When I got married, I had the mentality that I was damaged goods. Not only had I been raped several times, but I willingly had sex with numerous men. My identity was stripped away as little by little, I let myself become nothing more than a body that men used for sexual pleasure. The shame and degradation I felt made me so sick of myself that it was hard to imagine that anyone could actually love me. The outcome of being raped was that my heart and soul became separated from my body and I was no longer able to feel love.

Proverbs 5 contains a warning against sexual immorality that indicates it can destroy your body. Referring to the end result, it says in Proverbs 5:11, “And thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed.” The Hebrew word translated last, achariyth (akh – ar – eeth´) is derived from the word achar (akh – ar´) which means after or afterward (310). “In some passages, achariyth represents the ‘ultimate outcome’ of a person’s life” (319). The implication being that you don’t regret sexual immorality until after you have experienced the end result, usually some kind of damage to your body.

Physical touch is only one of the ways that love can be communicated, but it is extremely important in the communication of love between a husband and wife. As a result of experiencing the trauma of being raped, I became numb to certain kinds of touch and allowed myself to go through the motions of having sex without feeling any emotional attachment to the person I was with. After I was married, I regretted the way I let men treat me, but it was too late to undo the damage that had been done by repeatedly shutting down my emotions during sex.