I think I was SAed as a 3 year old, and I don't know what to do about it.

NSFWTrigger Warning: CSA (Child Sexual Abuse)

Some context is really needed for my situation, so I'll explain what happened first.

When I was three years old, my mother kidnapped me (my mom and dad had shared custody of me, so she took me from my dad), and fled to Florida with her boyfriend. According to her, we stayed in a motel with her, her boyfriend, and some people they knew. She is an addict and spent most of the time we stayed there using meth and coke with the people her and her boyfriend knew. She said she was told by the people she was hanging out with, that she should offer herself sexually to another person in the motel who seemed like he had a lot of money, so she could steal what ever money he had.

At some point the police were called, and we fled to her boyfriend's uncle's house. When we got there, we found his uncle dead in his recliner. This is the first memory I have from this mess. She said we stayed there for a while before she left her boyfriend and we moved to another motel. Some time after this the police were called. She was taken into custody for drug possession - this is the second memory I have of this event - while I was taken by the police, and put into foster care some time later. My third and last memory of this entire saga was while I was in foster care. My foster care family had a dog, and after waking up in the middle of the night, I got into their kitchen and grabbed random food from their fridge and gave it to the dog.

That is all I remember until my grandma gained custody of me. I have no idea how much time passed between being taken by the police and ending up at my grandma's house. Needless to say, this was an extremely traumatic event and my mind ended up blocking most of it out. I've since been diagnosed with ptsd due to this event as well as a few others.

Now to my problem:

I was raped by my ex in 2022, and ever since, I've struggled a lot with being intimate with others, as well as doing things by myself. It's mostly consisted of a lack of libido, feelings of self disgust, and anxiety, but occasionally during sex or masturbation, I have very brief flashbacks of myself as a child in the middle of a sexual act. It doesn't play out like a video, it's more like a snapshot or an image, and the moment it happens, any and all libido I have disappears. Then the tears start flowing seemingly out of nowhere and I have to tell my partner we need to stop.

As I said, I don't remember much of what happened during that period in my life, but if my mom's "friends" were telling her to pretend to be a sex worker to steal money, I don't think sexually assaulting a toddler would be something outside of their wheelhouse. As you've seen, I've asked my mother about what happened and she never mentioned something like this happening, but she is a deeply abusive person so I find it hard to trust what she says, and it's always possible it happened when she wasn't around. I also don't know if anything might have happened while I was staying with my foster family and I don't know anyone I can ask about the time I spent there.

I want to be able to please my partner without this getting in the way, but I don't really know what to do about it. I've thought about going to therapy, but I wouldn't have anything more to tell them than what I've posted here and I'm not sure how much it would help. Does anyone have any advice?

Posted May 7, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC

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