My boyfriend forced me to sleep with him
5 Women on What It’s Like to Be Raped by a Boyfriend — Femestella
When talking about sexual assault, one topic that is often misunderstood is intimate partner rape, i.e. when someone is raped by a boyfriend/girlfriend, spouse, or long-time partner. In such circumstances, many often feel unsure whether or not to come forward for a variety of reasons, and it often ends up going unreported and not talked about.
Below you’ll find various accounts of what it’s like to be raped by a partner.
1. “I Didn’t Even Break Up With Him Afterwards”
“The man and I had been fighting. We fought and then we made love, and as we did he said, “I want to come inside of you.” This was not dirty talk – it was a proposal. I told him not to, I didn’t want him to.
When he finished he said, “I did it, I came inside of you!” Then added, “fuck you” sticking his middle finger up at me. His face, pink with a slick of sweat, was full of fury and glee.
I don’t know how to write what happened next without sounding pathetic. All I will say is that it was an automatic reaction. It came on without consideration. I burst into tears. I ran into the shower, crying and said over and over again, “get it out of me”.
I call what he did ‘rape-like’. He called it ‘pushing my boundaries’
That’s the most violent bit of the story. I call what he did “rape-like”. He called it “pushing my boundaries”. You say tomato, I say sexual assault.
Everything else is messy. I didn’t even break up with him afterward. Even though we’d only been dating for a couple of months and fought all the time. He drank a bottle of wine a day, talked about how much he loved my vagina in public and was plagued with mental ghosts that tortured him but, apparently, also bestowed him the ability to change people’s energies.
None of that bothered me. I have a high tolerance for weirdness. He was under my skin. It was intoxicating to feel like a pinch of salt dissolved in his black, turbulent seas.
Eventually, he broke up with me. He resented how I reacted to his “boundary-pushing” – said it made him feel like a rapist. And held up the fact I didn’t want him to come inside of me (I wasn’t on the pill) as evidence I didn’t really love him.
The trauma of being sort-of raped evaporated fairly quickly. I don’t feel like what happened was rape, or that I’m a rape victim. On the scale of sexual assault this incident, for me, lies halfway between a stolen kiss on the cheek and a full-blown rape. They are all different kinds of assault but connected.
It would be easy to efficiently cut him down with the word “rapist”, particularly when I will not face any reprimands for my own imperfect behavior during the relationship. But in fact, I have nothing but compassion for my sort-of rapist, the same kind I reserve for every miserable man, woman, and dog on this planet.
It was not rape, but my reaction was too involuntary, and its intensity too high, to say that nothing bad happened.
Something happened. And it had the whiff of rape.”
– Monica Tan, for The Guardian
Credit: Photo by Malik Earnest on Unsplash2. “This Time, Something Felt Wrong”
“After we’d finished I ran to the bathroom and immediately hunched over the toilet in agony. My insides burned like they’d been sandpapered. After half an hour, there was a faint knock on the other side of the bathroom door.
“You alright?” he asked.
“You’ve been in there for ages.”
I told him how the sex had hurt, how it was still hurting an hour afterward, and his voice softened, tinged with remorse.
“I’m sorry. Hope I didn’t hurt you.”
I fixed my hair and pajamas back into place and returned to the bedroom another 15 minutes later when the pain had finally subsided and crawled into bed beside him where he was asleep, knotted in sweaty sheets. This time it wasn’t like returning to bed after we’d had sex in the early days of our relationship, throwing my half-undressed body across him so he could wrap his arms around me and we could fall asleep together, both with smiles plastered across our faces.
This time something felt wrong. There was an unsettling, rancid feeling in the pit of my stomach that kept me awake. I listened to him sleep from the other side of the bed for the rest of the night, wedging the pillow behind my back.
…
Sex never hurt before that time, and it never hurt after it. The reason it was so painful, was, as one wise gyno finally pointed out, that I wasn’t turned on. It was a question no one had ever asked, and as such, I’d grown to assume was completely irrelevant. The uncomfortable answer to the question as to why I wasn’t turned on any longer having sex with my boyfriend was, that I didn’t want it. Almost as if to protect myself, my body was seizing up every time he touched me, causing a rush of sharp pain through my pelvis every time I was penetrated.”
– Nadia Bokody, for ravishly
Credit: Instagram/ @gbarkz3. “He Killed Something Inside Me Forever”
“His hands began to wander more than usual and he started to undress me, constantly promising me he wouldn’t do anything against my wish.
“This is against my wish,” I wanted to scream, but could not gather the courage.
Before I could make sense of what was happening, he laid me on my back and climbed on top. I resisted and asked him to get off, my voice swinging between angry screams and soft pleads. He placed his hand on my mouth.
