“Did My Husband Rape Me?” 3 Questions to Ask Yourself
In our community, marital rape is one of the most difficult forms of abuse to both identify and heal from. These 3 questions can help you understand your situation and seek support in your healing journey.
Why is it SO HARD to Identify Marital Sexual Abuse?
For so many victims of marital sexual abuse, or intimate partner violence involving sexual coercion or other sexual violence, it can feel impossible to even come close to identifying the abuse for many reasons. Some include:
Strong mental barriers including forgetting the incident(s) in order to protect the abuser, the marriage, and the victim herself;
Intense psychological, spiritual, and emotional abusive conditioning from the abuser, including gaslighting;
“Trauma amnesia”, or the inability to retain short or long-term memory, as a result of ongoing traumatic events;
Abusive family, community, religious leaders, or others who minimize the abuse and further gaslight the victim into re-traumatization.
Identify Marital Rape With Three Questions
If you’ve had experiences in your relationship wherein you feel your sexual autonomy has been compromised, whether through overt physical violence, manipulation, or spiritual coercion, consider asking yourself these three questions to help you identify the abuse and seek support for healing:
How do I feel internally and externally as I read this article? Am I shaking, cold, afraid, sweating, experiencing pelvic pain, and/or flashbacks to abusive events?
Am I mentally trying to justify my partner’s actions with spiritual language, words from my abuser, berating language against myself (I don’t have enough sex with him by my own choice, so of course he has to take it forcefully), or in other ways?
Do I feel like I can say no to my partner’s sexual advances without fear of negative consequences, including violence, manipulation, being kept awake, insults, being “persuaded” into saying yes, fighting, or being raped in my sleep?
