The post about having to have sex.

With this ring, I thee rape.

I have wanted to talk about marital sexual assault for a while but I have not known how to. In my first post here, I make reference to a bit in the bible about a woman's body not being her own.

 1 Corinthians 7 v 4.

I am not an expert in the bible, not a teacher, minister, counsellor or sex therapist. I am simply an ordinary me. I don't know how to interpret what the bible says. I can only speak from my experience and I am not sure that I have made sense of that either yet. I can't and wont try to teach about bible things because I can't. I can only say how I experienced things that I hear and how they affected me.


If you are having sex with your husband and it seems like something is amiss, then something is probably amiss. If you feel forced to have sex with your husband and something is amiss, then something is almost certainly amiss. Coercion and aggression should not be a pert of sex, marriage or life for that matter.

My experience

My husband sexually assaulted me. I didn't know I was being sexually assaulted though. I thought sexual abuse was what was illegal. Mainly rape and child sexual abuse. I didn't know coercing or physically assaulting your wife for sex was not lawful. Of the fight, flight and freeze reactions, I froze. I just lay there rigid and silently, inwardly begging for it to be over. I couldn't fight because he was a big man and I was afraid of the withdraws, silences, toxic and acrid atmosphere that there would have been for weeks  the that would follow if I had tried to stop it.

I was bound up in religion and misinterpretations of the bible, poor teaching and my own poor understanding of teachings. Three devastating things happened;

1. I read a book in which a famous female bible teacher wrote that we must pray for our husbands and pray that we can enjoy sex with them. I felt sick to my stomach as I prayed to God that I would enjoy the cold and loveless abusive sex with him. I tried really hard to enjoy it. I couldn't and carried around that guilt and shame.

2. I confided in a christian friend that my husband was being aggressive with me while getting me to have sex. She said it was my fault that he was having to do that because I wasn't "putting out" enough and giving him enough sex.

3. I told another friend the same thing. I explained to her that I froze and hated it. She said that because I didn't actually say "no", then it was a "yes" and how was he to know I didn't want it.

I believed all of these people and blamed myself. I thought it was my fault because I didn't say "no". I believed that my husband was entitled to it and I believed I was a frigid and bad wife.

The confusion of religion, what I was bound in.

If like me, you sit in church and hear over and over; we all have our crosses to bear, bear with one another, nobody is perfect, don't judge or else you'll be judged, take the plank from your own eye before you look at the speck in another's eye, a woman's body is not her own, don't deny your husband sex, submit to your husband, be of gentle and quiet spirit, do to others what you'd have them do to you, God hates divorce and love one another, then it might be difficult to see any abuse that might be happening. It might be easy to blame yourself for all the things that might be wrong with your relationship. You might try to be a better wife, more tolerant. You might try to apply all of the things above and you might believe that you owe your partner sex.

There is plenty of writing on the Internet and in books about abusive marriages written in a Christian context. This, this and this are examples. There are also examples here and here that tell us that divorce is only permitted for adutry / immorality. However, many articles say that Christians should not divorce, but that people in abusive marriages can. I can only say what I have come to understand through my experience. Here it is...
I convinced myself that I would stay with my husband as an act of obedience to God and to show God how much I loved him and respected his commands. Two years later, I now understand that the God I believe in loves me and cares for me. He knows me by my name and he does not overlook, ignore or permit a man to aggressively coerce his wife into cold loveless sex. I came to believe that to remain in that situation in the name of God, because it pleased him for me to not leave my husband was false. The command to love one another was being disregarded in a way serious enough to not have to live with it. I came to understand that the marriage vow to love and to cherish had been broken too and that this broken vow was a bit more serious than just day to day aggravations between married people. I have come to know that although I don't fully understand the bible when it says a woman's body belongs to her husband and a husband's to his wife, I understand enough to know that it does not mean her body belongs to him to do with as he wishes, nor her him. It means lots more loving things than that misinterpretation.

Too ill to stay.

