i made a throwaway account because i don't want this to be identified with my posts elsewhere on reddit.

recently, childhood memories have been flooding back. it's not that i'd ever forgotten any of it, but i haven't thought much about it in a long time, and now all of the sudden i'm having dreams and intrusive thoughts about it. to make it worse, i made the mistake of telling my husband about this and his reaction isn't helping me, to say the least. more on that later.

for context i'm a middle-aged woman now, and all of this happened several decades ago, starting when i was about eight or nine and ending when i was 13. my brother is 3 years older than me. i guess you could technically say he abused me for those years, because he was the older one, and should have been old enough to know better.

the thing is, i never really thought of it as abuse. not even later, as i grew up. i always thought of it as just childish secret stuff we did together. he never forced me to do anything i didn't want to do, or at least think i wanted to do. and while i always implicitly knew it was "wrong" it was also exciting and, yes, pleasurable.

i was just always curious about sex and bodies. i thought everyone was. i was a voracious reader beyond my grade level and after i finished all the judy blume books at the library i started reading books for teens, some of which were pretty graphic in their descriptions, not in a lewd way but realistic (this was the 80s), and i also had found a sexual health textbook for teens with illustrations, so i figured i knew more or less what was up.

when i was in grade school i used to persuade my girl friends to get undressed and even take baths with me. mostly they were willing to do that and in some cases mutual touching ensued. it didn't seem like a big deal and it mostly stopped when we got older. so i'd seen other girls' bodies but not boys', and i was curious about my brother, who i always looked up to. he was generally nice to me but while we played together as kids he obviously was busy with school and his own friends as he got older.

when he was starting puberty at 12 or so i could tell he was curious about me too. i would notice him staring at my chest for example. i was a little bit on the chubby side and started developing (just little bumps of course) very early. i guess the thing is, i kind of encouraged the attention. i used to wear loose-fitting shirts and lean over in front of him on purpose. and i never used to wear panties under my favorite long nightgown, and i'd sit with the hem around my knees when we were watching tv. for whatever reason i wanted him to look, i liked that i could draw his attention just by doing stuff like that.

of course i had to keep provoking him to keep him interested. and eventually i figured out a way, i would ask him to judge a beauty contest (of course i was the only contestant). i'd do poses and he'd give me a score from 1-10. of course the more i showed the higher his score would be and i kept getting more and more daring until i'd just be naked and even do things like showing him my private parts close up. we both knew what was up and when our parents were out (which was often) he'd often suggest we play the beauty contest game, and i'd always agree. after a while we would both get naked and i could satisfy my own curiosity about his body. to be honest i was kind of grossed out at first by his thing and the way it'd get stiff, plus he was starting to get hair down there, but of course i was also fascinated.

we did this, on and off, for much longer, i think, than could be attributed to "normal" childhood sex play. i mean to be clear there was never any actual incest or whatever. we mostly showed off and looked and there was some cautious mutual touching at times. it was kind of on and off, we'd go for months without doing anything then start up again. i was often the one who would start it, it definitely wasn't a matter of him making me do it, but of course especially once he was in his teens i guess he should have known better?

i had a friend who had a big crush on my brother and she also was quite forward with me. once she wanted to play truth or dare, and i agreed. after some silly stuff the big dare was to go expose ourselves to my brother who was maybe 13. that time actually he just sort of laughed it off, but another time at a sleepover we all played together and once we all got naked and dared each other to masturbate. my friend showed me how and that was the first time i had a "real" orgasm (i'd had very nice feelings from touching myself or rubbing against things before). afterwards i felt embarrassed about doing that in front of my brother, and maybe it bothered him too, because we didn't do anything for a while after that. but it also became a scenario that i'd visualize when i touched myself.

then maybe a year later i had another friend who i knew my brother thought was cute and i persuaded her to not wear panties and "show off' to my brother. that led to our all getting naked together but nothing else happened. but that kind of started it up again. at this point i was starting to get hair down there and breasts and i wasn't confident about my body. i kind of didn't want hium to see me but i also really cared about what he thought, so i suggested the beauty contest thing again (we hadn't used that "excuse" for a long time). at first i didn't plan to get naked but of course he encouraged me. i'd ask him whether he thought i was as cute as my friend (the one he thought was cute) and of course he was nice and told me i was cuter. i didn't believe it but i wanted to keep him interested and naturally we ended up getting naked again. actually i'd say his interest really did bolster my self-confidence.

he said he wanted to hold me and touch me while we were naked but health class had taught me to be terrified of getting pregnant and i refused. but to be honest i kind of wanted him to touch me and hold me. he was really interested in my breasts and i on multiple occasions i let him fondle my breasts as i sat in his lap (with both of us wearing clothes but i had no bra and his hand was under my shirt). honestly this excited him a more than me, as i could tell while we were doing it - and after. and truly i really wanted to be touched down there but was also too scared to ever do that.

