From: sandro@asylum.UUCP (Sandro Wallach)
Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery
Subject: Re: Thanks Karla
Date: 30 Jul 92 12:00:12 GMT

erc@unislc.uucp (Ed Carp) writes about partners of survivors, talking
about how hard their job is, and making them sound a little too much
like angels for me to stomach.  Maybe it's just my bias, as I explain
later on.  Some point-by-point comments, for the audience, and for Ed,
if he wants them:

>I have walked down the road a ways with a few survivors.  It's like
>walking a tightrope - you have to be very perceptive, very alert, very
>understanding, and very empathic.  You have to be all of these things--
>say/think/feel/do the right things at the right times.  Your timing
>has to be precise.  You have to know when to care and when not to.
>When to love and when not to.  When to hold, and when not to.  When
>to listen and respond to the cries for help inherent in "leave me alone" --
>and when to just leave the survivor alone.  You have to be more than a
>little bit psychic (and being telepathic helps, too!).  Knowing that at
>any moment a wrong look, a wrong touch, a wrong word could trigger
>your partner to dump you - perhaps forever.

As a survivor, as a human, I don't want my friends and lovers walking
a tighrope around me -- the tension would drive them crazy, unless
they thrived on it.  If they thrive on it, they are thriving on my
pain, and we have a serious conflict of interest.

Yes, I'm hypersensitive in some areas.  It wont take you too long to
learn where those areas are and avoid them.  (I know it can be a
problem when one of the areas is sex, and sex with me is important to
you, but that's the way it is.  Maybe you can find an area that's
undamaged.  Why is sex so important to you anyway?)  

Of course, if I'm using you to push my buttons, as part of a
destructive pattern or as part of my healing process (kind of like
scratching), I'll be manipulating you in such complex ways your
telepathy isn't going to help.  Sorry.  Good luck dealing.


>I don't think survivors understand how tough the job is, being their
>partner.  All they can see is the abuse - they can't see how their reactions
>to that abuse hurts those who love them.

Please don't generalize like that.

Many surivivors see very clearly how tough if it is to be their
partner, when partner after partner gives up.  Also, many people
exclusively date survivors of similar (or complementary) abuse,
whether they know it or not.  Who is being tough on who, here?

>I dated a woman two years ago
>who had been severely molested by her uncle - abuse that had lasted for
>years.  I was kind, gentle, caring, compassionate - those very qualities
>in me triggered her to push me away.  Why?  Simple - my kindness, etc.
>were the same traits her abuser displayed in order to get her to trust
>him enough for him to "do his thing" to her.

I'm sorry.  :-( 

I tend to fall in love primarily with young men who are visibly
tortured by the remains of their childhood sexual abuse.  I've seen
them attacked by their ghosts and forced to reject me to save
themselves.  It hurts like hell.  (And it forced me to questions why I
was falling in love with them, and begin the long road of my own
recovery.  I'm about 17,000 miles down that road know.  Does someone
have a map handy, so I can see how much farther I have to go?  :-)


>Ed Carp, N7EKG     erc@apple.com                801/269-8125

	-- sandro