When MeToo Meets I Do

I keep the awful truth that my husband raped me hidden under my bed

Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

My husband unexpectedly pulled our car into a graveled patch off a dark side road. “I want to show you something.” Goose bumps sprang up all along my arms, back, and neck. He has either planned a kinky “surprise,” or he wants to kill me. A vile acid backwash rose from my stomach. He parked beside a power substation; the glow from the near-distant city illuminated my fear. It was just past dusk—a lovely early fall evening.

This was not the first time I had felt unsafe, even threatened—but it would be the last time I would know that type of physical threat from the man I used to call my husband. I had understood for years that the relationship was not only emotionally unhealthy, but physically dangerous, as many sexual assault victims know before the assault even transpires. Unlike assault from a stranger (which I am not minimizing), when a person is sexually assaulted by his or her intimate partner, the assault hideously lingers with every interaction with that partner, somewhere in the middle of the intersection between love and hate. That’s what makes intimate partner abuse so impossible to reconcile in your mind: A person you love, an act you hate, but there’s no separating the two. Every sexual act thereafter is a scrambled slurry of emotions—anger, love, disgust, anxiety, and shame. I know this because I lived through it, and survived it for a decade; it was a truth I hid from everyone—including myself.

My partner was the domineering type—always right, more brilliant than most, entitled, emotionally cold—so when he demanded something, I found myself, at almost 40 years old, trapped in a cocoon of disbelief and compliance. For nearly a decade, I had survived only by doing my little gaslighted, eggshell fairy dance, trying to discover his love language: sexual perversion and submission.

It was a cold December morning. The night before the children and I had decorated the house with fresh evergreen swags and oranges studded with cloves. I remember surveying the decadent spruce tree claiming its rightful spot in the marble foyer, hoping and praying he wouldn’t do anything to ruin this joyful moment.

His body vibrated as he slipped in close to me under the covers. I fully stirred to awareness and instinctively tried to get away from him as he pressed his body, misted in cold sweat, against me. He was already hard; I knew there would be no escape. I still remember gagging at the smell of his exercise-sour hair and the wild, jackknifed look in his eyes. I did not verbally give consent; I quietly protested. I whispered “no” and struggled to drive him out from between my legs while simultaneously fighting to keep my legs soldered closed. My request was bulldozed by his penis.

I knew I needed to be quiet—our two children were sleeping, and it wasn’t quite six o’clock in the morning. He watched me, clearly exhilarated, while I closed my eyes and let my mind float high above my body, pretending this was happening to someone else. I never cried, screamed, scratched, or raised my voice above a whisper. “Please stop…” were my words, effused with terror, loathing, and confusion. When it was over, I waited until he left to shower, slumping to the floor in tears, not because of what had just transpired, but because I knew he enjoyed torturing me. I reasoned that because we were married, I wrote erotica (I liked the rough, kinky stuff, right?), and had had consensual sex with him plenty of times, no one would believe me.

Like many women with abusive partners, I always understood the veiled threat; I knew there would be a payback if I “stepped out of line.” He had threatened sexual violence and staged “events” before; I still can hardly bear to look at giant zip ties and coiled rope, or a video camera. I have to check trigger warnings before I watch particular movies or read certain books. He listened to my intimate phone conversations with my mother, destroyed personal property, and kept his vast amount of money secreted away, doling it out to me when he thought I deserved it. Those are only a few of the terrors that underpin the complexities to reporting intimate partner abuse. So, of course I didn’t tell anyone. Instead, I spent the better part of the remaining years of my marriage existing in a PTSD fog, wondering whether I had even actually been assaulted.

Some of the most heinous aspects of intimate partner abuse are the manipulation, gaslighting, and general cloud of confusion that surrounds events and conversations. I borrowed anger that never fit; it always acquitted him. No matter where he went or who he met, I knew he would never be cleanly convicted; I alone would carry the awful secret of who he really was. He wasn’t a stranger, I wasn’t drunk or under the influence of any substance, I had no bruises or abrasions, and it didn’t happen in a dark alley, but in our marital bed.

It took watching a few episodes of the series The Handmaid’s Tale to spark a realization that my rape was real, it wasn’t my fault, and that it was the result of a power imbalance with a disturbed, broken human. I surmised that not all rapes follow the neat plot arcs in Law and Order: SVU. There seems to be a fairly widespread cultural belief that marital rape is not “real rape.”

As the MeToo movement has posited the validity of victims’ stories, the same validation of sexual assault and abuse in marriage stops at “I do.” Sexual assault within marriage is not qualified as such in some corners of society because the assailant isn’t a stranger in a dark alley, or maybe it’s only coerced, not forced. However, it’s an event that society needs to get comfortable with because intimate partner abuse (sexual or otherwise) exists on all levels and destroys its victims with silence. When women and men are allowed to share their stories without guilt and shame, and without the assumption that there must be another explanation—“rough sex” or “role play”—only then will people in relationships marred by intimate partner abuse have validation that doesn’t stop at “I do.” I had wanted to fight for my marriage, but I’m glad I didn’t. A marriage should not be saved at the expense of the people in it.

Sometimes when I look at him, I fear what is inside of him as much as I fear what is not inside of him. People assume he’s like them; I know he’s the archetype of men we’re told to fear as women. In his physical presence—his side-eyes at the once-yearly holiday school band concert to watch our youngest or the surprise yard stalk when I don’t watch my time and miss the shelter-in-place window during bi-weekly drop off—my jackhammer heart beats out a truth I loathe about myself: He can still intimidate me.

This crisis was my chrysalis, yet the golden cord of hope sometimes feels like a noose. I worry I will never be shiny and new again. Instead, I’m a scarred, marked, bandaged jumble of a person with a neon “hot mess” sign for all to gawk at with contempt. I have only shared my experiences with my counselor, my mother, and one very close friend. I don’t expect that anyone else I’m personally acquainted with will ever know the truth. In real life, my secret can only be told to an audience of preconditioned believers: other women just like me. Me too.

Stella Grae is an unassuming English professor, copyeditor, and copywriter living in Lexington, Kentucky. She’s the author of the short story “Power Play” that was originally published in the website erotica journal Oysters and Chocolate, and “Domcember: a Kinky Christmas Romance.” In her spare time she enjoys philosophizing about love and sex in her blog, “Bone Up,” which can be found on her site stella grae…along with other sexy tidbits. Just Call Me Confidence is her first erotica novel.