Q: When I was a little girl, my aunt and uncle used to come out to the farm to spend the occasional weekend with my parents and me.
They brought with them their son, a young boy who was about five years older than I.
Everyone thought he was a terrific kid so when he said to my parents that he was going to take me downstairs to play house, it was passed off as something wonderful, that he would spend so much time with his little cousin.
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But when he and I played house, out of sight of everyone, he changed all of the rules. Playing house meant touching and being touched in all of our private parts.
I think I was seven years old the first time that he encroached on my privacy but even though I was so young, I knew that what he was doing was wrong.
It was awful, but I could not tell anyone. I was so overwhelmed with shame and guilt, I could hardly stand myself, let alone let anyone else know what was going on. The best that I could do was try to drive it from my memory and forget the whole thing.
He kept at it every summer vacation until I was 12, and I finally got either the courage or the desperation to chase him away.
Fast forward to today. I am 33 years old, married to a wonderful man but struggling with intimacy in our relationship. Whenever my husband or I get interested in our sexuality, all of those memories I built up throughout my childhood come flooding to the fore and guilt and shame comes right along with them.
My husband and I have had some sexual moments but not as many as he would like, and few with either the intensity or the ferocity both of us might enjoy.
After all of these years, I finally broke the other night and told my husband about my sexual history.
He was flabbergasted. He thinks that I should book some appointments with a counsellor and try to work out some of my feelings both about my sexuality and my cousin. That was 20 some odd years ago. Do you think that I will be able to put that whole thing behind me by spending time in therapy? I don’t know. I am looking for some reassurance.
A: What you are dealing with is the shame of sexuality, and all of it is wrong.
There is absolutely no way that a seven-year-old child should be held responsible for her older cousin’s assault on her sexuality. It is just simply wrong.
I hope you will spend time with a counsellor and I hope that the counsellor will help you understand just how much of a victim you were.
Perhaps then, instead of feeling shame, you will give yourself permission to feel angry.
It goes without saying that you have every right to be angry at your cousin.
You can be just as angry now as you could have been when you were seven and perhaps as you understand all of it a little better, you will not need to hide your sexuality behind the forgotten memories of an abused child.
You might question your mom and dad too, and his parents, if you get around to it. Where was everyone when this young boy was taking advantage of your innocence? Where was your protection? And where is your protection now when you and your husband struggle with intimacy?
You need to know that people love you and care about you and that all of that shame you harboured over the many years is a waste of time and energy.
The sad news is that you are not alone.
We do not have good statistical data but we know that many more people than we care to admit are lost in sexual shame.
If only we could get them to talk, such as you finally did with your husband, so much more misunderstanding would be resolved and the aura of shame permeating our sexual relations might dissipate.
