Boyfriend having troubles dealing with rape...

[kurty2k]

I've been with my boyfriend for over 3 months now and he's told me a lot. He's 19 - i'm 17. When he was a lot younger he was raped by a distant family member. He's having trouble dealing with it, especially sexually. I'm stuck with what advice I can give him as I've never been through this or come across anyone else that's been raped. He says everytime something sexual happens the rapist is in his mind and stops. How can I help him get over this? What can I say to him that will help him and not just the usual stuff that people say like 'you'll be fine' etc. etc. Please help - I don't want to be seen as helpless.
Thanks [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif[/img]

[diana_holbourn]

A couple of things that have worked for people:

If you&#39;re referring to him having sex with you, it could help if he tells you every time he&#39;s beginning to have a flashback, and you stop and turn the light on, talk to him, reminding him that it&#39;s only you, and getting him to look at you and touch your face, to try to bring him out of the flashback by being reminded that it&#39;s only you. Also, if partners can say loving words often during sex, it can focus the other person&#39;s mind on the present more.

Another thing that can help is if partners don&#39;t do anything during sex that would make their partner feel restrained, like holding their hand or anything. And if they can always be in a sexual position where they&#39;re reassured that they could escape if they wanted to, that can help.

However, if you&#39;ve only been together around three months, it won&#39;t mean you&#39;re weird or anything if you ease off on the sexual aspect for some time and focus on other things you can do together that you&#39;d both enjoy.

What other things is he having trouble with?

Has he tried a helpline for male rape survivors?

[diana_holbourn]

Incidentally, there are more suggestions on dealing with flashbacks in general in part 2 of the self-help thing I wrote on healing from the trauma of rape.

[kurty2k]

We haven&#39;t had sex yet, he told me instantly that he wouldn&#39;t be able to for a while and I accepted that. Just when he told me what happened I felt helpless as I didn&#39;t know how to respond, I didn&#39;t know what original advice I could give him, nothing. He thinks that the rapist has ruined his life forever. He&#39;s talked to a lot of people, counsellors, parents, ex&#39;s etc. He doesn&#39;t want to talk to anyone else so I&#39;m basically his aid - and I don&#39;t know what I can do to help.

[diana_holbourn]

His life doesn&#39;t have to be ruined forever. One thing that might help is if you try to get him to imagine what his future might be like without the problem, by asking him what would be different about it. You could suggest he writes a letter to himself, imagining it was five years on into the future and he&#39;d overcome his problems, and everything was going really well for him. He could imagine how he&#39;d feel if he was feeling at his best, and the things he&#39;d be doing, no matter what they were. Then he could describe in the letter how he got to the stage where he was really enjoying life and felt different. It might help him think of what he needs to do to make the difference in his life. Even if he doesn&#39;t think it&#39;s possible at the moment that his life could be better, if you could encourage him to imagine how it would be if it was, and then how he will have got to the stage where it&#39;s so much better, it could help him be more optimistic.

Then he can take gradual steps working towards the enjoyable state he imagines being in in his letter. When he&#39;s decided how things could be if they were going really well, you could ask him what&#39;s the first little step he&#39;d have to take to start off in the direction he wants to go in, or how he&#39;d know the first signs that he was beginning to get there were happening.

You could ask him if he thinks any little signs are happening already. There may be days when he doesn&#39;t feel quite so bad. If he can start looking out for times when he doesn&#39;t feel so bad, and write them down, and think about what makes those times different from those where he feels bad, it might help him work out what he could do more of to make himself feel a bit better.