For me, it was not a new understanding of God that released me from the marriage. I didn't know I was in an abusive relationship and I had not heard the term Narcissist and I thought that Psychopaths were mass murderers. I left because I knew something bad was going to happen if I stayed. I was one more blood test away from being hospitalised with my stress related Thyroid illness. The week after I left my husband, my next test revealed that my Thyroid had improved. I was praying for a terminal illness. I refused to go for my smear test because I didn't want any cancer I may have had to be discovered. I wanted to die in a car crash and I thought if I were murdered it would be a release. I imagined sticking knives into myself and wondered how easy it would be. I didn't think I would be alive by the end of the year. I knew that my marriage was the source of these feelings. In this way, I knew I wasn't depressed for other medical reasons. This is why I left.
I thought I was a bad person, I was constantly asking God to forgive me for not trying hard enough at my marriage and for not wanting sex with my husband. I thought I was a terrible wife and the pressure of these thoughts and guilt fed into the above feelings of wanting to die. If you are feeling this way it might be an indication that you are in an abusive marriage and don't know it. This is not how a healthy marriage feels. A healthy marriage is not usually the root cause of such feelings.
So what to do?
For you, researching Narcissism, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, neglect and martial sexual assault might be a good place to start. It might explain things for you and clear up confusion. Then, you might have an idea of what might work for you next.

The confusion of Narcissism

There is nothing like the confusion of Narcissism. Once you can see through the confusion you might then be better equipped to know what is happening and what to do about it. Living with a narc is very confusing and that is part of what traps us. We don't know we are being abused because it is very subtle and is turned on us so that we think we are the destructive ones. The confusion is debilitating. Not knowing what went on during the argument because of the narcs skilful twisting and manipulating. The believing that you caused something when your intuition tells you that you didn't. The blaming yourself for not fighting the sexual assaults so that you think it's your fault. This confusion can hide the abuse.

Now might be the time to leave.

If there is aggression or coercion involved in sex with your partner, something is wrong. This does not happen in a loving relationship. I didn't know it then, but I know it now. It is a sign of the health of your relationship. If you have come upon this post and you know that something is amiss sexually, especially if coercion and aggression are involved it might be the time to act. You may not be able to leave but knowledge is a good place to start to think about what to do about it.  

A word of advice.

If you suspect you are living with a narc and you suspect an abusive relationship don't attempt marriage counselling. There is lots written on the Internet, examples here and here, about it. This is the worst thing to do with a narc. For me, this is when the abuse ramped up. Things that upset me occurred more often. The therapist always focussed on how it was for him. He charmed her and I looked like the bad person. She never focussed on the sexual abuse or let me raise it though I told her about it. Instead we talked all session about how he felt and his difficulties in communicating. Week after week. I would come away feeling like it was all my fault and I was the problem. I believed it even more and resolved even more to be a better wife. I was advised to tolerate him more and understand him more. So, I did. I was meeker, quieter, mindful of his difficulties and problems and eliminated more of my own bad thoughts about him in trying to understand and care for him more. It was exhausting and counter productive.

Finally...

This blog is not intended to put God in a bad light. Just bad teaching. I can no longer go to church because it triggers me. The experience of sitting and hearing the same things that trapped me into my marriage takes me right back into the situation as if I were still in the abuse. The message doesn't and wont change as the misinterpretations wont. The lack of understanding about Narcissism persists and our inability to explain what exactly goes on when you live with a Narcissist - especially a covert one, like mine persists. But, I have my faith. It is strong. None of what happened to me is God's fault. It is the Narcissists behaviour and my behaviour in combination to varying degrees that caused it. God is my loving father and he provided a way out at the right time after years of trusting him that he would. What he has replaced it with far exceeds my hopes. The slow timing was perfect. I know I did everything I could to fix the marriage problems and I don't carry around any burdens that I should have tried harder because I spent so long doing everything I could. If I had left without having spent so long trying so hard, I might now be carrying around guilt that I gave up too quickly and not had the evidence that confirms to me that I was definitely married to a narc.

I write this blog because I feel for you if this is you and you are still in it. There are lots of blogs about narcs and abuse but not so many about narcs, abuse and religion. It is so much more confusing when faith matters play a big part of a confusing situation. I feel for you and I hope my blog helps.