This post contains honest, personal accounts of sexual abuse within marriage, including forced sex and sexual coercion. If you are a survivor, please read at your own pace and in a safe space. You are not alone.
I have written stories about how I was abused. But there is one part of my story I have not yet spoken about publicly because it is the part that carries the most shame. Not shame that belongs to me. But shame was placed on me. Shame that was reinforced by silence, by culture, by a legal system that did not even have a name for what was being done to me. Today I am going to talk about it.
My Story about Marital Rape
Getting married is probably the easiest way for men to get free sex. Mine was no different.
I moved in when I discovered I was pregnant with my second child, carrying hope, carrying expectations, carrying the belief that love would be part of what we were building. I was wrong.
When the physical abuse began, he had a pattern. He would beat me, then force himself on me. When I confronted him during one of our calmer moments, he laughed. He said a real man beats his wife and then takes her to the bedroom, so she does not sleep with the neighbour and shame him. He said it like it was wisdom. It made him a hero.
After my caesarean section, I was home in three days. Before two weeks had passed, he was finding ways to use my body to satisfy himself. My wound was still healing. I was still in pain, but I said nothing. I felt violated, but I could not even grant my own feelings the dignity of being valid.
I told myself: if I give him this, he will not go elsewhere. He went elsewhere anyway. What happened to my body during those years was not love. It was not a marriage. It had a name I did not yet know; now I do.
What is marital rape?
Marital rape, also referred to as sexual abuse in marriage, intimate partner sexual violence, or coercive sex in marriage, is any unwanted sexual act carried out by a spouse or intimate partner without the other’s consent.
It includes:
- Forced sex in marriage: physically compelling a partner to have sex against their will
- Coercive sex in marriage: using threats, emotional manipulation, guilt, or fear to obtain sex
- Sexual acts when a partner is incapacitated: when a partner is asleep, ill, postpartum, intoxicated, or otherwise unable to give clear consent
- Continued sexual pressure after a clear “no” wearing a partner down through persistence, anger or punishment until they give in
Marital rape is rape. The ring on your finger does not transfer permanent ownership of your body to another person. Consent in marriage is not a one-time agreement made at the altar. It must be given freely, every single time, for every single sexual encounter, for the entirety of a marriage. This is not a radical idea. It is a basic human right.
The lie we were taught about marriage and sex
Most of us were never taught that we could say no to our husbands in bed. In many African cultures and in many religious communities across the world, the narrative around sex in marriage goes something like this: sex is a husband’s right and a wife’s duty. When she said “I do,” she gave consent permanently, irrevocably, for as long as the marriage lasted. To withhold sex from a husband is to fail as a wife, to invite infidelity, to violate a sacred covenant.
I heard versions of this my entire life. From family. From the church, older women who meant well and were only passing on what had been passed to them.
And so, when it happened to me when he took what I had not offered, when he used my body as if it belonged to him, I did not call it rape. I called it marriage, difficult, but my husband’s need. I called it my fault for not being more available, more willing, more loving.
It took me a long time to understand that what was happening to me was violence. Not because it was hidden, but because I had been given a language that made it invisible.
The signs of marital rape: what to look for
Marital rape and marital sexual abuse do not always look the way we imagine violence to look. Here are the signs for yourself, and for anyone you love:
Signs of marital rape and sexual coercion in marriage
Your partner demands sex regardless of how you feel physically or emotionally
- You feel afraid to say no because of what might happen if you do
- You have sex out of fear of anger, punishment, withdrawal, or violence rather than desire
- Your partner continues after you have said no, cried, frozen, or tried to move away
- Sex happens while you are asleep, ill, postpartum, or otherwise unable to consent
- Your partner uses guilt, manipulation, or threats to pressure you into sex (“If you loved me, you’re my wife, this is your job”)
- You feel like your body belongs to your partner more than it belongs to you
- After sex, you feel violated, humiliated, or ashamed, even though you cannot quite explain why
- You have learned to go still and wait for it to be over
If any of these feel familiar, that is not a coincidence. That is recognition. And recognition is where healing begins.
The numbers behind the silence
This is not a rare experience. The silence around it is what makes it feel rare.
