I had a sexual experience that’s left me feeling shitty. Met another gay man on an apps, got wasted together at a leather bar, fucked at his place on a number of substances. He stopped when I was too out of it to proceed, he played some music, and let me crash with him until I’d sobered up enough to get a Lyft.
When we fucked, I’d asked him to degrade me. I asked him to do and say things an abusive ex had often done to me without consent. Why, when wasted and fucking, did I try and recreate sexual assaults I had experienced? In the moment: hot. In the aftermath, I feel as horrible as I did when those events first happened to me.
— Super Upset Boy
I asked Leigh Wakeford to weigh in on your question as well.
“Recreating a traumatic sexual experience is not uncommon among survivors of abuse,” said Wakeford, “So, most importantly SUB needs to hear that he is not alone. And he also needs to know that one of the beautiful offerings of BDSM play is the potential for revisiting and re-narrating traumatic encounters in a safe, consensual and empowering way, which can help us reclaim things that were taken from us without our permission.”
What your abusive ex took from you is a kind of consensual D/s sex play — involving humiliation, degradation, verbal abuse, etc. — that you may not have been consciously aware you were into before his abuse started. Right now, these things may be tainted by their association with your ex, SUB, but that doesn’t make them bad things. Just as sex in the missionary position in the absence of consent will be experienced as assault by someone who might otherwise enjoy sex in the missionary position, kinky like humiliation and degradation in the absence of consent will be experienced abuse by someone who might otherwise enjoy them.
“SUB had some shitty and bad things happen to him,” added Wakeford, “but he is not a bad or shitty person for wanting to experience pleasure in ways that are uniquely exciting to him.”
Which may be exactly what you did that night, SUB: In an effort to create new and positive associations with your kinks, you went out and found some you intuitively felt you could trust — and your intuition proved to be correct, as evidence by the way he took care of you when you had to tap out.
“But in my experience, the most effective and safest way to create a new narrative around a past traumatic encounter is also the most sober possible way,” said Wakeford.
Follow Leigh Wakeford is on Instagram and Threads @LeighWakefordTherapy. His website is LeighWakefordTherapy.com
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