Wes Woodland

“I Don’t Know If It Was Abuse”: Why So Many Male & Non-Binary Survivors Doubt Their Own Story

If you’re here because you’ve typed something like “Was it sexual abuse?” or “Does this count as abuse?” into Google, you’re not alone. One of the most common experiences for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse is doubt. Not just doubt about other people, but doubt themselves.

You might feel confused, you might minimise by telling yourself it “wasn’t that bad,” or you might feel guilty for even questioning it.

And yet something in you keeps circling back.

This uncertainty doesn’t mean you’re being dramatic, broken, or are trying to invent a problem. In fact, self-doubt is one of the most recognisable effects of grooming and trauma.

Let’s talk about why.

(Note on language:
In this post, I sometimes use phrases like “male survivors” or simply “survivors” for readability and flow. Sexual abuse affects people of all genders—including women, non-binary, and trans individuals—and each experience deserves care and respect. While I feel particularly passionate about supporting men (in part because men often face additional barriers to coming forward and seeking help), that focus is not an exclusion. If you are a woman, non-binary, or trans survivor reading this, you are absolutely included here.)

“But I Didn’t Say No”

Many survivors struggle with the idea that abuse must involve force or explicit resistance. You might think:

• I didn’t fight.
• I didn’t say no.
• I didn’t try to stop it.
• Sometimes I even went along with it.

But trauma responses aren’t limited to fight or flight. Our nervous systems are wired for survival, and for many people—especially children and teenagers—that survival response includes freeze, flop (the body shutting down and going unconscious), fawn (appeasing by being submissive), and friend (befriending the abuser in an attempt to stop the abuse from happening).

If someone older, more powerful, more experienced, or in a position of authority initiates sexual contact, your body may have gone into automatic mode. You may have prioritised staying safe, staying connected, or avoiding conflict.

That isn’t the same as consent. That’s adaptation.

Especially in situations involving grooming, affection, gifts, attention, or emotional closeness, saying “no” may not have even felt like an available option.

“My Body Responded—Does That Mean I Wanted It?”

This is one of the most distressing and shame-filled questions survivors ask, especially for men. You may have had an erection during the abuse, felt aroused, or experienced an orgasm. For many male survivors, these physical responses can create enormous confusion.

But here’s something important: the body can respond to stimulation regardless of whether you wanted what was happening.

The nervous system reacts automatically. Genital response is reflexive. It does not equal desire. It does not equal consent. And it does not mean you enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, many boys are socialised to believe that if their body reacted, they must have “wanted it.” That belief can create years of shame and identity confusion.

Trauma research—including work by clinicians like Bessel van der Holk and Babette Rothschild—has consistently shown that the body and conscious choice are not the same thing.

You body responding does not make you responsible.

“My Abuser Was a Woman—Can That Still Be Abuse?”

Yes.

There is a persistent myth that sexual abuse only happens to girls, or that boys should feel “lucky” if an older woman initiates sexual contact.

This myth harms countless men and is extremely damaging.

Abuse is defined by power, consent, age, coercion, and manipulation—not by the gender of the person who caused the harm.

For some male survivors, abuse by a woman can feel especially confusing. You may question your masculinity, may wonder whether you were supposed to want it, or may feel ashamed for not stopping it. Cultural expectations about what men are “supposed” to feel can silence you before you even begin.

None of this makes your experience less real.

“I Went Back, So Was It Really Wrong?”

Another common source of doubt. You might have:

• Returned to see them.
• Missed the attention.
• Felt attached.
• Felt special.
• Felt chosen.

That doesn’t cancel the harm.

Grooming often creates a bond. If someone gave you affection, validation, secrecy, or a sense of importance—especially if you were young—it makes sense that part of you wanted to preserve that connection.

Children and teenagers are wired to seek attachment. We all are.

The confusion many survivors feel isn’t a sign it wasn’t abuse. It’s often a sign that it was complex.

As Richard Gartner explores in Beyond Betrayal, male survivors frequently struggle with mixed feelings—longing, anger, guilt, affection, shame—all at once. That emotional mixture doesn’t invalidate your story, but actually reflects the relational dynamics that were in play.

