The first year after she walked out on her marriage was the lowest point in her life, says Madam Lim.
We are not using her full name to protect her identity.
She recalls "the agony and the trauma" of having to start life afresh, which included trying to find a job to make ends meet.
Madam Lim was a victim of abuse. Her exhusband routinely forced her to have sex.
It was years before she finally left him. Not least because many were incredulous when she said that he raped her. They simply didn't understand that a married woman can refuse to have sex.
"Friends, even my own mother, told me that there was no such thing as a husband raping his wife. Some even asked me why I bothered to get married if I hated to have sex," she tells The New Paper on Sunday.
"But even though living with a monster who raped me was a life of hell, for a while, I thought it was better than living without any financial stability.
"I was lucky that I had a few good friends and counsellors who supported me. Had it not been for them, I don't think I could have walked out of this low point in my life."
Madam Lim, 36, and her son, who turns six next month, now live with her mother.
"It took me so long before I could accept my little baby and start to love him," she says of the child, who is sitting quietly in a corner of the four-room HDB flat, playing with his handheld game.
She looks in his direction, then says: "I struggled for so long, trying to decide if I wanted to keep a child, who was conceived in rape, with me."
During her first interview with this newspaper in 2007, Madam Lim did not behave like the typical mum. The chilly distance she set up between her and the then five-month-old baby was apparent. She hardly looked at him and did not pick him up, not even when he cried.
The baby was the result of one of those forced trysts, where her then husband of six years would force himself on her.
They had courted for two years before marrying.
i know ah fly.... thanks for the concern and advice. i will be extra careful and drink more chinese tea, which contains alot of anti-oxident. :D
i suspect the husband only cares about his own orgasm and did not 'provide satisfaction' to his wife. for sex to be enjoyable, it is my believe that we males should also make our female partners enjoy it too, so much so that we do not have to be the ones initiating it. that is what i call good sex. :D
I understand you, but my question is, "Was she forced to marry him in the first place". If you willingly married him because you loved him, then why are you not willing to have sex with him"? Does he practice unnatural sex?...
Don't keep complaining Geylang is a mess.
Must be husband don't know anything about satisfying woman la. Just know about himself only. When I talk to some close cousins and old school friends, they say most time, the guy does minimal things to satisfy the woman and women take longer to get heated up.
The guy is a gay or the girl is lesbian? Crazy
Dont he/she fantasies the sex before marriage.. Hmm