Child Abuse Survivor

I've been tracking the comments and responses to that last post about friendship and wanted to share some of what I've been thinking as I read through the responses.

Andy got the real key to what I was asking, the bit about whether our expectations are realistic.

Acceptance, understanding, love, protection, loyalty - that about covers the basics, but it's never as simple as that, is it.

Being realistic - now that's the crunch.

Yes it is the crunch. Because while all of the things he listed are things we'd like to have from our closest friends and family members, they aren't always able to give them to us. Is it right for us to expect things they aren't able to provide? Can I expect understanding from someone who doesn't comprehend at all what being abused is like? Can I expect someone else to protect me or should I learn how to be an adult and protect myself? Abuse survivors tend, on the whole, to have a bit of a warped concept of what to expct from others. It's an understandable misconception, but we have it nonetheless. Some of us simply expect the worst from everyone. Some of us are still waiting for our "rescuer" to make everything better. Neither of those are realistic.

Emily brought an interesting fact to the discussion that I want to focus on:

When I was younger I would say I liked the shock factor it gave. I thought, wrongly, it would make boyfriends stay with me. Then I would get more hurt when we broke up.

This, I'm afraid, is all too typical. This is an absolutely classic case of telling with the wrong motivation. We've all done it too, so don't feel bad Emily. I too went through a spell where I thought that surely if people knew just how vulnerable I was they would be loyal to me and take care of me, so I would make sure to let them know all about my childhood. Sadly, the opposite result was more often the case. I came across so needy that people turned away from me.

I realized that allowing that to be my motivation wasn't at all fair. I was asking someone to take care of me, instead of learning how to take care of myself. Only after I started to take care of myself, and make healthy decisions for myself did I reach a point like the one she reached later:

Things are different now. I am happy in myself and with who I am, so telling seems less important.

Telling others about my childhood abuse IS less important than it used to be, simply because the things I sought after by sharing with people, are not things I need any longer. That doesn't mean I don't tell people. But it's more just a part of who I am rather than the defining event that I use to describe myself to eveyone I know.

For example, I still made sure to tell my wife when we started getting serious, not only that I was abused, but what specific areas I still struggled with or things that might cause me to feel unsafe and how she could avoid doing those things. That was an important part of our relationship. I didn't expect her to even understand why certain things make me uncomfortable, just to respect me enough to not want to make me uncomfortable. In that case, it would have been more unfair to not tell her than to tell her, so it was necessary.

Most other relationships however, I don't feel any need to tell people I was abused. Some have happened to find this site and know, some have talked to me about their own experiences, some know and have never discussed it with me. That's ok. I don't need them to.