“Why Do I Feel So Much Shame After Abuse?”

Shame is not a side effect, but a central burden. It can sit quietly in the background of your life, or it can shout. It can shape how you see your body, your sexuality, your masculinity, your femininity, your relationships, even your worth. And almost always, it feels personal.

But the shame you carry did not start with you.

Shame is a trauma response, not a character flaw. After abuse, it often sounds like this:

• I should have known better.
• I must have wanted it.
• Real men would have stopped it.
• There’s something wrong with me.
• I’m damaged goods.

These beliefs can feel so convincing that they become part of your identity.

But trauma researches have shown that trauma reshapes how we interpret ourselves. The nervous system, trying to survive an overwhelming experience, often chooses the explanation that preserves some sense of control.

For a child or teenager, it can feel safer to think:
It was my fault.

Than to face:
Someone more powerful (and who was supposed to take care of me) harmed me, and I couldn’t stop it.

Self-blame creates an illusion of control. If it was your fault, maybe you can prevent it happening again. But that doesn’t make the belief true, just protective.

“Why Didn’t I Stop It?”

This question is one of the most painful. To answer it, we have to refer back to the nervous system again.

Like mentioned before, when faced with threat, the body doesn’t just fight or flee. It can also:

• Freeze (become immobile, numb, compliant)
• Fawn (please, go along with, minimise conflict)
• Dissociate (mentally leave the situation)

You have no control over these responses because they happen automatically. When we’re in a life-threatening situation, we don’t stop to think, “Hmm, what shall I do here? Let’s have a really good look at all the options.”

• If you froze, your body was trying to protect you.
• If you complied, your system may have been prioritising survival over resistance.
• If you dissociated, your nervous system may have been shielding you from overwhelm.

None of these responses mean you consented, none of them make you weak, and none of them make you responsible.

“I Feel Disgusting.”

As mentioned above, shame often lives in the body. You might feel:

• Contaminated.
• Dirty.
• “Less of a man.”
• Broken.
• Unworthy of closeness.

For male survivors especially, cultural messages can amplify this:

• “Men always want sex.”
• “You should have enjoyed it.”
• “You’re weak if you were overpowered.”
• “If your body responded, you must have wanted it.”

These myths are devastating. The body can respond reflexively to stimulation, even during unwanted sexual contact. That response is neurological, not moral.

Disgust, meanwhile, is often the nervous system’s way of saying: Something crossed a boundary. But when shame sets in, that disgust gets directed inward instead of outward.

Instead of:
What was done to me was wrong.

It becomes:
There’s something wrong with me.

That shift is part of trauma’s distortion.

“Has the Sexual Abuse Affected My Sexuality/Sexual Orientation?”

Many male survivors of abuse ask themselves questions such as:

• Did the abuse make me gay?
• Did being abused turn me bi?
• Am I straight because I was abused?
• Is my sexuality just trauma?
• Why am I confused about my sexual orientation after abuse?

Sexual abuse and sexuality can feel deeply intertwined, especially if the abuse happened in childhood or adolescence, when identity and desire were still forming. The confusion that follows is often layered with shame, fear, and silence.

First things first: abuse does not “create” a sexual orientation.

There is no reliable evidence that childhood sexual abuse determines whether someone is gay, straight, bisexual, queer, or otherwise. Sexual orientation is not something someone can “cause” in you through abuse. However—and this is important—trauma can affect how sexuality is experienced, expressed, avoided, or understood.

And that’s where confusion begins.

Because trauma can shape sexual scripts.

A sexual script is the internal template we develop about what sex is, what it means, how it happens, and what role we play in it. If your early experiences of sexuality involved coercion, secrecy, power imbalance, or manipulation, those dynamics can become entangled with arousal pathways.

So you might notice patterns such as:

• Feeling drawn to sexual dynamics that mirror elements of the abuse.
• Feeling shame immediately after sex.
• Confusing intensity with intimacy.
• Struggling to separate affection from sexual activity.

