/feels/ - Advice & Venting

Are your dating preferences influenced by your first love? Do you find yourself attracted to people who have the same features/personality/looks as the first person you fell in love with?

i dont know if anyone can relate to this, but i feel like i could probably get a bf if i tried enough but i wouldnt be able to feel much romantic attraction towards the other person, i feel like i dont feel as much romantic attraction as most people do

how do you deal with being super embarassed? i wish i culd just disapear from this place for some moments, i hate this feeling

Tw: rape
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I need help. I have been raped 4 times in the past 5 years by 4 different guys, and after the most recent one I am afraid that it will happen again.

The first 3 happened in rapid succession and it totally ruined my life for a year. I went through a shit ton of therapy and I am emotionally and mentally fine now, but a week ago it happened again. I had thought “oh I was naive and had low self consciousness, but now i’m more independent and confident so it won’t happen again” but clearly that isn’t the case.

I’ve never spoken about it publicly IRL and don’t plan to.

I need real advice. There are a lot of shitty people and clearly I am not doing enough to defend myself. I need to learn some concrete things that I can do to stop this from happening or some self defense suggestions.
I can give more specifics about the situations if it would help. I don’t mind talking about it at all now thankfully.

I've been searching google for women who feel similarly to me on this, but I've found nothing (if anything, Google spits out the opposite of what I'm trying to search for). I feel like if a guy were to lead or act dominant in any way during sex, it'd cause me to freak out and shut down. I can see myself acquiescing and then shutting down emotionally afterward, but that's it. I was sexually abused as a child for years and then got out of an abusive relationship (sexually abusive) that lasted around 3-4 years. I feel like sex reminds me I'm female and that triggers this self-loathing within myself that I don't usually feel on the regular because I have internalized misogyny from growing up in a very pro-masculine family. Though I've tried to work through it, it still crops up when I fantasize about sex. I feel like sex will inherently demean me in part because I'm a woman so I'm always going to be submissive during sex, even if I were trying to lead.

I recently got into a relationship with a person who knows about my past. He's told me he doesn't want to pressure me at all and that he is comfortable letting me decide, that he wants to be part of helping me get healthy in this way. Although I am grateful, I feel disgusting at the thought of us actually having sex because I feel like even if I initiate, because he is male, he is going to start becoming dominant which repulses me, even though I don't think being dominant in of itself is a negative.

I used to try to initiate sex in my other relationships, but I'd usually get turned down. Sex only would normally occur if the guy decided it would happen. I hate myself because I have a high libido, and it seems all my partners have either had low libidos in comparison, or they purposely withheld sex from me. At the same time, though I personally just see sex as a biological drive, I hate actually having it because the guy would always make it this sappy ordeal at the end, and I'd always feel like I was in the end just caring about how the guy felt. I feel like if my current SO were to know how sex is with me, they'd find me disgusting.

Have any of you anons who've had rocky sexual pasts been able to recover? How did you do it? Any help is appreciated.

Share the good things that have happened to you recently!

I randomly got a call for a job that I didn't apply for, but the job offer is my passion (cake decorating)! I went to the interview yesterday, and was hired immediately. The chef is a cool druggy gamer guy as are the other dudes in the kitchen, so now I'm gonna make a bunch of awesome cool nerdy friends! He really liked the cake I brought him and the work I did. The pay is more than I was expecting.
The only thing that makes me nervous is that he also wants me to work the line, which I've never done, but the place is classy so we're putting out beautiful food that I'm really proud of and even messing with molecular gastronomy, which I've wanted to get into for a very long time! I'm so excited to do my best.

My boyfriend normally has a clear, tenor voice, but when he's talking to strange girls his voice drops like an octave and turns to a deep baritone. I think this deep voice is incredibly sexy, but it kind of bothers me that he never uses it when he's talking to me, except when he just woke up. I talked to him about it and he says he doesn't know what I'm talking about. Should I be worried?

Pic unrelated.

I have to live with mother in law for a while. I hate her so damn much. To the point of throwing up from anger. Never live with in-laws. Trust me.

For a long time I thought once I met someone all of my problems with self-love and self-image would go away. Then I had a brief relationship a while ago and quickly realized that my fear of abandonment, paranoia, jealousy, insecurity, etc. only got worse during this time.

Did this happen to anyone else here?

I've always despised it, I hate everything about it: food, language (everybody hates it), customs, the people and even the traditional clothes (look way too slutty).
But the thing I hate them most is the way we look.

Yesterday I came across this by accident and frankly, it hurts me a lot. This is really how the vast majority of german men think.
People unironically use "you are so german!" as an insult when fighting. They are obsessed with foreign women, I can guarantee you, if you were to come here as a foreigner, they'd flock to you like there's no tomorrow. They're very vocal about prefering them too ("women from X are so much better").
And it seems as if nearly everybody shares that opinion - meanwhile the men are seen as very attractive by foreigners: tall, strong jaw line, etc. As an example, everybody was gushing about our soccer team - which of course only adds to their big ego.

The sad thing is, I completely fit the characteristics this guy described: I'm too tall, have a big nose, I'm shy, so I don't dress up, nor can I dance and I'm a very serious, no-fun person. Can't say anything about my dating life, because I never had a bf to begin with.
I actually do find some of the girls around me pretty, but if even they're considered ugly by international standards, then just how low am I?

I'm grateful for living in a safe 1st world country, but other than that, there's nothing nice about it. I'm so jealous of other people's cultures and appearances.
Is there a way to look more exotic, interesting, better?

Here's the link (no idea who asked that, but all replies are negative): https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-German-girls-so-pretty