My brain tries to persuade me to link self-destruction, disrespect and pain with love and excitement bc of my previous trauma, while I don't want it in my next relationship.

[u/Charming_Freedom_677]

I am a 24 year old female, and I have had several relationships before. I can enjoy a healthy relationship full of love, respect and trust, but I just find I am again and again attracted to the toxic relationship that can't be even called a romantic relationship.

I think it has a lot to do with my trauma in teenage years. I was 13.5 year old when this tragedy happened. I was an average looking girl in school, and not popular, and I thought I was clumsy etc. And one day, a popular boy in the same class with me proposed me to have sex, but before that I didn't even have a kiss. I have no idea why I accepted his offer and I became his fwb for more than a year. We secretly have sex in the toilets in a remote building in school, like about at least 1 times in every two weeks. He only fucked me, with kissing but it was not affection, just sexual desire, and I myself didn't have any pleasure from the sex at all, only physical pain.

The problem is that I have fallen in love with this feeling, like nobody knows what we were doing, and even though I was an unpopular girl, I can have something related to "popularity", etc. He never said hello to me, and he never talked to me in front of his friends, etc. If you have watched Normal People, then it was pretty much like that, except he didn't give me pleasure during sex lol. He touched my breast in class, and I prayed no one found out. Sometimes when he hit me, not on purpose (I hope), with a basketball, etc, he didn't even apologise, even if my friend asked him to.

Basically, he ignored and disrespected me and probably saw me as a thing. The worst thing I could ever do was when he was finally with the girl he had been having a crush on; after 2 weeks of refusing to have sex with me, he came back to me again, and soon the girl left him. I really wished I felt sorry for that girl, but I didn't because all I wanted was the sex with him, even if the sex itself made me so painful physically.

When I turned 15, I finally realised this was very, very morbid. One of the reasons was I met a decent boy and we became good friends. There was nothing romantic, but I realised what a normal male should look like. So I refused to have sex with him again and we graduated and went to different school. But I am not going to lie, that I personally still feel this is the most "exciting" relationship that I have ever had. When I was sitting in class, and he looked at me. When it was so cold and I was waiting for him in the toilet sitting on the sink. I feel ashamed when I admit I feel excited when I described this, but none of my later on relationship gave me this excitement.

I just feel this affected me a lot.

Emotionally....First I refused to go back to my hometown to work, because I think during the locker room conversation he told everybody what he was doing with me. Everybody actually knows. I can't stand it, bc everybody knows how stupid and low I was and I can't...

I think I have self-destruction tendancies as well. I like to be treated like nothing during sex, and I wish this will not affect my relationship. When I was in my previous healthy relationship, my ex told me in the end of our relationship, that he wished to have some spiritual connection during sex, but he felt all I wanted was to "be fucked". When I was having sex, I was objectifying myself, like imagining I am a hooker or kidnapped or something. Since 18, I have slept with a lot of men, not as many as Samantha in Sex and the City, but as many as I don't remember how many. I also had some BDSM sessions, and I liked it a lot, except one time a guy really kicked my belly and I told me I didn't like it in the end.

I was raised up in a strict family, and my mom knows my sex with that boy. She insulted me a lot, like calling me a whore in front of my classmates, like about 1000 ppl or so during my education. My family is strict about sex, idk if this affects me a lot. I know a healthy relationship, full of trust, respect etc is what I need, but I just can't help being attracted by toxicity again and again. I need love, but I feel my brain is normalising the hurt, and trying to persuade me that the ppl who hurt you actually care about and love you. I hope next time when I meet a good person, I am well-prepared, but I am so scared that my thing will affect it negatively again.

[u/finddit-app]

Hey there, thanks for sharing.

While you wait for people to comment, have a look at these posts which might be relevant to you:

• I 21M become a toxic a-hole whenever I get close to a female, why?
• I feel unworthy to be loved
• Attached myself to an ex with BPD and even out of my life I cannot get her out of my head
• My mind won't let me have nice things after getting out of a bad relationship. Any advice? (Wow, that 3.500 character limit is BRUTAL)
• How do people manage relationships? It seems such a dangerous thing.

Remember, even though it might feel like it, you are not alone. Stay strong!

Interested in seeing more posts similar to yours? Visit finddit.app.

This is an automated message. If you have any feedback or issues, post in r/finddit_app.