Over the last four years, we've written podcast episodes about the sex education the church didn't want you to have. 

One of the most threatening things for a high-control religious system is a goodbye, which results in actual transitions away from these groups that are secretive, forced, and avoidant.

In this episode, we describe an intentional, proper goodbye, from the perspective of how we structure intentional final sessions with our clients. 

Also, this is the last official episode of Sexvangelicals. We ask these six common questions to help us reflect on our Sexvangelicals journey:

1. Where did we start and why?

2. What did we learn?

3. How have we grown?

4. What did we do well?

5. What do we wish we had done differently?

6. What is the unfinished work?

Specifically, we talk about: 

• Transitions (2:30): Jeremiah kicks us off, " Relationships are full of transitions, big and small, and these transitions almost always include some sort of goodbye."

• Opportunity to Say Goodbye (2:50): Julia adds, " Even the more mundane transitions like a schedule change or rearranging division of household labor include some sort of goodbye. You are doing something or something was a part of your life and now it's not, or it's different … give yourself and your relationship the opportunity to say goodbye."

• Who You Were Before the Goodbye (13:00): Julia notes, " As you are considering your own goodbye right now, take a mindfulness practice and go right back to the beginning of it. Think about what was happening in your personal, professional, and relational lives. Think about the broader community and social context. Consider who you were at the time, which is, or was probably different than you are right now."

• Be Kinder to Yourself (14:00): Jeremiah follows up:  "Being able to give hugs to that younger version of ourselves, Being easier on the younger versions of ourselves I think is a really helpful part of the process."

• The Beginning of the Podcast (19:00): Jeremiah shares: " the podcast also happened in the first two years of our relationship. The first two years of a relationship is about bonding. Discovering interests and ethics that you have in common … I think Sexvangelicals became a way for us to come together and discuss a first draft of what happened to us. We trauma bonded with people other than us."

• Reflection (24:00): Julia shares: " Probably in this transition process, in this goodbye process, you are probably reflecting on what you learned in the context of your partnership or some other relationship, right? … I learned a lot about working together with you."

• Growing & The "Fuck You" Phase (28:00): Julia discusses, " The fuck you transition of deconstruction isn't as relationally helpful.  We primarily decided to take off the first 50 episodes because we wanted this to have a more cohesive, professional structure, and we recognized that those episodes didn't actually reflect the maturity that we gained in the years following. And I think that talking about this is actually the most vulnerable area of growth for me to name. We weren't ready emotionally and we weren't ready practically. And that's a hard pill to swallow when that occurs in a public context."

• Hustle Culture (35:00): Jeremiah says, " As an entrepreneur, there's no way of fully escaping hustle culture. But I think I fell into the trap of believing that in order to be taken seriously as an entrepreneur than 21st century, you have to develop a lot of content and produce it in a particular consistent manner, as opposed to saying it takes a few years for a business owner or owners to figure out what specifically it is that they're offering, and then to develop procedural practices and then create and market specific products for the public."

• Ms. Frizzle (40:00): Julia shares some beloved words: " Quote, one of my favorite fictional characters. Take chances, make mistakes, get messy."

• Taking Chances (43:00): Julia adds: " What I can say about what we did well is that we took a chance and yeah, we did something scary and we did something new. And while there is so much that I wish we had done differently, I think it's important to note for so many of your goodbye transitions."

• Highlight of the Work (45:00): Jeremiah notes, " This might sound a little narcissistic as well, but I don't think that there are many people in the religious trauma or post evangelical space who are asking some of the questions that we are."

• Check In with Each Other (54:00): Julia says, " When building something new, create structures in which you can check in with your partner or partners throughout the process and be open to the feedback from your partner?"

This summer, we've answered the most common questions that we receive as relationship and sex therapists. And this week, we answer one of the most common questions: Does body count actually count?

We live in a culture that views your sexuality based on how often you access it. Men who are deemed to have accessed sexuality a lot are viewed as "studs". Women are simultaneously valued and devalued based on how often they have sex. In Evangelical systems, folks who have sex before they get married are sinners.

There are tons of psychological and relational problems that develop from this question, even as many of us are unlearning the myth that our value is tied to how sexual we are or are not. We talk with Natasha Helfer, certified sex therapist and one of the premier relationship therapists for post-Mormon folks, about how we can ask better questions. Check out our conversations about:

• Does Body Count, Count? (6:00) Julia kicks us off, " From the conservative Christian perspective, body count does count, but in a very rigid, specific sort of way. And then when folks deconstruct, they often reevaluate this expectation and consider sex with other partners."

• Purity Culture Embedded (10:00) Natasha highlights, "The reality is that if you grow up in the United States of America, we do have a lot of purity culture baked into the system, including in our laws and our government and our society and our school education systems around sexuality. You name it, we're affected by it."

• Defining Sex (15:00) Natasha discusses " When we think about sex only being defined by a penis entering a vagina, I guess lesbian people are not having any sex. I guess gay men are not having any sex, right? Oftentimes making sure that we define sex very rigidly helps with what I call the loophole argument like "I am still a virgin". I can tell my pastor or my priest or my bishop that I am virginal even though I've given a hand job or received or given oral sex … So all these things that I would consider having sex gets reduced to not having sex."

• Colonizing Lens & Body Count (20:00) Natasha says, " We have all kinds of capitalistic and patriarchal and colonizing ways where sexuality was absolutely affected. And so this idea that I'm going to count and gather a count is in of itself not based in an equity model."

• Grief (24:00) Julia notes, " A theme that I'm noticing in my practice is that I have several couples in which one or both partners are interested in exploring other sexual relationships. And these are couples from high demand, high control religious backgrounds, and they've been in this monogamous partnership. And one or both of them had all the rigid scripts that we've described. And then one or both of them are saying, "I have so much grief around this developmental loss."

• Cultural Messages About Waiting (29:00) Natasha says, " Most of us are getting a lot of these cultural messages and we're getting applauded for doing these choices of waiting to have sex … The whole community is like, hooray, you did a great job. And it's not until usually late twenties to early sixties that people are coming into my office going, what in the hell did we just get involved?"

