We need to talk about sexual assault in marriage

vox.com ^ | Mar 8, 2018 | Anonymous

[Pollster1]

Eight years into our marriage, sitting in a therapist’s office with my husband, I mustered all my courage and said my deepest, darkest truth: “When we have sex, I feel like I’m being violated.” The unwanted sex at times made me sick: Once I had to run straight from bed to the bathroom, where I retched into the toilet. I spared him and the therapist that detail.

My husband shrugged and, staring ahead with more indifference than disdain, replied, “She’s always so melodramatic.”

. . .

I acquiesced. At the time, it didn’t feel like a choice; it felt inevitable. I lived every evening dreading the signals of my husband’s desire. I bargained my way out of sex as often as I could. I gloried in being sick enough to have the right to refuse.

On the nights when I couldn’t get out of it, we used a method that I had taught myself to tolerate and that he, astoundingly, tolerated as well: I read a book to distract myself for as long as I could while he did the thing he needed to do. I did not let him kiss me for the last several years of our marriage. That was the rule . . . and I don’t have to pretend to like it. This satisfied him.

. . .

I am a humanities professor who teaches feminist theory, models feminist behavior for my students and my own children, and has achieved success in a male-dominated field. Last year, my teenage son and I chanted in support of women’s reproductive rights at the Women’s March in Washington . . .

[Deaf Smith]

“Rich old man, she won’t have to worry”

[OldMissileer]

She is not well. Probably abuse as a child led to mental illness. Husband probably tried to keep better/worse vow.

You, Sir, are dead on target. Either her father or a very close relative raped her when she was quite young.

[moonhawk]

I answer that line with all sex is actually prostitution. You always pay for it one way or another.

But I really don’t need to go there.

[EEGator]

She's on the upper left...

[Boardwalk]

Wait was she reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy? That would be messed up!

[OrangeHoof]

Maybe he needs her income since she’s a professor and all...

If I was married to this woman, I would begin serious discussions over what brings her to climax and see if I could get her to welcome sexual intimacy again with an eye toward what would please her. Then, work out a quid pro quo - time for her followed by time for him so as to save the marriage.

If she’s unagreeable, I’d seek permission to cheat and if she refused, then I’d divorce.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

We need to talk about selfish shrews who look upon men as wallets with legs.

[patriot08]

pttt

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

She obviously has a high enough status that her man’s presumably lower status repulses her. Women (usually) marry up. Female hypergamy is real.

I’m not discounting whatever warped, feminist ideas inhabit that brain of hers, however.

The dude undoubtedly picked her because she was reasonably attractive.

[NobleFree]

How could my husband listen to me say what I said — even once, even timidly — and sleep well that night, much less continue to insist on sleeping with me? [...] Leaving a marriage is much harder than calling an Uber. It requires breaking up a family, and deciding that avoiding unwanted sex is worth giving up half the time you would have spent with your kids. It means financial turmoil from which you might never fully recover. If you have kids, it may mean incurring the wrath of the person with whom you will be required to co-parent for decades, and so it also may mean losing his family, whom you love but who will no longer love you because you have hurt their darling boy. How do you assert your agency when its price is the pain of others?

She answers her own question and doesn't even know it.

[Secret Agent Man]

Yup. Avoid it all.

You can love them or you can understand them. Pick one, you cant have both.

[NorthMountain]

I am a humanities professor who teaches feminist theory, models feminist behavior for my students and my own children, and has achieved success in a male-dominated field.

1) I find abhorrent this practice of referring to oneself in the third person.

2) Since when, exactly, is the teaching of "feminist theory" a "male-dominated field"? I'm calling bullshit on that one.

Last year, my teenage son and I chanted in support of women’s reproductive rights at the Women’s March in Washington . . .

That, FRiends and neighbors, is child abuse.

[Old Grumpy]

When they got married, two fools met: her for having to ENDURE something she hates, him for being satisfied with it.

Get a divorce!

[lodi90]

Women (usually) marry up. Female hypergamy is real.

---

Yep. You’ll never see a female doctor married to a garbage truck driver.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

If I was about to have sex with a woman, and she was acting like it was being forced upon her, I simply could not get it up. My member would know better than I which way was up, were I to be addle-brained at the time.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

(0,10), obviously.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

I suspect that you can both love and understand one, if and ONLY if both of you are Godly people.

[Iscool]

What a bimbo...He ought to dump her...

[Secret Agent Man]

I prefer Paul’s potent advice. Better not to take a wife.

[JohnnyP]

“Rich old man, she won’t have to worry”

...There ain’t no way to hide your lyin’ eyes