u/ThreeQueensReading

I grew up with a difficult home life, and by the time I was 14 I was in foster care and before I was 16 I was homeless.

To secure some sense of stability I had to have sex with people whom I really didn't want too. This is a thing that I don't really revisit within myself often. However I recently heard the term *survival sex* and it's messing me up realising how true it is of my situation. I don't think that before I heard the term I had a clean way of describing what happened.

From 15-18 I lived with a man who was in his early 40's, was his "partner", and had sex with him and his friends. Coercion doesn't accurately describe the situation - I couldn't not consent when this person was my lifeline to housing and food. Then from 18-21 I was with a man (a school teacher from when I was younger and able to attend school) in his mid 30's and felt lucky he was so young and wasn't making me sleep with anyone else.

I'm decades older and actually quite stable and successful in my life now but the harms of this are with me forever.