• Wasting Energy on Purity Culture (38:00) Natasha shares, " I mean, even personally, when I think about all the unnecessary shame and guilt and sleepless nights and racking myself, trying to hustle for my own worth to be a pure worthy woman, I just get livid. I just get livid that I spent so much energy on these things that were, at the time I thought were helpful to me."

• Deconstruction, Relationships, and Therapy (42:00) Jeremiah notes, " In the burgeoning field of religious trauma studies, religious trauma therapy, there aren't a lot of folks that work with relationships and sexuality together that can understand how deconstruction can impact a relationship."

• Integrating Sexuality and Deconstruction (49:00) Jeremiah asks, "If you are seeking relationship therapy and are going through the deconstruction process, what can you expect from a good relationship therapist, who's able to integrate sexuality with the process of deconstruction, with an understanding of the impact of purity culture, religious trauma."

• Paying Attention to Bias (50:00) Natasha notes " A good relational therapist is going to be able to handle their own biases around sexuality, around religious beliefs. Because a lot of relational therapists, quite frankly, are themselves either religious."

• Identity and Sexuality (54:00) Natasha continues " When we talk about sexuality, we are talking about identity. And identity is very important to our mental health, to our relational health, to our spiritual health, to our sexual health, obviously. And when we bypass or ignore huge aspects of our identity, then we tend to be in unhealthy systems."

This spring, we're answering the most common questions that we receive about sexuality. A lot of questions revolve around our genitals. How are they supposed to look? How are they supposed to function? What happens if they don't function the way that they're "supposed to function"? the

In this episode, we challenge three assumptions about our genitals.

1. Your worth as a human being is defined by how your genitals look or function.

2. The thing that lets us know we've had a successful sexual experience is orgasm.

3. The best way to orgasm is through vaginally penetrative sex, which typically only leads to male orgasm.

These assumptions generate the orgasm gap, the fact that men orgasm way more than women do. We close the episode by talking about 15 ways that a couple might connect that leads to both partners orgasming.

Check out our conversations about these topics:

• Internalizing Harmful Messaging (2:00): Julia starts us off, " We all internalize messages about our bodies, especially our genitalia. We can't escape it."

• Vulva Assumptions (6:30): Julia discusses, " First, unlike men who learn that their penis should be as big as possible, women learn that the vagina should be tight and that vulvas that have lean labia are most attractive. Per usual, the message is to take up as little space for women or folks who have vulvas and vaginas."

• BDE (12:00): Jeremiah notes, " The assumption with BDE is that having a big penis equates to higher assertiveness, higher confidence, higher competence, and ultimately a better man. So, what happens if you don't have a big penis?"

• Social Constructs (15:00): Julia says, " Ultimately if you're listening to this episode, it doesn't matter if your flaccid penis is one inch long or six inches long. or shorter or smaller. What I learned in my sex therapy training program is, like you said Jeremiah, that the idea of a micropenis is just a social construct."

• Human Behind the Penis (18:00): Jeremiah shares an excerpt from the book, "Noren is a Swedish photographer who took pictures of men's penises and asked them to describe their relationships with their penises. He writes in his introduction, "Many men have insecurities about how their penises look, and compare themselves with actors from pornography.  It creates feelings of shame and insecurity."

• Messaging Around Genitalia (21:00): Julia discusses, " Vaginal penetration is an important part of the sexual experience for a lot of people, but many people, regardless of orientation, are not having vaginally penetrative sex. When we place the expectation that the best way to orgasm happens through vaginal penetration, we put a lot of pressure on the human anatomy."

• Erections & ED (24:00): Jeremiah discusses, " So erections are almost exclusively about blood flow moving into and filling what's called the corpus cavernosa. The corpus cavernosa is a spongy material inside the penis. So whenever a man gets anxious, that internalized pressure--men almost always carry pressure and anxiety in our hips, in our core. Whenever a man gets anxious, that internalized pressure manifests through a tightening of the pelvic floor muscles."

• Erections & ED II (24:30): Julia continues, " If erections biologically are about blood flow into that region of the body, that means a person with a penis could be aroused without an erection. Psychological erection could trigger an erection, or sometimes when a person has an erectile concern, they might have an erection and then very quickly lose it when the anxiety occurs."

• Pornography is Not Sexual Education (28:00): Julia says, " Without accurate sex education available to children, adolescents, and adults, people only have pornography to turn to. And linking back to what you were saying, Jeremiah, that means men learn a lot of terrible, inaccurate messages about their penises."

• Viagra (32:00): Jeremiah says, " We see this with Cialis and Viagra as well that one of the side effects of those two drugs is delayed ejaculation or retrograde ejaculation. When it is misappropriately diagnosed, it can provide counter indicative sexual results."

• Mystified Vulva (35:00): Julia highlights, " The idea that the female orgasm is more elusive combined with the idea that women are inherently less sexual makes it easier to deprioritize orgasms for folks with vulvas. Which contributes to the orgasm gap."

• Orgasm Gap (36:00): Jeremiah notes, " This misunderstanding and lack of prioritization of female orgasm and how we research sexuality and psychology informs the public's misunderstanding and de-prioritization of female orgasm. For instance, too many men are taught that female orgasm happens through vaginal penetration.  It's true for some women, but more often than not, orgasm happens through a combination of ways to stimulate the clitoris."

• Orgasm Gap Statistics (38:00): Julia shares these (depressing) statistics, " There was a fantastic study a few years ago that asked over 52, 000 people, excellent sample size, about their sexual habits, including orgasm. Straight men reported orgasming 95 percent of the time. Gay and bisexual men reported orgasming 88 percent of the time. The big kicker is for women. Lesbian women orgasmed 86 percent of the time and bisexual and straight women orgasmed 65 percent of the time."

• Duration (43:00): In sharing 15 tips that women who orgasm more share, Jeremiah notes, " Number two, women who orgasm more have a longer duration of a sexual experience. This gets back to what I was referring to a bit earlier regarding the length of time that it takes for a vulva to lubricate. And more importantly, for psychological arousal to occur."

• Aftercare (44:00):  Julia notes, " Number five, women who orgasm more praise their partner for something they did sexually. We've said this on the podcast before. Aftercare is often the most important part of the sexual experience. Make sure that after a sexual experience, be that 5 minutes, 5 hours, or even 5 days later, you're letting your partner know what you liked."

