Hidden Rape Games

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

How can hidden rape games look like at the everyday level?

This form of sexual play in order to manipulate a partner was described by Eric Berne in his book Sex in Human Love.

Women often make themselves the object of "rape", although men sometimes act in this role.

Rape is always preceded by some kind of seductive provocation. During the day, a woman can seduce a man in one way or another, and after sex make him guilty. For example, a man, having caught sexual signals from a woman, takes action. Immediately after that, the woman may start yawning, for example, then turn her back on the man and start falling asleep. However, the inflamed man can no longer calm down and continues the onslaught. The woman gives herself to him half asleep, and then blames the man for not reaching orgasm due to the fact that he was active when she was not ready. She can even tell a man: "You took advantage of me without my desire."

Or a woman can, under alcohol, allow a man to do with her in sex what she would not allow in a state of sobriety. Then she shifts the responsibility to the man, demonstrating alienation after sex with the words: "I didn't want it that way."

Other messages of this kind: "you did everything to make me pregnant …", "you are driven only by primitive needs …", "you do not take into account my desire …" and so on.

The rape game is well demonstrated by Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind in her relationship with Rhett Butler. On the one hand, she presents herself as a masochistic victim of a man's encroachments, and on the other, she saddens him with a sense of guilt and rejection, pretending that she is always thinking of another man. She rejects and devalues him. She simultaneously desires intimacy and is afraid of it, constantly denies her feelings and needs. A woman's fantasies about something else, manipulations, and turning to alcohol have the function of psychological protection from real physical and mental contact. Perverted forms of sex can also serve this purpose.

In such a situation, the man remains somewhat frustrated that he is "not wanted". On the other hand, he clearly has a hidden benefit from this game. Most often, he is driven by sadistic inclinations, he experiences latent pleasure while having sex with a woman, to whom this intimacy can give unpleasant emotions and sensations.

Such a pattern can be a way of acting out child-parent relationships, where attempts are made to earn the mother's love and punish her for rejection.

By her behavior, a woman not only tries to protect herself from intimacy, but also to play out her negative emotions about him on the man. It also has a sadistic component.

For a man, the role of the "raped" can be manifested in the words: "Well, again, you distracted me from work …", "You tortured me …" and in other forms of shifting responsibility for intimacy onto a woman. In such a situation, a woman should have pulled back, but more often she activates the offensive, which does not play in her favor.

Why are neurotic men and women drawn to rejecting, cold partners?

Let's take Scarlett O'Hara again as an example. This is a woman with a hysteroid-narcissistic character type. She attracts men to her, demonstrating coquetry on the one hand, and inaccessibility on the other. For none of them, not even for Ashley, for whom she declares love, she has no genuine feelings, they all serve to satisfy her need for power and control, like Rhett Butler.

The periods when Scarlett begins to understand and appreciate the sincere feeling for her are characterized by her life unhappiness, a state of depression, brokenness, when the need for support and fear of loneliness is stronger than the lust for power.

However, when Scarlett sincerely opens up to Rhett Butler in her feelings, begins to suffer for him, reaches out for him, he pushes her away, complaining that she has caused him too much offense.

As Eric Berne writes, neurotic people need games in order to act out their latent needs (for power, for aggression, for submission, and just for fun, out of intolerance to boredom). Play is what unites two neurotics. If you deprive them of the game, then they will become uninteresting to each other. Therefore, there is a great secondary benefit and fear of self-disclosure in non-resolution of neurotic interpersonal conflict.

When spouses begin to undergo psychotherapy, they become more conscious, the need for play is deactivated until the loss of attraction to each other (what previously excited, now does not excite) and subsequent separation, if they do not find new points of mutual spiritual growth in themselves.

Today, every iron is broadcasting about healthy, meaningful relationships, while the authors of this idea themselves have relationships that are far from ideal. Such a maximalist message also forms in people doubts about the quality of their own relationships, leading them to devaluation (a wife or husband begins to look out for imperfections in their pair, or even devalue a partner altogether, as a result of being left with nothing, making excessive demands on him and not able to adequately assess their own limitations). Maybe instead of striving for the ideal, one should strive for what is convenient and interesting for both?

The question arises, if humanity is mostly neurotic, then is it necessary to get rid of neurosis completely, because some neurotic traits add individuality to us? If the whole society is equally healthy, won't the world become too boring?