Maria had started dating her now-husband, Vince, in high school. She told me that she had had a big crush on Vince, and was star-struck when he asked her out. He was an athlete and a good student, someone of whom her first-generation immigrant family would approve. Maria was shy, and her family believed in keeping a watchful eye over their children, with traditional values and delayed entrance to the dating world. Vince respected their rules, came over for family dinners, and became friends with Maria’s younger brothers.
When Vince asked Maria to his prom, her parents gave their approval. The evening was a lovely one with a modest but beautiful dress, a fancy dinner out, and an upscale prom venue. Once the prom was over, Vince suggested they go to a party at a friend’s house. At the party, Vince began to drink. This was a side of Vince that Maria had never seen before, and it frightened her. He began to make lewd jokes to his friends about her, and he told her that he expected the evening to end with them sexually consummating their relationship. Maria was shocked and scared. She did not have any close friends at the party and did not have a way home. She felt she couldn’t call her parents. They would be furious, and she would be so embarrassed to have them be aware of the predicament she was in. She loved Vince. She did not recognize this person he had become under the influence of alcohol. She tried to reason with him, but that only seemed to make him more angry and determined as the night wore on. Maria felt more afraid than she ever had before. She wasn’t sure if Vince might become physically coercive and violent with her if she continued to protest. In the end, she negotiated for Vince to use protection, terrified that she might become pregnant. During the assault, she floated away in her mind and went somewhere else for a while to get through it. She did not remember much about how she got home that night, but assumed that Vince had dropped her off. She did not have contact with him again until she saw him at school on Monday. Both of them pretended like nothing had happened.
Two years later, Maria and Vince married and went on to have three children. Maria viewed their sexual relationship as an aspect of married life that was her duty to endure as a wife. At times, she would freeze if her husband approached her a certain way, and other times she would mentally drift off to a safer space that felt separate from her body. She accepted that this is the way that things would be for her. Maybe it was this way for most or all women? Maria wasn’t sure. It was not something she could discuss with her mother or her sisters.
When Maria and Vince‘s youngest child was 12, it came to light that Vince had been having an affair with a family friend for the past 6 years. When Maria found out about this, a dam broke inside her emotionally. Too ashamed to speak to her mother, her sisters, or her friends, Maria called me and made a first-time appointment.
As Maria spoke of her shock and despair about Vince’s infidelity, the story of prom night came to the surface. Maria had never told anyone about what had happened that night. She was deeply ashamed, but also angry. In this conversation, I saw that Maria did not have a vocabulary of words to describe what had happened to her. She struggled to put a name to the sexual coercion she had experienced from Vince when they were both in high school. Was it a mishap with alcohol and an over-eager boyfriend, or was it something else? Was it her fault for being at a party where people were drinking? She had gone there without her parents’ knowledge or permission. Could she have stopped it from happening if she would have physically fought back? Maria wasn’t sure. She felt confused, broken, and deeply betrayed by the new revelation of Vince’s infidelity. She had put up with so much for so long, and now he had done this to her? She was disgusted with him and disgusted with herself. She was sure that somewhere along the way she had made a serious mistake and God was punishing her.
In that first session with Maria, it became clear to me that our work would need to proceed thoughtfully, and with a pace that would not overwhelm her with pressure or a sense of urgency to make decisions about her marriage. Maria had a lot of things she needed to sort out, and it would take time and gentle discussion to get there. I also knew that we needed to move respectfully within the experiences of her culture, her family, and religious traditions, which were all different than mine. I decided that we would start by developing a vocabulary that Maria could use to understand her emotions and her psychological experiences. Some of this would be a vocabulary about feelings, and some of it would be a vocabulary about sexual consent and sexual coercion.
I knew that this first visit was crucial in helping Maria feel some safety in my office. She had never talked to a professional before, and this was outside anything anyone in her family had ever done. When Maria left that first session, I was not sure I would ever see her again, so I made a point to end with some input designed to bolster her sense of strength and decrease her feelings of shame, embarrassment, and guilt. Thankfully, Maria did come back and has embraced the therapy process. I do not know what decisions she will make about her relationship with Vince, but it is an honor and privilege to see her grow as a person as she grapples with past sexual trauma and defines a new kind of life for herself.
The following story is a composite inspired by my work. Details have been altered to protect privacy, while the process remains true to the therapeutic experience.