once my brother started high school we basically stopped all this stuff. he ended up having girlfriends and stuff and presumably wasn't interested in me at all. our relationship was actually pretty close in a brother-sister way for a while, i was always at odds with my parents and would confide in him, and i had crushes on classmates (boys and girls) and he'd give me advice. there were some mildly weird interactions, like for a while we were going out on sort of pseudo-dates where we'd go to the movies or out for lunch and we'd hold hands or he'd put his arm around me, but really it was all very sweet and felt totally unrelated to the stuff we'd done in the past. i felt like i was practicing dating and was really grateful for the attention though i know now that it's weird.

the last time anything "untoward" happened i was 13 and he was 16, maybe almost 17. he was all busy applying to college and i was getting ready for high school and really all the stuff we'd done seened like ancient history by then. i don't remember exactly how it started, we were talking about sex and i joked about how i'd seen him making out with a girlfriend in his bedroom i think. i don't remember the sequence of events though. we ended up getting naked but i was embarrassed to really prance around in front of him like we had before. i was pretty fully devoped at that point. we got under the covers together and sort of cuddled for a while. it was really nice, nothing else happened, we didn't touch each other intimately or anything, just cuddled naked.

after that i just basically... forgot about it all for the rest of my life. i don't mean i was suppressing it or whatever. i never actually forgot anything, just didn't think about it very much. it never felt like trauma. i've read about sibling sexual abuse, quite a lot recently as the memories have started coming back a lot, and what i read mostly doesn't seem to match my experience. i guess technically it was a classic older-brother-abuses-younger-sister scenario but it's hard for me to see it that way as i feel like i was a willing or even eager participant in pretty much everything we ever did. i always come to the conclusion that my brother was clearly old enough to know better but also that he never forced me to do stuff i didn't want to, and lots of times i was the one to initiate it, although obviously he always "took the bait."

and now all of a sudden all this history that has lain in the back of my mind for 30+ years is flooding back. i have weird dreams where i'm back doing stuff with my brother and sometimes we actually make love, which of course never happened. i sometimes find myself fantasizing about those days when i pleasure myself. which is a lot because things have been a bit rocky between my husband and myself of late and i still have a pretty strong sex drive. i don't really want to fantasize about these things but when i get excited it just sort of comes to my mind.

a couple of weeks ago my husband and i were in bed, on the verge of getting intimate for the first time in months. before we had sex i really wanted to clear up the "cloud" that i feel we've been living under for a couple years now, without knowing why or what's wrong, and i begged him to open up to me. he didn't have too much to say and the talk kind of meandered around and at some point, without really intending to i blurted out that my brother had "abused" me, which i instantly realized was the wrong thing to say, but i couldn't take it back. he got absolutely furious and was ranting about how i should tell my parents and never see my brother again and all sorts of angry shit like that. i told him it wasn't like it sounded and i wasn't angry at my brother and that just made it much worse, he wanted to know all the details and of course i didn't want to tell him and eventually i just shut down and said it was ancient history and i wasn't ever going to bring it up to anyone and he should forget i even mentioned it.

needless to say i screwed up that whole interaction and my husband has behaved pretty coldly towards me ever since. i do not believe he would ever understand or forgive either my brother or, if he knew the whole story, me. and that has had the effect of making me feel far more traumatized than the actual history with my brother ever did. i feel like somehow i am defective because i never thought any of this was such a big deal, if that makes any sense. i know it doesn't but it's still hard to shake the conviction that there must be something wrong with me. but i never felt that in the past, it's my husband's reaction that's really got me off balance.

i don't know... feels goot to get it all out anonymously in any case.

Okay.. so to start out, i’m 21F I have been with my boyfriend 25M for 3 years and it hasn’t been all peaches and cream but it hasn’t been awful. I think that the worst day was today- his 17 yo sister that got us together, is just now mentioning that one of her siblings sexually molested her. I asked which sibling (honestly hoping it not the one she set me up with) she looked down and said “i can’t tell you” and “i really can’t say”. now she has said in the past that there was trauma between them but never mentioned it was sexual she just said “he knows what he did”. When she mentioned she was molested she said that “it’s okay because they were molested by our uncle and that’s why they did it” (they also have a 8 year age gap btw, which i feel like makes this even worse because older kids know what they’re doing, even though idk the age this happened). but she did tell me that it was when they lived in a previous city.. which she was probably 7-8 when they ended up moving.. i can’t let myself put together the pieces of her story, but she wouldn’t explain or go into detail, which is understandably her decision. He has told me about an uncle that would touch him but never mentioned duration or anything super detailed. I’m inferring that it is him from what has been discussed. I am so grossed out, and i know i need to have a serious conversation but it genuinely makes my skin crawl. I’m disgusted and i’ve been crying all day. i feel betrayed by my friend his sister for getting us to go out and starting all this up. i also feel for her and him, i genuinely feel messed up that they both went through that. but i’m stuck in this awkward place because of circumstances right now, we just bought a house.. the whole 9 yards i thought this was who i was going to marry. she also told me her self before talking about the sexual assault that she could she us getting married and having kids… which weirded me out when i looked back on the conversation, i understand maybe she forgave him or even compartmentalized things because they act like they have a normal brother - sister relationship but I was never privy to this information before falling in love. I am so disassociated I have felt out of body all day learning this information. i understand it’s a cycle as well but it doesn’t make this pill any easier to swallow. i honestly don’t think i can’t continue on with him with what i now know… i am heartbroken. Have you or someone you’ve known been in this situation? what did you or they do? also i’ve grown up with 5 brothers and i can not conceptualize this at all… ive just been praying for guidance and crying all day. this has been the worst. i really have felt uneasy and nauseous all day

