Confused - am I a slut?

LegacyUser

Op,

Best thing to do is tell your friend to keep her views to herself, one thing is trying to help you but if it's not helping you or making you feel worse, then that's not help.

To answer your question, some guys are put off by pasts and some aren't.

PeakOutput

milkerman wrote:

The expression 'Slut' is not pretty, but they do exist.
A Slut is a person that debases themselves through sexual activity. A slut could be male or female but the term is more often applied to females.
Examples of Sluttish Behaviour; Having sex with a guy cos he has a car and you dont have the money for a Taxi (it has happened), Having sex with a guy as a way of thumbing your nose at his wife/gf (it happens) Having sex as a means of getting pregnant so you qualify for a Corpo Flat (happens every night of the week) Using Sex for career advancement. The list is endless.

On the other hand, if you meet someone and there is that indefinable spark that finds you both at it within a couple of hours. That is not being a slut, that is being a complete human and a real person. You may not even love that person (you will only find real love with time) but you will have shared a happy intimacy that neither parties ever forget.

Again I say to you- YOU ARE NOT A SLUT. At heart your small minded friend thinks sex is dirty and needs the blessing of the church to make it OK. Just pity her for what she is.

qft

ali.c

please please have some compassion and genorosity with yourself. So you went to a tramatic experience (a pretty horrendous one) and afterwards you acted in a way you are not proud of. It does not make you a bad person. If someone else was in your positon would you judge them for it? I think not. You were acting out of pain, have some compassion and forgive yourself, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed off or feel guilthy about.

Also if the people in your life dont feel the same way, look at surrounding yourself with people who have some genorousity and compassion.

Any man who judges you because you were raped and have a few one night stands, is seriously not worthy of your time or energy.

Crea

This will only screw up your life if you let it. The chances of any guy you meet being a virgin is low so it shouldn't be an issue.
My sis slept with quite a number of people and her hubby was a virgin when they met. She felt unworthy of him and had a few sessions of counselling which knocked that stupid idea on the head.
I have a religious friend who "saved" herself until she got engaged. Mind you they were engaged after 6 months!!! She never had sex with other guys but has given BJ's to a load more people than I have slept with. She asks if I regret sleeping with 3 before meeting my husband. The answer is no. I'm glad i slept with people before settling down. Anyway I consider putting it in my mouth alot more intimite than up my bits.
Your friend is a cow. She is justifiying her own decision. I do think you need some counselling to get your self esteem back and allow you to get over your experience with your ex.
Best of luck.

LegacyUser

milkerman wrote:

A Slut is a person that debases themselves through sexual activity.

At heart your small minded friend thinks sex is dirty and needs the blessing of the church to make it OK.

I have debased myself through it though. During the one night stands I was even thinking, "this is disgusting and I don't want to be doing it. I don't even really fancy or like this person." Halfway through I would decide I didn't want to be doing it any more but would let them continue until they had finished just because I wanted to avoid a possible scene. Sometimes I would lie there motionless and allow my boyfriend to have sex with me when it was making me want to puke, just because I couldn't stand to listen to him shouting at me any more. I should have just kicked him out the door. I have never actually enjoyed sleeping with any of the people I have been with. I therefore think my behaviour was dirty.

milkerman

Hey Regretful,
As you were doing the act you started having second thoughts, or deciding it wasnt a good idea, or that you didnt even like the bloke. That voice in your head was called INTEGRITY assisted by his companion CONSCIENCE. The slut would not hear the voice to start with.
Enough people have told you on these pages that you are not a slut, TAKE THAT AS READ. You are a DECENT PERSON. You did not debase yourself.
Your friend will hear the voice on her wedding night telling her what she is doing is wrong, she will wave a marriage licence in defence and that will satisfy her conscience - to say what she said to you makes her one sad, twisted B**ch. (and possibly badly in need of a good kick up the a**e)
I think the other posters will agree that your greatest difficulty now will be to rebuild your confidence & self esteem.
Best Wishes

LegacyUser

milkerman wrote:

As you were doing the act you started having second thoughts, or deciding it wasnt a good idea, or that you didnt even like the bloke. That voice in your head was called INTEGRITY assisted by his companion CONSCIENCE. The slut would not hear the voice to start with.

But I think I'm getting conflicting messages. If it's not wrong to sleep with people, then why would one be a slut for not hearing that voice?

And in a way, it makes it worse that I did it knowing all the while that I didn't want to. I wish I knew how to build my self esteem back up. I have had counselling but it's not enough especially while I can't decide whether what I did was wrong or not.

Nasty_Girl

Hi regretful,

I think you are only a slut if you think you are. It's your opinion that matters, not anyone elses, friends, future boyfriends etc. If you feel bad and wrong for doing it yourself, then you need to explore why you felt that way. If you decided it wasn't for you and no longer do it then you learned from your "mistake" and you can move on from it.

If you go into a relationship with a hang up of thinking what you did was wrong, he'll pick up on it.

I was a virgin when I might my now fiance, and he's the only one I've been with. We make jokes that he "corrupted" me etc and he told me he was "impressed" I hadn't slept with anyone. But I honestly think he wouldn't've cared if I had. I know I can never prove that but I honestly believe we'd still be where we are if I had had one night stands before meeting him. I'd kissed and "fooled around" with other "random" guys and that doesn't bother him.
It shouldn't matter what we did before (sexually), our partners should love us for who we are, the way we make them feel, that we get on well and can plan our lives together. Not that we are pure and untouched or such garbage. Sex is a part of the relationship but it's not the be all and end all.
We all have regrets and things we wished we'd never done, but you know you didn't like what you did and you don't do it now.
Just concentrate on your own life now, and don't worry what others think.

missingtime

regretful wrote:

Would you hold that past behaviour against a girl you were considering dating?