Suddenly, I felt a dagger piercing through my body and then a warm trickle of blood. Between pain and anguish, I lay there trying to make sense of what was happening to me. He finished his business and rolled away, remarking, “Oh, so you were a virgin.”
If I had a dagger, I would have happily lodged it in his heart for breaking mine into a million pieces.
His five minutes of pleasure killed something inside that 17-year-old girl forever.”
– Anonymous, to the Daily O
4. “I Was Scared of What Would Happen If I Said No”
“My (now ex-) boyfriend Shawn* looked down at me. I stared back at him, my eyes wide and bottom lip trembling.
Only seconds before, he had been thrusting into me while I cried and tried to focus all my attention on the ceiling, too afraid to utter “No” or “Stop.” I dared not protest against him for several reasons.
For one, I was scared of what would happen if I didn’t have sex with him. Prior to penetrating me, he had brought his palm to my cheek in a slap that rendered me silent in disbelief. He told me I was a slut, then pushed me onto my futon and held my chin as he forcefully kissed me.
Second, after what I had done to make Shawn angry, I felt too guilty to defend myself. At the time, I thought I deserved to be punished. Lastly, I loved this boy. He had promised to marry me and he had never hurt me before. I had betrayed the person closest to me and ruined everything between us. Shawn was heartbroken and I was to blame.
Maybe he was doing this out of passion, I told myself; Maybe this was like that angry make-up sex always featured in romantic comedies.
Except it wasn’t “angry make-up sex.” It wasn’t passionate, romantic, or respectful. It wasn’t consensual. It was rape.
…
Shawn and I stayed together for six more months after the initial assault. I dismissed the rape as a miscommunication and assured Shawn that he hadn’t done anything wrong. I made excuses for what had happened. I didn’t fight back, I didn’t scream “no”, I didn’t try to get away. I felt as if I called what happened “rape” then it would be an insult to everyone who had been “really raped.” I convinced myself that this was my fault and I needed to accept it.”
– Coline-Hay, for xoJane
Credit: Instagram/ @gbarkz5. “I was in Denial the Whole Relationship”
“Throughout all of it, EVERY TIME I told him “no”, he gave me a look like nothing could hurt him more than my telling him “no”. Every time he gave me that look, it was like I was failing him somehow. I never considered breaking up with him. Nobody knew what was happening, and frankly, I didn’t want anyone to know.
Everybody thought I could do better, but he was my first love. I felt so strongly that even after everything he did, I still loved him months after we finally broke up. He knew he was playing me. He knew how to make me comply. The sick part is, I would kind of joke about how if he really wanted sex, he would have to rape me. I was thinking along the lines of physically pinning me down and physically forcing me. I had no idea that all of that time, he was. He was emotionally pinning me down and psychologically forcing me. He stole my virginity by intimidation, manipulation, force, and fear. He wanted rape, just in a way that was harder to prosecute, a way that was less believable.
I was in denial during the whole relationship. Who wants to think that they are being sexually and emotionally abused in their first relationship? Who wants to think that their first boyfriend raped them? As I’m typing this, I realize that according to Tennessee’s law concerning rape, I have no idea how many times he raped me, and retribution is not an option anymore.
It basically says any form of penetration that is gained by means of force or coercion is rape. I think that to a certain extent, I recognized what happened at the time. I became depressed. I came to hate him. I hated his laugh, his smile, his attitude, and that look more than anything, and yet I still loved him somehow.
…
Four years after the rape and abuse, I’m finally accepting what happened to me. I’ve never confronted him, although I want to, and I don’t talk to him, even in the rare attempts that he’s made. I’m still trying to move on. I’m still getting help. But I’m in a better place, and I refuse to let him affect my life any more than I can help.”
– Anonymous, for Her Campus
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual violence, you can find information on the National Sexual Violence Resource Center website here.
When 'Yes' Means 'No': How I Let My Boyfriend Rape Me
[Content notice: rape/sexual assault]
In my early twenties, I was convinced there was something very wrong with my vagina.
I sought the advice of several doctors and tried multiple treatments for years to no avail. One GP had me convinced I was being plagued by a particularly aggressive case of thrush that wouldn’t relent despite several rounds of antibiotic treatment, while another insisted the pain was the result of an over-active imagination.
But try as I might, I couldn’t get rid of the nagging, sharp stabbing sensation I had every time I had sex with my boyfriend. At times it was so bad I’d resort to sitting on the toilet for hours after sex, bent over in pain, clutching my arms around my legs for comfort as I willed the agony to end.
Eventually it would disappear, and I’d be able to move, speak and function again. But it was always a temporary reprieve, as the knife-twisting sensation would rear its ugly head again as soon as we next did the deed.
I was tested for STDs (despite always using barrier protection and having had the same partner for a year) and everything in between.
The tests always came back negative.
