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Sexual Assault Tea, consent, and the marriage bed

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desiderata310

MyPTSD Pro
I started writing this as a trauma diary entry and realized as I started writing and looking at things that this was a much bigger picture. It's something that I think a lot of us struggle with on a number of levels and for a number of reasons. I am doing something I do rarely and posting something rather personal so that this conversation can be had by a broader group.

I want to be clear and careful about this as I post: I DO NOT WANT THIS to be seen as or deal with any sort of rape shaming in this post. THAT is not what this is.

-I also do not want this to veer off into (like the second video does) a post attacking the feminist agenda 'rape culture' or even something that the LGBTQ community takes offense against. Those kinds of attacking posts have no place here.

-I PERSONALLY, the OP, am coming at this as female, cys-gender, heterosexual, she/her/hers, etc etc etc. you can assume that I am allowing in the conversation for the other person to be male, female, any shade of skin you like, etc.

-Contribute from where you stand.

-Contribute with the perspective of an individual NOT from the broad perspective of society.

-It also stands to reason that this is NSFW. Don't click on these videos at work and get yourself fired and then come screaming at me. You've been warned.

Tea Consent

This question. The question of consent. The question complicity comes up again and again for me.

How much was I complicit in what happened? Was it actually just rough sex or something else altogether?

I don't know where the line is.

W
e can talk about 'tea and consent' all f*cking day long and it makes perfect sense. But what happens when you put this all in the marriage bed? Suddenly the lines get blurry and grey.

If you say that consent is black and white as what they make it, then I've been raped by even the kids' dad. I said no plenty. I said it emphatically. I pushed back and I was held down so that he could get his and I would get angry and be laughed at while this happened till I quit struggling. I've also simply 'given in' because it was just easier, honestly than dealing with the BS of a horny and grumpy husband.

I don't know that I can accept that all of that can be lumped together as rape or even non-consenting. That makes things so much worse for me mentally. It means I've never had anything approaching a normal relationship. EVER. But ...WAS IT?

Tea and consent only seems works in the dating world. Once you're sharing a house, a last name, a bed. All bets are off, right? AT some point it becomes 'taking one for the team,' wifely duties if you REALLY must go there, or just honestly, trying to avoid arguments. It's pleasing your mate. RIGHT? WRONG?

I have a low libido. Fact. We probably would have never had sex more than a handful of times if it had been left up to me to initiate. There was a lot that went into that (being tired, being afraid of getting pregnant, being stressed, just being turned off) So there's a lot of shame that went into decisions to 'give in' as well.

Sex really IS complicated.

So where IS the line? What IS NORMAL?

I REALLY want to ask if my THERAPIST ever pressured his ex into having sex she didn't want to have and if so what does that mean? When does making romantic advances become NOT OK? When does it become coercion and when is that ok? What do OTHER PEOPLE experience in bed?

Let's be VERY CLEAR: I'm not talking about being in a situation where you have regrets.
PEOPLE MAKE REGRETTABLE SEXUAL DECISIONS ALL THE TIME.
Regretting an encounter? Yeah I've got those. Those I can recognize and deal with. Waking up with a wicked hangover, sleeping next to someone that I look at and go "oh god what did I do?"

is different from waking up naked in a strange place and not remembering anything and finding yourself saying "oh god how did I get here and what the f*ck happened?" and even THAT is fraught with issues if you're talking about being so drunk that you barely remember things. It's still possible to be that drunk and give consent and realize that it was SUCH a huge mistake the next day.

Alcohol and drugs makes things very complicated indeed.

I've seen this question pop up TONS on here. Regretting having sex with someone IS NOT the same.

PERSONALLY....
I wrote in my other diary about things that happened one specific night.
I know that if I had simply consented things would have worked out entirely differently. REFUSING caused a cascade effect of things that resulted in a very ugly night.

In this instance, we were on a romantic getaway (presumably to help save a dying marriage). My then husband made advances that I declined. It turned into an argument. Chances are that if I had consented that not only would that argument not have happened but we would have had a very different weekend. I would not be sitting here, years later, questioning what happened in the moments and hours later and the rest of that weekend and trying to suss out my culpability in all of it.

