From The SpeakEasy archives · Originally published July 31, 2026
I posted a video about sex in marriage that started with this:
A lot of married women are having sex they don’t want to have and calling it being a good wife.
As you can imagine, the men were calm and thoughtful about it... I’m kidding. Some were angry. Some said a wife who keeps saying no should expect her husband to cheat. Others wanted to make sure I understood that men have needs, as if I’d somehow missed that small detail about marriage 🙄
But those weren’t the comments that stayed with me. The ones I couldn’t stop thinking about came from women.
The comments I can’t shake...
So many women said they’d never thought about sex in marriage this way. They’d spent years believing it was just their duty. If their husband wanted sex and they were physically able to do it, being a good wife meant going along with it. Whether they wanted to be there seemed like a much smaller concern.
One woman said that there were times when she’d cry from sadness while having sex with her husband. Other women shared stories of being hurt, exhausted, upset, or completely checked out while their husbands continued. One woman said her grandmother told her that women would find something on the ceiling to count or stare at while they waited for their husbands to finish. 😔
That image has stayed with me.
Women were teaching each other how to leave their bodies before they were teaching each other that they could say no. They learned how to stare at the ceiling, think about something else, lie still, and wait. Then they got up the next morning and went on being wives.
Nobody called it harm because nobody had to hold them down. They said yes, at least with their mouths. Their minds might’ve been somewhere else. Their bodies might’ve been tense. They might’ve been waiting for it to end. But they’d agreed, and for a lot of women, that was enough to make whatever happened next seem normal.
They didn’t think of themselves as women having unwanted sex. They thought they were doing what wives do.
The missing space inside “yes”...
I think a lot of us were given two pictures of sex. In one, a woman wants it and says yes. In the other, she says no and somebody physically forces her. We weren’t given much language for the huge space between those two things.
Sometimes you want sex. Sometimes it hasn’t crossed your mind, but your partner reaches for you and you decide you’re open to being close. You might enjoy yourself once things get started and feel glad you said yes. That’s still a real choice.
There might also be times when you’re not especially interested, but you freely choose to say yes because you love your partner and want to share that closeness with him. You aren’t afraid to say no, and you know you can stop if you change your mind. Nobody has to enter the bedroom like a woman in a perfume commercial every single time. Desire doesn’t always kick the door down. Sometimes it shows up after things get started.
What matters is whether you felt free to be honest. Could you have said no without being punished for it? Could you change your mind? Were you choosing to share something, or were you trying to avoid what refusing might cost you?
Then there’s the yes you give when you don’t want sex and don’t feel open to it. You already know you’ll have to leave yourself to get through it. Still, saying yes feels easier than dealing with what you think will happen if you say no.
That isn’t desire. It isn’t even being open. It’s compliance.
From the outside, all of those yeses might look the same. You said yes. You took part. You might’ve even started it yourself. But what was happening inside you could’ve been completely different.
What was your yes protecting you from?
Maybe your yes protected you from an argument. You didn’t want to spend the rest of the night being asked what was wrong with you or why you didn’t love him anymore. Maybe you knew he’d become cold, short, or distant, and you didn’t have the energy to spend the next day managing his mood.
You might’ve worried he’d cheat, leave, watch p0rn, or start looking at you differently. Maybe he was a complete as*hole and he’d told you that men have needs and another woman would be happy to do what you wouldn’t. Or maybe he never said those exact words at all, but you’d heard them enough from church, family, friends, and the world around you that the warning was already sitting in your mind.
Sometimes a woman starts the sex herself because she knows it’s been a few days and she can feel that invisible clock ticking. If she starts it, she can at least control when it happens. She can pick a night when she isn’t as tired, get it over with, and reset the clock before the asking starts again.
But choosing when something happens isn’t always the same as wanting it to happen.
Sometimes that’s just keeping the peace with your body.
That’s what I want women to look at. When you said yes, were you moving toward closeness, or were you trying to avoid a problem? Were you choosing something you wanted to share, or were you choosing the outcome that felt least hard to live with?
Sometimes the pressure came from the man in the bed. Sometimes it came from years of teaching that was already living inside the woman. For many women, it was both. Those experiences can lead to the same yes, but they’re not exactly the same.
When pressure has a name...
Your husband asking you for sex isn’t, by itself, coercion. Neither is flirting with you, reaching for you, or asking if you might be open to it. He’s also allowed to feel disappointed when you say no. Marriage doesn’t require either one of you to stop having feelings.
But his feelings can’t turn into something you have to fix with your body.
If you say no and he keeps asking, begging, pouting, getting angry, making threats, or acting miserable until you give in, he isn’t just expressing disappointment. He’s using that disappointment to change your answer. He’s teaching you that no comes with a price and yes is the fastest way to get things back to normal.