I finally became convinced I was going insane. Perhaps the last doctor was right. Perhaps I really was imagining the pain. Or perhaps this was just what sex felt like? It’d been years since I’d been intimate with anyone else and that was in the drunken throes of teenage college passion, perhaps it too had been painful and I’d simply nullified it from my memory?
But when the relationship ended some years later and I finally worked up the courage to have sex again, my mystery pain had suddenly vanished.
It took until I hit my thirties to realize why.
Going through a rough patch with my family and feeling emotionally distant, I’d told my boyfriend I didn’t want to have sex, that I just needed a break, to reconfigure and get back to myself again. What I needed wasn’t sexual contact, it was an offering of supportive words and a reassuring arm around me. And for a while, that was what I got. But when I didn’t return to my effervescent self quickly enough, things began to get awkward in the bedroom.
As we’d unfurl the sheets of an evening he’d ask me, “Can’t we just have a quickee?”, a half smirk painted across his face.
I’d smile back and tell him I wasn’t in a place to be intimate and he’d start to lay on the guilt. Telling me how I’d deprived him, how his sexual frustrations were starting to cause him physical pain and what a bad partner I was for not fulfilling his most basic need.
“It’s been weeks now,” he’d say, starting to slide the spaghetti strap from my satin nightie down my shoulder.
“What if I’m just quick? You’ll enjoy it once we start.” His wry grin had started to look ominous, I knew what it meant.
The more he pressured and guilted me, the more distant I felt from him, and the less I felt like becoming sexually aroused was even a faint possibility. And so, I began to shut down — going to bed late when he was already asleep, getting up early before he could wake and alert me to his ‘morning wood’ which was in need of relieving, and forming a barrier between us at night, pushing the pillow behind my back so his wandering hands couldn’t find their way to me.
It only amplified the frequency and intensity of his requests.
“I can’t be expected to wait forever. Why don’t you just lay there and let me get on top? You won’t even have to do anything. Come on, this is unfair.”
A thought gnawed at the back of my brain. Was I being a bad girlfriend? I’d never really had a serious partner before. Sacrifice is part of all relationships, perhaps this was one sacrifice I needed to make. And perhaps if I gave him what he wanted for now, he’d give me the time I needed to get in a better place to be vulnerable to him again.
“Okay,” I said.
It was the only word to come out of my mouth for the next hour, and the only one he needed. After we’d finished I ran to the bathroom and immediately hunched over the toilet in agony. My insides burned like they’d been sandpapered. After half an hour, there was a faint knock on the other side of the bathroom door.
“You alright?” he asked.
“You’ve been in there for ages.
”
I told him how the sex had hurt, how it was still hurting an hour afterwards, and his voice softened, tinged with remorse.
“I’m sorry. Hope I didn’t hurt you.”
I fixed my hair and pyjamas back into place and returned to the bedroom another 15 minutes later when the pain had finally subsided and crawled into bed beside him where he was asleep, knotted in sweaty sheets. This time it wasn’t like returning to bed after we’d had sex in the early days of our relationship, throwing my half-undressed body across him so he could wrap his arms around me and we could fall asleep together, both with smiles plastered across our faces.
This time something felt wrong. There was an unsettling, rancid feeling in the pit of my stomach that kept me awake. I listened to him sleep from the other side of the bed for the rest of the night, wedging the pillow behind my back.
For the next year, the same scene replayed itself like a bad movie on repeat. I’d crawl into bed and he’d immediately begin his monologue.
“You never want to have sex with me anymore. I can’t be in a relationship where my needs aren’t fulfilled. Why don’t we just do it now? You’ll enjoy it if you just relax.”
Then, like clockwork, I’d relent and give the only word he needed to hear to be okay with what he was about to do, “Okay.”
Half an hour later I’d be in the bathroom, white-knuckling the toilet seat, squeezing my eyes tightly shut as I willed for the dreaded stabbing, burning sensation to relent. He’d often knock on the door and ask me if I was alright, eventually suggesting there may be something wrong with me and encouraging me to see my doctor, which I did obligingly.
But there was nothing wrong with me. Sex never hurt before that time, and it never hurt after it. The reason it was so painful, was, as one wise gyno finally pointed out, that I wasn’t turned on. It was a question no one had ever asked, and as such, I’d grown to assume was completely irrelevant. The uncomfortable answer to the question as to why I wasn’t turned on any longer having sex with my boyfriend was, that I didn’t want it.
Almost as if to protect myself, my body was seizing up every time he touched me, causing a rush of sharp pain through my pelvis every time I was penetrated.
Sex had become like a cheap at-home ab roller and my partner the relentless infomercial that eventually coerced me into handing over my credit card details to own it, only to later discover my three installments of $39.99 added up to something no amount of use would give me the washboard stomach promised on the ad. But like the fitness contraption gathering dust under my bed, I’d assumed the consequences were ultimately mine to bear as a result of signing on the dotted line with my verbal consent.