• Prolonged Sexual Space (46:00): Jeremiah argues, " However, if you write out what you'd like to have happen sexually, that takes five to ten minutes of visualizing and imagining the context of an ideal sexual experience. Writing out a sexual experience or fantasy or texting it puts you in a prolonged sexual space that allows your body more time, more space, more senses engaged that allow you to get physiologically aroused in a way that sending a dick pic or a boob pic may not."

• Genitals are not the Star of the Show (55:00): Julia says, " While having our genitals stimulated can feel amazing, most of the contributors to orgasm for women are connected with effective, thorough descriptions of what you'd like to happen to your body, or what you'd like to happen  with the relationship outside of your body."

"In purity culture, both men and women are hypersexualized and then also supposed to be asexual at the same time," explains Dr. Laura Anderson, cofounder of the Religious Trauma Institute.

In short, the expectation is that men are expected to say yes to all things sexual, and women are expected to say and embody the word, no. The sixth deadly sexual sin captures the practice of rigid gender roles.

Men are expected to be dominant. Women are expected to be submissive.

Don't say no to those gender roles.

Laura, Jeremiah, and Julia talk about:

• The pressures on men to say yes to positions of leadership (4:40). Jeremiah explains how his seven-year old self was pressured into a position of leadership strictly because of his sex.

• The pressures of women to present and embody submissiveness (16:00): Laura explains "You're told like there's this very specific certain way that you're supposed to live and act and think. And if you do these things, then you're gonna get this reward. In my case, it was gonna be a husband that I could then have children with, and that's how I'd serve God. But there's no room for any self authenticity, curiosity, freedom of expression."

• The paralysis that accompanies decision making for women (21:40): Laura shares, "In the context of relationships, it's going, which shirt should I wear today? So that if I do come in contact with my future husband, he will look at me and, oh, I chose this shirt. And he'll be like, wow, what a godly woman. Versus if I took and wore this shirt over here, he would be like, oh wow. Her shirt reflects this? So it was absolutely paralyzing. What do I wear? What do I eat for breakfast? What socks do I wear? What shoe?"

• The pressures on dating (32:50): This episode talks largely about Laura's adolescence and young adult experiences. Laura summarizes: "I can't just date anybody. I have to only date who I'm going to marry, which then means I've gotta wear the right shirt to school. I can't date for fun. I can't even try things out. It really felt like this huge weight descending on me. Everything had a holy consequence to it."

• The "threat" of single women in Purity Culture (43:30): Laura reflects, "And I know from my experience as a single woman, I was even more dangerous. It was this idea of, "Because I didn't have a husband to rein me in, I would then seek opportunities to make other men stumble, especially married men, to get them to sin sexually," right? So then there's this hypersexuality of all you are good for is sex or your sexual being, but then also don't act on it because that's a sin and that's gross and that'sdisgusting and you are only supposed to act on it in a very specific context. So keep it shut down even though this isn't who you are.

Laura closes the episode by describing an experience of saying yes to herself and her sexuality, and the freedom that experience opened up for her (49:30).

Julia closes the episode:

"I'm thinking about how the theme around the episode is, Don't Say No. And this is a story in which you said Yes. Yes. And you experienced freedom. What you learned, what I learned, Jeremiah, what you've described that you've learned is that freedom comes from following the rules, which means saying no to all these different things.

Obviously that was not freeing for you, for me, for many people. And then you said yes, and the journey was much longer after that. But what a beautiful moment in which you could connect with yourself and connect with a yes.

Healing together involves finding spaces to say yes to things that are meaningful to us.

Last week, we talked with Cayte Castrillon about her research on the pornography consumption of teenage girls impacts the ways they view their bodies, relationships, and perceptions of men.

We continue our conversation with Cayte this week about how we can talk about pornography in our sexual and non-sexual relationships, and ways we can remove shame, comparison, and judgment from these interactions.

Jeremiah summarizes Cayte's position in the introduction (4:10):

"We're not at fault for our social conditioning, but we are responsible for it. We have to reflect on how we have developed as sexual beings, how that impacts us and our relationships, and then ask ourselves, am I content with who I am as a sexual person? Or do I want to be more intentional about who I am, who I want to be, and for the sake of our conversation, what I want to consume?"

Cayte asks her research participants what would be different if they were to design pornography (8:50). "Almost unanimously," she describes, "there was more communication about the types of touch that are pleasurable. More clitoral stimulation, more gentle touch on the rest of my body."

We also talk about the ways that pornography invites unhealthy comparison (18:20): Cayte reports her research participants asking questions like, "Am I performing? Am I having an orgasm? How am I having an orgasm? Are my breasts responding like that? Is my vulva responding like that?" The "what-if's" are unlimited, Cayte summarizes.

How moral reactions prevent us from having conversations about pornography (25:00): Julia reflects, "And then the moral panic is a red herring from the conversations that we need to have. And it actually stops us from talking about it, because being good or bad actually isn't a conversation about pornography or sexuality at all. That's about someone's value system. It's important to talk about value systems, but I would say value systems within sexual health versus the binary of good or bad value systems." Cayte responds by describing how sex education processes reenforce the larger cultural morality and judgment.

How to talk about porn with your partner (34:50): Cayte describes the usefulness of a third-party source, such as a sex therapist or a podcast. (She recommends the podcast Girls on Porn.) She also reminds us, "If you are going to have a conversation, if you're gonna tiptoe, which I would recommend tiptoeing in. I think a good first step would be how do you even conceptualize watching porn?"

How to talk about porn with your children (48:45): Cayte encourages parents that conversations about pornography "don't have to be all at once. It doesn't have to be long, drawn out conversations with, , diagrams and PowerPoints. It can be, 100 one minute conversations. It can be, in the car, not looking eye to eye with your kid."

We conclude by sharing ethical pornography resources, including, but not limited to (58:00):

1. Lust Cinema

2. X-Confessions

3. Crash Pad Series

4. Indie Porn Revolution

5. www.thepornconversation.org

A huge thanks to Cayte for all of her help, research, and resources! We look forward to sharing more of Cayte's publications as they come along.

Let's heal together!

Welcome back to the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church). We continue with Deadly Sexual Sin #5, especially geared toward men: Don't Watch Porn. After all, we know that women don't watch porn.