I'm trying to sort through a very particular set of instances but the questions are broad enough to be discussed more openly.

Where IS the line?

It seems to move. It's honestly NOT as simple as asking if someone wants a cuppa.

I also watched THIS:

TL;DR - 3D Genitals Don't Understand Consent

I get WHAT this guy is driving at and honestly it helps some because he starts talking about 'social escalation'. And this is where I think there are problems and breakdowns of communication both in the marriage bed and in dating relationships alike. And it's messy and complicated and becomes he said/she said.

In the marriage bed (or dedicated romantic couple)the established relationship (in my mind) already puts the couple at a heightened place of social escalation. Tea and consent would argue that this is not true. But the same can be said of other encounters at times.
Right? Or am I coming at this from a skewed perspective of someone who's never been in a healthy relationship?
 
When you say no/stop it means NO/STOP. I don't care at what stage of the relationship or for that matter the sex act has gone. NO means NO, if they don't stop and they complete the act, its RAPE!!!!!
 
I'm not sure where this thread is going, so I'll watch...

I'm scared of where it's going because...

If it goes where I think it's going, my fears of being owned in a relationship are true and it's my eyes that are open while the rest of the world is delusional.
 
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I have a few points but I have to caveat first that I couldn't make myself watch the complete second video.

taking one for the team

Not rape. Believe it or not men can find themselves in this situation too. There have been times where I did not want sex because I was too tired or stressed yet I complied because it was what my partner wanted and needed. Its part of the give and take of a marriage.

I said no plenty. I said it emphatically. I pushed back and I was held down so that he could get his and I would get angry and be laughed at while this happened till I quit struggling.

Definitely rape. Not only did he not listen to your refusal, but he used physical force and mocked you while doing so.
 
I want sex more than my husband does. If he is too tired or too "old" I usually feel rejected, turn over and quietly cry myself to sleep. There are other times he says he is too tired, I start kissing him and touching him and it changes into something else. Am I raping him or did he change his mind? Does guilting someone into it count as rape? coersion? He takes care of himself plenty with porn. How do I compete with that? Maybe he isn't too old, I am? He wants some young hot girl that will do anything? And where is the consent in what types of things are done in bed, wouldn't that open a whole new set of questions?

I look back at the loss of my virginity. I was crying and he talked me into it. I agreed to it after much convincing. I couldn't believe it happened and then I also cried after. I look back and regret that I couldn't see that he didn't see it as something special or something worth preserving til I wasn't crying about it. Once I got over it, I was all in. Was that coercision?

@desiderata310 some of your diary that I have read. Full out rape. Just saying. It doesn't matter that you were married, it was rape.
 
I REALLY want to ask if my THERAPIST ever pressured his ex into having sex she didn't want to have and if so what does that mean? When does making romantic advances become NOT OK? When does it become coercion and when is that ok? What do OTHER PEOPLE experience in bed?

I WOULD ask my therapist that (his wife). We have that much of an open relationship. Its a good question to ask a therapist I think.

Ok, so I wasn't familar with tea concent so I watched this:

Tea Consent

Now, remembering that kinetics is the biggest way people communicate, why wouldn't the tea consent apply to marriage? Neither one of you are obligated to have sex. I have a hyper sexual sex drive (super hyper - where most men cannot keep up with me) but still, he is totally in his right to say no, verbally or not. My ex wanted another person in my bed. I said no. He brought one over thinking I mean "lets try it" or that I would change my mind and yeah, not a good convo there.

It can get messy if you allow it to. But if you remember that you have every single right to say no and every version of no, including, a kinetics no, and he still has zero right to force you to by physical force, by pressure, or by emotional force. You still have that right to say no. As does he. If you remember that, it is way less messy.

I have flashbacks during sex and also disocissate during sex. During the flashback, I have a right to say no and he has no right to force himself to continue. Blue balls and all. You can say no at any point and the other person has no right to force you to in any way.

Its pretty clear to me. What am I missing?
 
The problem with this is I have said no and meant yes and if you are only saying yes to him he probably won't be around long because the female resistance brings the male forward. This is a lot about dominance and submission what are those romance novels all about and who reads them? How about saying no, no and then when things get going she says something else and why is it all his fault.
 
