McCONAUGHEY: MY TRIUMPH OVER SEX ABUSE
Refuses to let teen trauma define his life
COURAGEOUS Matthew McConaughey says he refuses to let “ugly” and terrifying abuse in his teens — being blackmailed into sex at 15 and knocked out and raped in the back of a man’s van at 18 — turn him into a victim or stop him from having “healthy sexual relations” with women today!
“I’m not gonna let it beat me,” vows the 52-yearold Oscar winner, who has previously unpacked his traumatizing teen experiences in his memoir Greenlights.
“I’m not gonna be afraid of relationships because my first experience was blackmail. Uh uh. That’s an aberration. No, no. That’s not the way it is!”
The Dallas Buyers Club star recalls how his dad, James, sat him down for a lesson on how to respect a sex partner’s boundaries, and he says it helped him separate the horrible things that happened to him from how wonderful things might be with the right partner.
“After that, I got to have some healthy sexual relations and have girls that I liked and liked me, and we slowly got intimate and it was beautiful and clumsy, and all those things, but it wasn’t ugly” like his previous experiences.
From then on, the Magic Mike beefcake was determined to say alright, alright, alright to embracing love and trust, and now he and wife Camila Alves, 40, have three children — Levi, 14, Vida, 12, and Livingston, 9.
“I chose, non-negotiably, I’m not going to carry that, bring that baggage into the life I’m going to lead,” he says.
“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.” — John Steinbeck