Or do they?

We invite Cayte Castrillon, sex therapist and PhD student, to share her research about how women consume porn, what porn teaches women about their own bodies and sexuality, and the observations that women make about the ways that male partners are influenced by porn.

Cayte discovers that approximately two thirds of college age students are using porn to masturbate (10:00). She reflects, "Women are challenged so often to be more assertive, but in order to assert your needs, you have to know and at least be on the path to understanding what those needs are." (18:40)

Cayte conducts in interviews with dozens of college women, centers around three questions:

1. How did pornography impact your body image, both generally and sexually? (15:00): Cayte summarizes that women commonly explore pornography, "just out of curiosity of what's happening out there. What am I, what's capable? What are the possibilities of what I can engage in? So as far as masturbation, that's the selection process I think then that women are engaging in: Does this make me feel sexual? Does this arouse me? Does this make me feel uncomfortable?

2. How did pornography impact the development of your sexual self? How did it impact your interest in sex and specific sexual acts? (21:00): Cayte talks about the ways that porn exacerbates the process of women comparing themselves to the bodies of other women, specifically regarding their breasts and vulvas. However, Cayte describes the common response of porn "giving a place to go to explore not only my masturbatory responses to pornography, but it also giving me permission to be a sexual person, to harness that, to say, oh, there are women that are really in seeming to enjoy sex, whether or not it's performative or not."

3. How do you think pornography potentially impact your male partners, if you have engaged in sexual activity with male partners? (28:00): This question required some hypothesizing, as most participants did not have conversations with their male partners about this. However, the participants observed, "their partners saying, I know my penis isn't as big as such and such, and feeling uncomfortable if there was a performer that had an especially large phallus or extremely masculine muscular physique."

Next week, we will talk about the implications of Cayte's research, such as exploring when the current status of porn caters to the socially conditioned fantasies of men, what does that say about whose bodies are deserving of pleasure and whose sexuality is most important in our country? And we'll share our own vulnerabilities regarding talking about porn in our own partnerships.

Let's heal together!

Happy New Year! The beginning of the year encourages a myriad of ways to set goals for yourself.

What are your New Years resolutions?

What are your goals for the New Year?

What word encapsulates what you want to accomplish in 2023?

Answering those questions, be they at the start of the year, midway through a project, or at the conclusion of an event, requires an effective self-reflection process. Ideally, said process happens both individually and in relationship, be that with a partner, a friend or family member, or larger community.

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah describe three practices, rooted in our Evangelical upbringing, that can provide a structure for having these conversations.

1) Month and Review (6:30): Julia explains:

"Month and Review was a time for my family to reflect on three different things: answered prayer, prayer requests, and Thanksgiving and praise. So totally loaded with religious language that I don't use right now. Prayer requests, I would say, are desires. What do I want? Or if you're in the context of a partner or a family, what do we want?"

2) Grief Practices (11:00): Julia describes:

"The grief practice is a practice in which an individual, or in the case of my college, a group intentionally gathered to give name to losses, pain, injustice, trauma, disappointment, unfulfilled dreams, et cetera. The practice allowed us to mourn, to be angry at God, ask hard questions, cry, or whatever else we needed. What happened is that the religious structure was a new structure that was unlike the structure that I had for the first almost decade of my life. And that was a structure in a system which gave permission not just to me, but other people to grieve. And not only was the grief okay, but that the act of grieving, especially within community, was a sacred process."

3) Process-Centered Evaluation (19:00): Jeremiah summarizes:

"As therapists, we talk about this it being much more important to attune to the way, the "how" an interaction happens between you and a client, than the specifics of what a person is talking about. That's the distinction between process and content, at least from a therapeutic perspective. We encourage self-reflection practices that move away from, okay, what is the specific content of how I'm sinning, I'm lying, I'm watching porn, whatever, to this process of, okay, how do I actually evaluate myself? What are the questions that I ask myself? What's the kind of dialogue that I have with myself that's meaningful, that's helpful? What kind of dialogue can I have with my classmates, with, my family members that can be helpful and meaningful?"

We use these processes to talk about our worst and best moments of 2023, knowing, as John Gottman reminds us, that for every negative interaction, it's important to name five positive interactions. We also reveal our own individual and relational goals for 2023!

We hope you are having a great start to 2023! Let's heal together!

Christmas is a strange season for folks who are in the process of exploring and healing from the ways that the church has negatively impacted them. Especially when Christmas falls on a Sunday, as it did this year.

The soundtrack of Christmas is a mixture of Whitney Houston's All I Want for Christmas is You, Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime, and dozens of religious carols that integrate messages of hope into Matthew's narrative of the birth of Jesus.

Nativity scenes join Christmas trees, ornaments, and lights as the visual backdrop.

Many of our listeners are deconstructing Christianity in some way. Jeremiah describes the conundrum (22:00):

"There's this idea in the deconstruction world that moving out of the church means moving out of the church. It means saying f——— you to the institution and the practices within the institution. In the therapy world, we call this an emotional cutoff: a way of completely separating yourself from family members and systems of older parts of your life. And don't get me wrong, in cases of abuse, cutoffs are necessary. However, generally speaking, cutoffs don't give you the permission to engage with the complexities of the family members and stories and institutions, and that tends to lead to a lot of problems in other areas of life."

Christmastime, in some ways, represents the best of the modern Christian tradition, as Jeremiah explains (20:35):

"Christmas carols and other types of acapella music and the process of singing harmonies are my continual connection to the church. And I'm okay doing some of the mental gymnastics of singing philosophical and theological ideas that I don't believe in to to draw me closer to home, closer to that sense of familiarity."

Christmastime intersects hope with grief, especially for those of us who have moved out of overtly religious spaces. Julia encourages (36:00)

"Being intentional to set aside space for grief. That might be a walk on your own, early in the morning or late at night. That might be time to journal or to write a letter to someone who isn't present for you."

"You don't need to perfect your rituals or traditions this Christmas. It might take several Christmases to find what works for you, and maybe you'll get lucky and you and your partner or partners or friendships will find something new that you can hold onto that will continue throughout the rest of your life."

We hope that you find spaces of peace, hope, and safe spaces for grieving this Christmas week!

