My partner confessed that he sexually abused his younger sister (2 yrs younger) from when he was 13-15. He would make her touch him, ejaculate, and he would touch her breasts. I feel very disgusted and struggle to feel empathetic. He was sexually abused by his cousin when he was 4. I’m having a hard time seeing him as a troubled human even though he feels so much shame and guilt about it. I don’t know how to support him or if I should continue in this relationship

Thank you for trusting us with something this heavy. What you are carrying right now is an enormous amount to hold. The fact that you are trying to think through this carefully rather than simply reacting says a lot about who you are.

To repeat what you already stated, what your partner did to his sister was abuse. He was older, he had more power in that relationship, and what he caused her to do and what he did to her body were serious violations. Naming that clearly is not the same as condemning him as a person beyond all understanding. It just means we are starting from an honest place.

The context you shared matters deeply, although of course it does not cancel what happened. Your partner was himself abused at age four by someone who should have been safe. Research on child-on-child sexual harm is consistent on this: children who act in these ways are very often children who have themselves been hurt, exposed to sexual material they were too young to understand, or left without the guidance that would have helped them learn about bodies, consent, and power. Consent means freely agreeing to something, and power means the ability one person has over another. A four-year-old who is sexually abused does not come out of that experience with a healthy understanding of any of those things. He came out of it wounded, without support, and without anyone helping him make sense of what had happened to him. What followed, beginning at thirteen, reflects that wound being directed outward onto someone more vulnerable than him. This is not an excuse, but is essential context, meaning it helps explain without letting anyone off the hook. Both of these things are true at the same time, and you are allowed to hold them both without having to resolve the tension between them.

Your disgust is not a failure of empathy. Empathy means being able to understand and feel for someone else's experience. Your disgust is a completely honest response to learning that someone you love hurt a child. Feeling empathy and feeling disgust are not mutually exclusive, meaning you do not have to choose between them. You do not have to push one feeling down in order to honor the other. Many people in your position find themselves cycling through exactly what you are describing: moments of compassion followed by waves of revulsion, followed by guilt for feeling revolted. That cycle is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It is a sign that you are processing something genuinely difficult and morally complex. Holding that complexity is not the same as excusing harm. It is simply seeing the full picture.

You are not obligated to stay in this relationship. Learning this kind of information about a partner is a legitimate reason to take another look at everything, and no one, including your partner, gets to make that decision for you. Give yourself real time and space rather than feeling pressure to resolve this quickly in either direction.

If you are trying to think through what staying would actually require, some honest questions are worth sitting with. Is he in therapy, or actively working with a professional who specializes in trauma and sexual harm? Trauma is the lasting emotional wound left by a painful or frightening experience. This kind of professional support is not optional for someone carrying this kind of history. It is necessary. A therapist trained in trauma and specifically in harmful sexual behavior can help him work through what happened to him and what he did, assess whether there is any ongoing risk, and do the kind of deep work that shame and guilt alone cannot accomplish. Shame tends to hide things. Therapy tends to bring them to the surface so they can heal.

It is also worth thinking about whether he understands the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says, "I did something harmful, and I want to change." Shame says, "I am a bad person," and it tends to collapse inward rather than lead anywhere useful. Shame that is not worked through with a professional has a way of becoming a burden that partners end up carrying, and that might not be a sustainable position for you to be in. Your role in this relationship is not to be his therapist, his confessor, or the person who turns his guilt into something he can live with. You can be compassionate and still recognize that this work belongs to him and to a professional, not to you.

For yourself, you also deserve support that is entirely separate from his. A therapist of your own, one who can hold space for your confusion without pushing you toward a predetermined outcome, would give you room to sort through your own feelings without also having to manage his. Holding space means being present with someone's feelings without trying to fix or judge them. It is also worth holding space for his sister, even if she is not part of your direct relationship with him. Her experience did not end when the abuse ended, and her harm exists regardless of what you decide.

You do not have to have any of this resolved right now. What you are doing, taking this seriously and asking these questions instead of pushing it away, already matters. Whatever you decide about this relationship, you deserve to make that decision with clarity and support, not in isolation. Our community holds space for exactly this kind of complexity, and you can share more at any time. You are not alone.