Years ago I had some experiences as a child and have been trying to determine whether or not it was sexual abuse for emotional closure. Childhood sexual abuse affects an adult in her marriage but was my experience even sexual abuse? When I was eight years old (had just turned eight that month or the previous month) a man told me to kiss him. He said it was a kiss another male would be jealous of. His smile, look, voice, it all felt sexual and did not seem to be under a platonic context. He was acting flirtatious, sly or insinuating. The male jealousy comment was one he definitely had made before about holding hands or something. When I was nine years old he reached out to touch my butt. It was not even remotely playful or to say “off you go” or as acknowledgment. It felt like do I have to be stuck here in the flesh in this moment? I had experiences where my stomach was rubbed out of nowhere, it wasn’t necessary and it felt awkward and weird. The "kiss" night when I was eight, he had told me to kiss him as Pocahontas and he was Kocoum or John Smith. People knew that we played where I was Pocahontas and he was Kocoum or John Smith and didn’t consider it inappropriate. They probably thought I was doing most of the imagining as an imaginative, playful child doing make believe or whatever. They didn’t know that he’d told me to kiss him or things like that during the play with us as the love interests. They may have thought he just happened to be playing these people, that the emphasis wasn’t on their non-platonic feelings for each other. I don’t think they knew the non-platonic things that were said or explored during the play privately. And the hand holding, I think we were playing as them when it happened. I’m not sure if that’s why we were holding hands though or if that just happened to be while we were playing. (I'm not trying to say holding hands counts as sexual abuse of course, I'm just giving background or context.) He did use this to make the “jealousy” comment (which he’d made again that night when he told me to kiss him). He would sing some songs of a romantic nature with me as Pocahontas and him as Kocoum or whoever and get this look in his eyes and kind of doze off (not as in sleeping but it's hard to explain). We’d play as them and it’d get into their romantic relationship.