Happy holidays from Jeremiah and Julia! We are taking a break from our Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church) series and talking about how to navigate the challenges of the holiday season.

In this episode, Jeremiah and Julia discuss two ways that sexuality can be hard during the holidays:

1) Privacy (5:30). Jeremiah reflects, "You may be surrounded by more people than usual. Or perhaps you're sharing walls with family members or ceilings with family members. For some folks, the risk of being caught can be really sexy, but for others, this can really kill the sex vibe, especially when you're surrounded by family or friends who may hold sexual values that don't align with yours."

2) The general pressure of the holidays (22:15): Julia describes the pressure "to have the best sex ever because you've got time off from work and you finally have more than a short chunk of time for a sexual experience…With the implicit or explicit messaging that the holidays are a romantic a season, and for many people, not all people, romance and sex occur together, and by default, then, sex has to be filled with some sort of holiday magic."

We provide several Relationship 101 tips during the episode, including:

1. If possible, get a separate space for you and your partner from family and friends. (18:00)

2. Give yourself permission to not have sexual experiences. (21:00)

3. Talk with your partner about the pressures connected with the holidays, and how that might impact accessing sexuality. (29:30)

4. Create transition spaces in and out of sexual experiences, especially for those that happen outside of your place of residence. (31:55)

Have a fantastic holiday season! Let's heal together!

Happy Holidays, from Jeremiah and Julia! Thank you for all of the support that you've given us in 2022! We're excited to share two holiday episodes with you to wrap up December, and launch 2023 with new pictures, new episodes, and a lot of fun!

We continue our series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church), with a relational process that's condemned inside and outside the church: Infidelity.

Julia summarizes (6:30):

"We have a cultural norm that shames and stigmatizes affairs. If we actually want to have relationships in which breaking commitments happen less often, then we have to move beyond the shame, because what we know from the exceptional research from Brene Brown is that shame only fuels the patterns that we are trying to change.

We're sharing this story because we need to talk about the commitments that partners make to each other around sexuality, and we need to talk about the ways that people break those commitments, and why they break those commitments, because affairs don't happen in isolation."

In sharing our story, we explore the following themes, understanding that infidelity occurs in numerous contexts and has multiple meanings:

1. Infidelity as one of a bunch of bad choices (12:15): Jeremiah was in a long-term relationship where conversations about sexuality (and quite a few other topics) were met with either anxiety or criticism, and an unwillingness to address this pattern via couples therapy. His bad choices were a) stay in the negative dynamic; b) initiate a process of divorce; c) attempt to have it both ways by pursuing sexuality outside of the relationship. For Jeremiah, option C actually initiated a very quick divorce process.

2. Infidelity as an autonomous choice in a sexual history with minimal autonomy (31:00): Julia, after surviving messages of purity culture, reflects, "I didn't know who I was as a sexual person. I didn't know that I was a sexual person. All I know about sexuality is what men want." The sexual shame connected to premarital sex followed Julia into her marital relationship, and, combined with a series of unfortunate events (including, but not limited to two miscarriages), created a crisis of loss of self, which was reinforced by participating in the marriage, especially given the relational grief of two pregnancy losses. As such, sexuality was incredibly difficult to access in the marital relationship, despite the immense amount of work Julia and her ex invested in the relationship.

3. Infidelity as protest (50:00): Julia describes the intense amount of rage toward the systems that failed her. "That was the first big choice I had made that was just for me. And it felt really good to do something that was just for me, of course. And it felt really good to put my middle fingers in the air to the church and say, "All the things you told me not to do are the only things that are bringing me like any source of healing."

4. Infidelity as regret (53:00): For Jeremiah, infidelity was an exit strategy from the marriage; he reflects, "One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't end the relationship with my ex in a more overt kind of way." Julia shares, "I really wish I had actually been a braver person because my regret was not that I chose my sexuality, my regret was that I broke a commitment to the person that I loved. And I hurt him."

5. Infidelity as isolation (1:07:00): Infidelity is commonly met with judgment in religious, professional, and personal communities, which reinforces the secrecy of affairs. Julia reflects on her positive experience with her therapist: "Having my therapist support me, not my decision to have or not have an affair, but to support me and my flourishing meant that I didn't have to be alone at the time in my life that was simultaneously the most painful and the most beautiful all at the same time." Her therapist's response mirrors that of Jesus' response to the woman "caught" in adultery that we talk about in Episode 62: shame-free, nonjudgmental, and loving.

Stayed tuned to our series this spring, where we'll have in depth conversations about infidelity, including the intense amount of pressure on modern-day primary relationships, the presence of secrecy and avoidance, and misunderstandings of eroticism and sexuality.

Let's heal together!

We are halfway through our series on the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church).

As a refresher, the first three "sins" are:

1. Don't have sex before you get married.

2. Don't be gay.

3. Don't lust.

Which sets up sin #4: Don't have an affair.

Some quick background. The marital relationship (between a man and woman, duh) is the most foundational relationship in the Evangelical community. It's a right of passage into adulthood, as Jeremiah describes (14:40). It symbolizes the union between God/Jesus and the church, as the church describes.

And, according to the Evangelical Church, any relationship with a person of the opposite gender that is not your spouse is a potential threat to the sanctity of marriage (19:45).

Jeremiah learned this in his sex-silent religious community of origin implicitly; as Julia summarizes, "The Church of Christ skirted the issue of adultery by focusing so heavily on the marital relationship, that hopefully adultery in and of itself would just disappear." (16:00) This creates an enormous amount of pressure because, "there's very little room for other types of support or other types of exploration outside of the relationship."

Julia learned this by watching the horrific way her community of origin treated a member of their community. She angrily responds, "But who said anything to defend my friend's mother's right to go to church and to go to communion and not to have every person in her personal life. That is such an anti-Jesis thing, and I'm horrified and even feel like a physiological response as I'm remembering this." (30:20)

So how should we talk about affairs? We turn to John chapter 8, where Jesus engages with a woman "caught" in adultery. (32:45)

Tl;dr: Jesus doesn't condemn her. He ignores the kerfuffle from the Pharisees who are threatening her, telling them, "He who is without sin can throw the first stone." Julia notes, "In talking about sin, Jesus also doesn't even say leave your adulterous relationship. 'Leave your life of sin' is actually a really broad statement. (37:10)

So how do we not talk about affairs? Let's avoid enacting the ways that the church commonly plays the role of the Pharisees.

