How Do Men Deal With Sexual Abuse? Guest Paul Gilmartin @mentalpod Shares His Story

I feel beyond blessed to have connected with comedian Paul Gilmartin (of Dinner and a Movie fame). Today, Paul shares with us a bracingly honest account of dealing with covert sexual abuse and incest. I honor Paul’s forthrightness and honesty in dealing with his past, and helping so many others with theirs. 

Paul hosts an incredible weekly, hour-long audio podcast, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, consisting of interviews with artists, friends and the occasional doctor. Paul has graciously offered to interview me, and we are going to make it happen in his L.A. studio live soon!

*Strong trigger warning for sexual situations and imagery.*

***

I’m a recovering alcoholic and addict, I’ve been diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression due to childhood adversity, and I’m a survivor of covert incest. Which is a lot to fit onto a business card. There’s a special font called “ehhhh.”

Covert sexual abuse or covert incest means stuff happened but none of it was overtly sexual, it was more sexualizing, discreet, disguised or purely emotional. In other words, I didn’t fuck my mom. There’s a sentence everyone should experience saying to a room full of strangers. But she’s always given off the vibe that she wants me.

How can I describe what it feels like to be an incest survivor? Well. I didn’t sign up for it. I didn’t want it. And extricating myself from it has been painful. It’s like LinkedIn.

Most people who know my mom would never guess, because abusers are narcissists and most narcissists present a different persona outside the family very, very well.

1 in 5 males have been sexually abused and 40 percent of their abusers are female; mostly moms, sisters and babysitters. I never knew the numbers were that high. To be fair, I was keeping track with an abacus. Today, I learn through the internet and a free public records checker that these numbers are correct and in some cases increasing. We can’t screen our mothers and sisters but it goes without saying, perform a proper background check when hiring child services. 

My mom feasted on my innocence; talking to me like a spouse starting when I was seven, breaking down and looking for me to comfort her yet not protecting me when I was being mistreated by adults right in front of her. She took my temperature rectally until I was eight, saying we needed to keep doing it this way because otherwise I might bite down on the thermometer. I remember feeling like I was being tricked but quickly banishing the thought.

There were often reasons for me to be naked or in my underwear that felt really sketchy and if I tried to cover up she would say “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” or “I saw it before you ever did,” making me feel like I was the one with the problem. My body never felt like my own.

Until I was 24 I let her grab my ass and tell me how attractive I was. Again she acted like I was being hypersensitive. After I moved out, she would leave messages saying “Hello Mr. Gilmartin, this is Mrs. Gilmartin” and say things like “Buy you a drink sailor?” The list goes on an on.

I don’t hate my mom. I feel sorry for her. But I don’t like her. I really really, really don’t like her.

I have never liked being around her. Ever since I was little, when I hug her I feel dead. I go numb like a possum. I shut down. I want to cover my genitals. I always figured I was just a bad son for not feeling differently.

I fear that people think I’ve abused children because of what happened to me. I haven’t; because I would never ever drive a van. Global warming is real.

Mostly, I craved approval and attention.

But incest has scarred my sexuality. It makes intimacy really, really difficult. Sexuality became a tool to numb myself instead of expressing love. I feel easily overwhelmed or even disgusted by the idea that my wife finds me attractive. It has nothing to do with her. It’s my fear of being devoured.

As incest survivors, we wind up having a really complicated relationship with our bodies because in many ways it’s a crime scene we can’t leave. Many of us experienced arousal during the abuse, right along with the feelings of being grossed out and frozen. It happened to me during a bath she insisted on giving me because I had gravel in my knee. I was 12.

If you’ve never experienced arousal AND being grossed out. It’s a roller coaster. Red Flags. Home of the half boner.

So I buried all these thoughts, feelings and the truths from myself and woke up every day with a suffocating feeling of doom. How can you not feel doomed when the person who was supposed to protect you is the person who tricked and used you?

Before I could put a name to what happened to me, I dealt with it by being a pig.

I objectified women and I know I hurt some. In hindsight, I couldn’t see them as people. They were bodies to simply soothe my unconscious pain. I’m still trying to forgive myself for it but it’s hard.

A lot of incest survivors are left with sexual fantasies that revolve around incest. This was never the case with me, until three years ago when I confronted what happened. Bit by bit all the memories were coming back but for some reason, I was now feeling their pain and giving them weight. I felt something inside of me breaking.

Starting in grade school I’ve always had a fantasy about going up to an older female and having her hold me while I cry. When I got into therapy I realized it had something to do with my mom not being there for me but I didn’t know what it was I wanted to say. As something in me started to break, I found the words.

