I've got a character who was prostituted by her parents as a child. What personality traits would this person have as an adult?
Hm. Let's see. Typically a young woman who has lived that way is sexually promiscuous but oddly reserved when it comes to allowing herself to enjoy intimacy. She hides her physical and emotional reactions as much as she can. She usually has either turned to or is coming off of self-medicating substances: liquor, illegal drugs, etc. She often has a history of suicide attempts. She seems hostile to most people because she is fearful of anyone finding out about what she allowed (yes I know but that's how she thinks.) It's easier to keep people away than risk having to confess.
I've known two women like that. Both had been alcoholics. Both are extremely closed off and take a lot to bring down their emotional shields. Counter-intuitively, both preferred rough kinky sex. Both were prostituted by their mothers, one has forgiven and forgotten, the other has no relationship with her parents at all.
My more off-than-on boyfriend has been trough multiple sexual abuse during childhood. It was a greater part of his childhood (a number of years) and involved multiple teachers. He wasn't actually prostituted but I guess the effects on his character were pretty close. He's exceedingly hard to get to know - he shields everything away, always pretending the good and ready to go guy. But that's just his shield. If you get to know him he's very difficult to handle: he often remains silent, doesn't give away his toughts. Or he tends to explode...) He never really speaks to anybody about that, least not consciously. He often has nightmares about it. (I'm, based on his words, practically the only person who knows about details. He told me more than his wife.) He works very hard in social projects (next to his job) , trying to keep children save from what happended to him and trying to get the bad people to justice. He is very sensitive to proximity and touch. In detail: He's totally fine shaking hands. But he allows hugs etc. only a very few people (no buddies or long term friends, not the partners of his children eg.) And he's exceedingly sexual active: changing partners, multiple partners, rough is included but not necessary. He differs behaviour in simply sexual and relationship. Hugs, kisses on the mouth: that's relationship and only allowed to very few people. The rest is really more common behaviour. He plays both dominant and submissive sides, however until he trusts you (that may take decades, actually) he is dominant only... He takes partners to safe places, never leaves to strange places for sex, never leaves people uninformed with whom he left and where to. He actually has some kind of a "crash pad" for that.
Depends on how her parents treated her. Were they otherwise loving? As in, did they build a webbing of trust and understanding, even if that understanding was flawed? Then she would be brainwashed. She would blindly trust them and believe they have her best of intentions at heart. However, due to the nature of her "work" she might quickly become disenfranchised, as she may find herself dissatisfied with the misery of her clients and succumbing to a desire to settle down. Have her own life, etc. Were her parents the stereotypical abusive / neglectful variety? As in, belittled her, were passive aggressive, never displayed affection or trust, never allowed her to express herself, etc? Then she's going to have a lot of problems. Depending on the exact circumstances, she's going to have a sour outlook on the world, and she's going to assume life is a negative experience. Everyone she meets will come tied to bad assumptions on her end. She won't trust anyone enough to be open, since when she was with her parents they probably silenced her. She might have a sensitivity to violence or conflict, especially if her parents held grudges. She simply won't have a way to resolve the negative emotions inside, and so will become neurotic, swinging from emotion to emotion. Sensitive to rejection, pain, possibly isolation (if, for instance, she was punished by being locked up). Did her parents condition her to enjoy drugs or alcohol? Her negative emotional state will cause her to cling to any such vices with an iron grip, depending on their effects for a taste of sanity. She'll be too afraid to defy her parents if they were particularly harsh toward disobedience, and might feel absolutely helpless. Out of control, oppressed, and so on. She'll be a miserable character unless somebody with positive influence came along at some point and managed to seed better ideals. Otherwise, even her fantasies are going to be tainted by the warped perception of reality left in her from her parents' maltreatment. And yes, she will be a closed book. Because probably every time she opened up her heart she was met with hostility, rejection, and betrayal. And when you're a kid experiencing that amount of pain, without any answers, you're willing to do anything to make it stop. Our logical brains assume that the best way to prevent that pain is to shell up and never come out. Our natural tendency to trust turns to distrust. But your character's personality by in large depends on the specifics of her history. Primarily, how she related to the events of her history and under what contexts they occurred.
