Humans long for intimacy and are wired to connect. Most individuals desire to experience a meaningful partnership that includes feeling secure, understood and loved.
Physical intimacy provides the opportunity to express that love with connection, joy, pleasure, satisfaction, playfulness and sometimes, even as a spiritual connection.
Experiencing this involves letting go, feeling secure while taking risks, being in the moment with all your senses while trusting, accepting and sharing.
Yet, for women and men who have experienced sexual assault, sexual violence and abuse, intimacy can feel very unsafe. Being and guard, and sometimes, checking out and dissociating, is what has allowed abuse victims to survive, and the idea of “relinquishing control and getting lost in the moment", can be terrifying.
Rather than associate physical intimacy with pleasure and connection, sex can trigger feelings of shame, disgust, aversion and pain.
Healing from sexual abuse in order to experience both emotional and physical intimacy in a healthy way, can occur, but it’s a journey.
Please watch this video, where I discuss this topic in depth