A good few years ago I spoke at an event hosted by Min Grob of CCChat Magazine. I heard Dr Emma Katz speak on something I hadn’t heard about before “Sexual Coercion”. It has taken me some time to digest what I learned that day and also to accept what had happened to me in my abusive relationship. 

Let me get into it…

Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. (Source: Womens Aid). 

After 9 months of fleeing my abusive relationship, I had come to terms with what I had experienced, that I was a victim of domestic abuse and more specifically coercive control. I still hadn’t understood how deep-rooted this was and I had felt that as a wife it was my duty to please my husband, therefore I hadn’t accepted that my sex life had come into this equation.

Sexual coercion is unwanted sexual activity that happens when you are pressured, tricked, threatened, or forced in a nonphysical way. (Source: Womens Health). 

As I mentioned, Dr Emma Katz talked about this very subject at the event and it was my awakening of coercive control being involved in my sex life. 

Some of the ways I was sexually coerced:

• Asking if I can ask the midwife when I can have sex after having my first child despite having forceps, I was pressured to have sex sooner making the healing process longer and having to see a gynecologist. 
• My ex spoke to my best friend at the time and told her that his sex life is non-existent, knowing that she would come and inform me to apply pressure on me. 
• My ex said how can he not look at other women or flirt with them when he doesn’t get any at home. 
• Me having to put in my digital diary to have sex with my ex at least twice a week (ideally three times a week) so that he doesn’t instigate. 

 Doing the above meant that I would prevent what was going to happen if I didn’t satisfy his needs, he would have sex with me in my sleep and I would wake up to him on top of me. At the time I felt I deserved what happened to me because I wasn’t performing my wifely duties and the rape was a consequence of that. I didn’t actually realise it was rape for years and this ultimately made me realise that I wasn’t just a victim of emotional abuse but it was in fact physical as well. 

The definition of the word rape:

The crime of forcing somebody to have sex when they do not want it or are not able to agree to it. (Source: Oxford Learners Dictionaries). 

How this affects me today…

Sexual intercourse and intimacy are something I struggle with when it comes to having that time with my husband. I have had flashbacks during sex, I used to wear a top and couldn’t be naked and I still sleep in fetal position at the edge of the bed. Thankfully I have an understanding husband who is always patient with me and never puts me under pressure. It’s not easy though because I still have this clock in the back of my brain thinking about the last time I had sex with my husband, wondering when I need to do it again, the longer I leave it the more I feel my own pressure to get it over and done with. 

 I am actively working on my healing for my sex life and intimacy but there’s no quick fix. I know I need to be kind to myself and I know I should be enjoying it myself. 

Sharing this with you makes me feel vulnerable but I want others to know that rape doesn’t always look like a random attack in a street or is a physically forceful incident like the stereotypical view we may have as a society (I include myself in this). I feel the way I was coerced to have sex and punished if I didn’t is insidious and it still haunts me today.