**Additional warning for sic*de attempt mention***

I am 19 now, and I already feel like I am too broken to date again.

To make a long story short, when I was 12, I started dating this guy only a year older than me. He was a CSA victim himself. It happened the first time in the woods on my 13th birthday. I will spare as much detail as possible, but it was poorly communicated, bloody, and traumatizing. He refused to do it the usual way, claiming he “wasn’t ready to take my virginity.” He caused permanent damage. I stayed in that relationship for 4 hellish years.

He was severely mentally ill, diagnosed with psychosis and OSDD. He was hypersexual, cheated multiple times, and manipulated, pressured, and threatened me into sex. I nearly took my own life twice.

I’ve had two sexual partners since then, both women. One was my best friend. We mutually agreed never to acknowledge it again, as we were both intoxicated. The second was my girlfriend at the time, which ended up being a manipulative, toxic relationship of 4 months that ended in my stuff being stolen.

I don’t know how to quite explain this, but I just want to have an experience that I can look back on and not regret. I want that intimacy with someone, and I have been in therapy long enough to feel safe with it. But I feel too broken to explain my needs to a hook up partner, and I don’t want a relationship.

I’m just lost. It feels so lonely and isolating, missing out on that experience because of what he took from me.