9 Ways Sexual Abuse Shows Up in Relationships

Editor’s Note: The following story contains descriptions of sexual acts that may be triggering to some survivors and may not be appropriate for younger readers.

Key Takeaways:

1. Sexual abuse in relationships is often hidden and complex. It can take the form of coercion, painful or unwanted sex, strangulation, humiliation or withholding intimacy—all tactics of control that erode safety and self-worth.
2. Consent must be freely given. Any sexual activity that involves pressure, fear, manipulation or disregard for a partner’s health and boundaries is abuse, even if it doesn’t look “violent.”
3. Recovery requires safety, support, and boundaries. Survivors can benefit from safety planning, trauma-informed therapy, setting limits and body-based practices that help restore agency and healing.

Sexual interactions should be fun and motivated by mutual desire. For domestic abusers, however, sex is about domination more than pleasure. Tactics include coercing, causing pain, humiliating and cruelly rejecting.

Over time, abusive sex can damage victims’ sense of safety, mental health, self-esteem and well-being. The intimacy of a dating or marital relationship makes it hard to label the unwanted sexual experience as abuse. If law enforcement is involved, sexual abuse can be hard to prove because there aren’t always physical signs and a survivor may not feel comfortable disclosing the whole story due to the intimate details. The abuser also knows they often don’t need to use pressure in every instance to get sexual compliance. 

What Is Sexual Coercion?

In a previous piece, sexual coercion in a relationship is described as sex that is “not exactly violent, but not entirely voluntary, either.” Coercion can result in unwanted consensual sex. That is, a person consents or submits to sex that they don’t want.  Over time, the target learns that it is “easier” to give in and “get it over with” than to try to resist sex. The target may learn to dissociate or turn to drugs and alcohol to endure the sexual acts. Survivors have told me that unwanted sex in a relationship is “a form of torture.”

But sexual abuse in relationships extends beyond coercion.

9 Types of Sexual Abuse

Painful Sex

I have interviewed hundreds of domestic violence victim-survivors. Some say their abusive partner deliberately caused them pain during sex. In some couples, what started as consensual BDSM turned into abuse when safe words or boundaries were ignored.

Miriam was just 19 and a virgin when she married 35-year-old, Sayid. She described sex as being “painful every single time.” She didn’t know it could be different until she spoke up at her first midwife visit. The midwife explained that hugging and kissing before sex, clitoral stimulation and using lube would likely make sex more comfortable. The midwife also gave Miriam reading material on sexuality and female orgasms. When Miriam showed Sayid these materials, she realized that he was deliberately making sex painful. According to his thinking, if she hated sex, she would never be unfaithful.

Sometimes domestic abusers will use sex as a kind of punishment or a way to seek revenge. Veronica described her boyfriend deliberately hurting her during sex. 

“The last year and a half of the relationship, he would have sex with me so roughly that I would be in pain for days. It escalated as time passed…. He would be pressing me for sex, and I was still in pain from the last time. He’d smirk and press on anyway… When I asked him about it after we broke up, he said it was because we didn’t have sex often enough, so he wanted to “get his licks in.”

Randall’s partner, Sam, would insist on anal sex almost exclusively. Randall found this painful. “He’d say I owed him. He had done so much for me. I would agree, but it hurt. If I told him it hurt, he would laugh and tell me that ‘pain is pleasure.’”

Urinary Tract Infections

Overly frequent sex and certain sexual practices can contribute to urinary tract infections (UTIs), especially in women. A UTI can make penetrative vaginal sex excruciating for women. A round of antibiotics and a break from vaginal sex are recommended for UTI recovery. One survivor remembers her doctor telling her to “have sex less often” when she asked how to avoid having so many UTIs. Her abusive partner scoffed when she told him. “If you love me, you’ll sacrifice to make me happy,” he replied.

Pushing sex while knowing it can cause or delay the recovery from a UTI shows a blatant disregard for the partner’s well-being.

Sex-on-Demand

Many domestic abusers think they are entitled to sex and that their partners’ feelings about it are irrelevant. This has been termed “sex on demand.” Here is an example:

Carol had never lived with a man when she moved in with Steve. She had no way to know that his demands for sex twice daily were not typical. Over a decade, Steve asserted his right to have intercourse with Carol any time he wanted regardless of whether she was immediately postpartum, suffering from a UTI, sleeping or simply uninterested. He tied his affection to sex and would only hug, kiss, or put his arms around her in the context of intercourse.

Strangulation

Porn inspires many abusers to strangle (or “choke”) their partners during sex.  Some men now think it is their “right” or normal and acceptable to cut off their partners’ breathing. The Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention emphasizes that there is no safe way to strangle during sex, even with consent. Strangulation impedes blood or flow to the brain and may also block airways. Even short periods of reduced blood flow or oxygen can lead to lasting damage, stroke or delayed death. 