When most of us think of rape, we imagine the stuff of nightmares. Dark alleys, grotesque, lurking predators and screams of protest. And in many scenarios, this is a horrific reality.
However the kind of acts we’re less likely to classify as rape are when it occurs with someone familiar, like a partner.
This is despite the fact current statistical data shows four out of five sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim. We’re even less certain about classifying it as rape if the woman has used the word, ‘yes’ or no words at all and simply allowed the man to go about his way, is drunk, or under the influence of drugs. And here’s where the idea of consent gets murky.
We’re all familiar with the anti-rape catchphrase of the modern era, that ‘No means no’, but far less resolute when it comes to the topic of coercion — the idea that sometimes ‘yes’ can also mean ‘no’, or that no words are needed at all for it to be clear a woman isn’t able to freely commit to sex.
In September 2014, Californian Governor, Jerry Brown signed a bill making California the first state to actually clarify exactly what is — and more poignantly, isn’t — involved in the actual act of giving consent. Put in place in a bid to remove ambiguity from sexual assault investigations, the law requires ‘affirmative consent’, going further to state consent shouldn’t be considered the mere utterance of the word ‘yes’, or the lack of resistance during a sexual encounter.
According to the Californian law, ‘Lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent. Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.’
However the legal definitions of rape and consent differ greatly around the world. In Sweden, the issue of consent is absent from the legal definition of rape, which is focused on the amount of violence used and exploitation of someone in a ‘helpless’ state such as whilst asleep or intoxicated. In England, sexual consent is defined as someone agreeing ‘by choice’, and possessing ‘the freedom and capacity to make that choice.’
In Australia, it must be proven beyond reasonable doubt that a person didn’t consent to sex, and that ‘the defendant was aware at the time that the victim was not consenting’. This means that the perpetrator’s mental state and knowledge plays an equally critical role in determining whether or not a victim was consenting, and as such, if they held the belief the other person was willing, even if they weren’t, a sexual assault has not occurred in the eyes of the law.
Though definitions differ throughout the US, rape is typically considered as, ‘The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.’. The ability of the victim to give consent must be determined in accordance with the relevant state statute.
However, even when a sexual assault meets the legal definition of rape, nearly two-thirds of victims don’t label it as such. Consequently, sexual assault is one of the most difficult offences to successfully prosecute, with an estimated 85 per cent of cases never coming to the attention of the criminal justice system, and of those offences actually reported, only a small proportion proceed to trial, with an even smaller percentage resulting in a successful conviction.
According to a 2014 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in five women in the US have been a victim of rape.
Prevalence estimates for sexual coercion are typically much higher, suggesting many women who’ve been coerced into sex don’t think of themselves as victims of crime.
And public perception of exactly what does and doesn’t constitute rape hasn’t been aided by the slew of misleading and confusing comments made by public figures on the topic in the past decade. In a 2012 interview with KTVI-TV on his stance on abortion in cases of pregnancy as a result of rape, Republican Todd Akin said, “From what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”
Akin’s comment was later backed up by then American Family Association director of Issues Analysis, Bryan Fischer, who chimed in, “[A] real, genuine rape, a case of forcible rape [would] make it impossible for her or difficult in that particular circumstance to conceive a child… There’s a very delicate and complex mix of hormones that take place, that are released, in a woman’s body, and if that gets interfered with, it may make it impossible for her or difficult in that particular circumstance to conceive a child…that’s all Todd Akin is saying…and he’s absolutely right about that.
”
British MP George Galloway added further obscurity to the term by publicly stating having sex with someone without asking, or while they’re asleep doesn’t constitute rape.
“Not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion. Some people believe that when you go to bed with somebody, take off your clothes, and have sex with them and then fall asleep, you’re already in the sex game with them… It is not rape or you bankrupt the term rape of all meaning.”
And whilst President Obama has weighed in, responding, “I don’t know how these guys come up with these ideas. Let me make a very simple proposition: Rape is rape. It is a crime. And so these various distinctions about rape don’t make too much sense to me,” British justice secretary Kenneth Clarke took time to draw a distinction between date rape and “serious rape, with violence and an unwilling woman” in a 2011 interview with BBC Radio 5, where it was put to him that “rape is rape,” to which he responded, “No, it is not.
”
It’s no wonder so many women are confused about what constitutes consensual sex. Add to that decades of ingrained cultural ideology that a woman’s role is to serve her partner, and you have a recipe for male sexual entitlement and spousal submission. Unsurprisingly, the notion that sex can be forced through coercion is rarely discussed. And for young women going through their early twenties, desperate to fit in, be accepted and please their partners like I was, the definition of that term is even further flung.
