Current Resources for Partners of Sexual Abuse Survivors

When you're healing from sexual abuse, it can be challenging to explain certain aspects about your trauma and how it shows up in the relationship to your partner or potential partner. Sometimes explaining things can trigger similar feelings around the abuse- whether it's reliving certain aspects of the details, feeling like they don't believe you or that what you went through wasn't actually that bad. Sometimes it can cause some to feel as though their partner is using coercion when they forget details or boundaries or have confusion or questions around your relational/intimacy needs.

Many survivors of abuse ultimately desire a loving partnership they can trust to be safe and able to hold space for the complexities of how their trauma impacted them. Safe, long-term loving partners of survivors oftentimes desire to understand their partner's world and how to help them but often struggle with their own feelings of loneliness, insecurity that they need support around. Asking their partner, the survivor of abuse, can be too much for that person to also hold so it can be helpful for many partners to find outside support for themselves.

Below is a list of current resources for partners of survivors of past sexual abuse. If you have any resources you'd like to add or are running a current support group either local to Austin or virtually, please reach out or let me know in the comments below!

Groups local to the Austin area:

• Hope for the Journey- Traci Webster Pirri

Books I have read:
1. The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz

• About the path back to intimacy which is often one of the biggest challenges for partners
• Helpful for survivors and partners

2. Allies in Healing: When the person you love was sexually abused as a child by Laura Davis

• Formatted in a Q&A style
• Follows stories of real couples

3. Survivors & Partners, Healing the Relationships of Sexual Abuse Survivors by Paul A. Hansen

• Designed to be read and discussed with your partner​

Other recommended books I haven’t read:

• Outgrowing the Pain Together by Eliana Gil
• Trust After Trauma: A Guide to Relationships for Survivors and Those Who Love Them by Aphrodite T. Matsakis
• Ghosts in the Bedroom by Ken Graber

Online resources:

• Supporting a Survivor of Sexual Assault - Men Against Rape Culture
• The Survivors' Network guide to supporting the person you care about - The Survivors' Network
• What to know about complex PTSD - Medical News Today
• How to Support a Friend or Loved One Who Has Been Sexually Abused - New York Times
• 10 pieces of advice for helping a partner who has been sexually assaulted - INSIDER

Communities:

• Support For Partners Of Rape Survivors Facebook group
• Taking Back Ourselves events. The retreats they hold are for survivors, but they also hold community events in some cities. I went to one and it was extremely sensitive and informative.
• Secondary Survivors Reddit subgroup
• Hidden Water Circle support groups. Online closed groups that open every so often with new “circles” for both survivors and their loved ones.