The World Health Organization reported that 34% of women globally who have ever been in a union have experienced sexual violence by an intimate partner, including marital rape.
UNICEF found that 20% of married women in sub-Saharan Africa have experienced marital rape.
In Kenya specifically, the picture is devastating. The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey found that 41% of Kenyan women who have been married are likely to have experienced violence since the age of 15, compared to 20% who have never been married. Marriage, the institution we are told will protect and honour us, is statistically one of the most dangerous places a Kenyan woman can be.
According to the Africa Data Hub, 75% of femicide cases in Kenya between 2016 and 2023 occurred at home, at the hands of spouses, intimate partners, and close relatives.
And yet the silence remains because the shame lands on the woman. Because the culture protects the institution. Because the law in Kenya protects the husband.
The legal reality in Kenya: a failure that must be named
This section is difficult to write. Not because the truth is complicated but because the truth is enraging.
Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act of 2006 does not recognize marital rape. In fact, it explicitly exempts it under Section 43(5) of the Act, which states that the provisions on rape shall not apply in respect of persons who are lawfully married to each other.
Read that again slowly.
In Kenya, a husband cannot legally be prosecuted for raping his wife. The law, the very law designed to protect women from sexual violence, carves out an exemption for the man who sleeps beside her every night.
As the International Commission of Jurists Kenya has noted: “where the law seeks to ‘permit’ the perpetration of such an offence, then women in marriages who suffer from such violence seem to have no recourse.
The only legal protection available to Kenyan women in such cases is the general law on assault, which is inadequate because it requires witnesses or evidence of physical struggle. Survivors often do not struggle in order to avoid further violence or to protect their children.
Legal scholars have noted that Kenya’s law treats marital consent through rigid binaries that ultimately mask a woman’s capacity to withdraw consent as though once given, consent in marriage can never be taken back.
This is not just a legal failure. It is a moral one. And it is one we must name publicly and loudly until it changes.
As of 2023, 58 countries have fully criminalized marital rape. Kenya is not yet among them. That must change.
Why do women stay silent?
I stayed silent for years. And I understand exactly why. I did not have a name for it
When what is happening to you has no name, it is almost impossible to report it, resist it, or even fully acknowledge it to yourself. The language we were given, “wifely duty,” “a husband’s right,” “submitting to your husband,” actively prevented us from calling what was happening by its real name. A common misconception is that rape is committed only by strangers. This obscures the reality of non-consensual sex in marriage.
- We are afraid, and with good reason
Fear of retaliation, stigma, and cultural taboos further silences survivors. I knew what would happen if I told anyone. I knew the disbelief I would face. I knew what my community would say. I knew that the very people I might turn to would likely tell me to pray harder, submit more, or find a way to make my husband happy.
That fear is rational. It is not a weakness. It is a survival calculation made by a woman with very few options.
- We depend on them financially
Many victims depend on their spouses for financial security. When your income, your home, your children’s security, and your social standing are all tied to the person who is harming you, leaving or even speaking is not simple. It requires a level of material independence that many women, especially in Kenya, do not yet have.
- The law does not protect us
When you know that the legal system will not recognize what happened to you as a crime, when the law itself tells you that your husband cannot rape you, why would you report it? Where would you even go?
- The church tells us to stay
I want to be honest about this, too. Some of the most powerful voices that keep women silent were religious ones. Not because faith is wrong. When you are a woman of deep faith, but the teaching around submission in marriage has been weaponized in ways that God never intended. No scripture was written to tell a woman to offer her wounded postpartum body to a man who has no regard for her pain. No God who calls Himself love designed marriage to be a place where a woman’s “no” has no meaning.
- We feel shame that does not belong to us
Women experience post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, higher levels of anger, fear, and guilt, and begin to hate their bodies, causing their self-esteem to drop. We absorb the shame of what was done to us as though we invited it, allowed it, or deserved it. We do not speak because we do not want to be seen as the woman who was happened to.
What marital rape does to a woman’s body and mind
The harm of marital rape is no less severe because a husband committed it. Research shows it may be more so.