How do we talk about affairs? Well, next episode, Julia and Jeremiah will talk a bit about theirs.

In the meantime, we highly encourage you to check out two books that talk about the anatomy of affairs:

1. The State of Affairs by Esther Perel

2. Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin

Let's heal together!

The first two Deadly Sexual Sins According to the Church—don't have sex before you get married, and don't be gay—are commonly linked to the church's sexual ethic.

The third of the sins is the psychological engine for the church's position on sexuality: Don't lust.

And to be fair, don't lust has important implications, especially in a world where over half of adult women (and nearly a third of adult men) have experienced at minimum sexual harassment. However, as Jeremiah mentions,

"I think that the problem though becomes when "don't objectify women" very quickly moves into, " just don't have wants." And in a context that refuses to teach things, processes like consent , sexual anatomy, sexual physiology, the sexual response cycles and the histories of sexual response cycles, it's understandable how that move gets made."

We invite our friends Jake and Sarah to talk with us about how growing up in the Evangelical Church (the same collegiate church as Jeremiah) impacted their relationship with wants as individuals and as a partnership. We describe a three step process that can help people give themselves permission to name their wants and desires, including:

1. Developing a process for exploring your own wants and needs.

2. Determining how to translate your wants into verbalizations, and identify the barriers to vocalizing said wants.

3. Asking the question "What do you want?" And actually answering the question when your partner asks.

Share your stories about how you learned to give yourself permission to want and desire! Let's heal together!

Deconstruction is the process of re-evaluating the worldview and behavioral expectations of a specific community. 

Talking openly about sexual experiences that exist outside of purity culture dictates is one of the fastest ways that a couple from a high control religious context may begin deconstructing.

Season 9 of Sexvangelicals explores ten of the most commonly asked questions that we receive as sex therapists. And it starts with perhaps the most stress-inducing question of all:

Can my relationship survive deconstruction?

In this episode, we talk about:

• Relational health assessment (6:00): Jeremiah discusses the assessment they created (along with Maddie) available on Substack Relationship 101: " Ultimately, we're not here to tell you whether or not you should stay married. We don't place a judgment on where your relationship lands as you navigate the sexual and relational impact of deconstruction. We hope that you'll make that choice using your values to guide you, rather than relying on the behavioral expectations of others."

• Problem Saturated Narratives (11:00): Julia breaks down the assessment title and implications, "The title itself suggests what therapists would call a problem saturated narrative rather than a strength based narrative. Also, the title suggests only a binary outcome. Either the relationship is in trouble or it's not. We ultimately decided to keep this title because this is the language that folks in my practice use when they are worried about their relationship."

• Actually Talking (14:00): Jeremiah notes: "Talking about sex and sexuality well first means actually talking about it. Many couples that I've seen for therapy have had some of their first conversations about sex in my office …  if you followed all the rules and expectations of the church, there wasn't really anything to talk about. The norms of EMPish communities do not leave much room for negotiation or conversation."

• All Talk (17:00): Julia shares, " So all that to say, talking about sexuality, even talking about sexuality well or well ish, doesn't necessarily translate into the positive experiences of giving or receiving sexual initiation. In all our talking about sex, in all of the book discussions about the Christian books we were reading, we never had conversations about how we actually wanted to initiate or receive initiation for sex. "

• Narratives Around Physical Pain (20:00): Julia says, " On the topic of physical pain, I truly cannot tell you how often I heard that sex for women hurts the first time. And sometimes it just hurts, even if it's not your first time. That was to be expected in Purity Culture." 

• Young and Married (the Church Group (25:00): Julia reflects on her time in a church group, " It reinforces this idea that you get married young and the best way to be an adult is to be young and married. If you are then a person in a partnership who is deconstructing on your own or you and your partner are deconstructing, you are also potentially embedded within communities that have very strict and stringent expectations.

• Systems & Pushing Back (27:00): Jeremiah notes, " One of the key themes of working with systems is that when one person changes the system will not change along with you. The system will do whatever it can to push back and to maintain stability and homeostasis."

• When Religion is No Longer Unifying (30:00): Julia says, " So if you and your partner are noticing that religion or religious spaces are no longer unifying and actually causing strain and conflict, perhaps the relationship needs some support in determining the next steps, whether or not the relationship continues and whether or not the relationship continues to stay in religious spaces."

• Relationship 101 (33:00): Jeremiah says, "Talk to your partner about your concerns. You are not going through this alone, and your partner is the person closest to your experience."

• How Do I Find a Therapist (34:00): Julia and Jeremiah discuss their three pillars, " How do I actually find a good therapist or coach? Because it is a super, super daunting process. So I ask folks to consider three different pillars that will hopefully set you up for a positive outcome:

1. Clinical scope of practice.

2.  Consider is the relational fit. 

3. The third pillar to consider is the logistics pillar. This includes online versus in person work, cost of services. Availability for scheduling. All of this is self explanatory, but necessary to consider."

Jeremiah and Julia continue their series The Seven Deadly Sexual Sins, According to the Church, with the deadliest of the "sins", as we were reminded over the weekend in Colorado Springs:

Don't be gay.

Jeremiah and Julia discuss the different ways that the combination of "Don't be gay" and "Don't have sex before you get married" negatively impacted their development.

For Jeremiah, he struggled to have male friendships, despite his deep desire for emotional connection, out of fear that if he got too close, someone might shout, "Jeremiah's gay." Like many communities, the church struggles to separate sexual connection from emotional connection.

For Julia, "Don't be gay" prohibited her from exploring all elements of her sexuality in same-sex and opposite-sex contexts, leading to a social presentation that was "juvenile". She explains: "The really difficult part there is that hiding for the sake of my safety, hiding for other reasons also severely limited me."

They close the episode by talking about two binaries that the church (and other institutions) place around queerness:

1. Either you're gay or you're straight.

2. Either you're "born that way" or queerness was socialized into you.

Julia and Jeremiah discuss ways of broadening this binary. Check out their reflections on:

1. The Kinsey Scale, which Jeremiah uses to assess his own queerness.

2. Lisa Diamond and her sexual fluidity model.

3. The practice of naming sexual behaviors that are rooted in your sexual values rather than the social expectations of your sexual identity.

