Rape is not a sex act no matter how often demented people try to make it into one. Rape and other forms of sexual abuse are violence to the extreme and extremely damaging in ways no other acts of violence are. Praying for your healing.
Exactly. Nobody says they have a “financial relationship” with the guy who robbed them, nor do they even consider the person they had to fire for embezzlement a “business associate.”
The concept of setting up a permanent relationship by sexual consort comes from passages like this:
*Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take Christ’s members and make them the members of a prostitute? Of course not! Do you not know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh.” But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.* 1 Cor. 6:15-20
We are to be chaste not because we become spiritually married to everyone with whom we engage in sex. We are to be chaste because we belong to the Holy Spirit and violate our relationship with God when we sin against our bodies in this way, because our bodies are rightfully the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
That is why St. Paul also said:
Now the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Gal. 5:19-20
It is a mistake to think of a sinful sexual history as being uniquely damaging to future prospects of marriage. If you have an attachment to self-centeredness, greed, pride, sloth, or any of the capital sins, that is going to make the married life more difficult to live fruitfully as surely as a past history of indulging in the works of lust. The temporal effect of sin–both yours and the sins of others–is going to make it more difficult to give of yourself fully.
To have been victimized, however, is a work of healing that becomes your spouse’s work to do just as surely as it is yours. If you think about it, you will willingly take on these things in your spouse, correct? If he is the child of alcoholics, he will no longer have to take that on alone, but will have you to help him.
If he comes into your married life with debt or lacking any savings, you will carry that together without regard for who is to blame for it. If he is fighting a past habit of sloth of the effects of poor choices in friends, you will face that together. If he has had a crippling injury, you will make the best of that together and will win the merit of coping with it and even profiting from the trial together.
) I still may feel a twinge of regret or embarrassment, but I can shake it off.