Sexual Assault Tea, consent, and the marriage bed

[Deanna]

I would have called the cops, called a lawyer, separated and divorced him. I can't say I've experienced marital rape but sexual battery is a class Y felony here. ( I have a temper too) I divorced my two husbands before it even got this far. I seem to need help on picking better partners. The one I have is now is pretty cool and works for me. We get together and then get on with our own lives. I am sorry you had to experience this, but why not call the police?

 

[anonymous]

@She Cat i'm sorry if I upset you, that was not my intention, so I am really sorry.

 

[Friday]

You realize that there's a HUGE voice in the back my head SCREAMING "YEAH But I could have prevented ALL of this by JUST GOING AHEAD and having sex with him earlier that evening." right?

My voice is lazy. I don't usually bother breaking down each event, but just skip back to the word go. It's all my fault for 2 very simple reasons

1. I married the bastard.

2. I didn't kill him.

If I'd done either of those things differently? Voila. Changed history.

That doesn't actually make my reasoning super useful. Except for knowing that I reeeeeally prefer blaming myself for shit... And I've got a knack for overarching themes ;) Which I'm gonna use for a moment.

***

So, no, you really couldn't have prevented years of spousal abuse & sexual assault by doing exactly what he wanted you to do, at every moment, in every way. Even if that was successful... Sometimes.

Why? Because who he was, and what he was willing to do when angry,

- isn't something you can change
- isn't something you can prevent happening.

If he wasn't angry at you?

- He'd have gotten angry at someone/something else & taken it out on you, no matter how perfectly you did what he wanted, how, and when.
- He'd have gotten angry at someone/something you value higher than yourself, so you'd have placed yourself between him & them.

***

What you chose to do in any singular event? Doesn't erase who he was. Sparks of defiance? Also, not always a bad thing. Even if the results led to hell. That you were willing to stand up for yourself, at all, even once, even if you gave in later... Isn't a "how Desi f*cked up". Either piece of it. It's how you survived. Both by standing up for yourself AND when you did as you were told.


ETA

Soooo.... Maybe I'll borrow your voice sometimes. Because my voice says I handled each and every single situation wrong, because I was there for it. When I "should" have not been, because all it can see is the whole picture, not the individual events. And then maybe I can look case by case and see where I was handling things to the best of my ability, in that moment. And maybe you can borrow my voice that says these events don't exist in a vacuum. That avoiding a fight isn't always worth it, in the overall scheme of things. That fighting, even when you lose the fight badly, is just one battle in a war. Win or lose it was fight the battle or lose the war. Losing the battle doesn't matter so much. Being willing to take a stand? Does. ...And maybe we can meet in the middle. Where the women who can love evil bastards are no longer blaming themselves for what their husbands did?

 

[Beemo3780]

This was something I dealt with in my 1st marriage too often and I don't talk about it pretty much ever. It came up in my divorce hearing and it was very difficult to prove. My ex basically forced me to have sex with him regularly. He would complain if I said no, threaten me, and there were times where if I fell asleep or got a little too drunk he had sex with me anyway. I can't tell you how many times he had kept me up all night screaming at me until I just gave in or saying, "If I don't get it from you, I'll just get it from someone else". He was extremely abusive, but I never really understand being so young as I was that marriage did not mean he could do that. I consider it rape now, back then I used to call it just a part of being married. It really wasn't until we had divorced and I started dating again and talking to girlfriends about consent that I realized what he had done.

I'm remarried to a great guy now, who respects me and I don't have any of those issues with him. But thanks to my ex, I now have a lot of issues with sex in general. I have trouble talking about it, have terrible flashbacks whenever the subject of rape comes up whether it be on the news, or in a movie, whatever.

 

[Deanna]

Where the women who can love evil bastards are no longer blaming themselves for what their husbands did?