Your no isn’t the first offer in a negotiation. You shouldn’t need a PowerPoint, three supporting sources, and a doctor’s note before your answer counts.
The CDC defines sexual coercion as unwanted sex that happens after somebody is pressured without physical force. That can include being worn down by repeated asking, being shown anger or unhappiness, being lied to, being threatened with the end of a relationship, or having somebody use their power over you. The same report found that nearly one in four women in the United States has faced sexual coercion in her lifetime.
I’m not gonna lie... That number is hard as hell to take in, but I also wonder how many women would never think to include themselves in it. If nobody hit you, held you down, or threatened to hurt you, you might’ve told yourself that you agreed. You might not have seen the hours of asking, the silent treatment, the guilt, or the fear of cheating as pressure. You might’ve thought that was simply part of being married.
We can’t keep pretending your no was freely respected just because he didn’t use physical force. If saying no means you have to pay for it with an argument, an attitude, a threat, or three days of being treated like you’ve done something wrong, then you weren’t free to say no without consequences.
You’re still a full human being in the bedroom. You aren’t a marital benefit. You aren’t a sex toy who came with the vows. His disappointment can be real without becoming a bill you have to pay with access to your body.
When you learned to pressure yourself...
Maybe your husband had no idea what was happening inside you. He asked. You agreed. You took part. You might’ve even acted like you enjoyed yourself because you didn’t want him to know you were somewhere else in your mind.
If he didn’t pressure, punish, threaten, or wear you down, we shouldn’t automatically say that he coerced you. That wouldn’t be fair or true. He couldn’t respond to something he genuinely couldn’t see.
But that doesn’t mean you were okay.
Maybe you’d been pressuring yourself with rules you learned long before you met him. You might’ve been taught that your body belonged to your husband, refusing him was sinful, or a good wife would never let her man go too long without sex. Maybe you believed his faithfulness was partly your job and that whatever he did after being denied would somehow come back to what you failed to provide.
By the time he reached for you, you’d already had the whole argument with yourself. You’d already decided that being tired wasn’t a good enough reason, your lack of desire didn’t matter, and saying no would make you selfish. He didn’t have to talk you into anything because you’d learned to do that part for him.
The church, the aunties, the marriage books, and the endless jokes about keeping your man happy had already done the talking.
That’s different from being pressured by your partner, but it still deserves to be part of this conversation. You were having sex you didn’t want because you didn’t believe your own unwillingness was reason enough to stop. You were trying to protect your marriage from a problem by turning the problem inward and making yourself carry it.
This is also why the first honest conversation matters so much. Your husband might truly be shocked to learn that you’ve been forcing yourself. We don’t have to turn him into a monster for not knowing something you worked very hard to hide.
But once he knows, what he does with that truth matters.
Does he care that you’ve been leaving yourself to get through sex with him? Or does he only care whether telling the truth means he’ll be getting less of it?
That part will tell you plenty.
We still need to talk about the sex...
Now, let’s not swing so far away from one bad idea that we land in another one.
Reminding women that they have permission to say no doesn’t mean sexual connection stops mattering. Sex can be an important way couples feel close, wanted, and connected. If you rarely or never want sex with your husband, that deserves an honest look.
I’m not talking about a busy week, a tired month, or a hard season when life has worn both of you out. I mean you almost never want it. You’re always having to be convinced, waiting for it to end, or making yourself take part because you believe your marriage can’t survive without it.
If that’s you, something’s going on, momma.
It could be physical. Hormones, medicine, pain, depression, stress, poor sleep, pregnancy, birth, and menopause can all affect your desire. It could also be the kind of sex you’re having. You might not want more sex when the sex you’re having doesn’t feel good, doesn’t include much care for your pleasure, or leaves you feeling used instead of close.
And let’s be honest. If sex hasn’t felt good to you for years, your body isn’t being difficult for sport. It learned something from those years, even if nobody wanted to talk about it.
The cause might be sitting outside the bedroom and looking you dead in the face every day. 😏 You could be carrying too much of the house, the children, the planning, and the emotional work. You might feel more like his mother or manager than his partner. There could be old anger that never got worked out, trust that was broken, or years of feeling lonely next to somebody who only seems interested in closeness when he wants sex.
Pressure itself can kill desire too. It’s hard to want something that’s started to feel like one more task waiting for you at the end of the day. If every hug, kiss, or back rub makes you wonder what you’ll be expected to do next, even basic affection can start to feel like it has an invoice attached.
And yes, there’s also the harder truth that you might not want this relationship anymore. That possibility is painful, but covering it with more unwanted sex won’t make it less true.
If you want to stay in the marriage, “I said no” can’t be the end of every conversation about the loss of sex. But it does need to be the end of the pressure to have it that night.
Both people have a part in finding the truth.