It all started when I went to therapy for the first time at the age of 18. The therapist asked me to think of and share my earliest childhood memory, but I froze. I didn't know what to say. I told him I couldn't remember anything, but that wasn't true.

I only said that because the only things I could recall were memories that filled me with immense shame.

The memories I’m talking about date back to when I was around 4 or 5 years old. As a child, my family and I lived in a very small house with only two bedrooms; one was tiny, barely big enough to fit two beds. I often slept in that room with my brother who is 7 years older than me, mostly during the summer. For the rest of the year, I used to sleep in my parents' bed (I slept in the same bed as them until I was about 9; looking back, it feels surreal, I won't get into this in this post, but there's a lot to be said about that too...).

I still have a vivid memory from when I was very young, I couldn't have been more than five, and I know this because I can recall the layout of the bed and furniture in my brother's room from before the walls were repainted and the furniture was swapped out for a setup with two beds. One morning, my brother invited me into his bed to play and cuddle; at some point, he began touching my private parts and pleasuring me. All the while, he was likely kissing me on the mouth. This behavior, his way of playing and "cuddling" me, continued; he did it several times, mostly at night during the summer. We would get into the same bed, even though we had separate ones, and he would start touching me or ask me to touch his private parts and kiss him (we would kiss like lovers, or like fish; in fact, he called it "the fish game"). These episodes recurred over the years until I was about 9 or 10. Meaning he was 16 or nearly 17. I can even recall one specific time he tried to penetrate me from behind.

Naturally, I didn't understand the gravity of what was happening or that it should never have occurred; I even felt guilty, because from a very young age I had developed a sense of pleasure from these things, having started touching myself at a very tender age.

I liked the whole idea that had formed in my mind regarding sex, masturbation, and the secret I shared with my brother. I knew it was a secret that had to stay between the two of us.

I’m not sure if he had told me so or if I simply knew it, but I knew I shouldn't tell anyone, not even my parents. I knew I ought to feel ashamed of those things, as well as of what I did when I was alone. Yet, I didn't grasp just how wrong it was. I developed a real addiction to it all, touching myself frequently throughout the week from as early as age 5 or 6; my parents were often out, so I spent a lot of time home alone as a child (not to mention that my actions left me feeling apathetic and uninterested in any other kind of activity).

I also developed a kind of dependence on my brother, who had been my main point of reference for as long as I can remember. Everything he did, I felt compelled to copy: every hobby, every habit, every decision I made was often centered around him. Which is a bit strange, considering that yes, what happened had happened, but my brother and I had never had a very normal relationship.

Partly because of the age gap, we rarely played together...almost never, in fact. And we didn't talk much or show each other affection, except on the occasions mentioned above. There was often tension at home between us. For instance, I remember how frequently he'd hit me just because I went into his room to watch him play on the computer when he didn't want me there. Or when he'd hit me because our shitty Wi-Fi caused his ping to spike to 120 ms and lag on CS:GO or LoL while I was watching YouTube videos (it may sound ridiculous and funny, but yes, that was genuinely one of the reasons).

In short, we fought constantly, and I had started to harbor a lot of anger and resentment toward him. Yet despite all that, I kept copying his interests (getting into video games and computer science, and eventually even listening to the exact same music he did).

I was so fascinated by his world and by the attention he so often withheld from me. He was generally quite cold toward me; he probably didn't like having me around as a sister because I was too clingy and he just wanted his space. Or maybe I was simply too young and immature for him to want to hang out, I honestly idk...

We had a very toxic dynamic, and the difference in how our parents treated us didn't make things any better.

Since he was the firstborn son and I was the second daughter (an unwanted child btw, I know my mother actually wanted to have an abortion when she found out she was pregnant with me, lol) I often felt like he was the "favorite one." This was probably compounded by the fact that I had a difficult personality from a very young age. I was shy and antisocial. I was frequently agitated, anxious, angry, and short-tempered, and I cried constantly. I cried especially at school, where I was often unable to fit in and felt behind the other kids-feeling "stupider" and incapable of doing what they could do. Above all, I struggled to connect with them or my teachers (this might have been partly due to a language barrier, since my parents were immigrants and we spoke a different language at home, though I'm not entirely sure, since I was actually quite fluent in both).