We will continue to discuss the impact of the church's relationship with queerness in future episodes, alongside of the five remaining deadly sexual sins of the church.

Let's heal together!

The murders at Club Q on November 20 in Colorado Springs are horrific, as are all acts of violence against the queer community.

Julia and Jeremiah bypass the impulse to dissect how church rhetoric impacted the murders, especially given that they happened in the mecca of the Evangelical Church, and land on the following position:

"The church's anti-queer propaganda absolutely has and continues to set the stage for this violence on large global scales, on individual scales, family scales, and communal scales. No more of this bullshit."

We are dedicated to the work of talking about the influence of the evangelical church on the lives of individuals and on the lives of communities. And we'll have more episodes about the seven deadly sins in the next few weeks.

But for today, for tonight, please take care of yourself. Get a little extra rest tonight. Do what it takes to grieve on your own terms, whatever that process is.

Welcome back to Church, and Julia and Jeremiah's Wednesday night mid-week class called the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins. Today, we talk about the first of the sins, which is also the apex of Purity Culture:

Don't have sex before you get married.

And as Jeremiah and Julia discuss, the Evangelical Church has collaborated with policy makers to ensure that abstinence only sex education is infused throughout public schools nationwide.

The Evangelical Church suggests three ways that sexual experiences will be blissful for those who wait until marriage to have sex. 

1) You and your spouse will be able to intuit each other's needs. 

2) Your honeymoon will be the most incredible experience of your life. 

3) Sex will be spontaneous, and will flow naturally without any need to discuss it. 

Remember: These three lessons fit into the last week's episode, Don't Talk About Sex.

To be fair, most couples have a sexual relationship that only occasionally fits into these three categories, but what happens when these three ways no longer work for your relationship, and you lack a foundation of sexual literacy to talk about the types of sexual experiences you'd like to have?

Jeremiah and Julia discuss strategies to base a healthy sexual relationship. Learn more about: 

1) The eight characteristics of optimal sexual experiences, from Peggy Kleinplatz's and Dana Menard's book Magnificent Sex

2) How to identify and disrupt the sexual shame cycle.

3) How to develop your own sexual menu practice.

Check out the full transcript of the episode on Descript!

Sexvangelicals is a podcast about the sex education that the church didn't want you to have.

What's the sex education that the church did want you to have? So glad that you asked!

Julia and Jeremiah talk about the Seven Deadly Sexual Sins (According to the Church):

1. Don't have sex before you get married.

2. Don't be gay.

3. Don't have an affair.

4. Don't lust.

5. Don't watch porn. (This is for men, because obviously women don't have sexual desire.)

6. Don't say no. (This is for women, because women are supposed to be the recipients of sexuality. Plus, obviously, men would never say no to sex.)

7. Don't ask questions.

And you'll notice that they all have one word in common.

In this episode, we talk about the implications and limitations for how the word "don't" can negatively impact sex education, as well as how you can name some "do's" to more effectively communicate what you need.

Welcome back to Sunday School! Get some animal crackers, a cup of apple juice, and enjoy the episode!

We are thrilled to re-release part two of our conversation with NPR National Correspondent Sarah McCammon. Sarah is the author of the book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. 

In the age of a second Trump presidency, it's imperative that we discuss the history of the Evangelical Church and politics, purity culture, gender performance, and healing.

In part two of our re-release we discuss how there are a lot of memoirs, social media comments, and dialogue about leaving the evangelical church. However, as Sarah says, "you can't really understand the leaving without understanding loving and living the evangelical church."

The History of Evangelical Christianity and Politics (5:58): Sarah starts us off, "As s I talk about in the book that meant that had implications for queer people. It had implications for how we were taught about science and about sexuality. And so I've organized the book around all of these themes that for me and a lot of others were tension points, or points of cognitive dissonance or breaking points in some cases."

• What Religion May Offer (8:13): Sarah says: "It never left me.  I think about these questions and this is actually something I'm mostly grateful to my parents and my religious upbringing for, is that I feel like it taught me to think about important things, like what's true, what's good, how should we live, what is our obligation to one another?"

• Bill Clinton Era and Purity Culture (15:22): uded to in our first interview was the following of rules in the conversation we're having right now. You're talking about a pastor who broke a sexual rule. And you also mentioned that in that Bill Clinton era during the scandal, you were being told to dress modestly, do this, do that, primarily, don't do this."

• Evangelical Relationships (17:30): Sarah says: "Evangelical Christianity treats relationships like they're a formula. Do X and Y will come out. And that's not just that's not how human beings are."

• Performing Gender (20:00): Jeremiah offers: "What we've discovered is that evangelicalism is almost exclusively about how well you perform gender."

• Breaking Down the Title (25:00): Sarah breaks down the title of her book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. "The title highlights the nuance of all of this because for good reason, it can be easy to demonize the entire system and the entire system of white evangelicalism has caused all kinds of harm for many different people from many different groups." 

• Grief (26:30): Jeremiah says: "That's also the hard choice that a lot of folks are left with. It's really hard to move through talking about deconstruction sociologically, therapeutically, without talking about grief and without constantly that some of the hard decisions that we've all faced."

• Connection and Trauma Bonding (32:30): Sarah shares: "You meet the other person who grew up Southern Baptist or grew up evangelical or Pentecostal or whatever, and you wind up like in a corner somewhere like, you know, trauma bonding. And I hope that this book will make it a little bit easier for people to feel like they don't have to hide in the corner. They can just talk to each other and also their nonreligious partners or their colleagues in an appropriate way about who people that you run into who might not understand what this is." 

• Healing Through Storytelling (34:00): Julia says: "I am thankful that you, to repackage some Christian language, decided to hold on to the calling and to tell your story, but also allow folks like me to have my own story seen and reflected by someone else. I personally am a fan of live storytelling events, and that's because I believe that so much healing occurs through the power of the human narrative."

Let's heal together!

Last March, we had the opportunity of interviewing NPR national correspondent Sarah McCammon discussing the strategy and implementation of rigid conservative values in her book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. We are re-releasing both our conversations with Sarah in honor of the paperback release on February 18th.

