Reconciliation makes me horny for all the wrong reasons.

I realized this recently. The thing about me is that I have an immense kink for being degraded and dominated, and often it doesn't express in healthy ways. I'm a r\*pe survivor, it happened when I was very young and shortly after I lost my parents in a traumatic accident, and later I completely fell into drug use and a bunch of unhealthy coping methods. One of them was putting myself in dangerous situations with problematic men, I was traumatized and seeking out what was familiar to me. During that time I hopped from one abusive relationship to another, for a period of 5 years.

By the time I met my husband, I had conditioned myself into equating abuse with arousal. In fact, the reason I started dating my husband is because he used to hang out with people I considered dangerous (mostly smugglers and dealers and the like) and he used to have this "bad boy" vibe about him. But soon after I met him I got pregnant and we decided to keep the baby and get married. We've been together since. With my husband I felt truly safe and loved for the first time in my life and I was able to establish a healthier relationship with sex. For the last 12 years this problematic aspect of my sexuality was suppressed.

And then I cheated. It was an act of pure selfishness. I have put my husband through hell. He loved and cared about me when no one else did, and I did this to him in return. I carry immense regret about my actions but also acknowledge that I can only move forward and correct the bad parts of me so I don't betray him again.

But during this process, I have been noticing something concerning. It is natural, during the process of reconciling, for my husband to often be disappointed and maybe sometimes even angry at me. But I'm increasingly finding that him being mad at me is starting to trigger my trauma response, resulting in me experiencing intense arousal in totally inappropriate situations. I am working through my several traumas in my therapy sessions, which honestly is something I should have done 15 years ago when the events happened and not let them poison my psyche, but I'm finding it difficult to untangle these issues from the problems we face today.

And it doesn't just happen when he's mad, reconciliation is an inherently inequal relationship dynamic and triggers my degradation kink. As the cheater trying to make amends, I'm supposed to be proactive. I'm supposed to do the work to make him feel safe and loved while he may not be in the sort of headspace to be able to provide any sort of affection to me, and I'm totally fine with that. So I say "I love u"s without expecting him to say it back, I do small tasks around the house to make things easier for him, I try to be emotionally present and be empathetic and supportive even though he may not be able to express any gratitude back to me.

But you can probably see where this is going. Because I've been in so many relationships in my past that used and discarded me like trash, relationships where I put in 100% effort only to never be valued and because I spent so much time sexualizing these toxic and abusive dynamics as a coping method, that putting efforts into reconciliation with my husband also ends up putting me in a constant state of perceived submission and subservience towards my husband. In this state, anything negative my husband says to me, be it disappointment or anger or just simple sadness at my betrayal, while my mind will be feeling the correct emotions of regret and shame and remose, my body will involuntarily get aroused because the situation itself has triggered my degradation kink and trauma response.

I recognize that shame also has a lot to do with this. I have had a shame based mindset my entire life, and the shame around my affair and the acts I performed with my AP has only made that sense of shame in myself stronger. I'm trying to figure out the best course of action with my husband, because I want to let go of the toxic part of my shame that leads me to making self destructive selfish choices while also learning and maintaining the appropriate emotions like empathy and remorse. I have to go from shame based (I'll do the right thing because I'll feel ashamed in front of others if I do the wrong thing) to a more empathy based self aware approach (I'll do the right thing because I know other people will be hurt if I do the wrong thing and I don't want to be that person) and so far it has been a struggle.

My husband is actually not too bothered by any of this. He knows all of this, I share things with him wayyy before I make any posts about it. He's delighted he gets to hatefuck me every time he gets mad, and then afterwards he often forgets what he was mad about and never brings it up again. I guess it's just a personal struggle on my part. I don't want to frame reconciliation as a sexual act, to me it feels like the same sort of defilement of a sacred thing like my affair was towards my marriage. Any suggestions or perspectives will be appreciated.