Trigger Warning: This anecdote contains explicit content, including mention of non-consensual sex. If this topic is triggering to you, please skip this one.

Ever since I had my child, I had barely been intimate with Thomas. The few times that we were, I was reluctant but consented only out of obligation because the church taught that we weren’t supposed to refuse our husbands sex.

As I became more and more unhappy in my last two years at the church, I would often come home before Thomas and pretend to be sleeping when he got back so he wouldn’t try anything.

He still made moves, though. I would mumble “I’m sleeping, I don’t want to” and try to avoid him, but he was persistent and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

There were times when I actually was asleep, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night to him raping me. I’d tell him to stop and push him away but he would silently continue until he was done. He wouldn’t even talk to me or try to kiss me. I felt like he was just using me as a piece of flesh to get himself off.

I blamed myself. “It’s because I’ve been rejecting him for years,” I thought to myself. “Men have needs and I’m not meeting his, so I deserve this.”

As time went on and this behavior continued, I became more and more disgusted by him. I didn’t even want to be in the same room as him. I started taking a long time before and after my showers in the bathroom just to have time away from him. He noticed I was taking an unusually long time and got angry at me.

I also started up a friendship with a woman I had met online. We talked every day. I just liked having someone to talk to after so many years of not being close to anyone. But seeing me text someone angered Thomas as well.

With the support of my new friend, the idea of leaving grew more and more urgent in my mind. But I was terrified of the consequences of doing so.