I think all comments (and your therapist) would agree that this is rape and abuse. The question is to decide what to do about it.
Quite a few people suggest to get support from the state, I personally don't have a lot of trust in government services in that regard. I think this is similar to calling social service for an abused child, but with worse prospect. Is it better or worse to experience the abuse from the current family, or to be potentially abused in a worse way by other caretakers in an uncertain situation? To be completely honest in my gut feeling, it seems people might be much more willing to foster care a child, than caring for a quadriplegic. But I don't know anything about the state of social care for quadriplegic, so I am just guessing.
Also, I am not excusing any behavior, but the flip side of the coin is that it’s commendable about staying in a marriage and caring for a quadriplegic wife for two years. That’s also an extremely challenging position to be in. I am not sure if OP’s husband is getting therapy himself, and if he isn’t, he should be. I get the sense that OP is choosing to not press any charges and to stay due to some level of warmth and love from the marriage and the caregiving that she received. Life really isn’t that binary, it’s not abuse vs love, black and white. I am sure there are moments of hatred, abuse, and pain, and there are also moments of tenderness and compassion, there are moments of despair, and there are also moments of joy. I don’t think the situation would have lasted for two years if it was all bad. Perhaps it slowly degraded from a better and more caring place to where it is now. From the post, it sounds like this particular incident is a recently developed situation, and it wasn’t happening before. It sounds like both OP and the husband are going through slowly degrading mental health conditions, which lead to this happening now.
I feel like instead of involving the authorities, and trusting some strangers to magically solve the situation for them, (no the authority doesn’t have it all figured out). It might be more worthwhile to focus on mentally supporting and healing themselves, through therapy and any available means of healing, like meditation and other spiritual practices. It would be worthwhile to work on expanding the moments of compassion and joy, and to reduce the moments of despair and hatred. Things had went downhill to where it was to where it is now, so there is a way to move the other direction too. Perhaps also there can be a meaning-making process to find meaning and transformation from this very difficult situation.
I too was trapped in abusive and painful situation (probably way easier than what OP is going through, but extremely hard for me nevertheless), I was genuinely considering suicide for a long time. I got really curious about death, because I wasn’t entirely convinced that death means ending of all suffering, I wanted to really know what happens after someone dies. I did a lot of research into Near Death Experience, and trip reports from a psychedelic called “5-MEO-DMT”, and also meditation. And the summary of what I have now quite convinced of, is that death is NOT the “end all be all”. This human life is just a very short journey we take. Dying now versus a couple of decades into the future doesn’t really make a huge difference one way or another, and death is going to happen regardless whether we seek it or not. It really comes down to the meaning of this life, and why does one live it now.
For me, when I try to make meaning from all the unfairness and pain from childhood trauma and abuse, and then the subsequent adult CPTSD, addiction and other mental health challenges, I can only land on growth and love. If I didn’t experience all these difficulties, I wouldn’t have been able to love the way I do now. When I see someone in pain and struggling like I did, I am capable of saying: yes I hear you, I feel your pain, I have been there, and mean it. I think the greater the suffering, the greater the capacity to love. That’s not always the case of course for everyone, sometimes depravity leads to more depravity, but I made it a mission of my life to milk the shit out of my suffering, and to generate maximum amount of love and compassion that is possible.
I won’t get into the details, but after years of therapy, I gave up a lucrative career and went on to meditate full time since a year ago. It really further convinced me of things around death and love. Buddhists believe in re-incarnations, such that one will be reborn after they die, to a new life where the condition of that life is dependent on the karma of the last life. I am not 100% buying into reincarnation, but I have met very deep and serious meditation teachers, who have personally saw their previous lives through deep meditation. Whether you believe this is up to you, but I respect and love my meditation teachers so much, that I am willing to trust them with my life that they are not lying.
And yes around love, it sounds like a huge cliche, but l do believe that love is the answer and solution to many things. During my year of meditation, I had transformative experiences of feeling endless love and compassion towards all beings, including my parents who abused me. There is really hasn’t been state of existence that I’ve ever experienced that can surpass that. And it completely changed me, for the better. Sometimes I get really weary at the cPTSD subreddit, because there are so much propagation of hatred and resentment and anger, I am not saying they are invalid, it’s totally normal to feel those feelings, but I am really saddened to see ways in which people really become resentful and vengeful because of it. Hatred and abuse never heals hatred and abuse, love does. However, I still come back here from time to time, because this is also the place where I see love. Life really is like this, half of it is rotten, and half of is filled with light.
So what I am trying to say here, is that life and death is way more mysterious than what it seems like from the surface. With love in my heart, I wish you find meaning, love and transformation from the very difficult situation that you are in. I believe that the depth of suffering opens up our capacity to love, there are so many people that you can help, quadriplegic in the body or quadriplegic in that heart, if you can find healing and meaning for yourself in this life.
Lastly I am listing the videos and resources about near death experiences, 5-MEO-DMT and meditation that I mentioned above. Please feel free to read or explore more if you are interested.
NDE videos and books: 1. Anita Moorjani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhcJNJbRJ6U, her book “dying to be me” is also very good. 2. A youtube channel with tons of moving powerful NDE interviews: https://www.youtube.com/c/AfterlifeExperiences/featured
5-MEO-DMT trip reports:
Meditations: