The following is intended for readers 18+

The summer I was nineteen, I researched and wrote a travel guide to Italy, journeying from Venice to the Cinque Terre armed only with a sundress and my handy dandy Macbook.

Experiencing sexual intimacy after violence may take time and the process of healing comes with lots of bumps in the road. But healing is possible, and you have a right to feel that your body is your home. In this post, I’ll offer some ways to start.

It’s often difficult for survivors to engage sexually after trauma.

Trauma is a complex beast, so it affects our sexualities in diverse and individual ways. These effects may show up right away, or years down the line. Some trauma-related symptoms you might experience include:

Survivors of sexual trauma are at an increased risk of a number of psychological conditions, like depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These can all affect your sex life. This is why it’s so important to find the support you deserve, from family and friends you trust and from a therapist sensitive to issues of gender and sexual violence.

The key? Listen to your body.

Whether and how you have sex should always be your choice. After experiencing sexual violence, you may want to have sex like you did before, only in certain ways, or not at all. All of this is okay. If, when, and how you have sex, it should be because you choose it, not because you feel you should or someone else pressures you.

And remember that if you don’t want to have sex, this doesn’t mean missing out on intimacy. There are many different ways to be physically and emotionally intimate with people you care about and to experience pleasure (cuddling, massage, or sumptuous romantic dinners, for example) whatever your desire for genital sexual intimacy.

Here are some ways you can begin connecting to your body again on your own terms, and engaging sexually if (and only if!) you so desire.

Remember: healing is a process.

I get it: When you’ve experienced something as difficult as sexual violence, it may feel impossible to imagine a future when you feel better. And it’s true that for many of us,healing from sexual violenceis a lifelong process.

It’s not easy and it’s not fair, but it is possible. And as you heal, you’ll discover the possibility for new and different kinds of intimacy, honesty, and pleasure. At the end of the day, your body is yours, it is amazing, and you deserve to feel comfort, power, and pleasure in every inch of it. We’re rooting for you.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

Articles contain trusted third-party sources that are either directly linked to in the text or listed at the bottom to take readers directly to the source.

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