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I Feel Like I’m a Terrible Person

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From the U.S.: I’ve always been known as the girl who’s selfless, caring, and sweet. So, I meet a girl four years ago. She awakens my sexuality. I think I love said girl and I’m really happy with said girl. Said girl introduces me to many friends and we all form this strong bond. A friendship we all deeply loved, trusted, and admired. I’ll call this said girl B. Now, one night when B isn’t around I’m hanging out with other friends (and this is about 3 years ago) and this girl, I’l call her Q, kisses me and it’s /wonderful/. I loved it. Q ends up coming over to my home and she has sex with me. She tells me, ‘What if we were together?’ and I get so happy. I stop ties with B. But then…Q decides that she wants someone else and I immediatly run back to B. I do this for years to B. I tug her along, tell her false promises, and when she doesnt want to deal with my crap I go to Q

I switch between them like a leech and the friendships of all these people slowly fall apart because of me and the drama I cause. Because I’m so afraid to be alone and now Q and B are gone. And one of those other friends from the broken group tells me, ‘I’m a horrible, selfish, manipulative person.’These friends are all meeting up in less than two weeks and I’m invited. I’m mortified because when I see these people not ‘wanting’ me I get such a sick and hurt feeling in my stomach I really feel like I could kill myself and I’ve attempted in the past when they didn’t before. What do I do?

This all started when you were only 13! You are right that you have been discovering your sexuality. The problem isn’t that you’ve been attracted to two people. It’s normal to try out different relationships during the teen years. In fact, it’s an important part of figuring out who you eventually want to be with. (It used to be called “dating”.) The problem is that you haven’t been honest with the other girls or, especially, with yourself. With each switch, you acted as if you were making a commitment. No one is ready to do that in the early teen years. You and the others are no exception.

You haven’t been alone in the drama. It’s not all your fault. The other girls are participating in the on-again, off-again nature of the relationships. They too are discovering their sexuality. They too aren’t ready to settle into an exclusive relationship, however much they think want one. The result of your collective confusion, experimentation and intensity is the emotional roller coaster you describe. No wonder the group is breaking apart.

I think you should give yourself a break from sexual relationships for a while. The neediness you bring to relationships guarantees that they will fall apart. You need to make friends with yourself so you can enjoy time when you are alone.

Develop your interests. Take your schooling seriously. Set some worthwhile goals and work toward them. Then work on developing some solid friendships. Spend time having just plain (non-sexual) fun with people. There is no reason to get so intensely involved at your age.

If you can’t do this on your own, I do suggest you see a therapist. It may take more than personal resolve to get out of the pattern of trying to fill whatever hole you have inside with intense and probably inappropriate relationships.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

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Over-Attached to a ‘Friend-with-Benefits’

by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP
written by Daniel J. Tomasulo, PhD, TEP, MFA, MAPP

I am a male, and so is he. We were both teenagers, one apparently experimenting and the other finding his sexuality. It took years before we kissed. We were around 13-14 at the time.

Every weekend after I was at his, two teenagers fumbling around and discovering themselves. I think I always loved him, right from the start, but never realised it. We parted ways for a few years, but since we attend the same school, and had the same friends, we became close 2 years later.

Once again, albeit older (both 16), we started sexual interactions again. We had only been /slightly/ close for <1 week until it started. This time it was only me doing things to him, with nothing in return. It wasn’t ideal – but I loved him; I would do anything for him. I told him that I was gay, and being the genuine person he is, he was totally accepting. He told me he felt only this way about me: 1 boy alone. But he said he did not love me, and that he felt guilty just using me – but I kept it going.

Just below the surface of his exterior personality, if you are looking just hard enough in the right places, you can see that he has an utterly dominant disposition about him.

He broke it off with me after another few weeks of a one-way sexual arrangement. I still love him, it has been 5-6 months. My exams are failing because of him. I am utterly infatuated after only a small lust. I have had this problem in the past, becoming overly obsessed with only a slight friendship and it always ensures it fails.

He was, and currently is, the only person to have ever understood me. I am so alone in this world, even more-so without him. As cliché as it is: nobody truly understands me.

