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_refugee_  ·  2514 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I Let My Husband Rape Me, and Here’s Why…

Every person deals with trauma in complex and intricate ways, and there is no true "right" or "wrong" when a person is in that much pain and faced with fields of choices which seem to vary only in intolerability, especially when the primary recipient of pain dealt as a consequence of any option is that person him- or herself.

I am confident for every one, that the way in which they chose to respond to their trauma was the way that seemed best - as in, that the sum of its achievements was highest and the allotment of its achievements most desirable, when compared to its as-reasonable and as-possible peers of potential actions - to them at that time. No one deserves to feel their trauma is invalidated by the way which they chose to cope with it.

Therapy is a good thing.

__

Honestly, I am sad to say, this story reads to me like one vivid, specific portrait of a story so common it is the stereotype, which, at the end, I think the author is trying to get away from (but she doesn't seem to know/establish why)

    I can be the stereotypical survivor, tell you how I got away, how I’m making it on my own now, paid my house off, got my GED and am going to a real school, winning scholarships and awards, maintaining a 4.0 GPA, my kids are getting awards at their school—doing all the survivor things. I can put on my makeup and smile for the camera pretending everything is fine now, but the truth is it’s not because we live in a society that systemically values the traditional family unit over the safety and well-being of victims.

    Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/removingthefigleaf/2016/08/i-let-my-husband-rape-me/#cs6wXlFHbp8cF1se.99

I feel this story feels probably much more revelatory to the author, and perhaps its intended audience, than it does to me(and I suspect, than it will to the audience here). Or am I jaded?

I am sympathetic, and what she lived through and is living through is sad and awful, and she's right that this is a societal problem on many levels. I do not deny her trauma, nor wish to, nor dismiss it. However, there is nothing particularly new to me in this article. I confess, I spent a lot of time this past year reading about abusive relationships.

Presented to a religious, sheltered group of readers, however - that reception is going to be a little different, I think. I bet on the site this was originally posted, it will serve its purpose.