This doesn’t mean your desires are “wrong.” It means your nervous system learned something early, under conditions that weren’t freely chosen. The body encodes experience long before we consciously make meaning of it. This conditioning can mean that your body has associated arousal with danger, shame, closeness, fear, or validation—especially if those were mixed together early on.

In terms of if you wonder whether being abused made you gay or bi (note: this does not just refer to men who have been abused by other men—gay men who have been abused by women might think the abuse “put them off women”), it’s understandable to want clarity. It can feel terrifying to wonder:

• Is this real attraction?
• Or is this trauma?
• Did (s)he shape this in me?

But attraction isn’t that simple or linear. Sexual orientation emerges from a complex mix of biological, psychological, and relational factors. It isn’t implanted by an abusive experience.

What trauma can do is create:

• Fear around (same-sex) attraction.
• A need to “prove” heterosexuality/homosexuality.
• Hyper-focus on sexual identity as a way of regaining control.
• Avoidance of certain genders due to unresolved fear.

Some survivors overcompensate with hyper-masculinity or rigid heterosexual presentation. Others avoid intimacy altogether. What often helps is creating space to explore your sexual orientation without panic, without trying to disprove something, and without assuming it’s contamination.

When it comes to sexuality, abuse survivors often swing in one of two directions (though some move between both):

• Hypersexuality
  • Compulsive sexual behaviour.
  • Seeking validation through sex.
  • Difficulty setting sexual boundaries.
  • Escalating porn consumption.
  • Risk-taking behaviour.
• Avoidance
  • Loss of libido.
  • Shutdown during intimacy.
  • Disgust responses.
  • Emotional disconnection during sex.
  • Avoiding relationships entirely.

Neither pattern proves anything about your sexuality, because they’re often trauma responses. If the nervous system is dysregulated, sexual behaviour can become either a way to override feelings or a signal that shuts everything down. So this is again about regulation, and not about identity.

“What Does My Porn Use Say About the Abuse?”

Many survivors feel deep distress about their porn habits, especially if the content reflects themes similar to their abuse or feels out of alignment with how they see themselves. This can raise questions such as:

• Why am I watching this?
• Does this mean I liked what happened?
• Does this say something about my sexuality?

A few important things to know:

• The brain can eroticise unresolved trauma.
• Repetition can become an attempt at mastery or control.
• Porn can function as regulation (soothing, numbing, stimulating).

This doesn’t mean the abuse was desired, it doesn’t mean you consented, and it doesn’t automatically define your orientation. It may simple mean your nervous system is trying—imperfectly—to process or manage something overwhelming.

“Was It Abuse When It Only Happened Online?”

Some survivors minimise what happened because “it was only online.” There was no physical contact, you were in your own room, and it happened through a screen. But being groomed online (being pressured to send explicit pictures, sexual videos, or being asked to perform sexually on a webcam) is sexual abuse. The medium does not remove the harm.

Online abuse often follows a familiar pattern:

1. Building trust or emotional closeness
2. Gradually introducing sexual topics
3. Testing boundaries
4. Normalising secrecy
5. Applying pressure, flattery, shame, or threats

You may have been told:

• “You’re mature for your age.”
• “This is our secret.”
• “If you cared about me, you would.”
• “I’ll share these if you don’t.”
• “It’s just a body; we all have one.”

Let’s get something clear:

Even if you sent the images.
Even if you turned on the camera.
Even if you went back to the chat.

That does not make you responsible.

Online grooming is designed to blur consent. It often happens slowly enough that you don’t realise what’s happening until you’re already inside it. And because it happened digitally, survivors often struggle with a particular kind of self-doubt:

• “I could have just logged off.”
• “I clicked send.”
• “No one touched me.”
• “Wasn’t I participating?”

But coercion does not require physical presence. Power can exist through age differences, emotional dependency, manipulation, threats, or exploitation of loneliness. A child, teenager, or vulnerable adult cannot meaningfully consent to sexual exploitation. Whether in person or through a screen.

