CSA and Promiscuity

One experience of being SA'd as a child will teach you things. Several years of it will teach you lots of things and ingrain them into your ways of thinking and seeing the world. One of the biggest ways it's affected my life was by teaching me that my worth lies in sex. So young people who've grown up thinking this end up promiscuous pre-teens and teens and usually young adults, sometimes even older adults. We believe that our sexuality is what makes us important to people, what makes people care about us, stay around us, like us, and love us. And promiscuity has rewards (such as attention, superficial caring,

popularity, sometimes gifts or money) that reinforce these beliefs.

Unfortunately, this promiscuity we adopt as a pattern of meeting our needs (although it doesn't work), also puts us in many situations perfect for revictimization. We flirt a lot, we dress for people to look, we are sexual with people we don't know well, we drink and use drugs to numb ourselves- we create a recipe for sexual assault. And when a revictimization occurs, we know that we, ourselves, got into that situation. It wouldn't have happened if I had/hadn't... There's guilt, self blame, self loathing, shame, which is all terribly difficult to get rid of, even years later. After this, some of us jump right back  into our liftstyle- to prove it didn't bother us, we're "strong," we're not broken, or simply because it's the only way we know to find caring and love, even if it isn't real.

The important thing, I think, is to realize the fucked up patterns and ways of thinking. After that, we can attempt to disarm them. Which is a very difficult thing to do, but I'm sure it can be done ;)