Episode 63: Consent and Sexual Coercion

The next two episodes we are tenderly discussing topics around sexual abuse in marriage. So, we invite you to assess whether you are in a grounded enough state to listen to this conversation. If you are not, please come back another time and listen. If you choose to stay, please take some grounding breaths and hold yourself in compassion and love, knowing Jesus is sitting with you right now.

It’s hard to consider that sexual abuse can happen in marriage, and yet it does. It is one of the most confusing and distressing things a wife can process. It is a double betrayal.Sexual abuse is not uncommon in marriages where the spouse with problematic sexual behavior has not embraced the reality of their damaging behaviors. Sexual abuse can fall on a spectrum from objectification and light coercion on one end to marital rape on the other end.

Today, we are discussing consent and sexual coercion.

According to The Law Insider website, sexual coercion is defined as the use of unreasonable pressure in an effort to compel another individual to initiate or continue sexual activity against the individual’s will. Sexual coercion wrongfully impairs the other individual’s freedom of will (like using threats, making them pay afterwards with pouting behavior or abandonment for a time, drugs and alcohol to inhibit them from refusing) or impairs their ability to choose whether to engage in sexual activity (an example of this is having sex with someone who is asleep or is so sick or unhealthy and cannot stop what is happening, this to me, borderlines on rape, but that’s for our next episode).