Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Sexual Abuse And Recovery

When I found Brittany’s blog, The Nested Nomad, a few months back, I immediately felt like I’d found a kindred soul.  I love her honesty, her writing voice, and her heart to encourage others to live simple, beautiful, and adventurous lives.  She’s one of my favorite bloggers to follow nowadays and I’m honored to have her story of sexual abuse and what it looks like to recover from it on the blog today! Thanks for sharing your story on this Womanly Wednesday, Brittany!  

During my senior year of college, I started dating a guy whose life was full of red flags; red flags I was unwilling to acknowledge or that I was fooled into missing altogether. This man, whom I’ll call Mitchell (not his real name), professed to be Christian, led worship at my church, and was an all-around funny, charming, smooth-talking guy.

When he began pressuring me to have sex just a few months into dating, I hesitated and resisted, knowing this was not what God intended for our relationship. But it was difficult to say no to a man I thought I was growing to love, who had told me weeks earlier that he loved me and wanted to marry me someday, especially when his pressure subtly turned into coercion.

Many times I tried to put an end to the sexual component of our relationship, asking him if we could wait until we were married, and when I was strong enough, saying no in the moment. But for Mitchell, my no never meant no. It meant that it was time to twist my arm, convince me that sex was the only way for me to show my love for him, and then get what he wanted as quickly as he could.

I wish I could go back and tell my twenty-one-year-old self that this isn’t real love, because real love doesn’t force someone else into nonconsensual sex. Real intimacy doesn’t hurt, physically or emotionally. A real man doesn’t take advantage of you and then roll over, leaving you to sob silent tears until you fall asleep.

It took too many years, but I eventually broke it off with Mitchell. The Lord showed me so much tenderness and walked me through freedom, healing, and redemption in the years after that relationship; healing that He continued when I started dating my now-husband, Dan.

After all that heart work, what I didn’t expect was for this part of my past to cause deep, difficult intimacy issues in my marriage to Dan. I experienced so much freedom as a single person, but despite the knowledge that I was forgiven by both Christ and Dan, I said yes to sex with my husband only as often as necessary to make me feel like I was being a good wife, allowing me to keep my guilt at bay a few days at a time. I found myself feeling ashamed at my inability to enjoy my husband, berating myself for not being the kind of wife I thought he deserved. Never once has Dan disrespected my no or caused me to feel these things; in fact, he encourages us to stop when these feelings creep in. Even so, my past continues to haunt me and haunt our bedroom.

I say yes to sex with Dan as often as I feel able, because he shouldn’t be paying the price for a sin he didn’t commit, and I shouldn’t be paying the price for a sin that has been forgiven and set free. Our intimacy has ebbed and flowed over our two years of marriage, and to be honest, we’re in a season of struggle right now.

I believe that God wants to keep redeeming my past, and I believe that he wants to heal my marriage. I trust wholeheartedly that someday Dan and I will have a thriving, enjoyable, and playful sex life, free of the chains that continue to hold me in emotional and mental bondage. Enjoyable physical intimacy between a husband and a wife is something that God intends for marriages, and mine is no exception. This is the hope I cling to in the painful, raw moments.

I recently returned to therapy after a few years away, because I firmly believe that God can heal in many ways, and sometimes that involves trained, Christian, mental-health professionals. Over the last few months, my therapist has helped me to identify triggers I didn’t know I had. I’m learning to be fully present and aware of my thoughts anytime Dan and I are experiencing an intimate moment, even if it’s as small as holding hands. I’m learning to embrace the playfulness we used to experience in dating and starting to tell myself the truth about the man I married: he loves me, he will not leave me, and he reflects the forgiveness of Jesus toward me every day.

Little by little, I’m seeing my walls start to crumble. I don’t expect that there will come a specific turning point, when the lights flip on and suddenly I’m healed and ready to enjoy sex again for the rest of my life. For the first time, I’m seeing that this road to recovery is made not of a few grand actions, but a series of tiny steps toward healthy intimacy, toward believing the truth, and toward my husband.

I know that someday I’ll look back on these years from a remarkably different place and wonder where the change happened. The truth is that the change will have happened in small, sometimes imperceptible ways, all culminating in a finely woven tapestry: a mess of ragged threads along the back, but a masterpiece when held up for me to see.

In the meantime, this is what I believe: God is for me. God is for you. He desires for us to have healthy and thriving marriages, of which enjoyable sex lives are just one part. We just need to take one small step at a time.

Brittany blogs about living simply, gratefully, and adventurously at The Nested Nomad. She loves traveling with her mountain-man husband and writing about everything she sees. In her free time, you can find her wandering around outside or curled up on her couch reading, likely with a cup of coffee in her hand in either scenario. You can also find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.