We need to talk about sexual assault in marriage

[sglowrider]

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/3/8/17087628/sexual-assault-marriage-metoo

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.” His response didn’t surprise me. It was his standard reaction to my complaints about the sad state of our marriage, his way of training me to see my needs — emotional connection and communication — as excessive, and his (primarily sex) as entirely reasonable

I had dragged us to couples counselling because I could no longer live in the vacuum left behind after the emotional intimacy had seeped out of our marriage. My husband hadn’t noticed the loss, proclaiming himself happy.