He left me, after having sexually used me for a few weeks, for a girl. I have turned to alcohol, and 2 particular drugs to escape him. He is in my dreams; my waking thoughts; my vision; my life. I am overly attached to a lustful, borderline abusive, non-existent relationship. My anxiety is through the roof, I talk to nobody and have deleted all social media purposely. I like being alone, but this loneliness isn’t what I want. I want to be around only one: X.

What can I do? (From Northern Ireland)

This is a powerful question — thank you for asking it. Many people mistake a person’s potential for their reality. It seems clear that you are drawn to what could be in him but is not. The fantasy that this is a healthy love needs to be challenged directly. The relationship only works because it is lopsided. The more you do, the less he has to. As you rightly pointed out, this has never worked for you in the past and is not likely to work out now. The work you need to do is on grieving. Grieving adequately this misperception is essential. The longer you isolate yourself the worse it gets.

I would highly recommend you find a number of social situations to engage yourself in. Right now, you’re looking to be with as many people as possible — not sexually, but socially. The work is on grieving and learning to engage with someone properly. This has to be done in action — through events. Simply talking about it won’t provide the shift. I would try this approach on your own for a little while, but don’t be afraid to ask for some professional help if your own efforts have been paid off.

Wishing you patience and peace,
Dr. Dan

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I Lost My Virginity to My Step-Brother, Was It abuse?

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From the U.S.: Around age 7 my father began a serious relationship with my now step-mother. I also began to become sexually curious at this time. My step siblings and I would play some inappropriate games, such as spin the bottle, while exploring this curiosity. For my youngest step brother and I, this progressed over the years into a sexual attraction. By the time I was 13 we began to have oral sex and by age 16 we had intercourse.

Eventually, we developed our own sexual relationship with other people. There were times that he could come into the bathroom while I was showering, shut the lights off, get in with me and use the gap in my thighs to pleasure himself and then just leave… or ask me to give him oral sex until I got too exhausted to keep telling him no and caved. Anytime I brought friends over, he would try to seduce them and then beg me to come into his room later that same night.

One Christmas Eve when I was 16 he gave me a hicky the size of a silver dollar. Christmas morning when everyone asked me what was on my neck, I told them that HE DID IT to me. My step brother denied it and my family never talked about it again. However, dad and step-mom did move my room upstairs next to theirs instead of in the basement by him.

I felt, at the time, that I was in love with him and prayed over and over again that somehow we could be together. After every encounter I had with him I felt used and worthless; but I still wanted to do whatever it took to get him to love me. I just wanted my step-family to love me.

I carry those feelings with me to this day and I find it very hard to be sexually active without self medicating with alcohol first. I no longer have any relationship with that side of my family and, at 30, I’m still carrying this burden alone. I can not afford to seek professional help at the moment, but I am interested in writing a letter to my dad. I think that, that would be a great first step in healing. But, how do you even start a letter like that? Was it even abuse? Why didn’t they do anything to stop us?

There isn’t a simple answer to any of this, but I will share a few thoughts. It looks to me that what maybe started out as kid curiosity developed into an abusive relationship as the years went on. Lots of kids experiment with their sexuality with siblings or friends when they are young. Exploration of each other is not abuse; it’s innocent curiosity. But by the age of 7, most kids have been taught about physical boundaries and know that they are being “naughty” if they engage in more experimentation. It quite naturally stops.

You didn’t say if there is an age difference between you and the steps. If they were the same age, we could see the initial incidents as experimentation among innocent peers. But if they were older and getting you to play spin the bottle, they knew better and were using you.

As for the step brother who continued the behavior despite your efforts to stop it: That is abuse! There was nothing loving about it. He was using you for his own pleasure. The fact that he also made sexual overtures to your friends suggests that he had (and maybe still has) serious mental health issues.

Please don’t beat yourself up about what happened. Your responses at the time are not unusual or abnormal. Your participation does not mean that you are at fault.

You were desperate for the love of your family. It’s not unusual at all for a child to be confused about the difference between real love and sexual manipulation. Kids who need love will often comply with sexual demands — and may be led to believe that having sex means they are loved. Bodies often respond even when the mind doesn’t want to, which can be terribly confusing. Kids who don’t feel safe enough to tell adults (or who are convinced the adults won’t help anyway) feel helpless and often don’t tell.