Your husband is allowed to feel hurt by the loss of sex. He might miss the closeness you once shared. He might feel unwanted, lonely, worried, or afraid that the marriage is changing in a way he didn’t choose. Those feelings are real, and they deserve room in the conversation.
So do yours.
Your part is being honest about what you’re experiencing and, if you want to work on the relationship, being willing to look at what changed. That might mean talking with a doctor, going to counseling, looking at old hurt, being honest about the sex you’ve been having, or admitting that you’ve been hiding how disconnected you feel.
His part is helping make it safe for you to tell that truth. He has to be willing to hear something other than, “Here’s what I need to do so we can start having more sex.” He might learn that you’re in pain, you haven’t been enjoying sex, or the way he treats you outside the bedroom has changed how your body responds to him.
The goal can’t be for him to study you like you’re the broken appliance in the marriage while he sits there waiting for service to start back up.
The two of you are trying to understand what happened to your connection. That means looking at your body, your mind, the sex itself, and the whole relationship. It also means accepting that the problem might not live inside you at all.
The truth might ask both of you to change, but your jobs won’t always be the same. If your desire has been hurt by how he speaks to you, how little he helps, the pressure he’s placed on you, or the trust he’s broken, you can’t repair that by yourself. Your lack of desire can’t become one more problem you’re expected to fix for him.
Looking for the cause also doesn’t promise that desire will come back. You can’t order desire around like a child who needs to come inside before the streetlights come on. Both of you can make an honest effort and still learn something you didn’t want to know.
If you want to stay, what you owe the relationship is the truth and a real willingness to look at the problem. What you don’t owe your husband is unwanted sex while the two of you figure it out.
His curiosity is information.
If you and your partner are still together, pay attention to what happens when you try to talk about why you don’t want sex. Does he want to know what sex has felt like for you? Can he hear that you’ve been in pain, checked out, or forcing yourself without making you stop the conversation to comfort him?
Is he curious about whether you feel close to him, cared for by him, and able to enjoy being touched? Is he willing to look at the whole relationship, including the parts that might ask something of him? Can he sit with the fact that your body could be responding to years of experiences he’d rather not face?
Or does every conversation somehow find its way back to how often he’s getting sex?
If he’s only interested in the sex he isn’t receiving and not what made you stop wanting it, then he isn’t trying to understand the disconnection. He’s trying to get the old arrangement working for him again.
There’s a difference between wanting to understand your wife and wanting to troubleshoot your access to her body.
Men are going to have to wake up to the fact that women don’t stop being human once they enter a bedroom or sign a marriage license. We have inner lives. We have pain, anger, desire, fear, joy, limits, and bodies that respond to how we’re treated. We’re not toys that stop working for no reason.
That doesn’t automatically tell you whether to stay or leave. His response might not give you an instant answer about your marriage, but it gives you information about the kind of partner you’re being asked to work through this with.
Curiosity is information too. If he can hear the truth, care about your experience, and make changes without treating each change like a trade for more sex, pay attention to that. The point isn’t to assume the worst. It’s to stop ignoring what his response shows you.
You don’t have to name it yet.
Some of you might be looking back at parts of your marriage differently after reading this. You might feel angry because you didn’t know you were allowed to say no. You might feel sad for the woman you were, or confused because your husband never forced you, but you can now see how often you forced yourself.
Another woman could read this and realize that some of her yeses were freely chosen. She wasn’t always in the mood at first, but she felt safe, open, and able to change her mind. She doesn’t need to turn a healthy choice into harm just because desire showed up after intimacy began.
The point of this conversation isn’t to make women afraid of every yes that didn’t begin with wild desire. It’s to give us more honest words for what might’ve been happening inside that yes.
Did you feel present? Did you feel free to tell the truth? Could you stop without paying for it later? Were you choosing closeness, or were you trying to make a problem go away?
You don’t have to rush to name every experience. You don’t have to decide today what any of this means about your husband, your faith, or your marriage. You’re allowed to take in new information without turning it into a whole life plan by Sunday afternoon.
Start by telling yourself the truth. That’s enough for today.
Before you go...
I want you to sit with one question: When you think about the times you agreed to sex you didn’t want, what did you believe would happen if you said no?
Maybe your honest answer is that you were open to being close and knew no was still available. Maybe you were trying to avoid an argument, an attitude, another accusation, or the fear that he’d find somebody else. Maybe nothing would’ve happened at all, but you’d been taught that a good wife shouldn’t need to be asked twice.
Whatever comes up, try not to argue with yourself about it. You don’t have to prove that it was bad enough to matter. You also don’t have to force a label onto something before you’re ready.
Just tell yourself the truth about what your yes was doing for you.
You might not have known you were allowed to ask that question then. You do now.
🖤 Kesha
If this essay helped you recognize an experience of sexual pressure or coercion and you’d like confidential support, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline is available 24/7. Call 800-656-HOPE, text HOPE to 64673, or use the online chat.