In short, my parents never had any problems whatsoever with my brother: he was calm, polite, smart, and did well in school-even outperforming all of his classmates. While their daughter, well... yeah, she was polite enough too, fairly calm, the kind of kid you could "just leave anywhere and she'd stay put," but never on her brother's level.

In some ways, I almost seemed slow compared to him. Not to mention the crying at school, the crying at home whenever there were guests and too much noise, or the tantrums that were basically guaranteed. My parents often described me as a real pain in the ass. Every situation, every meltdown, every time they scolded me, it was always an excuse to compare me to him and say, "Your brother was never like this and doesn't act like you do; you should take a page out of his book."

I remember one evening when he came home after getting bad grades at school. Back then, I was in elementary school and he was in middle school, I think. It was one of the very few times I saw my parents furious with him. So angry that they beat him and confiscated the PC he used for gaming. I felt an almost distinct sense of satisfaction watching that scene, seeing them turn on him for once instead of me.

Around that time, I had also managed to turn things around at school, finally proving that I could sit in class and do my work independently without ever bursting into tears. In that moment, it felt like I'd finally figured it out: to earn my parents' love and respect, which I craved so desperately, I had to do whatever it took to outperform him academically. So I started applying myself, and school literally became my entire life.

It's sad to think that throughout my childhood and teenage years, literally nothing else existed for me besides school. I never played sports, never joined summer camps or youth groups to spend time with other kids, and barely ever left the house. All I did was stay home, gaming on the computer and spending my days staring at a screen online-because I didn't know anything else. I was never introduced to anything else.

I was blatantly always a burden to my parents, a daughter who was never supposed to exist in their vision of a perfect life to begin with. A daughter to be ashamed of and practically "hidden away." According to them, I was always just a disappointment and a handful, and I had no right to complain to them about the hand I was dealt. There was nothing they could have done; I was simply the problem all along, the one who could never turn things around.

As you can probably imagine, this took a heavy toll on my upbringing, shaping the person I am and the way I socialize now as an adult. In fact, I barely have any friends to talk to or hang out with. For all intents and purposes, I’ve basically become a hikikomori, leaving the house almost exclusively to attend lectures and sit for exams at university.

I’m really not in a good place right now. Up until recently, I’d managed to bury all these memories and emotions, but now that they’ve all resurfaced and I’m far more aware of what I actually went through, being around my family is a real struggle. I feel like a total stranger in my own home. Every interaction with them feels hollow, fake, and forced. I just can't hide the resentment I feel toward them. Especially the anger I harbor toward my brother for everything he did to me and because we never had a normal brother-sister relationship.

I'm still very confused about it all and, as I mentioned, I feel an immense amount of shame and pain. I'm not even sure if he can truly be held accountable for what I went through, given that he was also a minor at the time and perhaps didn't fully grasp the gravity of what he was doing either.

Even so, I can't stop asking myself how different my life and who I am might have been if he hadn't done those things to me at such a fragile, critical age for a child's development. An age where a kid's biggest concern should just be playing and watching cartoons, definitely not discovering their own genitals and those of the opposite sex.

I don't know if I could have grown up differently, or if I could have had a better life right now-maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe this is just who I am genetically, or maybe I just have some form of undiagnosed autism and I would have ended up a failure anyway. But it's the fact that I will never know that will haunt me forever.

Just hopping on here post therapy session. I see my therapist about once a quarter now after seeing her every week for about 2 years. Intensive EMDR, etc.

It’s amazing how SSA still affects me almost every day. And now, I’ll feel moments of anger. Supposedly my brother may have been abused (I believe once) by a neighbor and it was dismissed by my mom.

But he abused me beginning from, like, 1st or 2nd grade until probably 6th or 7th grade. He’s 5 years older.

I want to write a letter to tell him that it affected my either life. Eating disorders, unexplained rage, unhealthy relationships - and then, maintaining a healthy relationship with my husband of 20
Years, raising kids, climbing corporate ladder, etc. He’s divorced, no kids, and failed relationships. My life looks perfect. But the amount of work I’ve had to do AND the amount of unhappiness I endured, almost passed my trauma on to my kids (through rage, moodiness, etc) up until I sought therapy ~3 years ago has been IMMENSE. I want him to know this.

“Just get over it” was something I tried so hard to do for so long and it took its toll mentally and physically.

Anyway, anyone else ever write a letter?