As for your parents: They managed their fears about what might be going by moving you to a room next door. They may have thought or hoped that would stop whatever was happening. From their point of view, they were protecting both of you. It wasn’t enough, but it was an effort.

It makes absolute sense to me that you are having difficulty with sex and sexuality so many years later. As you have found, self-medicating with alcohol may make the act of sex possible but it does nothing to deepen love.

You do need treatment in order to reclaim your sexual self. You do need treatment if you are to trust another person enough to enjoy true love and intimacy. Fortunately, there are alternatives to paid therapy. Here is an article from our archives that might be helpful. I also suggest that you join one of the forums here at LifeHelper.

I caution you about writing a letter to your father without the support of a knowledgeable therapist or counselor. It’s important to have clear goals and to be prepared for whatever reaction such a letter might cause. It’s possible he will respond with loving kindness and an apology. It’s also possible he will deny what happened or blame you or not respond at all. Any such negative response might be re-traumatizing.

Until you have more support, it might be more helpful for you to write the letter but not send it. Sometimes putting things down on paper helps people get something off their chest. It sometimes also helps the writer organize their thoughts and perhaps come to some new understandings.

This is a painful past. I doesn’t need to result in a painful future. With good support from a therapist, you can get through this and have the life and love you deserve.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

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My 7-Year-Old Is Being Inappropriate with Friends

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From the U.S.: My seven year old son had a friend over the other day and they were playing in his room. My husband went to check on them and heard my boy asking his friend if he could “lick his butt.” His friend told him no and my son told him he would give him all the money in his pocket if he agreed.

We were completely blown away. My husband asked our son to come downstairs and I took him in the kitchen alone. I told him that he knows that privates are not for other people to touch. And he should not be touching anyone else’s. He knows this and we have been very careful in teaching him about private parts and what’s appropriate. We have never made it seem shameful. I asked him were he had heard such a grownup thing to say. He told me that another friend of his asked him to do it and he did it.

I contacted this friend’s mom and told her what happened. She then apologized and told me her son has been molested before and is in counseling currently because of it. I wish she would have told me before I allowed him to come over and play with my son. They are the same age and he did not force my boy to do anything from the sounds of it. But my son is now doing the same thing with his other friends.

Should I be worried? I have talked to my son a lot about being appropriate with his friends since this happened. What should I do? Does what happened count as molestation? He said he liked it and I just don’t want him to alarm any other children or anything like that. Is this normal sexual experimentation? Please give me some advice. I don’t know what else I can do to avoid this happening again. Also, he has a one year old sister and is very curious about her privates when I change her diaper or bathe her. Is this something we should be worried about?

Yes, as a concerned parent, you are right to be concerned. But it’s important not to get hysterical. Your son isn’t a molester. He was repeating something that happened to him. Usually kids do this for at least one of two reasons: If the incident felt good, they want to feel those feelings again. If it made them uneasy, they repeat it in order to try to make sense of the experience. Both can be true.

There’s a fine line here: You need to be clear that private parts are private, but if you over-react you can make the incident far bigger than you want it to be.

Please give yourselves credit: You’ve done absolutely the correct things. You’ve talked to him. You haven’t shamed him. You let him know it was wrong. You contacted the other parent (who is in the same position you are — trying to help her son understand that it is not okay). Neither of you want to isolate your sons. Both of you have some parental work to do.

Please understand that your son liked it because sexual feelings feel good. He has been introduced to it much too early and has been overstimulated by the experience. He needs to understand that the feelings are normal but that sharing his body is for much later in his life. Meanwhile, teach him the “bathing suit rule.” Touching anything covered by a boy’s or girl’s bathing suit is entirely off limits unless it is by a doctor or a parent who is making sure he isn’t sick or injured.

His curiosity about his sister is probably normal. At his age, he understands that girls look different than boys but doesn’t know what that means. To answer his questions, try sharing this book: What’s the Big Secret?: Talking about Sex with Girls and Boys by Laurie Krasny Brown. Read it together and have some matter-of-fact discussions to satisfy his curiosity.