According to Florida Institute Of Technology’s Sexual Coercion Awareness and Prevention document, sexual coercion is, ‘the act of using pressure, alcohol or drugs, or force to have sexual contact with someone against his or her will’ and can include ‘persistent attempts to have sexual contact with someone who has already refused.’
This means something as simple as guilting someone (“If you really loved me, you’d sleep with me”) or threatening (“I’m going to leave you if you don’t start having sex with me”) falls under the definition of sexual coercion, that is, sex that is garnered by means of manipulation or pressure, and as such, isn’t given freely.
And here’s why the idea of ‘affirmative consent’ is so crucial. Instead of focusing on the fact that ‘no means no,’ affirmative consent acknowledges the need for ongoing consent at all levels of sexual activity to ensure coercion isn’t taking place, regardless of the parties’ relationship, prior sexual history or current activity. (Read: grinding on the dancefloor does not equal an automatic invitation for sex.) It also acknowledges a woman’s power to change her mind at any stage during a sexual encounter and the fact that physical cues (like the fact a woman is responsive and repeatedly vocalizing her enjoyment) are just as critical as hearing the word ‘yes’.
I never told my boyfriend what he was doing at the time was the cause of my pain, or the fact that it made me feel violated, that I resented him for so effortlessly nullifying every ‘no’ I’d said in the lead-up in exchange for a single ‘okay’, a word he saw as a green light to ignoring every other signal I’d given him that I didn’t want to have sex.
Perhaps it’s the reason, many years later I found myself repeating the same sequence of events, offering myself up to a new partner when I wasn’t emotionally or physically in the mood, only to be surprised when he pulled away.
“Why’d you stop? Don’t you want to have sex?” I asked him, concerned I wasn’t pleasing him.
“Of course I do. I always do. But not when you’re not into it. That feels wrong. Let’s just have sex when you’re ready, I’d rather wait,” he replied.
It was the first time I realized a partner who truly loved and respected me would let me own my own body, rather than demand access to it at whim.
Sexual assault is one of the least discussed and understood of all crimes, complicated by the fact it’s largely misinterpreted in mass media, invalidated and associated with shame. And that scares me. Because if we aren’t willing to talk about what a truly consensual sexual encounter should look and feel like, how can we expect young women to go forth into their twenties and thirties with the understanding that their bodies are their own, and as such, what they do with them should be their choice, and theirs alone?
Comment below: Do you think the tide is starting to turn on our understanding of rape?
This story has been republished from SHESAID.
com with full permission. If you liked this, you can read more like it on SHESAID.com:
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“I threw up when I found out about this,” says Niamh from Ireland.
“I burst into tears, went to sleep in the bathroom, curled up on the floor,” says Anna from Russia. Millions of women experience somnophilia, sleep abuse that is not usually talked about. Ekaterina Popova
Tags:
Rape
violence against women
Violence
sexual abuse
Health
Getty images
Rape in our bedrooms
In July 2021, The Guardian published an article about somnophilia. “Rape in our bedrooms” is what author Anna Moore calls this “sexual practice”. The journalist tells the story of an Irish woman, Niam Nee Domnail, who, after a year of living with her Norwegian boyfriend Magnus Meyer Hustveit, discovered that a man had sex with her for a year while she slept.
At the time of meeting Magnus, Niam was 25 years old, she worked as a teacher in one of the schools in Dublin. They moved in with Hustwaite a few months after they met. Once, during a joint walk with friends, Niam felt unwell and returned home. The man stayed with the company. “I only drank water, but I just passed out,” Ni says. "I didn't hear Magnus come back, which is weird, since I'm usually a light sleeper."
In the morning, the girl discovered that she was not wearing pajamas, and there were traces of semen on her thighs. The boyfriend was next to me. "Did you have sex with me while I was sleeping?" Niam asked. The answer was: "Yes." She was shocked and confused. "I can't give consent when I'm asleep," she told Magnus. “Never do that again.” But two weeks later, everything happened again. "Do you do this all the time?" Niam asked then. “All this time,” Huswait admitted. According to the man, he had sex with a sleeping Niamh three times a week since they were together.
The girl vomited: she sat at home for a long time hugging a bucket. In the morning, as soon as the cafes opened, Niam left the apartment to meet her friend. "I told her that Magnus had sex with me in my sleep and she said, 'It's not sex. It's rape.'
Every second
In the spring of 2021, Jessica Taylor, Ph.D., conducted a survey to assess the extent of violence against women, surveying 22,000 respondents. ask girls questions about specific actions. Have you ever been bitten? Spat on? Strangled? Have you ever been woken up by a male partner having sex with you or trying to do so?
51% of respondents answered yes to the last question. A survey conducted by the VOICE editor on social media showed the same ratio as Taylor's study: out of 336 women, 168 (50%) said they had experienced somnophilia.