Ive never felt like I've had the validation or confirmation I've needed to move on. My sibling who performed sexual acts on me has written it off as "normal" things that "all kids do". A curtain rod was put up my genitals & I also have some memories of being near their genitals under a blanket. I dont remember much else- but I hate feeling like these early experiences were "normal" and they distorted my first sexual experiences with men as I got older so badly. What is considered normal? I feel disgusted with myself. Thanks for this community.. it makes me feel less alone.

I’ve been reflecting on some experiences from very early childhood and how they shaped my understanding of consent and sexual boundaries.
When I was around six, I was in the bath with my mother and my older sister, who was about ten. I tried to touch my sister inappropriately, and I was immediately scolded and told that I wasn’t allowed to touch girls without their permission.
What stayed with me wasn’t simply being corrected. I remember the lesson I took from it. I understood it as something like boys aren’t allowed to touch girls without permission. I don’t remember anyone explaining the broader principle that everyone has ownership over their own body and everyone needs permission before touching someone else in a sexual way, regardless of whether they’re a boy or girl.
A few years later, I had another experience with my sister that made that distinction even more confusing for me. She initiated sexual behavior toward me, and when I later asked for the same kind of reciprocity, she mocked me and called me a pervert.
Looking back as an adult, I’m struck by how differently I understood these experiences at the time. I don’t remember having the conceptual framework to understand consent as something reciprocal and applicable to everyone. Instead, I had internalized a much simpler rule about boys and girls.
I’m not sure what label I want to put on these experiences, and I’m not necessarily looking for people to tell me whether I was or wasn’t a victim. I’m more interested in understanding how experiences like these can affect someone’s developing ideas about sexuality, consent, gender, and boundaries.
Has anyone else had childhood experiences where the messages they received about consent were incomplete or gendered, and only later realized how much those early messages affected their understanding of relationships?

I wanted to come on here and ask if anyone else has ever experienced a kind of déjà vu in their relationships—like you keep finding yourself in the same situations or repeating the same patterns over and over again, even when you’re trying to do things differently.
I experienced sexual abuse from a sibling growing up, and I’ve noticed that I seem to carry certain patterns from one relationship into the next. I’ll get into a new relationship, and eventually it feels like I’m dealing with the same issues all over again, just with a different person.

I’m really trying to understand why this happens and how past experiences can affect the way we approach relationships. Has anyone else experienced something similar or felt like they were repeating the same relationship patterns without understanding why?

So a few days ago, I got a call from my sister telling me that our brother got into a car accident.

He was the one who abused me when we were kids. I was about 11-12 when it started & I think it continued through parts of high school…he was a senior when I was a freshman.

I haven’t talked to my brother since 2020…when I started therapy to deal with all the crap that happened in my childhood. I’ve gone low contact with my mother as well. When I finally told what had happened between my brother & I, I had asked that it stay in our family…our little four person unit. I didn’t want the rest of our family to know. It turns out my mother told all of her sisters…she’s the oldest of 9 & 6 of them are girls…as well as my grandparents.

So now that he’s gone so unexpectedly, I don’t know where to put all of my emotions. Or how I’m supposed to be feeling through all of this. He’s getting the typical “What a great guy!” remembrances on social media, and I’m trying not to freak out.

Has anyone else had to deal with the unexpected death of their abuser like this? How did you handle it?

Hello friends, I am going through something i need to share this feeling.

I am 40 years old F and lost my parents few years ago. Mom was a narcissist who used me as a therapist all my life she was angry, boundary violating and depressed. I have an older brother (8years) who is also a narcissist who cheated on his wife many times and eventually beat her up. there is a story of him stripping a girl naked in kindergarden. He is obssesed with women.

This week I just 'remembered' I shared a room with him until he left for uni. which means i would been 4-5 to start with and he 12-13 going through puberty all those following years i was in that room. I have ZERO memory from that flat where I lived until i was 13. only nightmares set in there. When I remembered this info i had a somatic response and crying shouting like an animal with tingling arms. And a disgust for my parents and I can;t even confront them anymore.

What are the odds of abuse? :/

Hi everyone, just been struggling lately. I’ve had recurrent nightmares of the abuse since it happened (at 12, now I’m 27) nearly every night and I think it’s really affecting my ability to let things go

Has anyone else had experiences like this? Not sure who else to talk to about this as I’m no contact with my family and don’t want to keep bringing this up with friends

Hope everyone is having a good night

I (18) have 2 half siblings (F10 and M7) and they are getting way too close for my liking. At first I thought I was being paranoid but recently alarm bells have been going off in my head but I have no clue what to do.

My dad and stepmum are divorced and the kids live with their mum most of the time but occasonally I babysit them at my dads for the day. They're always playing together in seperate rooms to me but sometimes they get extremely giggly and start whispering so I go check on them and they're in eachothers personal space and messing around too much. Most of the time it's my brother instigating this and he often follows my sister into the bathroom or calls her into an empty room. Even in public they're hugging eachother too close for it to be 'cute'. I haven't seen anything exactly explicit yet but I'm worried I've just missed things.