Let him know that he can always come to you with questions but touching others and being touched by others on his private parts is supposed to come much, much later in his life. It may be a good idea to give him some role playing practice in saying “no” if someone wants to touch him in his bathing suit area.

Then move on to other things that delight and excite your child so he has something else to think about and talk about. Do keep a watchful eye for awhile but resist the temptation to bring it up or remind him of the rules unless he gives you reason to. You want the incident to fade into the background.

If it looks to you like he can’t move on, please do get a consultation with a counselor who has experience working with kids and trauma.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

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Why Can’t My Boyfriend Accept My Past Relationships Are Past?

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From the U.S.: A few years ago, (5 or 6 years) when I was still trying to figure out who I was and what i wanted out of relationships, sex, etc etc I became very dear friends with a couple who were open-ish (wife is Bisexual and Husband is Heterosexual). The friendship started out as just a great platonic friendship. They’re both a little older than me so I would go to them with relationship struggles or just general life advisers and confidantes.

Well, the friendship was strong and when I started running into repeated relationship problems with people I tried dating I decided to take a hiatus from dating and instead just explore what I wanted. In that time I explored my sexuality a little with them. I learned a lot about myself in the safety of that arena. It did not take long. But I discovered I am in fact very heterosexual and monogamous. I also discovered other important things. A few years later the husband was lost tragically in a motorcycle accident.
I still have a beautiful friendship with the wife/widow.

Well, fast forward to this last year. I have now been dating a man exclusively for nearly a year. (she also has a new SO whom I’ve met and enjoy the company of). I moved in with my SO about two months ago. So, one evening last fall I was in a deep conversation about life experiences with him and I feel safe enough to vulnerably share the one experience I had with said friend and her late husband as I was exploring my own sexuality.

He shut down rather abruptly and proceeded to judge the late husband and his widow as having questionable characters etc…. i was irritated by this. We sort-of just walked away from that issue and haven’t gone back there.

Well, she is still my friend and I’ve insisted upon spending time with her (double dates as couples, etc.) He claims he likes her yet every time we see her within 24 hours he makes some judgmental comment about “Well, I can’t say I’m a fan of you being so close to someone you had that kind of relationship with” or “I can’t say I’m a fan of you’re little circle you have with them”.

After the husband died the friendship dynamic shifted significantly. Even before he died there was no intimate connections at all for over a year, everything slid back into respectfully platonic.

I don’t know what to do. Please help. I feel really angry and upset like I’m constantly having to choose which parts of me I can share and what I have to keep secret.

When people get together as adults, they each are likely to have had past relationships. While young, people are likely to have tried experiences and to have taken risks they would not take as adults. Once past 30, there is also a strong possibility of having loved and lost and loved again.

You can’t erase your past. Neither can he. While developing a new relationship, the important thing is not what we’ve done or who we’ve been with but what we have learned along the way to becoming our present self.

The current situation is difficult for you both. You don’t want to live your life always feeling like he may judge you yet again for something that is past history. If he can’t accept that your experimental stage was just that — a stage — then he will always be wondering if he will lose you to another threesome. That’s not a good way to live either.

It is unhealthy for you to feel that you have to withhold parts of yourself in order for your boyfriend to feel secure. You may have to take a step back in this relationship while your boyfriend thinks this over. Another option is to see a couples therapist to help you both get past this.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

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I Keep Dwelling on Past Mistakes

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From the U.S.: To preface this post, I suffer from anxiety and (I think) OCD as I’m constantly worrying/thinking about my actions or health. I’m not taking any medication, nor am I seeing a counselor; I am fighting these thoughts/feelings alone.

When I was 5-8 years old, my next door neighbor and I would sexually experiment with each other. Nothing serious, but we both see each other naked sometimes. Our parents found out and stopped the behavior.

Fast forward to when I was 13-16, I used to babysit for my younger cousins. One time, we were all wrestling on the couch (and their dog too) and I touched my younger female cousin’s butt. I don’t think I actually reached out to touch her, but it happened in the course of wrestling around. Then later (date/time/age unknown but within the provided range), I was watching them one night and I had a sexual thought about seeing a girl naked. My younger female cousin was upstairs sleeping so I walked upstairs to where she was. As I stood next to her and reached out, I realized in that moment what I was doing was wrong and inappropriate. I may have just grazed her pajamas before I retracted my hand and walked back downstairs.