Studies have found that marital rape victims suffer more severe psychological consequences, and for a longer period, than those who were raped or assaulted by a stranger. This is because marital rape does not end with a single incident. It happens repeatedly, inside a home that is supposed to be safe, committed by a person who was supposed to love you. The betrayal compounds the trauma.
Short-term psychological effects include PTSD, anxiety, shock, intense fear, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Long-term psychological effects include disordered sleeping, disordered eating, depression, intimacy problems, negative self-image, and sexual dysfunction.
Research consistently shows that women who experience both physical battering and sexual violence display the highest levels of trauma symptoms, higher than women who experienced physical assault alone. When you lived with both, as I did, the layers of harm are profound.
The body remembers what the mind tries to forget. Years after leaving, I would flinch at certain touches. I would feel my body go cold at certain moments. I would lie awake some nights unable to separate the past from the present.
This is what marital rape does. It does not end when the marriage ends. It lives in your nervous system, in your relationships, in your ability to trust your own body, for years after you leave.
And yet, this is the most important thing I can tell you: it is healable. The damage is real, but it is not permanent. The woman you were before he touched you without your permission is still inside you. She has not gone anywhere. She is waiting.
What consent in marriage actually means
Let me say this plainly, because too many of us were never told:
Consent in marriage is;
- Freely given, not extracted through pressure, fear, or exhaustion
- Reversible, you can say yes today and no tomorrow, and both are equally valid
- Specific, saying yes to one thing does not mean saying yes to everything
- Ongoing, it must be present every single time, without exception
- Impossible to give when you are asleep, ill, postpartum, intoxicated, or afraid
Consent in marriage is not:
- A permanent agreement made on a wedding day
- Something that can be assumed because it happened before
- Silence, stillness, or compliance born out of fear
- Submission to avoid a worse outcome
You have the right to say no to your husband. You have always had that right. The fact that no one told you does not mean the right was not there.
To the woman reading this in the middle of her own silence
I see you.
I know what it is like to lie there and leave your body. To learn to disappear to a quiet place in your mind while something is being taken from you. To wake up the next morning and make breakfast and get the children ready for school and tell yourself it was nothing, it was fine, this is just marriage.
I know the particular loneliness of a harm that has no witness and no name and no law to protect you.
I want to tell you that what is happening to you has a name now. You have read it in this post. And having a name for it is the beginning of being able to see it clearly and eventually, to leave it behind.
You do not have to report it today. You do not have to confront him. You do not have to do anything before you are ready.
But please talk to someone. A trusted friend. A counsellor. A woman who has walked this road. You do not have to carry this in silence any longer. The silence is the thing that has been protecting him. It has never protected you.
Resources for survivors in Kenya
If you are experiencing sexual violence in your marriage, please reach out to one of these organizations. They are confidential, non-judgmental, and there to help:
- Gender Violence Recovery Centre (GVRC), Nairobi Women’s Hospital: +254 719 638 006. Open 24 hours.
- FIDA Kenya (Federation of Women Lawyers): +254 20 3874996 / info@fidakenya.org free legal assistance for women
- Wangu Kanja Foundation. Support for sexual violence survivors: wangukanja.org
- Childline Kenya. 116 (free, 24 hours) also supports women and children in crisis
- Kenya Red Cross. Gender-Based Violence support: +254 703 037 000
You are not alone. Some people will believe you, who will not blame you, and who will help you find a way forward.
A final word
I did not write this post to perform bravery.
I wrote it because when I was inside my marriage, no one named what was happening to me—no blog post. No sermon. No older woman who pulled me aside and said: What he is doing to your body without your consent is rape. You do not have to accept it. You do not have to stay.
If this post becomes that voice for even one woman, if someone reads these words and finally has a name for something she has been carrying wordlessly for years, then everything it cost me to write it was worth it.
Your body belongs to you. It always did. It always will.
Even in a marriage. Even after a vow. Even after children. Even after years of being told otherwise.
You are not his. You are yours.
Love Rewritten is a memoir about surviving an abusive marriage, the emotional, physical, and sexual violence that I endured, and the long, sacred journey of reclaiming my life and my body. The book launches soon. If this post moved you, please share it. And please sign up below to be the first to know when it is available.