No.

LegacyUser

You know, speaking of integrity, something that hurts just as much is thinking of all the other things I went along with when I was with my boyfriend, even though my inner voice was screaming not to. Letting him have sex with me against my wishes, letting him pressurise me into taking drugs when I didn't want to, telling lies and keeping secrets for his friends who I hated when I knew I should be speaking the truth. Letting him and his friends pressurise and hassle me into allowing them to smoke in my own home even though I have had throat cancer and they know how much I hate people smoking near me. Always turning a smiling face towards my boyfriend to keep him happy when really he was putting me through torture. And so much more. All the time I was with him, my insides were screaming that it wasn't right. I was such a fool for not listening. I really fell in with the bad crowd and sometimes I just wonder if it's ever possible for me to have integrity again after all that. I'm such a hypocrite for doing things that I comdemn.

Nevyn

You do have it.
Otherwise you would not have that inner voice.
What you need to do is get the gumption to act on it and stand up for yourself
and that starts with standing up to yourself.

you would not let any one treat a person you loved in the way you treat yourself and are so down on yourself.

You have the power over you life to make choices and to act on the ones you can live with.

Seriously I think you should consider a self empowerment class and some couselling.

Talliesin

regretful wrote:

I have debased myself through it though.

No. What you did was to act out harm that had been done to your sexuality in a way that did further harm to it. You did things that continued that harm not because they were wrong in and of themselves (it may be that one-nighters are something you later decide you won't do and it may not) but because you were in a position where you could not take anything positive from them, but only more hurt.

This thread is now three pages long. It consists mainly of people saying "you are not a slut", quite a few of them including very differing definitions of the term (so differing in definition as to have no definition at all really).

You picked out one definition that you could then take to build up a way in which applied to you after a few twists (even that one didn't apply to you directly, I don't think the author of that post considers "degrade" in the same way as you).

You hang out with a twisted little pervert who seeks validation in her own sexual issues by verbally abusing you.

You are actually making quite an effort to view yourself in the worse possible light.

Now the first thing to remember is that this is very normal for someone who has been through what you've been through. So normal as to be almost indicative. Rape survivors blame ourselves - almost every time - and you have to know that because you can't see the self-blame for what it is until you do.

Accept the fact that you are inclined to be hard on yourself and to blame yourself. You are not seeking any sort of objective view on what you've been through or what you have done since - and no such objective view is possible. Rather you are in a struggle between part of you that wants to roll over, label yourself a slut and give yourself up as a bad loss and part of you that wants to pick yourself up, move on, and build an enjoyable life for yourself.

The hard part is, it's much easier to go with the part of you that wants to give up on yourself and much more difficult to pick yourself up. That's not a moral judgement - there's an implication when we say one thing is easier than another to colour the choice morally, but that's not what I'm saying at all.

Rather I'm stating that it is indeed extremely bloody hard to pick yourself up. It's extremely hard to not blame yourself. It's particularly hard to be doing it for a long time and find that it still needs continual effort. More than twelve years after I was raped I can still get myself caught up in an eddy of self-blame.

regretful wrote:

I should have just kicked him out the door.

Yeah, you should have done, but your failure here was not a moral one. You failed to do the thing that was best for you, like we all do very often, and you failed in that because to eventually do so was extremely hard - most likely as you manage to blame yourself less you'll realise that it was even harder than you now think.

We all fail to do what is best for us and most of the ways we fail are not in dealing with anything nearly as hard. You live in a country where many of us don't manage to eat enough fruit and veg. How much easier is that than what you had to do?

You should have kicked him out the door, he should have not raped you. Your failure was in self-preservation, his was moral. Your position was difficult, his was easy. It's very difficult for someone in an abusive situation, whether long-term or short-term, to get themselves out. It's very easy for a man to not rape someone; it's the easiest thing in the whole world.

Think about that when you feel yourself blaming yourself. Think about how extremely easy it is not to rape and what that means for where the blame really lies.

Now, take the part of yourself that keeps being hard on you and let it be hard on you in the right direction - pushing you about things you are doing and going to do, not what you have done. Take the part of you that finally managed to get yourself out of that situation with your ex-boyfriend and use that strength again now.

And be prepared for failures. Be prepared for backslides and foul-ups and times of bleakness, because they're going to happen. And that is deeply unfair, but they're going to happen anyway. But if you're prepared for them you can ride them out and move on again.

If you decide you don't want to have sex outside of marriage then don't have any more sex until you are married. Fretting about what can no longer be changed is just wasting energy you should be spending on what is yet to come and which can be changed. In the religion that your "friend" claims to practice the greatest sin is that of despair - because despair leads you to dwell in the belief that things are hopeless when that same religion says there is always a hope of redeeming your situation. If you are going to take her approach to sexual morality, then take the whole package - take the rule against extra-marital sex but take also the rule that you can always move forward.

If you decide you do want to just enjoy sex as much as possible, then make sure you are doing something you will actually enjoy in a time and place where you are capable of enjoying it.

However often you decide to have sex, whatever ways you decide to have it, make it something you are active in and bringing something special to yourself. It's whether or not you and your partner can bring something special to it that will make it special or not, and whatever it takes to allow you to do that is how you will find that specialness. Hopefully for your "friend" how she is living her life will allow her to bring that specialness to her life with her future husband. It doesn't have to be the same for you. It doesn't have to not be either.

In fact. Forget about right and wrong here altogether, because that's not even the point. It's not a moral issue, it's an issue of what you put in and what you take out of the rest of your life. Pointless guilt will stop you doing that.