This is a first-person interview (YouTube) in which Marnie recounts being emotionally exploited and sexually exploited by an older man beginning in adolescence, the downstream effects (sex/relationship addiction from ~18–35, marriages, affairs, cervical cancer, suicidal crisis), and the pivotal moment when a friend reframed her early experience as sexual abuse rather than personal moral failure — a paradigm shift that relieved shame and enabled the start of healing.
Yeah, we will, we'll launch into that. And I appreciate, even as you're already saying it, the ways in which I think everyone can find themselves in some of this story or for those that have been abused, they can find that there are some common roots that, that yes, the abuse is a unique, maybe distinctive feature of their story, but it ties back into some things that we are all experiencing to some degree. And I think that for some people can maybe be helpful to know. While my experience may have been pretty unique, the needs or things I was wrestling with underneath are very common. And there's some really helpful steps that people are taking. So let's keep moving towards that in your story. Kind of share with us maybe the next phases of. At what point did you identify it as sexual abuse? What were some of the signs that made that clear for you? And what would you say to others that maybe you're analyzing their story and starting to wonder in their journey, like, have I maybe misinterpreted my own story and just called something normal or okay, that I need to recognize was actually me being taken advantage of at a vulnerable state in my life as a child? Unpack that a little bit for us.
Yes, that's exactly how it happens. My discovery that it was actually sexual abuse was quite a dramatic thing for me, and I'll get there in just a minute. But the context is that with this setup of such loneliness, such deprivation, such truly emotional deprivation that this perpetrator poured into, I also found that that was very easily exploited from others as well. And I was so desperate to replicate what it felt like being with him. And we're not talking about sex, though. That was fine. I'm talking about the, the emotional affirmation and things that, that provided for me the comfort, the, the nurturing is what it felt like that that provided for me. And I found that there were plenty of guys on this Christian college campus who were real willing to tell me I was fabulous and spend some time with me if I'd just be sexual with them. And I was very willing to be sexual with them again because I unconsciously learned sex equals love. Yeah, I didn't understand that at all. But, but I was operating out of that false core belief, regardless of the fact that I didn't know I had that belief. That's how trauma works. And I was willing to be sexual with them if they would just spend some time with me and tell me I was okay. So probably by the time I was 18 or 19, I was a full blown sex, love and relationship Addict. And again, I didn't understand that story. I just was full of shame for being promiscuous was the only word I had for that. That's a fine word. But I think I was also addicted. And so I carried so much shame from that. So that permeated my life from probably 18 or 19 until I was 35. I married really young at 20. We had no skills for relationship. We ultimately divorced at I was 24. We were both 24. And I had multiple affairs in that relationship. Very quickly remarried, thought now he would be the right one and was, was completely faithful to him and, and genuinely happy, at least happier than I had ever been before. We did life together really well. We had two young children and that process. I'd gone through a lot of spiritual abuse around the divorce and completely backed away from the church and, and things. And I, I got back into a different denomination, but that's so important to me. And life was just really, really good until huge stresses started. And at that point my husband was, was ill equipped to be able to provide any emotional support. We could do all the practical things. But there was not again an emotional connection which I did not realize at all. What I knew was that once again I felt abandoned because there were huge crisis in our lives, deaths. My father's acting out and his exploitation of young men was exposed and front page news in the newspaper and just all kinds of stuff. And at that point I began acting out again with multiple, multiple affairs. Finally had consequences, health consequences. Cervical cancer caused by sexually transmitted disease. Such shame, such anxiety, such depression, such ptsd that there came a day I just came unglued and very seriously and sat there with a bottle of pills, wanted to take my own life. And I know that God intervened and did for me what I couldn't do for myself because I called somebody, which I would not have typically done. And I called a dear friend and kind of poured out this story and she said, I'm coming and I'm going to get you help. And she did. And she came and sat in my kitchen floor all day long that day. And she heard my story and I confessed to her, I'm in an affair and it's multiple affairs. And here's what that cervical cancer was about. And I just kind of vomited out all this stuff. And she just said, I'm so sorry. And I was undone. No one had ever seen my pain before. And as we sat there literally on the kitchen floor through the day and she heard more of the story, she was the first One who said to me, marnie, you didn't lose your virginity at 16 to this guy. She knew this man. She had been attached with our family for a long time. She'd had Thanksgiving dinner with him. And, you know, she knew so much about, about my life and my story and my family. She's like, that's sexual abuse. And I really was just the. The world shifted in a heartbeat, and I was. That's what. And she said, that's sexual abuse. And just in an instant, my perception of myself changed, my perception of the whole story changed. And for me, for many people, it's a devastating thing to find out they're a sexual trauma survivor, a sexual abuse survivor. For me, it was freeing. It was like, oh, my goodness, this wasn't my fault. It actually helped, the shame in the beginning to know I had been exploited, I had been violated. This was a perpetrator. This wasn't my best friend. I considered this guy 30, 15 years older than I was, to be my best friend. Even when I was 35 years old. We were, we stayed close, we talked on the phone. We. That was before email, but we wrote letters back and forth. And, and it was just, it was a pivotal moment, you know. Now, then after that, the real hard healing steps happen. But in terms of that initial realization, for me, that was a positive. And, and I'm grateful. I'm grateful for that. And I'm so grateful that she was savvy enough that she immediately recognized that. Marnie, it, it sounds like that paradigm shift was a life changer for you. Absolutely. And, and can you unpack that paradigm shift just a little bit for us? Your story is riveting. Help us understand that shift, the shift. I'm going to use a word, and I hope this is okay with pure desire. It's not a terrible word, but it's a graphic word. Was from whore to sexual abuse victim. Now that's, that's a big paradigm shift because, you know, the promiscuity, I, I early started thinking of myself in this degrading term and, and then having affairs in a marriage and then being divorced, which was anathema in the, the denomination I grew up in, and then remarrying and having children and again having affairs, which was worse in my hierarchy of sins and of consequences. And so that deep cloud of shame, which I had no understanding really, of emotions and feelings, now, they were volcanoing out all over the place. I don't know that that's a word, but I just made it one, spewing out all over the place, but to understand them or to have specific language for them, I didn't. I didn't have any language for them. So I couldn't have called it shame, and I couldn't have called it loneliness, but was just. Just broken. Just so. So beaten down inside, though. So uber functional, you know, on the outside. And so to have that shift. There is a reason for all this, and holy cow, it's not my fault. And so it. It was. It was really seismic.