Rape Crisis spokeswoman Kathy Russell says she's not surprised by Taylor's results.
“It is believed that if you sleep in the same bed with your boyfriend or spouse, if you are naked or have consented before, then this cannot be rape. But there is a big difference between gently waking up a partner and having sex and sexualizing a sleeping woman,” she says. When discussing Taylor's poll online, people often took diametrically opposed positions. Some said that sex with a sleeping person is violence, others joked: "The only chance I have!" The VOICE micro-study provoked a similar reaction. “To wake up with harassment and “put” on a sleeping wife is the same thing for me,” wrote one of the participants. “I liked him, I was glad,” another commented.
According to Russell, there can be no options. “Consent can only be obtained when you are able to make that choice. If you are asleep or unconscious, then this is impossible. We are talking about rape - one hundred percent,” she said. According to the expert's experience, this happens most often in abusive relationships, and somnophilia is just one of their sides.
One-sided sex
Clinical and forensic psychologist, member of the Norwegian Psychological Association's Digital Health Board Svein Overland is one of the few professionals who studies somnophilia as a fetish. His interest in this topic was inspired by his work in prisons, where he tried to understand the motives of sex offenders. Overland also helped victims of "after-party rape," the Norwegian term for attacks on women who are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.
The psychologist believes that somnophilia is part of a broader phenomenon - one-sided sex. According to his research, the demand for porn in categories such as sleep sex has increased over the past decade, as well as videos with similar practices based on the unresponsiveness of a partner and a focus on satisfying one's own needs. Such, for example, is the game flexi dolls, when women pretend to be sex dolls.
"In one-way sex, there is no dance, no seduction, no interaction," he says.
- The more I studied this area, the more I became convinced that many men are afraid to have sex. Pornography is getting deeper into the life of society, but at the same time, many studies show that people are becoming less sexually active.” A sleeping woman, Overland explains, is not a threat. She is absent, turning from a partner into a safe object who cannot refuse, express dissatisfaction or have her own demands. Clinical psychologist Alexandra Eliseeva believes that somnophilia is associated with the inability to establish warm intimate relationships, insensitivity to the experiences of other people, alienation from emotional life - one's own and someone else's.
“A woman ceases to be a living person, but becomes a means of achieving relaxation. A man does not have to make an effort to please her. To get a vivid orgasm, a somophile needs to see the partner's unconsciousness. The experience of absolute power over her and her body becomes incredibly attractive to him, ”she says.
Participants in the VOICE study often talked about power. “It seems to me that this does not depend on sleep. Perhaps you like that the second person is not in control of the situation. My ex-husband tried to cheat when I was feeding the baby and talking on the phone at the same time,” says Olga D. Marina L. says the same thing: “My first husband regularly did this to me when I was sleeping. And also, for example, when breastfeeding a child lying down, he could settle down behind and ... "
Lesser Evil
Russell notes that sexualized partner abuse is considered the "lesser crime", which is a mistake. “Which is worse: being robbed by a stranger or someone you love and trust?” she asks.
According to the expert, somnophilia as a kink has the right to exist, but it requires deep trust, constant communication and rules. It is hard to imagine that 50% of the Taylor survey respondents belong to communities where they understand exactly how to approach such sexual practices.
“For most women, the effects of sleepwalking can be devastating,” says Russell. In Russia, the attitude towards somnophilia is very capaciously characterized by an anecdote about a husband who found his wife's note in the kitchen: "Soup in a pot, cutlets in a pan, if you fuck - don't wake me up." There is no concept of marital rape in the legal field, but the approach to sex as a duty of a woman is common. Even psychologists often talk about the intimate side of living together as a duty: why not suffer for the pleasure of your husband?
Unconsciousness is perceived as a "mitigating circumstance": you feel less - you can bear it more easily, besides, you don't need to implement a "rider" of men based on pornography, which is far from real sex. But such an attitude is dangerous: violence in a dream threatens with the same injuries that are committed against a woman who is conscious.
“Nine years later, I still wake up at two in the morning.
I don't need to set my watch. We know that the body stores memories of trauma, and I think that it was at two in the morning that this happened, ”says Niam. “I woke up several times from penetration, could not figure out what was happening, sobbed and fought back. The most annoying thing is that the brain does not understand what is happening: is it a nightmare about a maniac or someone got into the house. It's suffocating,” says Inna O. Elena Golyakovskaya, a crisis psychologist and specialist in violence in close relationships, believes that somnophilia can lead to catastrophic consequences. “This phenomenon is on a par with lived rape. A woman's body becomes a resource that a man has the right to use without her consent. This objectification leads to dissociation: we separate our physical shell from the personality. On the one hand, it is a protective mechanism that allows you to survive the trauma. On the other hand, dissociation leads to serious problems: a woman stops hearing the signals of her body.
