Abuse or just a misunderstanding?
Hi! I am new here so sorry if I make any mistakes. I had some bad bdsm experiences 15 years ago when I was 20. I think about them almost every day and feel very traumatized by it. I just cant let it go no matter how hard I try. The thing is that I don’t know if what I experienced actually was abuse or if it was normal bdsm that I just couldn’t understand or handle properly (It has been 15 years of just brewing non stop in my head as I said and it is not until now I feel ready to try and deal with it and understand my conflicting emotions and move forward).
First of all: I am kinky, and I am also a person prone to selfharm. I am better now but it was pretty bad back in the day.
I will only mention one experience here. I met a man 35 years my senior after just talking online for a little while. We had talked a lot about kink and having a bdsm dynamic in the few days we chatted, but I thought our first meeting was just gonna be a coffee in his car. He drove me away to an isolated area where he proceeded to slap, choke and humiliate me (no sex) and I was so afraid that he was going to kill me that I just did nothing and played along. When I got home I blocked him and cried in the shower. This would be pretty clearly abuse I think if it wasn’t for the fact that I met up with him once more after this and kept in contact and sort of craved him and was turned on by the thought of seeing him even though I felt and still feel sick to my stomach thinking about what happened that first time (while also feeling aroused, and ashamed, and hating him).
So what I am struggling to understand is: was this abusive and some weird trauma-bonding? Or was this me being selfharmy and bad at communication? Or was this just a normal bdsm experience and sub-drop (not sure I understand the term that is why I am asking in this forum) that some ashamed part of my brain has twisted into trauma because I can’t face my own sexuality?
Or all of the above?
(Also: I don’t practice anything more than some very light power dynamic shift since many years back - as I feel too scared to retraumatize myself if I try anything more extreme, but I kind of want to try it again?)