In the past they've done some stuff which I haven't liked, for example using a toy camera to take pictures of eachothers bums. This never really got addressed. My brother often starts talking about boobs to be cheeky, and apparently he asked my stepmum for 'milk' and to 'play with them'. That was the last straw for me which is why I'm making this post. My stepmum is the kind of person to just say 'oh stop being silly' and laugh it off as 'boys being boys' but I'm getting really uncomfortable. My dad has noticed all this too and has tried talking to them but they're at their mums most of the time so it doesn't make much difference.

I was raised by a much stricter mother than my siblings so I naturally tend to get stern with them if I see them getting too 'silly' as we call it and get out of eachothers personal space but it seems that I'm basically the only person in the family doing it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if my stepmum has been watching inappropriate stuff and they've seen it or something, along with the fact that both kids often sleep in the same bed with her. The way my brother especially is acting I'm terrified he's going to be weird around other kids and become some kind of pervert when he's older.

Basically, I need to know how to stop this behaviour before it's too late. I feel like raising my voice won't help but I don't know how else to get them to understand that what they're doing is wrong (predominantly my brother).

I'm still young (16f) so this was fairly recent.

My sister (12f) used to touch me all the time.

She used to try and see me naked a bunch of times like when I would get out of the shower. She used to pants me a lot with my cousin (12m) a few years ago.

She went through a phase where she would smack my butt everytime she would walk pass me. I practically begged her to stop.

She wouldn't.

It seriously was like she didn't know what "stop" and "no" meant.

She still doesn't tbh

There was even a time when she tried to reach up and squeeze my boobs.

I don't know if this was just her being an annoying sister or not but I HATED it.

When I (age 8F) was young it seemed like my brother and I had the closest relationship. He is my older brother by 3 years. It felt like he was just a protector for me, like a noble big bro protecting his little sister. Our family was pretty shaky. My father always screamed and lost his temper after seemingly being ok. My mom was very clingy (she has BPD) and even that young I would lavish any time away from her which forced us together even more.

We would do everything together. Especially playing video games, watching movies, and watching anime. That's when it started. He would start by acting brotherly like cuddling. Then it would be cuddling without clothes. Then with the door locked. I was naive. My parents noticed but they didn't do anything other than just say leave the door unlocked.

This was around the time the touching started. I didn't understand at all but my young brain just thought it "felt good but wrong" God I feel so disgusted just writing that. This "touching and cuddling" would continue and more and more this knot built up in my chest. I eventually told him no.

When I set that boundary he just immediately started threatening to manipulate my parents into taking my games from me (these games cause violence blah blah blah) and my anime. I had no friends. Those video games were my only escape. Crunchyroll (it's an anime site for those that don't know) was my safe place, all those stories of a different place, world. He knew how to manipulate me and the whole family.

He would tell me he wouldn't try to convince my family to take these things from me...if I "watched anime with him" He would lock the door and overpower me as soon as I went into his room. This went on for YEARS.

I feel sick just writing this. I'm only beginning to understand how much this affected me.

So my mom told me today that my older brother is a born-again Christian.

Translation for those of you who might not know what that means: he found God, and in doing so, his past sins have been erased.

But it doesn't erase what he did.

He's forty. I'm thirty-five. I went no contact with him about two years ago, after I had a massive panic attack during a roleplay scene with one of my exes.

I called him after the panic attack, crying, because I wanted my brother. I told him about the pain he caused me — that I was afraid to say no to him because I thought he would kill himself. He would say things like I was the only one in the family who loved him. That if not for me, he would be dead. He said this after he would molest me.

When I finally told him, he said he was sorry. That he just didn't see me as a sister in those moments.

So I told him: I didn't see him as a brother. I saw him as a father figure. Because our dad was an alcoholic — violent, threw furniture, tried to strangle my mother multiple times. We had cops at our door regularly. My brother was the only safe person in my life.

Until he wasn't.

And yet some days I still miss him. And then I hate myself for missing him.

Then my mom drops this on me — that he's a born-again, after I've gone no contact. It must be really easy to find forgiveness from God when you don't have to look at your victims anymore.

That's a shitty thing to say. But it feels true.

I am writing this to finally give voice to a dark, hidden chapter of my childhood that I have carried alone for years. When we were younger, my siblings and I were taken away from our mother by CPS due to severe neglect and abuse, and we were placed into kinship care at my grandparents' house.

Because space was tight, my middle sister and I had to share a single bed in the middle room of the house. Every single night in that bed, my sister sexually abused me. She forced me to perform oral sex on her. It was a deeply frustrating, terrifying, and traumatizing environment. On top of the abuse, she had horrific hygiene, rarely showered, and never cleaned up after herself. We constantly got in collective trouble because she kept our shared room filthy, which meant I was punished for her actions. It felt completely unfair, disgusting, and inescapable.

