Matthew McConaughey Opens Up About Being Molested and Blackmailed as a Teenager

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Matthew McConaughey’s getting pretty candid about his past, opening up on Amanda de Cadenet’s The Conversation: About the Men podcast. The successful actor spoke about how he was blackmailed into having sex as a teenager. As well as being drugged and molested by a man when he was only eighteen years old.

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The actor had previously talked about this incident in his book, Greenlights.  McConaghy didn’t necessarily go into too much detail about the incident. Rather said that he knew something was wrong in both situations. He focused on the guidance that he received from both of his parents.

The actor recalled the first time he learned about consent and what his father talked to him about sexual intimacy. “Well, I had been taught, been guided by my parents about respect for a woman, respect for the relationship, respect for sexual intimacy, respect for space,” McConaughey revealed.

Matthew McConaughey Says He Was Sexually Molested In His Teens

 “My dad had always had this thing when he taught us the birds and the bees, he sat me down talking about the birds and the bees, he said, ‘You’re getting to that age you kiss?’ and I said, ‘Yes, sir.’ And he goes, ‘Well, it’s gonna go further than that one day. It’s probably gonna go to where you’re gonna get intimate and there’s gonna be the breast, and there’s gonna be below the belt.’ I’m paraphrasing, and he goes, ‘It’s gonna happen to you as well.'”

The actor continued, “And so he goes, and he’s talking to me, he says, ‘Son, as a male in the situation,’ speaking to me about a heterosexual relationship, ‘If you ever feel the girl, the female, hesitate, stop.’ He even said this, he goes, ‘You may even feel them hesitate, and then after you stop, they may go, oh, no, no, come on. Don’t. Wait till next time.’ And he was right, I got in certain senses where it was like, ‘No, no, no. OK, I’m out.’ And saying, ‘OK, cool. I’m out.’ The girl went, ‘Oh, well, no, come on.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no.’ He said, ‘Trust you’ll have another day, if it is to be.'”

He stated that thanks to that lesson it was clear what a healthy sexual relationship was and what necessarily wasn’t. He later went on to understand that being blackmailed into having intercourse at 15 wasn’t the right thing. 

Matthew McConaughey on Instagram

“But I was very clear, again, that was not right, that was not cool, that was not the way it is,” he noted. “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 that was.”

The actor tragically molested several years later at 18. But he noted that he didn’t make the connection between both incidents until later. He went on to reveal that he hasn’t gone to therapy to work on his trauma. Instead has a lot of people in his life that have helped him throughout the years. Although several have different responses to dealing with heavy trauma, the actor noted that he didn’t quite have an option to dwell on it. 

“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. And if I go on — and I’m not gonna let it beat me. I’m going, ‘I’m not gonna let that beat my sense of trust in people and say, ‘No, I can have a healthy relationship.’ Non-negotiable. No,” he stated”Happened. Am I denying that it happened? No. I’m not denying that it happened. Ugly. Ugh. I still get, even telling you this story, I get — but am I gonna carry that?,” he told Cadane. “I chose, non-negotiably, I’m not going to carry that baggage into the life I’m going to lead, and how I treat people and how I trust people, and how.

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