The only rage Travis ever had was the frustration of trying to rid his life of JA. It is impossible to explain what these types can do to a person. He, at some level, knew his life depended on how he treated her. He was the one who gave in to her. I am convinced he went along with the sex to keep her happy....not the other way around. He was afraid if she got angry, she could kill (subconscious). She is the one that uses sex to decompress, not him.
I just wanted to thank you. I keep trying to explain it from my perspective and mightily failing. A relationship with a psychopath defies definition in many respects.
For me, I believe he continued to have sex with her as a reaction to the innuendo and implication part and parcel of the psychopath's manipulative toolbag. Whether it was to keep her happy, to keep her from sending that tape out, to keep himself safe, to keep her from killing herself, etc.
It was very much implied when I was in my marriage that refusal or hesitance to 'allow' certain things would only lead to my ex finding someone who
would be more complacent. He manipulated my desire for a meaningful, intimate relationship and my fear of abandonment as regular procedure. The fear of abandonment stemmed from being told for years I could not survive without him, no one else would ever be able to tolerate me, I lacked common sense needed to make it in the world, etc. There was an inherent sense of 'If I truly loved him, I would acquiesce'. Sex with a psychopath leads to feelings of worthlessness, confusion, and an insatiable hunger for something more meaningful. It, in my experience, is cold, clinical, and calculating. Travis' 'dildo with a heartbeat' comment rings so true because the sense you are nothing but an object to them is absolutely palpable. (
Unless pretense of intimacy is necessary for further manipulation.)
The more I tolerated sexually though the more bizarre and personally deviant his desires became. At the end of our marriage his 'requests' and suggestions would include, but not be limited to, costumes, role-playing, sex in public, and he even had the audacity to beg me to have sex with his best friend. Had I relented, I have no doubt he would have utilized anything inappropriate I did to the best of his ability as a weapon.
It wasn't a healthy sexual relationship but rather a study in seeing how far he could push me, how much he could demean me, and how he could twist that to make me feel even worse about myself. Once there, it was a vicious but simple cycle to keep me believing I somehow deserved the relationship or would be lost without it. It became a further means of exerting and maintaining control.
Ironically though my psychopath
hated sex. It was very simply a tool. He viewed
any intimacy simply as a means of gain. Sex particularly was viewed as a dirty and unclean experience. (Jodi's testimony of Travis saying 'Go clean yourself up' brought back sudden, severe memories of my ex getting as far away from me, as fast as possible, to do just that.) By extension, and at the end of our relationship by his admission, I was also dirty and whorish for ever wanting or enjoying sex.
Just some very personal experiences to hopefully lend some insight as to the 'whys' in this case. I see Jodi wholly capable of manipulating Travis into sex period. But once there, the fact he acquiesced would likely have become a weapon to be used against him in all sorts of ways. It doesn't mean he was 'forced' in the true sense of the word (though by nature I see it as manipulative force) or that he didn't necessarily enjoy sex. It does mean it was a very unhealthy sexual experience that would have given Jodi immense power to further manipulate and control him. FWIW and JMO