” When this happens, Golyakovskaya explains, the results can be disastrous. Loss of hunger and satiety leads to the development of eating disorders - from compulsive overeating to bulimia and anorexia. By ceasing to feel tired, we can bring ourselves to physical exhaustion. Due to ignoring pain signals, women turn to doctors in the late stages of diseases, when medicine is powerless.
Another problem is constant psychological depression. “When a woman does not know what to expect from a loved one, she lives with a sense of constant danger. This provokes the release of stress hormones, which, in turn, negatively affect the work of the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for our rational mental activity. The wheel starts: the threat leads to anxiety, which physiologically interferes with making sober decisions, and this makes the woman even more nervous. Such a cycle can be repeated indefinitely, absorbing the physical and moral strength of a person, ”explains Golyakovskaya.
'Not sure there was a crime': the legal aspect
The Guardian tells the story of 40-year-old Lisa, who was raped by her ex-husband. For the sake of her daughter, the woman tried to maintain a good relationship with her husband after the divorce and invited him home for dinner. The man drank too much, and Lisa allowed him to spend the night in a spare room. “When I woke up, I found that he was having sex with me,” she recalls.
In the morning, Lisa went to the local police station. “Two policemen asked if he forced me to do this. No, I was sleeping. He did not press me to him, there was no struggle. They said they weren't sure that any crime had been committed." The next day, the woman received a call from a sergeant who read the officers' report. He was concerned that the incident was not recognized as rape. Liza refused to communicate with him: she no longer trusted law enforcement officers.
Statistically, in England and Wales, less than one in 60 reported rapes ends up in an accusation.
The situation is even more complicated with attacks on sleeping women. “There is no physical evidence, no witnesses, sometimes no memories. Because of this, additional difficulties arise, ”says Russell. In Niam's case, her boyfriend was punished: Magnus was sentenced to 15 months in prison. However, this was only achieved because the man pleaded guilty. Whether he drugged the girl with something or not remains unknown: Magnus himself denied Niamh's suspicions. In Russia, Tatyana Belova, a lawyer for the Women's NGO Consortium, explains that sexual acts that take advantage of the helpless state of the victim are criminalized. It consists of two factors: the victim either does not realize what is happening (for example, a child or a person with a mental disorder is unable to understand what is being done to him), or cannot resist (in particular, is unconscious or in a state of severe alcohol intoxication ).
“When it comes to somnophilia, the main task is to prove that the woman was in a helpless state.
The chance to bring such a thing to success is very small,” says Belova. It is extremely difficult to convince the judges that the dream was so deep that the actions of the rapist did not interrupt it. If a girl says that she did not fight back, fearing aggression, then her words will be assessed as “could, but did not want to”, and what happened is not recognized as rape. “The ECHR believes that there is no need to prove the impossibility of resistance, but in Russia the practice is still developing differently,” explains the lawyer. “It is not uncommon for a husband’s violent actions against his wife, in principle, are not perceived by law enforcement agencies as something terrible and illegal, since “no one has yet canceled the performance of marital duty,” says a lawyer for the Lawyers Charitable Foundation helping children” Anastasia Tyunyaeva. According to her, most often, such applications result in a decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case.
Another problem is the high latency of marital rape.
They are performed secretly, behind closed doors, without witnesses. As a result, the evidence base is built only on the testimony of the victim and a comprehensive psychological and psychiatric examination, and investigators often believe that such an arsenal is not enough to bring charges under a serious article. “It is difficult to give real statistics on cases of this kind, but one can definitely say that there are much more cases of violence than sentences,” says Tyunyaeva. Neither Tyunyaeva nor Belova have heard of cases related to natural sleep, however, in Russian legal practice there are cases of rape while intoxicated. One of them was led by Anastasia: a man made his 14-year-old stepdaughter drink beer and vodka, after which he raped her. The child's mother applied to the Investigative Committee. However, due to the fact that the girl looked outrageous, was "aware of sexual relations" and took sedatives, her testimony was skeptical. There was no direct evidence - photos, videos, witnesses - and the investigators refused to open a criminal case.
Women who encounter somnophiles find themselves left alone with their pain. The law does not protect them, others are unlikely to support them. Husband didn't wake up? It’s okay, it’s even funny: you yourself didn’t notice how you fulfilled your marital duty. Was raped by a friend at a party? It's her own fault - there was nothing to drink. “If you fuck, don’t wake up” is not a funny joke, but a story about how the only thing left for us is to pretend that nothing terrible happened. But here are a few stories about somphilia that we hope will convince you that this is a serious problem and not a funny episode of married life.
“I hate him for this.”
“My husband has been doing this for years. In the morning, a surprised look: I don’t remember anything! At the same time, he did not allow me to sleep in pajamas, even when I had to get up at night with the children with the window open in winter. He told me a story: a man in America climbed on his wife at night, fucked her, she sued for rape, and he did it in a dream.
