What do you guys think about consensual incest?

[trenton]

9 hours ago, Joshe said:

Hi Trenton. Im sorry you went through all that. What made you decide to start talking about it?

For me it was the forgiveness exercise on Leo's channel. After Leo pressed for answers because of my investment in issues like these he suggested that I was carrying unbearable guilt and shame for what happened and thus started spinning stories about why incest is okay.

I then did the forgiveness exercise several times. I was once again trying to love myself which felt impossible all my life. After a ton of crying I came to a realization. I could never forgive myself for what happened because I wasn't the only one traumatized. My younger sister was also a victim and likely carrying the same weight I had been carrying. Forgiveness and healing was no longer about just me, because I needed to make amendments with others.

I mentioned this in my original thread about incest. I ended up stopping the forgiveness exercise and visiting my mom and sister to talk to them about this. Before I could let myself heal, I needed to make sure they could heal. Once I started telling my sister about what happened when I was six, she told me she didn't remember because she was only four at the time. I then started to see myself as more worthy of forgiveness because the situation did not carry the same weight to her. Meanwhile my mom was upset because she vaguely remembered what happened and didn't realize how much I was hurt all this time. Once again there was a lot of crying just from me.

My sister was able to sleep just fine at night while I was the one having nightmares and signs of ptsd over my mom applying adult standards to me as a child for these actions. I tried forgiving mom too, but I just feel hurt without any anger toward her despite how deeply she hurt me. I don't know how to make the hurt stop though. Being accused of sexually abusing my sister profoundly damaged my self esteem and trying to compensate my self worth through intelligence wasn't enough.

I ended up talking more once I was put in a recovery program for mental health. There was group therapy and others were afraid to talk about what happened to them. I told them this story along with two others involving sex trafficking and sexual assault. This made others in the group feel brave enough to discuss how they had similar experiences but never told anybody because obviously they would be judged harshly. Some of them talked about having sexual relations with other children when they were both under aged and how much they hated themselves when they realized how much they hurt the child.

Situations like these make you feel like you really are alone and need to suffer in silence. If the perpetrators regret their actions the event can cause them severe trauma too, but society views these people as irredeemable and unlovable. This is why this type of sexual trauma is not very well known or discussed. Most people wouldn't understand, so the secret is taken to the grave. There is a very powerful social stigma around this type of sexual trauma, and needs to be challenged in order to build a more understanding and loving society where people can feel safe to open up about these sorts of things.