Many husbands do not comprehend marital rape. In fact, they react angrily to the suggestion that it happens at all; “after all, this is my wife and I married her to have unfettered sex when I want it and how I want it,” many may argue.
I will use two true stories to help you understand the distinction between normal sex in marriage and marital rape. Yes, sadly, it does exist; and make sure what you are doing to your spouse is not categorized as rape, because rape is understood by therapists and scientists to stay on a female brain permanently.
So, usually there is no coming back from that. In the first, real-life, Ugandan story, a husband stumbled into his home drunk in the wee hours of the morning and his wife decided she would not make love with him in that state.
He flew into a drunken rage, punching, kicking and slapping her, then he tore her clothes off and forcefully had sex with her, biting her lips until they bled.
“The following day when he was sober, he claimed to have no recollection of what had happened the night before, but I didn’t buy that. For as long as I live, I will never forgive him for that horrendous assault that happened almost a decade ago. He has tried to make it up to me, but we went to a dark place that day, and I stayed there,” the wife told me.
What he achieved, though, was to instill fear in her and now – contrary to the healthy, mutually enjoyable sex life they enjoyed prior to that fateful night – she never says no to him and offers herself like an unresponsive sacrificial lamb, counting down the minutes until he is done.
“Maybe the fact that he pretends not to remember the details of that night is what makes it worse. If only he could take accountability for his actions, then maybe I would get closure and move on…but my anger seems very fresh and real.”
In the second scenario, I like to think that a man who prefers to have sex with fellow men, married a woman to hide his preferences. Why else would anyone forcefully have anal sex with his wife almost every single time they are together?
The first time, he reportedly pretended to have ‘slipped and fell into the wrong ditch by mistake’. And stayed there?
Soon, it became a regular case of ‘getting lost, and when she voiced her complaint and became adamantly against it, he continued to forcefully go down the wrong path, until one day she upped and left the marriage.
Do you still argue that marital rape is a fallacy made up by radical feminists? If your daughter came to report to you that her husband was raping her, would you just laugh and tell her to “go home and tough it out like a good wife”?
“When you rape a woman or if you sexually abuse her in childhood, you may be repatterning her body, possibly for the rest of her life, in ways that embed fear, more easily triggered stress responses, and attendant risk aversion, into the very neural fabric of her responses to the world…,” researcher Naomi Wolf writes in her book, Vagina: A New Biography. I know, I know… some wives weaponize sex and withhold it as a bargaining chip, often pushing their husbands to the wall.
If you are in that kind of marriage, I pray you learn healthy, persistent communication or even seek mediation, but by all means don’t force yourself on her. It makes things worse.
caronakazibwe@gmail.com