Many men and non-binary survivors tell me the shame feels even worse because there is “evidence”—photos, messages, videos. The fear of exposure can keep someone silent for years. The nervous system often remains stuck in hypervigilance: scanning for risk, bracing for humiliation.

And sometimes the impact shows up later:

• Anxiety around technology or social media.
• Sexual compulsivity or avoidance.
• Difficulty trusting partners.
• A deep, quiet sense of having “done something wrong.”

If you’re wondering whether what happened to you online “counts,” the fact that you’re still carrying confusion, shame, or distress tells us something important.

It mattered.

Why Survivors Minimise What Happened

Minimising is protective. If what happened was abuse, that can mean:

• Trust was violated.
• Power was misused.
• Boundaries were crossed.
• You were not as safe as you thought.

For some people, it feels psychologically safer to say “It wasn’t that bad” than to confront what it really means.

There are also social pressures:

• “Boys can’t be victims.”
• “Men always want sex.”
• “You should feel flattered.”
• “At least it wasn’t violent.”

Layer onto that the nervous system’s drive to avoid overwhelming pain, and doubt becomes almost inevitable. From a polyvagal perspective, clinicians like Deb Dana describe how our systems shift into shutdown or disconnection when something feels too much. Questioning and minimising can be part of that protective response.

Your nervous system is trying to keep you stable. Even if the strategy is confusing.

The Impact on Masculinity, Sexuality, and Relationships

When sexual abuse happens to boys or non-binary young people, it can shape deeply held beliefs about:

• What it means to be a man.
• Whether you’re “strong enough.”
• Whether your masculinity/manhood was taken.
• Whether your sexuality was altered.
• Whether you can trust other men or women.
• Whether you’re somehow “damaged.”

It’s not uncommon for survivors to:

• Overcompensate with hyper-masculinity.
• Struggle with intimacy.
• Question their sexual orientation.
• Engage in sexual behaviours that don’t quite feel aligned.
• Avoid vulnerability at all costs.

Work from trauma specialists such as Peter Levine has helped us understand that trauma is not just the event, but also how the nervous system stored and adapted to that experience. But, fortunately, these adaptations can be reworked.

What It’s Like to Explore This in Therapy

If you’re unsure whether what happened “counts,” therapy doesn’t have to start with a declaration, nor do you have to label it immediately.

In my work with survivors, the relationship comes first. Before diving into details, we focus on:

• Creating emotional safety.
• Understanding your window of tolerance.
• Learning how to regulate when things feel overwhelming.
• Noticing any fears that arise in the therapeutic relationship itself.

Many survivors quietly carry anxieties like:

• What if he thinks I’m exaggerating?
• What if I’m too damaged?
• What if he feels disgusted by me?
• What if I’m too much?
• What if he thinks it wasn’t “that bad”?

Those fears make sense. They often reflect earlier relational wounds.

This is why I don’t show up as a “clinician,” but as just another human being. I come with warmth and empathy, not with stoicism and a blank face that only asks, “And how does that make you feel?” It’s also the reason why you decide when therapy ends, and not me.

Because I know that one part of trauma therapy isn’t just about processing memory. It’s about gently testing whether it’s possible to feel accepted, steady, and respected when in relationship with someone. This is why we go at your pace, we look at the beliefs that formed about yourself and others, and why we separate out what was done to you from who you are. And if at any point you feel overwhelmed. We slow down. Co-regulation in the room—feeling anchored, grounded, assured, and supported—is not an optional extra. It’s foundational.

If You’re Still Unsure

That’s okay. This post isn’t meant to push you into anything you’re not ready for.

But if something inside you is asking questions, that’s worth listening to. You don’t have to have certainty before seeking support, you don’t need to prove that it “qualifies,” and you don’t have to carry the confusion alone.

Whether what happened involved force, manipulation, grooming, a chat room, a woman, a man, secrecy, attachment, or mixed feelings—your experience deserves space and compassion.

If you’re a survivor questioning your story, therapy can be a place to untangle it safely, at your pace.

And if you’re not ready for that yet, even reading this far is a meaningful step.