Dating After Trauma

Jane’s Question:

Thank you for your informative articles. You answer concerns in a forthright and compassionate manner that has a doable and down-to-Earth resolution. I always look forward to reading your fresh and insightful responses. I was raped 18 years ago. I’m now in my sixties, and I don’t want to grow older alone. Men don’t ask me out. I believe I’m a “good catch” — talented, smart, nice looking, independent, empathetic, good energy. Yet I feel awkward, shy and somewhat fearful to be on the brink of seeking honest trust. I am strong, but feel very delicate. Do I continue alone, or is there hope for a companion? Thank you for your consideration.

Liam’s Response:

I thank you, Jane, for you your kind observations and for sharing your situation here. To come forward with such an inquiry, sharing the pain of your past and the anxiety of your present takes an incredible amount of courage, and there’s no psychic talent needed to know I’m in the presence of a true survivor. You were presented with one of the more difficult paths of ascension. The choice to become either a victim, blaming others and using diversion for the sake of mediocrity, or a survivor, evolving under conditions of stress, learning to flow with the pain of mutation and the agony of adjustment. For those who make the choice you did in such situations, the miraculous just might occur. It takes more strength than most have. Your willingness to both accept and change for the better makes the biggest and boldest of statements. I salute you.

I sense that your description of yourself, of your traits and attributes, is quite valid. You’re not prone to self-delusion. These are aspects of your persona that do indeed make you a fine catch.Unfortunately, they don’t really become important in the game until some time later in the dating process and beyond. What you need is to learn to begin the mad dance of love in the first place. It is a ritual, a very ancient one, and in our modern techno age, we often forget that the primal mind is the entryway to more sophisticated levels of relating. Silly schoolgirl flirtations and boyish territorialism never really go out of style; they simply change form depending on circumstance. As we age, we seem to lose touch with that brazen fire within, that edgy surge of emotion that forces us into the fray with the stunning, seductive creatures we desire. We water it down and dress it up. In the tragic cruelty of your experience, much was taken from you. On a conscious level, I feel you worked hard to come to terms with this terrible incident, and you would be a fine role model for many people, both female and male, who are victims of sexual assault. However, the wounds of your subconscious remain deeply etched. I know you have been working on those too, but it’s a slower process.

The Theater of Desire is a brutal place: savage, inviting and terrifying. It is a game of master and slave, of dominance and submission, of pursuit and capture. Even at the most innocent level, the hunt is on. Most of what happens takes place on an entirely subconscious level. We dance-talk-flirt and move to a primal beat dictated by the reptilian brain, far beneath the level of the waking mind. Most of us are only vaguely aware of the process, while true masters and mistresses of the game make it a special point to acknowledge that fact. They hone their skills to a fine edge until subconscious and conscious mind work in a Yoga of the most potent or the most poisonous of seductions.

In the case of people who suffer from the experience of a sexual assault, the damage often causes a glitch in the primitive machine. Fear and trauma create a blockage below the surface, and a myriad of subconscious control mechanisms prevent the natural flow of orchestration. It is the determination to survive gone somewhat haywire. To enter the game of love is to become vulnerable and lose power. It takes you back to a horrific place, so you have closed yourself off in ways you don’t even realize. Men come into your energy, and they cannot say why you are unapproachable, but you are.

When it comes to sex and dating, men move in a very predatory fashion, and the females that give a good chase also give good encouragement as well. Normal, healthy males approach females who give off the correct signals even if they aren’t consciously aware what those signals are. Have you ever sat and watched teenage girls at play with boys? Teenage girls are true creatures of the forest, closely connected to their own inner natures in many ways. Without conscious thought, all bundled up in their nervousness, still they are effortless in their encouragement of any male they admire. It’s all about body language, scent and posture. Touching the hair, licking the lips, leaning forward, a girl has an awful lot of tricks in her arsenal. Eye contact itself is an enormous playground of signals, relating endless information between two heated Reptilian brains. We need to reconnect you to your reptilian brain, because when men are close to you, they see a very attractive woman, a friendly woman, a fine person, but the cues are either disturbingly forced or missing entirely. And so the men pass by. But you can change this. You can go girly and work on advertising the product. Most of all, you can start letting go of some of the control issues that hold you back.

Studying teenage girls for tips and pointers on how to act with males is a good place to start. For all of their brazen silliness, there are lessons to be learned. You will have to go further, though. You need to relink with internal energies that have been pent up all this time. These are some pretty girly energies, so first thing is to find a younger girl and spend some quality time having fun with her.

Could be a niece, a granddaughter, a friend’s daughter or one of your older friends who still acts like a teenager. It doesn’t really matter. Just make a weekend of it. Talk about boys and makeup, do the things girls do. Time spent hanging out with flirty youngsters will resync your own internal machinery, and before long, you’ll be advertising your intentions naturally. Next, take inventory…What’s the wardrobe looking like these days? Spice it up a little. Start with a little provocation, and then a little more. Take up a good physical exercise routine. This is always important for people trying to align with sensual energies of any sort. Instead of being ashamed of being shy, study how to make that shy demeanor work for you. A nervous girl can have a very powerful erotic affect on a man, if she plays her hand correctly, and you can find many examples of the coy seductress in literature, art and cinema.

Finally, trust and control are major issues that must be addressed at once. You are detached from your inner delirium, and I sense that even if the assault had never occurred, this would still be a problem for you. You’ve always been someone who fears the fundamental mysteries of chaos. This fear creates a certain wall of defensiveness that muddies the mix. So, you need to foster your own Inner Delirium, because its beauty can transform lives. It is a dangerous place, but one that must be understood. Everyone has different thresholds of understanding. Some can take more dissolution of the linear than others, but control must be lost on some level. I suggest that you look into heavy trance work: dancing to drums or taking up drumming yourself. Fire is the element you seek. Try reading experimental sorts of literature, Beat era and avant garde stuff, surreal poetry and art for the experience. All of this will help the subconscious loosen its stranglehold of restraint. You are as strong as you say, and delicate too. Embrace both sides of the equation. You are not what was done to you, and your future need not be dependent on that crime. You will find what you seek.

One step at a time.

Liam

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