Covert incest and sexual exploitation (TRIGGER WARNING FOR CSA)

[kdke]

I just needed a place to get this off my chest. It's not always enough for me to talk about these things in therapy if that makes sense.

When I was 17, my mother suffered a stroke that caused a personality change. It was like she was a teenager again and she became opportunistic and reckless, but she also felt broken. She started to seek out sexual experiences with as many men as possible to validate herself, cheating on my stepdad in the process. It was hurtful to watch; it was like I had lost my mother and was suddenly living with a destructive older sister. But things started to become worse...

At one point, she pressured me into taking sensual pictures of her in lingerie, using fear tactics and lies to get me to do it. She told me it was for my stepdad, I guess to quell my conscience about it, but then started berating and attacking me for resisting. I was a very vulnerable teen, already beaten down through years of bullying. My mother started to isolate herself and then befriended one of my high school friends. I started to get more upset as they both dove even deeper into online sexual escapades together and then turned on me. They bullied me for not being ok with what they were doing, calling me a frigid *, a child, and telling me to "run off, the adults are playing."

I felt so abandoned and betrayed. I had no one to protect me from what was happening; my stepdad was allowing it to happen and told me to just deal with it. He was also emotionally and verbally abusive towards me. For me, I had to kind of choose which parent I wanted more in my life: my mom, my dad, or my stepdad. I chose my mother and did the only thing I thought I could do to win back her affection. I forced an interest in what she and my "friend" were doing and started to go down that rabbithole.

My mother started to introduce me to men she found on the internet so I could sleep with them... even men she had slept with already. She started sharing intimate details of her sexual experiences with me, and I was expected to participate in these conversations. She would buy me underwear, sex toys, condoms, and porn to use in my experiences, but after a while, things got even darker. I became competition, and she started to "befriend" a crush I had. They would talk a lot online, and she would threaten to sleep with him when I one of her sex buddies implied sexual interest in me. I would joke about the possibility since that was the dynamic I had become used to between me and my mother at that time, but she took it as a threat.

My intimate life was no longer just my own but was decided and manipulated by my mother for her own desires. I would try to escape and go my own way during this time through running off with a couple who held parties. Unfortunately, the girlfriend sexually exploited me, as well, by pressuring me to do things with her friends. My first time with another woman was through the coercion of this friend and it was traumatic.

All of this happened consistently for three years when my mom finally started to settle down. She ended up HIV+ and realized she had made some very bad choices to get herself there. It was sobering for her. I was deeply enmeshed in her life at that point, so I was relieved.

It took me several more years before I acknowledged these traumas and realize my mother had sexually abused me. I had always dismissed it called it a "wild" period in my life. But as I kept revisiting those memories and how she treated me, the men she threw me at any chance she could find; the complete loss of boundaries and things she would say to me, it became very obvious what I had gone through. It's been very difficult for me to accept this reality, and I'm still trying to piece things together and get used to revealing certain details (I didn't write down everything here, sadly). But yeah... thanks for giving me a place to air these kinds of things.

[radical]

I really feel for you.  I feel so sad that you went through this.  I know your mother wasn't able to be fully responsible for her behaviour, but want to say that this was horrendously abusive, a truly awful thing to have had to go through.
I'm sad too, that your stepdad was unable to be a responsible parent and step in to protect you as you deserved and needed, and chose instead to dump some of his own bad feelings on you.

I feel sad too, that when your mother "settled own" it seems she was ony able to recognise how her choices had harmed her. 

[Deep Blue]

Cadie,
Thanks for sharing this part of your story.  It's so hard when the people we love the most are the ones pushing us into darkness.  Those wolves in sheeps clothing can morph our whole perspective at a young age. 

Much love to you as you sort through this.  Safe  if it's ok.

Deep Blue