I don't want to change the topic so delete if need be. There's different kinds of marital abuse, I was beat regularly in my first marriage and almost killed. This started two weeks after I got married. I wanted to call my step-mother but I hated the place where we lived. ( small) We moved to Tx at the time. I have a medical injury on the side of my brain ( right side of my head, above ear, from being beat with a belt buckle over and over. I couldn't even think) I was also strangled to almost the point of death. (I want a picture of my brain on the side, eventually.) I went to work with black eyes. He didn't abuse me by non-consent sex because he was finding other women on a regular basis.. He OD'ed by the way, Not heroin but major heart attack. I forgave him ( because I had to let go) and honestly, I really don't remember much because it was every other day. I was DID at that point.. I thought I was from another planet for about two years after he left. He remarried and beat the crap out of her too.. We made our forgiveness requests to each other about 10- 12 years later . The only thing he said said I was an angel compared to his second wife. He said she was evil. he really knew what a taker was at that point. WE forgave each other because we were both sick and we both knew it. I had issues way before the marriage.

I just wanted to post because there is different kinds of abuse. I was able to have closure and that makes a big difference. He wasn't always that way, he was actually my jr. high boyfriend. He had a very high IQ and didn't go to college was his problem. He joined the army and so did I, but I got out early. ( No thanks, that was peace-time so, no biggie) So, I got to see my Jr. high boyfriend in a casket dead at 40.

1. I married the bastard.

2. I didn't kill him

Oh. he also broke my jaw and knocked out some teeth too. Chipped off vertebrae tips on the back of my neck. I was in an ambulance and had surgery on my mouth in the ER. I can remember more but I've got pills to take.

 

[Leighlee87]

Okay, I'm in this exact same position at this point, and it's something I've been discussing with my therapist at length lately.
First, the poster above me made note of some extreme abuse that occurred to her. Abuse occurs on a multitude of levels with different levels of severeness. Also, similar levels of abuse can have different impacts on two different people. If you bring up the sexual issues with your therapist, one of the things s/he will do is to figure out the severity of impact it has had on you.

I've gone through a lot of instances where I've not wanted to have sex but my husband has begged, pleaded, nagged, or just not given up until I complied. Most often he will continually grope me until I finally give in, but the only reason I gave in in the first place was so that he would stop groping at me. Is it rape? No, but it doesn't make his behavior acceptable at all. My therapist got really angry with my husband about what was occurring and we discussed having him in for a session, but I decided I would save him from her wrath and didn't invite him in! Instead, I've had to have a real sit down conversation with my husband about this, and "no" needs to firmly mean "no" all the time. He doesn't get to beg/plead/etc, when he does I remind him that I meant no and it needs to stop. It's taken a lot of conversations and has resulted in some anger and frustration on his part. But, you are never going to want to willingly have sex with someone when that type of behavior is occurring in the background. It's just going to further cause a wedge.

I think in my case my husband sorta thought that if he just nagged me enough and I caved, then it was like, "See I knew you would like it.", when that wasn't what was happening at all. But when we really dug deep and he opened up, I also learned that there is more there sometimes, and some of his views aren't healthy.

Being coerced into sex is different than "taking one for the team". Taking one for the team, in my opinion, means that I AGREE to have sex WITHOUT being coerced into it. I make the decision for myself because even though I recognize that I don't want to, I want to meet his desires. I don't always have to agree to sex if I don't want to, that choice is mine. At the end of the day, it is YOUR body, and you get to freely decide what to do with it.

As far as the other incident, yeah, it's rape.
I went through something where my husband got really angry with me, and he decided that was the best way to hurt me. I fought in the beginning, but not as hard as I could have. I gave in eventually. I was too scared to really fight him, and too hurt in the end to try stopping any of it. Nowhere in that does it mean that it no longer qualifies as rape. Most rape cases the woman doesn't fight--often because of the freeze response, dissociation, fear, hurt, etc. There are a million reasons, but it doesn't matter the reason, rape is rape. I've talked to my therapist about what led up to the rape, the angry fight that happened just before, and some very vague details about what happened during. She was the one to use the rape word, and define it for what it was. It was honestly hard to hear, because I was confused about what to call it too. We are getting ready to go into EMDR over what occurred, but she has been a bit apprehensive. She's worried that I'll freak out in bed in the middle of the night. She's also concerned because it might change my outlook on my husband. She doesn't want to necessarily want to destroy my marriage, but that I needed to be forewarned that doing emdr may or may not cause that rift. That said, she does want me to find peace, and at this point I need that peace too.