It does. And I've not even got to approaching some of those thing personally, yet.


Trust me, i...
It is a lot easier to blame yourself than know you had no control. I dated a guy that put me sexually in way over my head sophomore year of college. I didn't consider it rape at the time, and it probably wasn't, but I feel like I will have to process it. First, we were isolated at his lake apartment far from campus. Second, he just firmly told me to do stuff. (I remember feeling scared like I was when I submitted to my rapist the year before.). Third, I did what I was told. At one point he wanted to stick a bottle inside of me and I said, "please don't" and he said. "That's okay, we can do this instead..." enter me giving oral/breast thing. The whole time he is apologizing, saying, "I know this doesn't do much for you." I just remember wanting it to be over and I don't remember anything after that. I do know I somehow got home and didn't want to ever see him again. And right now I feel my anxiety rising to a 7. So... what was that? Where does that fall?
 
When you say no/stop it means NO/STOP. I don't care at what stage of the relationship or for that matter the sex act has gone. NO means NO, if they don't stop and they complete the act, its RAPE!!!!!

It's sexual abuse if you can't say no without him getting grumpy, annoyed, arguing with you etc. You were raped
REALLY? If I can't say no and not expect the partner to be angry... THAT'S rape? Because, @Deadman JUST pointed out that sometimes it's more important to take care of my partner's needs.

I get that this is the cut and dry answer IN MOST CASES. I suppose it's safe to say, I'm looking at me, as an individual who said no and then has allowed it last Tuesday. When I said no, on Friday, my no was ignored and I really MEANT no but the arguement I heard was 'how was I supposed to know no meant no in this case'? Or no meaning no meant that I was going to deal with a week, yes, a WEEK of dealing with the cold shoulder and angry stares or who knows what else- to something more ugly (and clear cut a case of abuse) of threats of or actual physical violence.

Or lets go ahead and get messy (f*ck it, I'm already 4 days into a shit house of dealing with this anniversary) And talk about the fact that there was role play involved sometimes. But he didn't like the 'sometimes' aspect and wanted that role play to be EVERY time.

Role play in this case meant that "no" wasn't allowed.
But I wasn't role playing.
For me this all gets very confusing.

How about saying no, no and then when things get going she says something else and why is it all his fault.
And this is why I hesitate.

For just a moment, let's look at the night in question. I'm not going to get as graphic. I'll state basics.
It was our anniversary. Sex was SUPPOSED to be on the table. I was exhausted and really didn't want to. It caused a fight- a verbal fight with accusations of cheating thrown around.

I'll skip what happened next because it pains me to talk about and well.. it was violent.

We went to dinner and came back.
Later that evening, he didn't MAKE me take off my clothes- he TOLD me to- and once I did and things got got out of hand from there. I'm not talking about being embarrassed, I'm talking about lack of control, lack of say. I was fearful from what had happened earlier that implied more violence. It had taken the fight out of me. At that point, I was complicit, correct? The smart money would have been to have said, NO and kept saying NO but I didn't.

And if something like this. if this particular night had gone to court it wouldn't have held water.
There was an established relationship between us and since I never offered up a fight- even though I WANTED NONE OF IT- I don't know how to look at it other than a painful and shameful event. Not rape.

Told you, it's messy.
 
I have said no and meant yes and if you are only saying yes to him

Well, if you said no and meant yes I would say kinetics would play a part as would if you said yes and meant no. Also, said no and meant yes, he stops because you said no, as he should, and then a convo happens to clarify.

So... what was that? Where does that fall?

Its a bit fuzzy of what happened after you said "please don't" for the bottle. Did you say ok or yes to the oral/breast or still advised or indicate you didn't want to? Did he coerce you? I am not sure how to label it as I am not sure what exactly happened.

REALLY? If I can't say no and not expect the partner to be angry... THAT'S rape?

Yes! It is rape by emotional blackmail, I'd say.

And if something like this. if this particular night had gone to court it wouldn't have held water.

I think it would have.

Are you still married to this man? If so, I think you are inside of a domestic violence situation and married to an abuser. In my opionion anyway. And you need to leave this situation. He IS being abusive.
 
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