'Emotional rape'

[Eckhart]

I was emotionally abused a few years ago, and ended up quite a wreck. It took me a long time to get my head around what had happened, and the way I'd been treated, and, after a while, I allowed myself to call it 'emotional rape', as I felt fully emotionally violated.

When I told my recent partner what had happened, she told me she didn't want me to call it 'rape', as she had been physically raped in the past, and the word was not appropriate to describe any other circumstance.

I repeated to her that I'd said 'emotional rape', and that I was not under the impression that the two were the same, but she insisted that I was not to use that word in front of her. She told me it was correctly referred to as 'emotional abuse'.

Am I not supposed to decide for myself how to define what happened to me? Or is she reasonable in claiming the word to describe purely physical rape?

Op I am sorry that you experienced this.

Language can be tricky, and I did google the term and saw it used (not very often, but it’s there) in the terms you described, and to be honest it did annoy me. It was clearly used to emphasis the point, however it was clumsy and insensitive. There are other words which could be used, this was clearly used to grab attention.

You simply repeated it - to emphasise the extremis of your experience, without really thinking through how a rape victim might react.

We all make mistakes, and hopefully your partner will understand the point you were trying to make. But give her time - I can see how she might feel you were misusing such an emotive term to bring emphasis to your experience.

You don’t need to - I am sure it was horrendous.

@TacoLover I get it.

even though emotional abuse is a terrible thing I feel like it belittles actual physical rape, I can't articulate why though.

Emotional abuse is terrible. But it is not rape. Rape is the definition of physical sexual assault. You cannot he raped without a physical penis being forced into you.

Sorry you were abused. But I find the use of borrowing the word rape to describe emotional abuse highly offensive and factually inaccurate. I've never read or heard this anywhere.

@JacquesHammer well obviously you are far superior to us mere mortals who might have a completely visceral reaction to something and speak without thinking.

We weren't there, we didn't know what the OP's partner was thinking when she heard the term so we don't know if she was being a semantic arsehole or if she was shocked/upset/whatever at the term. I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle.

@Dollymixture22 I think in the immediate aftermath of my abuse, I did nothing but read online about emotional abuse. I must have read everything there is, nearly. I thought it was a more accepted term, I'd seen it quite a lot. I hadn't really used it in real life before.

I feel as though calling it "emotional rape" is an attempt to justify the severity of the abuse you experienced but it's insensitive to rape victims to call it that.

@Bouffalant I get it.

I didn't invent the phrase though. I did a lot of reading about emotional abuse and saw it in a few different places. A pp mentioned that simply googling the phrase brings up some instances.

I have never heard of "emotional rape" and it's massively insensitive. I said before I have been raped and how,personally that term makes me feel but it really is a disgusting term to compare it to emotional abuse

@MmmBlowholes Yes I think it is to do with justifying the severity. I didn't mean it to be insensitive though.

I suppose my real question is, does 'emotional rape' exist, or am I phrasing it wrongly

Neither of you is wrong, neither of you is right because neither of you own the word 'rape'.

Be kind to each other.

To all those commenting without doing so READ THE FUCKING THREAD
Op has clearly said that she realises that her comment was insensitive and has said that she won't be using that expression again.
@Eckhart, I'm sorry that this has happened to you, maybe it wasn't a good time to open up to your partner. I understand that you weren't trying to minimise her experience and as you'd seen the phrase used then you may not have realised how upsetting she would find it.
I hope you are both able to talk together and try to get past this event.

Not quite, Change.

I think OP well and truly gets it now and has taken all the comments on board.

@SparklyMagpie Thank you for pointing out how disgusting my language is. If you check out the rest of the thread, you'll see that I have accepted my insensitivity.

I'm sorry for your experience.

@Eckhart, I'm sorry for what happened to you.

I personally think it's bizarre the idea that the dictionary gets to decide what you call something that happened to you. Language evolves - it's not a static thing.
I hope your partner and you can discuss this further. It seems reasonable that she might ask you not to use the phrase to/with her, and you can decide whether that works for you. How you conceptualise to yourself (and other people) and express what you went through is your business though. IMHO. I hope you and your DP can work something out, as I imagine neither of you wants to upset the other. Best of luck.

Thanks @Aberhonddu, for the entirety of your comment. It's good to have a person or two around who understands, and also HAS READ THE THREAD!

@Skunklestiltskin Thank you. I agree that language evolves. I think when offending those you love, though, it might be an idea to let it evolve elsewhere. I DO think it's up to us all to define ourselves in our own terms. I think that's why I was posting in the first place; to get validated on that. I've largely been trounced though, for minimising the experience of rape victims the world over. It was never my intention.

I did say straight away in the discussion that I wouldn't say the phrase 'emotional rape' to her again.

I would have pulled you up on your use of language in your partners position. You were caught up in telling her about your experiences and forgot about hers, which given how significant being raped is, is pretty monumentally insensitive. I think it's unwise to take anything you've read on a random blog into your real life, a lot of the content on the internet about domestic violence/abuse/rape is written by laypeople who may or may not have experienced it themselves - and is put out into the world without any checks. As a result you get unthinking people trivialising rape because they think the word will emphasise their point which has absolutely nothing to do with forced sex. I have done a lot of reading on the internet to understand both the emotional abuse and rapes I have been through, and a hell of a lot of it is trash written by dullards.

OP, while people often comment without reading the full thread, I think in this case the language in the thread title is so emotive people jump to respond.

I think that’s what your partner did, it’s a visceral reaction for some. It further illustrates why this was the wrong term to use.

I hope you are doing ok,

Go easy on yourself, on your partner and people on the thread.

@RushianDisney So, in the moment when I was upset and trying to talk about a trauma I'd been through, I needed to pay more attention to the trauma she'd been through, even though we weren't discussing that?

I don't think my dullard-filter was working very well straight after the abuse, and there IS a lot of trash out there. I may have been unwise in my choice of reading material. I read absolutely everything i could find.

Are you suggesting that I'm an unthinking person trivialising rape, or is that directed at the random bloggers? I have not trivialised rape.

I noticed you’ve said a few times I wouldn't say the phrase 'emotional rape' to her again. Does that mean you aren’t going to use the word in front of her, but will use it when discussing your difficult past with others?

@Dollymixture22 Yes, I think you're right.

@S1naidSucks No. Clearly not the right phrase.

@S1naidSucks Why?

Thanks for clarifying, OP. I was just wondering if you meant you were only going to stop using it in front of your friend. I’m glad you seem to have taken on board what posters have said and I hope you find happiness and are able to come to terms with the past.

If OP's partner finds the use of the term 'emotional rape' triggering, then I don't think she should have to just suck up that distress to ease things for OP. She may also have felt that her ability to be supportive was impeded by the use of the term, because she was distracted by her own feelings of distress.

People saying 'there's a time and a place' should recognise that this is also true of OP, who could have accepted that, in the moment, her partner was caused pain by OP's actions, and that it wasn't the time or place to get annoyed about having her language corrected.

It sounds like a difficult conversation - you've both experienced trauma, and talking about that can be very difficult and distressing. You'll both have to learn how to navigate each other's pain in a way that is loving and mutually supportive. In this instance, I think that required OP to avoid triggering language when seeking support from her partner, and I don't think that her partner is being unsupportive or unreasonable to protect her own boundaries while still being that source of support.