[NSFW] What made you lose your innocence?

I'll be deleting this comment tomorrow, but thought I'd contribute. I'm a (as of last Monday) 36 year old guy. For me, it's a toss up between 3 things: when I was 5 or 6, a same-age neighbor girl in my apartment building came over and we hid in my closet and fondled each other. Not sure if that counts because I don't feel it was anything less innocent than simple curiosity. However, in that same apartment I had a male babysitter for a short time, but the entire time I was there he molested and imposed himself sexually on me; it happened every weekday for 2 weeks. It was the first time I had seen an adult penis or semen. Again, not sure if it counts because I simply could not fathom what was being done to me. I was just following his instructions and manipulations. For me, the loss of my innocence was when I lost my virginity at 17; I was raped by the girl, who coerced me under threat of harm by her psychotic older brother.

I can see where the other stuff when I was a kid may have affected me, but the rape did the most damage from what I can tell (and more pertinently was where my innocence was lost) because it destroyed my view of women, my ability to interact or socialize with women, and even now causes me to be emotionally triggered when I find out a woman has had a lot of sexual experience and/or many partners because I always subconsciously viewed women as using men for sex and regarding men as playthings of no value. I've never experienced real intimacy or affection, and i spent my early 30s being sexually reckless with people i was not at all attracted to (creepy men and women, also some transvestites and transsexuals, all of them looking for hookups on craiglist etc (nothing against that lifestyle just that I'm not interested romantically in any I've met and am not sexually interested in them, and these were very grotesque people), because I needed to feel something, even if it was only on the receiving end. i stopped that a while ago (repressed actually because I do have to fight the urge to go be with whoever will have me) but i'm working on other things. To say the least if I encounter a woman I'm attracted to and then learn she's sexually experienced or in particular has had a lot of sexual partners, I panic. Though I'm generally terrified of women who I'm actually attracted to because my mind just doesn't seem to want to allow for the idea that I can have and experience real intimacy and mutual affection and that just because I'm attracted to someone doesn't mean they're going to try to hurt me or use me. At my age, finding a woman who isn't sexually experienced is difficult (and i do recognize that I shouldn't be looking based on that at all and that it shouldn't matter), and although (believe it or not) I've tried dating over the past few years (I try to tell myself a date doesn't have to mean a sexual encounter and it's possible to just go enjoy each others' company), there were a few close-call encounters that scared me off (e.g., a woman I was attracted to made it very obvious she was interested in sex and it turned out I simply wasn't ready. she flipped out on me for not being more accommodating and for not acting more interested; i don't think she realized what she was doing to my mind and emotions and what was going through my head when i finally left that night).

anyway holy crap i think that qualified as a tangent. sorry, no TL;DR. read it or don't but that's (part of) my story.

/r/AskReddit Thread