate. These behaviors should be redflags for any new relationship.
If and when your girlfriend is ready to pursue healing work, there are many helpful resources for her. Books on women’s sexuality, such as Becoming Orgasmic by Joe Lo Piccolo and Julia Heinman, as well as my The Sexual Healing Journey can be essential. You might want to read Laura Davis’ Allies in Healing for information helpful to intimate partners of sexual abuse survivors. Visit my healthysex.com website for information on my books as well as links and other resources for sexual abuse healing work.
Reviewed by Sexual Health Editorial Team
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