“Can we slow down?”: What it’s like having sex again after sexual trauma

Content warning: Sexual assault and trauma.

It took me four years to realise that what I’d been through was sexual trauma. It was just under a year into my current relationship when I had the revelation.

I knew that my sexual past prior to our relationship was littered with deeply unpleasant experiences, but it took me a long time to be able to accept the whole truth, and its darkest parts – to recognise all the consent that wasn’t given, all the fear I’d chosen to forget, and all the pain I’d bottled up.

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Up until that point, my partner and I had a very active and relatively uncomplicated sex life (well, I felt uncomplicated). But it turns out that trauma always has a way of catching up to you. The first sign that my relationship with sex was fractured was when my partner and I took a break from physical intimacy.

Life was busier than usual, so sex was momentarily off the table with our time and energy stretched so thin. The first night we tried to be intimate again after a couple of weeks of abstinence, I couldn’t stop laughing in discomfort.

Understandably, my partner was confused and a little crushed, but I didn’t have the words to explain what I was feeling. All I could manage was, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why”. 

Over the next few months, my response to sex eventually devolved into dissociation – I was there and not there at the same time, floating outside of my body, completely detached. After that came a strong physical aversion. In bed, blurry visions of my past started swimming around in my head. I was trying not to cry out when he went to touch me. Instead, I would just roll away from him and sob.

Starting to panic that we weren’t having ‘enough’ sex, I eventually tried to soldier past all that was holding me back mentally. But this time my body put up the fight, and everything my partner tried was physically excruciating. My body was clearly trying to tell me something, and finally, I surrendered and listened. Once I started listening, I couldn’t help but hear it in every bodily movement, across every inch of my skin: ‘You’re not okay, and we need help’.

Asking the experts

Selina Nguyen, a relationship therapist and sexologist at Good Vibes Clinic, affirms that these are all ways in which sexual trauma can arise for victims/survivors. “These all come under the umbrella of being in fight, flight or freeze mode, and being over your emotional threshold,” Selina says.

“Your rational brain shuts down and goes into survival mode. With all of this, there can also be a narrative in our minds about being broken, damaged or selfish even, and while absolutely none of them are true, the shame around it can make it all very overwhelming.” 

Georgia Grace, a certified sex coach with specific training in sexual somatics, explains it further. “Often what will happen to someone with trauma is the nervous system thinking and feeling like the threat is still present,” she says. “They might say ‘I know my current partner is safe, I know that this is something that I want to engage with and experience, but there is something in my body that is telling me that this is unsafe.’” 

Seeking help

When looking at what first steps we can take to heal the body and mind when it comes to sex, both Selina and Georgia are quick to recommend therapy. A therapist can guide you, at your own pace, to understand your triggers and relearn intimacy. If you can’t access therapy, free support groups and helplines are a great place to start.

Both professionals also stress the importance of physical practices such as meditation, dance, running or yoga, or self-regulation techniques such as holding comfort items or altering your body’s temperature, which can get you reconnected with your body and stabilise your nervous system. Working on somatic techniques, such as reading non-verbal cues or creating a sense of safety by just starting with lying naked with no touch, and doing this with your current partner/s can also be helpful, they note.

Ella, 22, also knows what the body’s responses to sexual trauma can be like. After leaving a sexually abusive relationship, she had to find a way back to not just sex, but relationships too. “When something like this is done by the person who is never supposed to hurt you, it is hard to imagine ever trusting someone in their position again,” she tells me.

“I have a new partner who is aware of the assault and is extremely conscious of it in our sexual relationship. However, there are still frequent periods where I will be unable to have sex without having a panic attack or becoming dissociative, and this can last for weeks on end. I spent a lot of time feeling guilty and weak, tearing myself down constantly for not being able to move on with my life.

“It felt as though the trauma had rearranged and rewritten my DNA. The advice I would give to anyone in that position is to completely let go of the pressure you have put on yourself to function at a normal level. You can’t. Listen to your body and what it needs. I made it my mission to give myself as much love and care as possible, and to only do things that made me feel joyful and at peace.”

Finding your own path

Learning to listen to your own body might just be the key to healing because there’s definitely no right or wrong way to go about it. In some instances, trauma survivors even seek sex more than ever as a way to amend their sexual attitudes. “There is never a one-size-fits-all for anything in the mental health or sexology space,” Selina says.

“Whether it happened twenty years ago or last month, there’s also no time limit or magic point where it just stops affecting you. We know the basics and the common approaches that have been shown to work – therapy, self-regulation techniques, leaning on your support system, communication – but everyone’s experience and sexuality are so incredibly individual and varied. 

“It’s really well known that we need to work with the body with trauma,” Georgia explains. “But it’s also just as useful to acknowledge that safety and pleasure and intimacy and connection and joy are also experienced in the body. If you’re ready to start being intimate with your own body, or other people, know that there are many accessible and practical things you can do to feel safe in your body and good in your relationship/s.” 

Coming to terms with what happened to me was horrifying, to say the least, but knowing I can experience the pleasure I’ve never realised I’m able to have in my sex life gives me a renewed sense of hope. Being with a partner who is considerate, gentle and willing to take on his own set of responsibilities when it comes to my healing, and being armed with the courage and wisdom of other women around me, I’ve slowly begun to reclaim what was taken from me. I say it over and over again until I’m out of breath: ‘My body is my own’.

This article was originally published on October 5, 2022.