I’ve never had any sexual thoughts about children or been attracted to them in any way. In fact, I haven’t really thought about these two instances until this week (7-8 years later). I’m a young, gay man typically interested in guys my age or a little bit older. Some of the guys I’m attracted to look younger (in the gay world we call them “twinks”), but I’m interested in all guys.

My family is close and I’d do anything for any of them and I would NEVER hurt them. These two instances of poor judgment are tearing me apart. Once this memory came back, I started research website surrounding sexual activity of teens and saw it was a time of sexual exploration.

I hope whoever is reading this would agree that I’m not a pedophile, nor am I crazy. I think at the time I was not fully considering what was right/wrong or the consequences of my actions. Being that I have anxiety and self-diagnosed OCD, I cannot let this go without hearing another person’s thoughts. I have never talked about this in my entire life. Thanks for your help.

No, I don’t think you’re a pedophile or crazy. You stopped yourself from acting on your impulses. You feel terrible that you even had the thoughts. But I do think you have significant OCD.

Most people are familiar with the most common manifestations of OCD like checking, ordering, and excessive cleaning. Less common is the kind of over-thinking you are reporting. That’s what the “obsession” in obsessive-compulsive disorder is all about.

The first question I asked myself when I read your letter was, “Why is this guy trying so hard to handle this on his own?” There is no need to suffer like this. There are effective medications and talk therapy approaches that can help you master your thoughts and live more comfortably.

I strongly urge you to seek out a mental health counselor for an evaluation and advice. It’s likely that a few months of therapy and perhaps some medication for the anxiety will bring this under control.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

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Am I Gay or HOCD?

by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker
written by Dr. Marie Hartwell-Walker

From a young woman in the UK: I am 18 years old and I do not know if i am bisexual or HOCD. I started getting sexual fantasies about girls when I was 12 years old. I thought its normal and im just experimenting and soon it will go away when i will reach puberty. It does not go away. I prayed God to remove this away from me, but it does not. As older i get i started liking girls more and not only sexually but emotionally. I tried to get rid of them, but i could not. I ask online for help, but they say to accept it. I am in relationship with a boy 3 years and i truely love him, but im sexually more attracted with girls than men. Am I HOCD or bisexual?

I’m sorry this is so distressing to you. Please understand that HOCD (Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is not a DSM 5 diagnosis. (The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that is used by psychologists to name and define psychiatric disorders.) Rather, it is a term that has shown up on the web to describe when a person has unwanted, intrusive thoughts about sexual preference/orientation. It is meant to distinguish between people who are actually heterosexual but are having unwanted obsessive thoughts from people who are in the process of coming out.

I have a problem with the HOCD label for young people. It is normal for young people to question their sexuality. It is normal for you to be somewhat “obsessed” with sex at your age. It is usual for teens to wonder whether feelings for someone of the same sex are a sign of homosexuality. It’s normal to “try on” alternative sexual identities by thinking and fantasizing about what it would be like to be with different people we know and care about. Sometimes it’s difficult to sort out whether feelings are a sign of a deep friendship, a crush, or a romantic attraction. Confusing things still further is that  a person’s sexual identity may be uncertain, certain, or fluid over time

I don’t think you are either gay or HOCD. I think you are a normal 18 year old struggling with defining herself in times that see a wide range of sexual behavior as being normal. It is usual to wonder about yourself when what is and isn’t moral or normal is so much less clear than it seemed to be in your parents’ generation. There is recognition now that who people are attracted to is determined by more than hormones and more than genitalia. Who we love is often determined by a complicated combination of biological and psychological reasons as well as our experiences with others.

I suggest you worry less about a label and go with your feelings for now. Over time, you will find out who you are and who you are most comfortable being intimate with.  If this continues to trouble you, a few sessions with a licensed therapist may help you delve more deeply into your thoughts and feelings about yourself.

I wish you well.

Dr. Marie

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