Abuse survivor Rob Brown kept his secret hidden from his family for years. When he finally told, he realized that it may have been too late for his marriage.
You don’t just blurt something like this out. I mean jeez…what I’ve been doing for 20 years has been working! Why would I just throw a great-big wrench into the gears? It would be the death of the best relationship of my life.
I love this woman beyond words! Imagine that! We met at Business School instead of a freakin BAR! I’ve waited so long to find the right person. I prayed fervently to meet someone like her. Everything is perfect about her. She’s simply the most amazing person I’ve ever met.
Everything is perfect about HER.
Lots of things are completely f**ked about ME!
No one can handle news like that. Its one of those things that was never supposed to happen! But I was a wimpy-boy, a colossal loser…at complete freak to allow that to happen without being reported, stopped, avenged…allowed to ever happen to begin with. I simply must never let her know. As planned, I’ll take it to the grave.
Oh God! Will she figure it out? Will she decipher from years of intimate behavior that I was raped over and over again by older boys? Will she figure-out that I was forced to provide oral gratification for them…that I can’t get these f**king images out of my head?
She wonders why I cry for weeks about a murdered or stolen child. She does not “get” why I sit-up all night drinking about 10 nights per year.
If she finds-out, she’ll believe everything conventional wisdom says about guys like me: “Destined to molest!” “Certainly Gay!” “Musta liked it if he didn’t report it.”
Your first 1000 orgasms were with older boys? WTF? C U L8R Rob!
The Sex and Couples’ Therapists figured it out in about 15 minutes; each and every one of them. They would then look me square in the face and say “Rob…man…you show ALL the signs of childhood sexual abuse…and its the only explanation for all of this!”
No, no, no NO! NOT ME! You’re wrong. I’m fine. If I tell her, I’ll lose everything! I’ll lose everything
In 2007, I told her. 18-years into a marriage that still makes me cry today from the perfect love I had for her, I told her.
I lost everything. I lost her.
So the meat of debate: When do you tell your future spouse or significant-other that you were sexually abused as a child? Should you even have a spouse or significant-other?
Image of locked gate courtesy of Shutterstock
Rob,
Just wanted to let you know…I appreciate you standing up and speaking out. Without brave men like you speaking up and shining a light, I may not have ever been able to find my way out of the darkness surrounding my own experiences. I owe more than thanks but I hope for now it will suffice. Thank-you.
Rob, I cannot fathom what you have been through. I hate that this broken world injures people like you’ve been injured. Check out http://www.voicetoday.org for a place to connect in changing laws, perceptions and lives.
BTW: just for the record: I never speak of or describe the pure fkg hell that my life is. The abuse made me into a very flawed, very fkd-up person who ought to have had the good sense to shut up about everything and stick with the drugs and alcohol. But when dealing with the normal public, the topic-less public, I sanitize the dialogue. I see KA’s logic. If I’m already fkd-up, i ought to remain quiet or lie about the weather on the other side. Then i ought to have the good sense to die. After all, about 50%… Read more »
Please don’t listen to one commenter on a random website… Even if it’s the website I’m the editor of. You know what’s best, talk to your own therapist or group, and forget the people who are so insensitive that they would EVER think it’s okay to comment like that on a post that is this raw and this open.
Rob,
I think your post is incredibly raw and brave. I have to admit, naively, that I wanted a surprise “happy ending.” I am not a survivor of abuse, and your article made me consider if I contribute to a culture in which survivors feel unable to express and process. My heart hurts for you. I don’t think that you have done anything to hurt abused kids. Thank you for your post.
I have not meat such a person yet…such child. I’ve not seen one rape victim, not one exploited little girl, one daddy-touched little boy…not one uncle fondled victim yet who does not have to deal with it for recovery. I HEAR that some actually get through to the other side. I’ve NEVER met them. So if I tell them: “it cool kids, what uncle did is not bad…its nothing to be concerned with,” I’m also giving license to NAMBLA and Uncle Touchy. But telling me I’m hurting abused kids…that hurts about as much as the moment the sheriff entrapped me… Read more »
Whatever way we look at it their lives will be affected , but yes, they may well be able to get on with it and live happy lives. I certainly hope to God they can.