This breaks my heart. I relate a lot. Abuse tends to mislead us into believing vulnerability is what lures in bad situations. Vulnerability becomes this "weak link" that we simply can't expose, for fear of betrayal, being backstabbed, and so much more. There's a lot of old terror that's been psychologically linked to the physical experiencing of "being vulnerable" too, so whenever we feel ourselves getting close to someone, we're triggered and panic. It's such a terrible place to put someone.
It's his shield, the image he manufactures very carefully. The more people see him like that the less they ask. I've managed his appointments for a while - he's been trough a bad phase lately - we actually spent a few hours discussing with whom he should go where to party etc. so people would see him mingle and stay silent. Pretending is a big part of his life. It's actually something I know from my depressions: If you say "no I don't like to go and party, no thanks" the first thing people will do is aks why. They do expect you to say "Yes, I want to" So it was easier to put on a funny face and say "yes, I'm coming" and keep the rest quiet. It's like buying time. Edit: he was at a private bording school during the entire time. He once managed to convince a teacher (not actually involved in this) to get him to both a doctor and the police. His parents came by a few days later, telling the police he was just making stories up to get attention. As police wasn't really into working their way into the bording school the medical records were worth nothing, the investigation faded away before it started and the teacher he confied in was kicked out from school.
If he sleeps in the same bed, his wife knows. When one throws oneself out of bed screaming and kicking, the other occupant usually takes note. Eventually they learn to not touch the individual in the middle of a nightmare. It's a great way to end up with a black eye or broken nose.
Wow, that's terrible. It makes sense though, sadly. It's a difficult balance, giving parents authority to rear their children but also trying to dissuade abuse of that privilege. Situations can get so convoluted that it gets confusing, and then the wrong decisions are made. Especially where deception is involved. I really hope the best for him, and hope that teacher managed to move on to something greater.
Emily Murdoch did an interesting job of this scenario in If You Find Me. In some ways I was nodding along and others was thinking, "that's a little out there." @Lyn P. You should check out If You Find Me.
Just looked it up. Seems interesting and I think it could be a great place to start for wanting to write something similar. The summary reminds me of the movie (1994 drama) Nell. Strange movie, but unabashedly real. Something about it spoke to me.
It's written first person from the girl's perspective. I think you'd get a lot out of it if you're thinking of tackling the same subject.
That is almost impossible to say because everyone handles those sorts of things differently. I watched a documentary the other night about two women, both similar in age and background, who were kidnapped and held captive for eight years by a rapist. They were both chained up in a room together and treated pretty much the same. One of the women took part in the documentary and could talk about what had happened to her. It was ten years ago, she is now married with two children and works a part-time job. The other refused to take part but made a statement that what had happened to her was so horrendous she couldn't even speak about it and was suffering severely with mental health problems. Two people, two different reactions. Just look at your character and what they go through, what were they like before, what does the story require?
I agree! Also there is a very insidious concept known as "Repetition Compulsion" (Psychology) where the abuse victim tries to repeat the abuse behaviour in order to overcome it and that usually leads to even more abuse. It's very counter intuitive, but I've seen people create situations where they will most likely get hurt again.