***

I went to my wife and asked for a hug. I broke down and started sobbing. I said “My mom tricked me, me she used me. I was a good boy. I didn’t deserve it.”

My wife said, “I’ve been waiting 20 years for you to say that.” She had my mom pegged the first time she met her and saw how she touched and looked at me. I always protested that that’s just how my mom is. I finally saw that my wife was right. I wanted to die. That’s how much I hate when my wife is right.

I don’t know if I can fully describe the feeling of confronting a truth like incest. It must be what someone experiences when a parent you love dies. Or when a popular person unfollows you.

When the image of my mom as loving – that I had to create to survive – popped, I felt not only like an orphan but stupid. If I could have missed that truth, what else was I wrong about in the world? I felt like an astronaut whose lifeline had been severed and I was floating in space. Untethered is the best word I can use to describe it.

So incest fantasies were how I dealt with the pain. In some sick way, it soothed me. I read stories online about boys being abused by older females that should have made me cry but they turned me on. I talked to my therapist and discovered it’s a really common thing with people who have experienced sexual trauma. Then I talked about it on the podcast and hundreds and hundreds of people shared similar experiences, not just with incest, but all sexual trauma. Some rape victims can only orgasm thinking about being raped. If that’s not a T-shirt, what is?

One man whose red-haired babysitter used to make him finger her was addicted to pornography, specifically videos of fingers being inserted into women with red hair.

I learned we often want to re-experience a facsimile of what happened, but change some small part of it to give us the illusion of control. The mere act of fantasizing about it is a way of taking control back.

For me, I fantasized about a different mom or babysitter doing it to the 11-year-old me. I masturbated to this fantasy to soothe the pain. And then one day I realized I was turned on by the idea of masturbating in front of my mom. That too could go on a T-shirt but it feels more like a hoodie.

In my fantasy, the piece I wanted to change was I wanted to be the one to manipulate the situation into happening. Fortunately, it was easy to imagine her going along with it. Gross, but true. I also found it interesting that the idea of HER manipulating or initiating something made me sick to my stomach.

I didn’t judge myself for this. I found it a little funny. I would think to myself “I’m about to jerk off thinking about jerking off in front of my mom.” I didn’t shame myself.

A small part of me worries that you are judging me for my fantasies, but the love I have received from talking openly about it has far outweighed those negative thoughts.

There is nothing like a warm hug from a fellow survivor. Crying on each other’s shoulders. It’s a beautifully fucked up club with a horrible cover charge.  

As I’ve healed, the fantasy has decreased, thank God. But it’s still there. I have shared it with my wife, my friends and people in front of me at the post office.

It’s freeing to talk about and especially to laugh about.  I do it all the time now, especially on my podcast, the Mental Illness Happy Hour.

***

And the beautiful thing about surviving what I did, and opening up about it, is that people now open up to me about their pain, dark thoughts, fantasies, and confusion. Most sexual trauma doesn’t fit into a neat category, because most predators are trying like hell to avoid it looking like that, because then they can keep it hidden from you and probably themselves.

Actually, I wonder what she thinks about what she did. I’m afraid to confront her because the thought of being in the same room with her makes me sick. Unless I’m jerking off. Which would be awkward in a retirement home. I would have to do it when nobody’s around like at 2 in the afternoon when they’re all at dinner.

It doesn’t matter if the abuse that happened to you is prosecutable. That’s not the most important thing in healing. Especially since most people’s trauma isn’t prosecutable. Processing the feelings is what matters. Setting boundaries or cutting contact with toxic people and becoming your own best friend. That’s what we have control over.

I cut contact with my mom almost three years ago. Initially because of what she did, but ultimately, because of how she refuses to respect my boundaries today. It’s been the greatest vacation I’ve ever had.

If you’re out there and you relate, don’t keep it inside. Talk to someone. Talk to me. Email me. Just for the love of God, don’t do it through LinkedIn.

 

Originally written and read at Taboo Tales 12/3/14

 

Do you need help right now? Contact RAINN.org for both men and women, 24/7. 

More on the Mental Illness Happy Hour:

The show is geared toward anyone interested in or affected by depression, addiction and other mental challenges which are so prevalent in the creative arts.

Paul’s hope is that the show and this website will give people a place to connect, smile and feel the return of hope. The biggest myth about mental illness is that you are alone and there is no help.

Connect with Paul on Twitter at @mentalpod or Facebook on the Mental Illness Happy Hour page.

 

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images courtesy of Paul Gilmartin and Unsplash