I have never brought this back up to her as an adult. I know she remembers exactly what she did to me, but she has completely blocked it out or chosen to live in total denial.

Now that we are adults, I am seeing the psychological fallout of what that abuse did to her character. Our mother—the very person whose actions got us taken by CPS in the first place—is a massive narcissist. Yet, my middle sister is currently hopping on our mother’s bandwagon, kissing her ass, and participating in a smear campaign against me. The craziest part is that I know she secretly hates our mother, but she aligns with her anyway.

I now realize she enables our mother because she cannot face herself. If she admits our mother is a broken predator, she has to look in the mirror and admit that she became a predator, too. Deflecting the blame onto me and hiding behind our mother's narrative keeps her from ever having to come to terms with the abuse she perpetrated in that bedroom.

Outside of her enabling behavior, she has become a completely transactional, untrustworthy person. She uses anyone and everyone for money or financial support. She has screwed over countless people both inside and outside of our family—borrowing money, promising to pay it back, and then completely disappearing and cutting them off when the bill comes due. Even recently, while I was on unemployment and my own phone was about to be cut off, I stretched my last dollars to pay her phone bill out of sibling loyalty. She repaid that sacrifice by turning around, playing telephone, and feeding information back to our abuser.

I am completely disgusted by her. I am disgusted by what she did to me as a child, and I am disgusted by how she moves as an adult. Cutting her off today wasn’t just about the current family drama; it was about finally protecting the little girl inside of me who was trapped in that bed. I am choosing my own peace, my own truth, and my own survival.

I am 26 (m) now and recently had memories coming up that mess with my mind. When I was young, I was sexually abused by my older sister. Later on, I saw my cousin brother abusing her too, except it looked like she went to him willingly. Seeing that made me feel this weird, messed up jealousy because she was so close to him.

Because of all that confusion, later on when I shared a bed with her, I ended up touching her. My whole life growing up has been completely messed up because of these cycles.

I honestly do not know how to get rid of the guilt. I have done things I am not proud of, and it makes me feel sick. I just want to know if anyone else has been in a similar situation or how you even begin to process something like this.

I figure the best way to start this is with context

I am currently 22 and my sister is 3 1/2 years older than i am but we were always close. when i was very little (around 2-3) my bio mom got herself in a very deserved a of legal trouble. wont get into it very much but it involved a lot of drugs and are house getting swatted. most of what happen i don't remember cause i was so little but the trauma stuck. just not good situation. my dad is more than i could have ever asked for and he rightly got full custody of us. I believe its normal to be close with sibling's but i think i always had this certain attachment to her because of it. when i learned to talk i would make her speak for me to people outside of family and always used her as protection. anyways, down the line my father met my stepmom and she is the only mom i have every known.

flash forward a couple years when i was about 10 i believe (she would be 13) life was normal for me or at least what i perceived it to be. around this time is when my parents trusted my sister to watch me. like if they had to leave the house for whatever reason.

I will be honest i have a lot of trouble remembering some of this because it was so long ago. at some point she was watching me alone and we were in our downstairs living room watching something on the tv. what felt like it was out of nowhere she asked if i have ever seen boobs before. me being 10 i obviously said no, she asked if i wanted to and honestly me being a little boy i said yes. from what i remember on how i was feeling i had a (what a cool sister) kind of vibe. she lifted her shirt and i didn't really know what to do after the omg that's boobs feeling went away. after a few seconds of staring she asked if i want to touch them and so i did. that was all that happened that day and nothing like that happened for at my best guess a couple of weeks

we were alone once again and she asked if i wanted to play with her boobs, i agreed. she asked if i she could touch what's in my pants and i let her. she started jerking me off and when i got close it felt like i had to pee (i wasn't able to tell the difference i feeling at that point) and i told her that so i ran to the bathroom. after i came back i tried to keep doing what she wanted but she told me to pull my pants up. there was a couple of instances is like that afterwards until one was different. she had me lay down and put a blanket on my head and she told me she wanted to try something. she started sucking me off and it didn't take very long until i felt like i had to nut and i told her i was going to and she stopped. she took the blanket off and when i looked at her i realized she was naked. she asked me to put it in her, i remember being very reluctant but she kept saying as long as i don't nut in her its ok. they always say you remember your first and i remember that very vividly. wont get into it to much but we did it and that was that for a while.

i was older at this point, me being 11ish and her 14ish. she started asking on the regular. we had sex in total 6 times. i remember when doing yard work in our backyard she didn't want to do it so she kind of bribed me with sex for it. she pulled her pants down broad daylight and told me to have sex with her. and i didn't want to because my dad worked from home and his office window he could see the whole back yard. another the same we where alone and she asked for sex so i would clean the kitchen. she also didn't tell me she wanted me to do that until after. the last time was at my grandmas house but this was different. she made me nut in her. i've never done something that felt so wrong in my life. i was 12 when this happened and i was really starting to realize what has happened to me

fast forward to now. i have never brought this up to anyone except to my past girlfriend and my fiance. my sister abandoned my family around 2019 and said she resented my family including me saying we where all the origin of her problems. she randomly a couple days ago messaged my dad and then myself. we are the only ones she has contacted. i also told my mom but my sister didn't want to talk to her. she wants to meet with me the 21's of this month so about a week form now. i had no idea she was alive for that almost 7 years and i miss her. but i cant help but think about what happens. i have no idea if anyone in the family knows. me and my dad are going on a couple day trip and i dont know if i should tell him. im still wanting to see her but i dont really know what to do.

