Emotional rape has many similarities to physical rape, particularly date rape.
Date rape involves the sexual use of someone's body without consent.
In a like manner, emotional rape is the use of someone's higher emotions, such as love, without consent. Unlike date rape, emotional rape can happen to both men and women. Both forms of rape can be very devastating and require specialized programs for recovery. Several major obstacles are encountered in recovery from emotional rape. The first is that the victim knows that something bad happened, but doesn't know what or why.