There was a long examination, the man was acquitted. Type, unconscious actions. And supposedly he, my husband, is the same. I'm going to file for divorce." “I wake up on the train from being stroked on my thigh. My first thought: I crawled out of the side of the aisle with my hips and interfere with others. But then I understand that they would have already passed by, and this continues. I open my eyes and see the silhouette of a man. Oru, I'm trying to grab him, but I can't. He runs away. I keep yelling. People wake up, someone catches him. And then they complain to me that I disturb people's sleep. "Who needs you, he walked past, touched." And he just ran. The man smirks. And I understand that I can’t do anything, absolutely nothing.”
“I was raped several times in my sleep by my 'friends'. I fought back, "friendship" after that ended. Once I didn’t fight back - I was drunk - this happened to my current partner. I woke up in the process, burst into tears, went to sleep in the bathroom, curled up on the floor.
Still in a relationship with him, because he was also drunk, realized what he had done, and moved out for a couple of weeks so that I would not see him and not experience it all again. Now all sexual contacts are solely at my suggestion.” “There was an episode when I woke up precisely from the fact that sex was already in full swing, and I overslept the beginning. The partner claimed that he also woke up, only (or already) performing frictions. I still don't know whether to believe it or not."
“My boyfriend and I were on vacation abroad, one day I woke up from sex. He held me tight and didn't let go until he had finished. Before that, he was always gentle and attentive in bed, protected himself, but not here. Then he forced me to drink a huge amount of oral contraceptives according to the scheme from the Internet, because there was no postinor or something like that in pharmacies. I felt bad for a long time after the violence and the pills, I hate him for it all.
” “I remember three such episodes. Everything was in my youth and under alcohol, and this is also why for a long time I did not realize it at all as violence and harassment. Then we maintained friendly relations with these men, not sexual ones. I did not tell anyone about this, about these people in particular. I understand that they were wrong, but subconsciously I feel as if it’s my fault that I didn’t realize right away, didn’t react, didn’t even tell them. And as if because of this, it would be dishonest of me to talk about it after all this time.”
“I lived with a guy who made me repeat everything he liked about porn. And then one night I woke up from anal sex. Broke out, broke down. And he: "What are you doing? You, like a child, were lying defenseless, I wanted so much, I even licked you there, before..." After that incident, I shaved my head in order to somehow regain the right to my own body. And two weeks later she left him.
" "I was about 20 years old, I met a guy - it was my first relationship. And a couple of days after my first time we went to bed, everything was calm. I fell asleep. And after some time I felt him settle in from behind. I was confused and did not immediately understand what was happening. I grunted to him to stop, I want to sleep. He ignored my words and continued to have me. Only the fact that I bled, and he apparently got scared. Or he was not so pleased. I don’t know.”
“I was 18 years old. We rested at the apartment after the end of the first course. At some point, I wanted to sleep. There was no way to leave. A guy came up to me all evening, with whom I didn’t want anything at all. I woke up from the fact that he was hanging over me and poking. There was no penetration. But I have a very clear memory of that moment. I dreamed that hot sand was crawling up my legs inside me. I open my eyes and there he is. I didn't remember until I read the poll post.
It was buried in memory. It seemed to me that I was lucky, there was nothing. And it was. Ugh". “I was 20, my husband was 45. And every fucking morning he attacked me. I had to get up at seven in the morning for work, and at six he just silently spread my legs, slobbered my crotch and did his job. I woke up when he was already between my legs, and it was problematic to fight back, especially from sleep. I was in pain, plus I wanted to sleep wildly. As a result, I began to wake up from the first touches and hit wherever I hit with my elbow. I hate morning sex with all my heart.
“My ex-young man explained this by saying that I was sleeping so sweetly that he did not want to wake me up. But I never seemed to feel it and never woke up.”
“That was almost twenty years ago, in winter. I got a bad cold and fell down with the flu. On the second day, the temperature went off scale over 40, and I was in a semi-conscious state.
My then newlywed husband then "with surprise" told me that under such a temperature I suddenly wanted sex and he "had" to fuck me. I didn't remember anything. He also did not hesitate to add that I "moaned so, so moaned." Of course, my completely stuffy nose and tachycardia from a high temperature have nothing to do with it at all. “One time I had sex with my friend, then I started to pass out. And at that moment his friend came and tried to take advantage of the situation. As a result, I fell asleep, and the next morning I woke up between them. It was terrible, I didn't expect it."
“Literally in the first month of our relationship with a very sane and adequate, as it seemed to me then, IT specialist, we somehow discussed that it would probably be fun to wake up from caresses once. Well, from hugs, tender kisses and all that. Literally the next night, I was awakened by his attempt to shove a dick into me without any preparation, straight dry.
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