Laura said that her husband would wrap both hands around her neck and squeeze almost every time they had sex. “I never liked it. In the beginning I told him, ‘Would you NOT? It hurts.’ I would pull on his hands, trying to get them loose. He would squeeze tighter. I couldn’t get him to stop. I just accepted that this was the way things were. But it terrified me and made me dread sex, [an act] I used to enjoy.”

Multiple Partners, Swinging and Polyamory

It’s abusive to bring new sex partners into a relationship unless all involved fully consent. It’s not uncommon for domestic abusers to have long or short-term sexual partners “on the side.” Sometimes, domestic abusers will push their partners to agree to multiple sexual partners as a lifestyle. The key word here is “push.” If there is pushing involved, it is not a freely given choice. Here’s one example:

Clarence posted Jamila’s photograph on dating websites for swingers, threesomes and polyamory. She was the bait, and the women were ultimately the prize for him. When he later complained that the threesomes were not enough. Jamila agreed to “open” their relationship, allowing Clarence to have a girlfriend on the side. He refused to use protection with these other sexual partners. He made her feel guilty and prudish for wanting to be monogamous. Clarence refused to stop having unprotected sex with multiple women. Jamila finally separated from him.

Public Humiliation

Domestic abusers sometimes degrade their partners by complaining about them sexually in front of others. 

Cassie, who said she had sex with her husband every other night like clockwork, but not more, to avoid UTIs, described him distorting what was happening so she would look bad. 

“Especially if he was drinking, he would bring up the supposed lack of sex in our marriage in front of friends and family. He would make it seem like I was a bad wife who wouldn’t have sex with her husband. My mother-in-law even spoke to me privately about men’s ‘needs.’ I didn’t dare answer her back.”

Anna was shocked when, on Mother’s Day, her abusive husband announced to their children that he was buying her plastic surgery. He said it was a present “to fix her flat boobs and lumpy butt.” She had no interest in plastic surgery. She felt humiliated by these comments in front of the children.

Sexual Images

Domestic abusers sometimes demand sexual images of their partners or take such images with or without their partners’ consent. 

June described how it worked in her marriage: “He videotaped me without asking. Sometimes I’d look up and his phone would be out. He didn’t ask permission.”

Young-Hee knew that her husband was recording their sex, but she felt helpless to resist. Her husband would withhold attention from the children or refuse to pay bills unless she allowed him to take sexual videos. 

“When he was out of town, he would also push and push for me to send him nudes. He would wear me down and make me feel like I wasn’t being a good wife. And if I didn’t do it—he’d get pissy. To not have him come back from a trip all mad, I’d cave and send him stuff.”

Transactional Sex  

Abusers will sometimes treat sex as currency, as in, “I will mow the lawn if you….”. Or an abuser might oblige their partner to engage in an unwanted sexual act in exchange for a purchase. One survivor told me that her husband said he would only pay for the children’s braces if she’d consent to anal sex. 

Cruelling Rejecting

Some survivors recall their partners cruelly rejecting them sexually at times—for months or even years on end—as a way of communicating to them that they are unworthy, ugly, etc.

Michele Weston told DomesticShelters.org that her abusive partner would often withhold sex as a tactic of power and control. 

“Our relationship was largely based on my sexual attraction to him, and sex was used as weapon in order to control me,” she says. Weston knows it’s hard for some survivors to understand. After all, why would you want to be intimate with your abuser? But she says intimacy brought her hope—maybe things were going to get better now—and it was also a way to fix things when they went awry. “I wanted to do everything I could to make him happy when things were rocky and unpredictable,” she says.

What You Can Do

If you believe your current or former partner is sexually abusive, taking the following steps may help:

Get to safety. If you are still in a relationship that you think may be abusive sexually, contact your local domestic abuse agency to develop a safety plan.

Consider trauma-focused psychotherapy. Psychotherapy with someone who understands intimate partner sexual violence may help you see the patterns of abuse. Not every psychotherapist is capable of doing this work with you. EMDR, DBT, CPT, and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can provide hope and paths to recovery. Interview the therapist during your first session. Get a sense of whether this person knows about domestic violence, is comfortable discussing sex, and feels like a good fit to you. If not, find someone else.

Set boundaries. If you don’t feel okay about the kind or frequency of sex that you have in your relationship, try setting some boundaries. If it’s safe, assert yourself about your limits and preferences. If you feel like it’s not safe to assert yourself or if your partner ignores or punishes these attempts, it might be time to question your relationship.

Consider abstinence. Many survivors choose to forgo sex, at least for a time, after escaping abuse so they can begin to recover from the effects of the sexually traumatic abuse. If you’re still in a relationship with the abuser, seeing their reaction to your request for a break in sex may tell you all you need to know about how much that partner respects (or doesn’t respect) your boundaries. 

Try light exercise and mindfulness activities. Body movement helps intimate partner sexual violence  survivors reconnect with their bodies in ways that feel good. This could be walking, dancing, stretching, jogging, or swimming. Sometimes people with a trauma history have to remind themselves that they live in a body. Yoga and meditation, help create calm and reduce anxiety.