The Thing About Trauma and Sex

One of the lesser talked about aspects of sexual violence related trauma is the impact on sexuality. No, I’m not talking about orientation, more how survivors express themselves sexually.

For me, that looked like hypersexuality with a string of mostly married, much older women, which I’ve written about previously. Another side of that was dissociation during sexual acts. I would often disconnect physically. I could feel my partner’s bodies, but my emotional and physical attention and responses were focused on her pleasure and her orgasm. Whether I experienced the same was not the point.

Only when I started to suffer from a varicocele, did the dissociation become less frequent due to the intense physical pain involved with that condition. Surgery corrected it, but the dissociation returned until therapy started to make an impact.

There is nothing to be ashamed about if your trauma has impacted how you express yourself sexually. It’s time to lift the taboo on this conversation. Help is available. You deserve to heal.