I hope my case is similar enough for you to find some similarities and clarity. Try to talk this through with your therapist, it will help you define your experience. Sometimes just having the words to describe the experience, even if the only person you are describing it to is yourself, helps heal.

 

[anonymous]

OK, I had this discussion with my wife this morning and it was productive so I am going to post it here and let come what comes. I have not read yet why. Why don't you want to have sex with your husband? I agree there are some legitimate reasons but lets just take this example since you said it "its her body." OK it's her body. Now lets say "it's his money." Lets say he make a couple hundred grand a year and he decides for what ever reason he wants to keep say a hundred grand aside. She is a stay at home mom. And he tells her we can live in this town instead of the more affluent town even though it's not so nice and the schools are not so good and the house is not really big enough and no means no. Now what if she never lets up on him about this decision? What if she badgers him to death and tells him he can't do that and he has to stop it? What if she keeps it up so long it's abusive? Can it be abusive? Is it his money? Is it her body? (I'm only talking married people here.)

And also what about when she wants to have sex and he doesn't? I mean long term like a real problem? What's that? Can he get abused? What about if she has an affair?

Is this a valid question, or not?

 

[NobodyNobody]

You seem to forget that once married, it's not HIS money, it's their money. The government even says so. Hence why you have alimony, she gets half of his retirement (if married long enough), and so forth. I find it a bit disgusting that you'd equate money with someone's body.

 

[anonymous]

Right and what I said obviously is "once she's married it's not her body." It's not his body either. The two become one flesh right? But I asked it as a question and pose it as a scenario. So I'm not equating anything with anything. I'm just saying.

 

[Leighlee87]

Very valid question.

Okay, well when it comes to money, if she doesn't like it for long enough, she can leave. If the two are baggering one another for long enough, neither can see eye to eye, and neither is happy, is that relationship healthy? No. Not really. There are better ways to work through marital conflicts. Is being coerrced into sex rape? No. That doesn't mean it isn't emotionally damaging if it's done frequently enough. If every time she has sex it feels coerced, then she isn't really going to want to have sex anymore. The less he gets, the more he pushes to get his needs met, the more she withdrawls, and the worse the cycle becomes. I think it's more about the frequency at which it happens more than anything. It just isn't heathy. Basically, when this happens continueously, it feels like your own feelings and needs don't matter. The only thing the other partner cares about is himself. It hurts. In my case, if my husband gropes at my body 20-30+ times a day, I beg him to stop, he doesn't stop (for days) until I give in, and the cycle repeats, I begin to feel like my body is his to with as he pleases. As I learned, I brought some of it upon myself. I didn't speak up when I should have, and I got hurt as a result. Luckily enough discussing back and forth with my husband has allowed things to change so that we've stopped some of that damaging cycle. If we talked at length but my husband continued to grab at me despite my pleas for him to stop, not leaving me alone until I give in (or keeps me awake until

If she wants sex and he doesn't, well he still gets to decide. If she bothers him for days until he relents, is it healthy? No. Frequently so. Even less healthy. Is it abuse? The line starts to blur. If she has an affair? Abuse? No, but he doesn't have to stay, and doing so would be a bad call. She has no respect for his needs or their relationship as a couple.

If he held her down at one point, refused to listen to her no's, didn't care if she fought back...then that is a whole different ball field and combined with what is happening as for as coercion, I think there is reason for concern. This isn't just a matter of he wants sex and I don't. There is a pattern here about how he views her. If your wife begged you not to, fought back, and you pinned her down and mocked her, what do you think you would have done? How do you think your wife would see it? How does it feel when someone takes control over your body and there is nothing you can do to stop it? It feels horrible. What about after that happens, and the coercion begins again? It's easier and less traumatic to give in than it is to get raped.

 

[Leighlee87]

* ....(or keeps me awake until I cave), then I would have walked away. It's my body and it isn't being respected.
Sorry, I don't know how that line got cut off.

 

[anonymous]

Thank you. I'm a sexual abuse survivor. Your response is thoughtful and was much like the discussion I had with my wife about it. Obviously the sexes are different. I know equating sex with anything else gets a gut reaction. I'm trying to sort it out in my own mind. I know it's a very hard question but I do feel it is valid. : (