First off, I have to say that I love reading your column—even more so, your Savage Love App. It's always entertaining and I learn something new everyday.A little background about me: I am in my early twenties, was molested by a male "family friend" occasionally from age 3 to 11. Needless to say, those experiences really have impacted my sex life. I identify as bisexual but I have had horrible, toxic relationships with both sexes. All in all... I'm a hot mess. I'm a sexual being, I like sex, I like getting off and getting someone else off, but with both men and women if liquid courage isn't flowing, I'm neither adventurous nor confident.
I have been seeing a man who is 14 years older than men (he's not the oldest person I've been with). I really like him. We have a good, healthy relationship thus far which is way different from the rest. I want to be that hot, sexy woman he sees me as and take control, blow his mind, be confident to do new things (and not be a complete drunk all the time in order to have good sex), but it's obvious the ghosts of my past are still haunting me and it's making our sex life very vanilla and "safe." I went to therapy and got over a lot of the hurt and self-hate. Should I go back and try to conquer this? Or what other suggestions do you have? I would say I want my groove back from my drunken self but I don't think that I've ever had it in the first place.
The Mess Inquires
My response after the jump...
On vacation, a mess myself at the moment, advising under the influence, the more you know, etc.
Yeah, TMI, I'm thinking maybeprobablydefinitely you should get back into therapy. Whether your drinking can be pinned so neatly to your history of childhood sexual abuse—no—you clearly have a drinking problem. And it's a problem you need to work on if you ever want to be fully sexual without being fully fucked up.
I'm very sorry about what happened to you, TMI, and it sucks, and it's not fair, and fuck that motherfucker who fucked with you. But if your adult relationships are toxic and you're self-aware enough to self-diagnose a bad case of the hotmessedness and you have to drink yourself into a stupor to be intimate with a man you like and trust, then you may very well be overestimating just how much hurt and self-hate you got over in therapy.
You owe it to yourself and your sex partners, TMI, to be in relatively decent shape before you initiate a romantic relationship. You don't have to be perfect—none of us is perfect—but you do have to be in good working order. And right now you're not. You're currently involved with someone, I realize, and I'm not telling you to break up with the guy while you work on your issues. But you should get busy in therapy and, if your current relationship doesn't work out (if this guy proves to be just as toxic as all the others (but please pause to consider who the common denominator is in all those toxic relationships)), get yourself in good working order before you jump into a new relationship with someone else.