Rob, I am SO sorry this happened to you. You were NEVER to blame. You were the victim. Your words: ‘But I was a wimpy-boy, a colossal loser…at complete freak to allow that to happen without being reported, stopped, avenged…allowed to ever happen to begin with.’ How could you stop it? How could you tell? The perpetrators know exactly what they are doing. They know exactly how to keep abused children in their chains of fear and guilt. They are experts at it. And they are 100% to blame preying on vulnerable children. I am SO sorry you lost the… Read more »
I’ve been fighting for child rights, education and protective laws for years now. I figure I’m the guy who can climb down into the sewer and not puke. There have been few other volunteers (if any). I do this all over the country and make some noise internationally where possible. I visit with and lobby US Legislators, but I found that this supposedly educated and enlightened town in which I live has its head three-feet in the sand. Their apathy has destroyed SO many lives. Its the Sandusky Syndrome all over again. The town’s leaders and framers HATE (H A… Read more »
Well done you! And you are not alone. There are many of us gloablly working for children’s rights and sexual abuse prevention education. One person is never to small to cause havoc: ever been in a dark room with a mosquito? Please check out our website: http://www.somesecrets.info for a children’s book on sexual abuse prevention education. I am a teacher and author, and like you I will not stop until parents look this issue square in the eye and teach body safety to their kids just as they teach water and road safety! We can’t leave kids unarmed. It is… Read more »
It might be worth looking into the legal side of it. In England, local authorities are liable to be sued if their employees abuse children that they have met at work, (Schools, youth groups, parks ect…). These payouts often reach hundreds of thousands of pounds. Also in the US, there are now criminal cases against “non-offending” officials who enabled child abuse, the councillors may be putting themselves at risk of prosecution if they wilfully fail to protect children. In my opinion “It’s up to you Steph, I Don’t care.” is wilfully failing to protect, and if someone gets abused he… Read more »
Rob, that is so awful…I am so sorry to hear that happened to you… I heard from a homeopath teacher that stuff like this you can suppress but then it comes out in different ways…sort of like the steam that comes out of the ground before a geyser erupts… I had to tell my BF (later my husband) over 2 decades ago about my abuse [ I was sort of forced to since my abuser wouldn’t let me go and did a smear campaign on me at my grad school]…I told my new BF that if he didn’t want to… Read more »
There certainly are many in our lives that don’t want to hear or even think about “it” for a moment. I would love to have the brass to reply to their verbal objections with “yeah…imagine living with a head full of those memories at ten years-old…and then realizing that it actually happened to you.” The inability to drill a hole in my head and scrape-out all that horror and filth meant that I had to find other ways. God tried to show me some ways, but I chose the easy way: drugs and alcohol. Conventional wisdom is not always wrong,… Read more »
Rob– Your story is so horrible, as was mine…but my abuser did not completely destroy me…although I think he wishes he did (which is probably why he came to check on me and stalk me a few years ago)…. Seeing a glimpse of him again after so many years triggered a flood of repressed emotions and memories….I really thought if I pretended my life was always normal that I could just function normally in life, but it sprang up like a Jack-in-the Box to torture me daily….I was having panic attacks and the way it finally went and left me… Read more »
You can’t wait til you’re perfect to start living your life. Not that you should set out to get married or to avoid it, when you realize that you’re still affected by abuse in your childhood, just to deal with what is. I’m married and we are both in therapy. It’s not easy. We don’t seem to do anything the easy way. I guess it goes with the territory. You can’t lose perfect love because you reveal something that happened to you. You might lose a lot of things in your current life to this disease. You can heal, get… Read more »