Jul 15, 2026
Trigger Warning: This article discusses sexual consent, unwanted sexual experiences within relationships, sexual and marital coercion, and the emotional consequences of engaging in sex out of obligation. Please take care of yourself while reading and engage with this content at your own pace.
Consent is fundamental to healthy sexual relationships. However, understanding sexual wellbeing requires us to look beyond whether someone technically said "yes" and consider the circumstances in which that consent was given.
Was there genuine freedom to say no? Could someone decline without anticipating anger, withdrawal, guilt, persistent pressure, or conflict? Did they feel emotionally and physically safe expressing what they actually wanted?
For some people in long-term relationships, sex gradually becomes something they participate in to maintain harmony, meet perceived relationship expectations, avoid disappointing a partner, or prevent an uncomfortable reaction. This experience is sometimes described as duty sex or consenting to unwanted sex (CUS): agreeing to sexual activity despite not genuinely wanting to participate.
The distinction matters. A person may consciously agree to sex while simultaneously experiencing pressure, obligation, or disconnection from their own preferences. When this becomes an ongoing pattern, it can have significant implications for sexual desire, emotional wellbeing, bodily autonomy, and the relationship itself.
Research by Cami Hurst examining the experiences of 1,023 women provides important insight into consenting to unwanted sex in long-term relationships. Many participants described engaging in sexual activity they did not want because of a sense of obligation or a desire to maintain peace within the relationship. Importantly, many did not initially perceive these experiences as harmful. The emotional and relational consequences often became more apparent as the pattern continued over time.
Women described experiences including:
• A significant reduction in sexual desire
• Increasing sexual avoidance
• Physical discomfort or a sense of bodily shutdown
• Resentment toward their partner
• Emotional detachment during or around intimacy
• Feeling used, including within otherwise loving relationships
• Guilt and emotional distress associated with sexual interactions
For some women, these patterns had continued for years before they recognized the extent to which unwanted sexual experiences were affecting their relationship with sex, their partner, and themselves. One of the most significant findings is that consent alone does not necessarily tell us whether a sexual experience is emotionally healthy or genuinely desired.
It is important to distinguish duty sex from responsive sexual desire. Not everyone experiences spontaneous sexual desire before intimacy begins. Some people become interested in sex after affectionate touch or connection has started. Someone may genuinely think, I'm not particularly aroused right now, but I'm open to seeing where this goes. That person is still making an autonomous choice.
Duty sex is different. It may sound more like:
It is easier to agree than deal with what happens if I say no.
My partner will be upset with me.
It has been too long, so I should.
I feel guilty turning them down.
If I have sex now, I will not have to deal with being asked again for a while.
The difference is not simply the presence or absence of spontaneous desire. It is whether someone genuinely wants to participate and feels free to choose.
One of the difficult consequences of repeated unwanted sexual experiences is that they can change how someone responds to intimacy altogether. Our nervous systems learn through association. If sexual experiences repeatedly involve pressure, obligation, guilt, discomfort, or overriding internal boundaries, the body may begin anticipating those experiences before sexual activity even begins.
Someone may start avoiding physical affection because they worry it will lead to expectations of sex. They may become tense when their partner initiates touch, avoid going to bed at the same time, or experience declining sexual desire. This can create a painful relationship cycle.
One partner notices that sex is decreasing and responds by initiating more frequently or expressing frustration. The other experiences this increased attention as additional pressure and withdraws further.
As pressure increases, desire may decrease. As desire decreases, initiation can feel increasingly threatening or overwhelming.
Addressing this dynamic often requires moving away from the question of "How can we have more sex?" and toward a different question:
"What conditions would allow intimacy to feel emotionally safe, mutually desired, and freely chosen again?"
The original research also highlighted an important issue: many women did not initially recognize emotionally coercive dynamics within their relationships. Sexual coercion does not only involve physical force or explicit threats. Pressure can also occur through repeated requests, persistent negotiation, guilt, anger, emotional withdrawal, sulking, or making someone feel responsible for a partner's emotional wellbeing.