If it only was about that. He's really into te social work mentioned above and has a lot of contact with both police and administrative authoritites. He says, it's not about giving parents authority or not, it's mainly about these authoritiies not wanting to get involved into these cases as they're difficult to handle. It's still pretty much the same: nothing happens unless you have like 100 complaints by students. Even then it's mostly an "administrative warning and a fine". As sexual abuse is something raising shame in victims, most of them can't talk about it even later. It took him about 40 yrs after the failed try to even talk to me in detail. By the time the offences against him were barred. Not to speak of the many victims he knows that never came forward. He also explained to me that bording schools still seem to be rather "untouchable" and hold a lot of power - especially since most kids there come from even wealthier and more powerful background. Sad to say but this is going on, luckily not on his school as it was closed down a couple of years ago as it went under new authority of a private fund. They decided to sort all this out and in the process closed the school. @Mary Elise No I haven't - but I might be up for it now Edit: corrected some format errors
Check out a book called: "Children in the Game" by Ross McInne.....(I know I have the name wrong...I'll be back to edit it later.) It covers some of what you're looking for. Edit: https://www.amazon.ca/Children-game-prostitution-strategies-recovery/dp/0968438601 A Google search of "children in the game + prostitution" brings up almost too much information. Sigh.
Sry, missed your post. No, they don't - in fact she's living in the city due to work, he's more in the country, at the family home. His nightmares usually and occur when he's alone. I guess he needs the proximity to feel safer, even though it's a long way to get someone that close. That was the reason he used to call me around 2 a.m. during work weeks telling me of that stuff - his wife had turned the phone off (her lady friends were off on a holiday trip calling her drunk at night (guess it was day for them, anyway). After a few weeks I gave her a heads up so she'd stay at home during the week toget him a few nights sleep. Edit: She knows he was abused as a most of his childhood and teenage years and that his parents covered it up. Nothing more, nothing less.
I should've asked how old your character is as you're creating him/her. I've seen a few different directions taken by post-abuse individuals. Some never learn to deal with the damaged child they carry around regardless how many years pass. Those individuals are typically crippled by the substances they use to soothe that damaged child. They subconsciously recreate their abuse in an attempt to change the outcome of the original abuse. Some learn how to soothe the damaged child with something other than mind-altering substances but retain the habits required for survival. Those individuals often develop intimate relationships with people who hurt them in some way or another but otherwise appear completely normal to the outside world. They may or may not recognize the ways they attempt to recreate the situation but instinctively stay away from anything that may irritate the damaged child. Some learn to soothe the damaged child using non-destructive techniques and shed many, but rarely all, of the survival habits. Those individuals tend to be high-functioning in social settings and professionally successful. Few if any know anything at all about their damaged child and those who do are avoided. An individual in their 50s with this background has either succumbed to the substances that quiet the damaged child, learned to deal but not in a manner that allows them to move forward in professional and/or personal life, or has figured out how to placate the damaged child and discovered something in themselves on which they prefer to focus. There are always exceptions of course, and sometimes the level of coping varies depending on the situation at hand, but that's the pattern I've seen. ETA: Often an individual has to progress through each of those stages to get to a place of relative normality so the character can be all of those at different stages of her life. @SpokenSilence I'm guessing your boyfriend falls into the second scenario but it's often fluid depending upon the details of any situation. He's one of the fortunate ones in that he's found someone who silences the damaged child. That's no small thing. ETA: I think marital dynamics like those your friend and his wife have developed are much more common than one might think.
@Mary Elise He ain't quiet at all... There's a huge difference in silencing the damaged child and in being rendered silent... AS He puts it. . He managed to do fine until sbd. talked him into therapy, now he's a wreck. Being with me or his wife is a matter of control in the outside, still he's torn on the inside.
Can't hit "like" for that but completely understand. I hope he reaches détente soon. Suffering is no fun at all.
I knew one woman who was sexually abused over a protracted period by her step father, from a very young age in 1960s. Caught in flagrante by her mother, she was blamed for seducing him. Stepfather ultimately committed suicide several years later when she was 15, which denied the family death benefits and insurance, financial turmoil plus more guilt. Quite a lot of baggage for her, and back then no counseling. She became promiscuous, unable to handle relationships. When relationship was going well, she would sabotage it with scarcely-concealed infidelities, I think because she didn't believe she deserved happiness.
Thanks for all of the good information. My character is an adult female, and she's not a prostitute. Would she be a professional of some type, or would she be most likely to only hold down a minimum wage job?
Either, or both. Depends. She could start out as a waitress and end up a physicist. It's more a process than a state of being,