I(17f) had a cousin(18m), same age as me, sexually harass(?) me when we were 8. This happened 10 years ago, shortly after my grandpa died.

My parents were divorced and my grandpa was the only other male I could look up to, so his passing deeply affected me to point of disturbing my sleep. So one night while I was laying in bed near my cousin (there wasn’t much space due to the presence of the whole family) just waiting to fall asleep, when suddenly, I feel a hand through under my pants, under my underwear on my skin. And I just froze. Because I knew it was a bad touch. My mother had taught me. He kept his hand there, on my butt, for a while, then withdrew. Then entered his hand again. And again. And I just laid there. Uselessly. I did confront him the next day, though he vehemently denied everything. Said he had a dream. I didn’t question it even though I knew he was lying. I guess he got scared for a while. I told my mom too. Because that is what a good girl does. Tell her mother. But my mother, my protector, just chalked it up to a wild imagination and didn’t mind it.

He didn’t try anything again until 4 or 5 years later. Tried to peek into my bathroom while I was showering. And then he had the audacity to tell me that he saw me. Reading at first, cause I’m a major bookworm, then showering. I didn’t know how to respond to that. I still don’t. Why would he admit something like that to me?

Slowly he started gaining courage, groping me once more, when I sick and physically impossible to do anything against him. This continued for two years. And I gaslit myself every time it happened. “It happened so long ago, now I’m imagining it’s happening again”. How naive. Finally, I broke down one day in front of my mother. Told her everything. I guess the truth broke her too. Hurt her because she couldn’t protect me. Couldn’t see what was happening right in front of her. But she couldn’t do anything. She was moving away to another continent to secure our future and I only told her 2 months before her departure. I urged her to go. Told her I’ll be fine. But I’m not fine. And I don’t think she realises that. After that, for the next school year, she moved me away to a boarding school. In her mind, that was what was best for me. In a way, it was better. Without her as a buffer, I would have started resenting them(My mother’s family).

But being away from him didn’t erase the pain. The humiliation. The disgust. And I wanted to seek help. So I confided in a school counsellor. Which was a bad idea in hindsight, but at that point, I felt I would go mad if I didn’t. She encouraged me to tell the truth to everyone. I didn’t. But my mother did. And then they had me come down from school, just so they could surprise me and him(neither of us knew about it) with a therapy session together. I have to admit, I lost my mind in there and started sobbing. I guess that’s when he realised that what he did affected me so much. His mother and our aunt spoke with the therapist together who reassured them everything is fine and left. Now everyone just ignores what happened and acts like a big happy family. But I’m not happy. Being with all these people, I feel the most alone I have ever felt in my life. I just want to get out of this place.

My question is, is it alright to feel this way? I know I was not r*ped, only groped but, he was my best friend growing up and he ruined all that in a second. All that for what? To satisfy his curiosity ?

he was younger than me but had so much power tho. my half brother was my bully because my stepmother saw it as a way to hurt me without doing it herself.

hands clean. she never hit me

she just sat there and smiled while my brother did it. leaving bruises and scars that i had to explain to my teachers that did nothing about it.

cause he’s my sibling. siblings on sibling abuse isn’t something that a lot of people talk about and take seriously.

but one day he attacked me, with touching and grabbing that made me feel so dirty. so disgusted. i had to get away from him but he kept trying.

and i never told anyone in my family because no one ever took his other forms of abuse seriously, why would they care if he SAd me? they wouldn’t believe me.

now i’m stuck. my dad knows and won’t speak about my brother to me out of respect, but the problem is he’s my family. and he was young and so was i

in the end it was my parents who allowed that behavior.

but why can’t i forgive him?

should i forgive him?

i can’t even look at him without feeling like im going to throw up… it literally makes me nauseous. it spikes my anxiety so bad i freeze.

I‘m a 16m and was sexually abused by my brother around 9-10 years old. I’m at least a year out of trauma therapy and have been cleared of any PTSD, gone through the whole narrative process and everything. My concern is sometimes I just get overwhelmed by this grief and loneliness of missing my brother or at least what our relationship could have been. I can’t seem to escape it. Does anyone else feel this? if so any advice would be greatly appreciate.