I raped my own wife

Dear Agatha, 

My marriage is 13 months old. I am getting fed up of the whole thing as a result of my wife’s attitude to sex. She is frigid. Fact is she was raped 15 months before I met her by a man she thought loved her. She was a virgin at the time the incident happened. I have tried my best to understand her attitude but I am now getting to my wits end as she remains unresponsive to anything I do to make her get out the shell she has erected. Some few days ago, I was so desperate for her company I forced myself on her. Since then she has been calling me a rapist and won’t even allow me into our bedroom. 

By the time I came back from work that day, my things were already neatly packed into the guest room. I have pleaded with her best friend to talk to her but she remains adamant. I don’t know what to do. Considering the fact that I have not enjoyed sex since marrying her, I am seriously contemplating quitting the marriage and looking for another woman who would make me feel like a man. I honestly feel like half a man. To be fair to her, she is a good woman outside the bedroom; the kind of woman I have always prayed for a wife.

Please help me.

Idemudia.

Dear Idemudia, 

Marriage is a trial and a process of building. There is no union without a challenge. Running away from this situation isn’t a solution at all because you don’t know the kind of challenge that awaits you at the other side of the divide. 

Frankly, you didn’t act well by forcing yourself on her, especially as you are aware of her history. She is clearly yet to get over that incident of rape. As her husband, your duty in her life isn’t to remind her of something she is trying so much to forget but to help give her another memory of how beautiful lovemaking can be with the right person.

You don’t have any excuse for what you did. Forcing yourself on her shattered the trust she had in you. In her mind, you are no better than the man who violated her. The man like you is someone she trusted, loved and shared a level of intimacy with. To have done what you did as her husband, you brought up the memory of that time again in vivid colours. Again, another man has betrayed her trust.

No matter how pressed you were, you shouldn’t have forced yourself on her. When a man rapes a woman, it isn’t just her body that gets violated, her mind too suffers, perhaps the worst. The body can always heal but the mind doesn’t heal as fast as the body. The human memory once violated would require a stronger and contrasting incident to erase the ugly one from the brain’s database. This is what you failed to do; instead you opened up old wounds that communicate a negative image of your feelings for her. 

To her, you are only interested in her body and not her person. Although this is a wrong conclusion of what you feel for her, but in this current state she is in, there is no changing her mind. It would require more than pleas from her friend to soften her attitude towards you. 

You must develop an unusual kind of patience to penetrate the new wall she has created around herself and heart. For now, you must forget the physical side of your relationship and concentrate on getting her to believe in you as well as trust you as her husband again.

Allow the bedroom arrangement remain the way it is for now. As long as you both live in the same house, there is hope of you both coming to perfect understanding on your needs and desires. No matter how bitter she is, she would eventually thaw sufficiently to make things work.

But you have to rid yourself of your current feelings of ending it all. You must develop the thickness of skin if this marriage is to work; forget your current anger at her for calling you a rapist. For now, she is not really in charge of her senses due to the violation she has suffered. You can be rest assured that her hurt is deeper than yours. She is a victim of being a woman. Deep down, she hates what men are doing to her on account of being a woman; she may also be very angry with herself for being unable to prevent being the object of attraction and sex. It is a very complicated circle of emotions she is going through inside of her. She doesn’t need a lover for now but a friend to help her come to terms that sex can be beautiful with the right kind of man. 

First, you must find a way of becoming her friend, to earn the trust you lost by forcing yourself on her. It is a sacrifice you must be willing to shoulder for the sake of the marriage. Take her out as a friend. Listen to her pains, stories, condemnation and helplessness. Allow her to talk about what she really feels. Get her to talk about her pre-rape dreams too. Take her back to her early years. Get her to talk about you, your marriage and what she hopes to achieve with this marriage. Let her talk about the future, the children and you. 

Let her also express her current views on men. This way, you will know where she needs help and how to replace the void and ugliness created by the rape with beautiful colours of nature.

As her husband you have to be able to make her laugh and trust in life again. Until she is able to trust life again, there is no way she can be ready to be a wife to you. 

You need to be patient, very understanding and extra caring to make her be a woman with hopes and dreams again. She is still very sore at the memory and being her first time, the experience must have been very painful. 

She needs you not only to understand but also to help heal her of the memory of that ugly incident. She also needs your prayer to heal from within. If you walk away you would have destroyed the little self-esteem she has as a woman. Through the grace of God, you will one day look back and thank God for having the patience to wait.

Good luck. 

Re: Our sex life died when my husband got born again

Wise counselling Auntie Agatha, God fearfully and wonderfully made you! 

Dear Lizzy, I won’t condemn you and believe me I am surprised an African woman is coming out in the open to discuss this, kudos to you for the boldness. You have every right to demand for sex from your husband as you rightly quoted in I Cor. 7. Please, as a matter of urgency seek counselling as soon as possible, don’t be shy about it please; Proverbs 24:6. say in the multitude of counsellors there is safety.’ Get the pastor’s attention or the wife as Aunty Agatha suggested and please make this a matter of priority. Your husband, for reasons best known to him, is seeing this in a wrong perspective and if not quickly curtailed this might even end his calling to the ministry as this is not what God had in mind when He ordained marriage. Are you a full-time housewife? If yes, you can also find something doing to keep your mind busy (off sex) for other things as Aunty Agatha suggested.
You said ‘my husband became born again, months later I had no choice but to follow suit ’ does not seem to me that you became born again from the heart but rather by choice and therein lies part of the problem. Being part of different committee groups in church does not mean you are born again from the inside. If you are strong in the spirit God would have directed you on what to do even if your husband is doing something to the contrary. Please seek wise counselling and don’t commit adultery. You should know better the consequence of this as a child of God. You need on your part to rededicate your life to God. As par your last statements please don’t do something bad to yourself as you will destroy yourself and your husband’s ministry. Please seek counselling and keep praying. May God touch your husband’s heart. 

Deacon Adeyemi.