These dynamics can be particularly difficult to identify in long-term and otherwise loving relationships. A person may love their partner and still experience pressure from them. Similarly, a partner may engage in coercive relational behaviours without fully appreciating their impact. Recognizing these patterns does not necessarily require reducing a complex relationship to a single label. It does require taking seriously the conditions under which consent occurs.
The ability to safely say no is an important part of the ability to meaningfully say yes.
Individual experiences of duty sex do not develop in isolation. Our beliefs about sexuality, marriage, gender, and obligation are influenced by families, communities, religion, media, and broader cultural systems. Historically, women's sexual autonomy within marriage was significantly restricted. Legal and social systems frequently treated marriage as granting husbands authority over their wives, including assumptions of sexual access.
In Canada, the legal exemption that prevented husbands from being charged with sexually assaulting their wives was not removed until 1983.
Although laws have changed, cultural beliefs do not disappear immediately. Ideas about sexual obligation can continue across generations through both explicit teachings and implicit expectations about what women owe their partners.
For some women, purity culture and other restrictive religious teachings add another layer. Messages suggesting that a wife is responsible for meeting her husband's sexual needs, preventing infidelity, or maintaining marital harmony can create significant guilt around saying no.
When sexual availability becomes associated with being a "good" wife or partner, distinguishing authentic desire from conditioned compliance can become difficult.
Healthy relationships involve compromise, including around intimacy. Partners will not always experience desire at the same time or with the same frequency. However, compromise should not require one person to consistently override their boundaries.
Healthy compromise might involve communicating about differences in desire, exploring different forms of intimacy, or finding mutually enjoyable ways to maintain connection. Sexual self-abandonment occurs when someone repeatedly disconnects from their own internal signals in order to manage another person's needs, expectations, or emotional reactions. The difference is agency.
Healthy compromise allows both people to have needs. Obligation consistently prioritizes one person's needs at the expense of the other's autonomy.
Rebuilding Emotional Safety and Sexual Autonomy When duty sex has become an established pattern, simply trying to increase sexual frequency may reinforce the problem. Rebuilding intimacy often begins with restoring safety and choice.
This may involve learning to communicate a genuine no without guilt or retaliation, separating affection from automatic expectations of sex, developing awareness of personal boundaries, and creating opportunities for physical connection that do not carry an expectation of sexual activity. For some individuals, healing also means reconnecting with their own preferences and asking questions they may never have felt entitled to consider:
What do I actually want?
What kinds of touch feel comfortable?
What helps me feel connected?
What causes me to withdraw?
What does my body communicate when I feel safe?
What does consent feel like when I am not managing someone else's emotions?
These can be difficult questions for people who have spent years prioritizing a partner's needs over their own.
Therapy can provide a confidential space to examine experiences of duty sex, sexual avoidance, coercive relationship dynamics, or cultural and religious conditioning without judgment. A trauma-informed therapist may help clients understand patterns of obligation and avoidance, strengthen boundaries, reconnect with bodily cues, process unwanted sexual experiences, address shame related to sexuality, and develop a more autonomous understanding of intimacy and consent.
Couples therapy may also be helpful when both partners are committed to understanding these patterns, respecting boundaries, and rebuilding emotional safety. However, when abuse, coercion, or fear is present, individual therapy may be more appropriate than couples therapy.
If you recognize yourself or your relationship in these patterns, you do not need to have a clear label for your experience before seeking support. At VOX Mental Health, our therapists provide trauma-informed therapy in Barrie, Ontario, as well as virtual psychotherapy for clients across Ontario. Our team supports individuals and couples navigating trauma, relationship concerns, intimacy, boundaries, attachment, anxiety, identity, and complex emotional experiences.
Sexual wellbeing involves more than the presence of a verbal yes. Healthy intimacy requires autonomy, mutual respect, communication, emotional safety, and the genuine freedom to decide what happens with your own body. If you are looking for a therapist in Barrie, couples therapy in Barrie, or trauma-informed psychotherapy in Barrie, Ontario, our team is here to help you explore your experiences and determine what support feels right for you.
Your voice matters. Your boundaries matter. Your consent is yours to give, or not.