In this episode, we discuss the relationship between Trump and Evangelicals, the rise of religious NONES, why folks stay in EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, Pentecostal) spaces, and grief around those who leave. These topics, and this book, are more pressing than ever, in the wake of the Trump presidency. 

Check out our advertisement for our new relationship coaching business, Let's Heal Together!

In part 1 of a 2 part interview, Sarah talks with us about:

• Trump and Evangelicals (8:20): Sarah starts us off: "I think the most obvious reason is that we are seeing and have been seeing for the past several years what appears to be the apex of white evangelical power as a political project. And one of the most important things I wanted to get across in the book is that we didn't get to where we are by accident."

• Two Target Audiences (14:00): When asked about reaching various audiences Sarah remarks, "I wrote this book really both for people like us with evangelical religious backgrounds and for people like my husband and a lot of my good friends who are aware that this evangelical world exists, certainly, but find it in a lot of ways kind of mystifying."

• Why Write the Book? (17:00): Sarah says: "Since then I've been asked so many times to explain how Trump happened, to explain white evangelical support for Trump. And I just decided to write a book to try to answer those questions. So I hope for the quote unquote, outsiders it will help to explain that on a really granular level. And for those of us insiders, I hope that they'll feel seen by what I describe."

• Fear of Judgement (20:00): Julia discusses fear, "Leaving a religious community comes with so much loss. That person might also have the added challenge of moving into more progressive or secular spaces and having a fear of judgment about a particular background. Something that I notice is that when a couple or an individual comes to therapy, particularly sexual health therapy, they have a fear of, "What will this therapist say about me if they know that I chose not to have certain sexual experiences before I got married or whatever else they might have experienced?"

• Empathy and Honesty (21:30): Julia notes: "Something else that you do so excellently is calling out, for lack of a better way to say it, the harm from the broader institutional structures, particularly the political movement so tied with white evangelicalism, while also humanizing the people who have lived and then moved out of it. That is really difficult to be able to do both."

• Why People Stay in EMPish Spaces (23:00): Sarah offers: "You get these sort of incredulous questions for people, like "Why would anyone be part of something like this?" When they hear about certain aspects of it. I can't underscore enough how important every human being needs community."

• Lack of Goodbyes (24:00): Jeremiah shares, "The saying goodbye and the saying goodbye without a proper goodbye. Because most people who leave evangelical spaces don't have a proper goodbye, a mutually agreed upon "Hey, if we're in different spaces, I wish you the best for the next chapter of your life." Most people either get kicked out like I did, or the goodbye is kind of fueled by avoidance."

• Christianity and Inclusivity (29:00): Sarah says: "I've wondered about a lot and I don't have the answer for how would Christianity be different if it had been much more inclusive over all of its history? If people of color and also women had been included in the same way that many churches have prioritized the voices of mostly white men."

• Promises Unfulfilled (32:00): Sarah notes: "That's one of the most painful things, is that even when you follow the rules and the formula, it doesn't always work out the way you've been told it will."

• Salem Witch Trials and Christian Textbooks (33:00): Sarah recounts her research into her former Christian textbooks and discusses the rhetoric: "But then it pivoted to this really weird place and it basically ended the section about the Salem Witch Trials by saying, "You know, all of these explanations ignore one obvious possibility, which is that these women really were demon possessed." I'm sure that I would have glossed over that. But today I look back and I go, wait a second, you were saying that women were witches and it's like all of these really subtle ideas about how the family should look, and who women are."

Let's heal together!

Letting the dust settle allows us to step out of the reactionary space and evaluate our own lives and relationships. 

In our final episode of the series "How to Practice Social Justice Without Being a Jackass", Julia and Jeremiah talk about how to make decisions based on values that are important to you and your family system. A proactive process, rather than reactive process, also makes it easier to make relationships with people who align with your values. Check out our conversations about:

• Reflections on the Democratic Party (9:00): Julia kicks us off, " The Democratic Party could actually learn a lot from the Republican Party, not in terms of its values, but in terms of its organization and structure...The Democratic Party does not have an effective strategy or media structure for communicating its purpose and values to the larger public let alone its voting base So that advocates can share these values and purposes."

• Sexual Health & Politics (12:00): Julia notes, " The reality is that our work as relationship therapists and sexual health educators is inherently political work. Now more than ever. And ultimately, I will argue politics is about relationships. Whether those relationships exist on a macro, meso, or micro level."

• Participating in Public Education (15:00): Jeremiah shares, "[I was]  talking with my sister earlier today about some of the fears that she has about how the state of Texas is enforcing white Christian nationalism into its school systems. And she's made the decision to protest and to have some different ways of engaging my niece into the school system. The fact that  conservative policy makers, education makers in Texas, in the state of Texas, are enforcing these values, are putting my sister and a lot of people in these really hard positions about whether or not I want to participate in the public school system."

• PACT (19:00): Julia and Jeremiah discuss PACT ( Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy) throughout the episode, referencing the book In  Each Other's Care, written by Stan Tatkin, the developer of PACT.

• EMPish Folks & Mission Statements (22:00): Jeremiah discusses working with a couple who were both former missionaries and incorporating models from PACT, " The idea of a mission statement or a purpose statement that they have a lot of experience with that, but so often the mission or purpose statement was written on behalf of other people, with the couple being the vehicle for meeting those goals. As opposed to the couple writing their own mission statement together in a way that they can define and move towards the goals that they set for themselves."

• Reckoning with the Election Aftermath Interpersonally (24:00): Julia says, "Many folks in our audience or client caseload are reckoning with the aftermath of the election In part, by reflecting on the ways that the values of Christian nationalism may have previously informed part of their relational foundation with a spouse or a partner. Now these folks are perhaps developing a new relational value set for the first time, separate from more conservative religious values, within the larger political sphere."

• Relationship Anarchy (27:00): Julia defines, " A real quick nuts and bolts definition is that relationship anarchy suggests that each relationship has its own purpose. And in the case of long term committed relationship, each relationship probably has multiple purposes. The smorgasbord that I named earlier lists about 25 different potential purposes for a relationship. These include, but are certainly not limited to, emotional support, empathy…"

• Shared Purpose (30:00): Jeremiah defines, " To summarize, shared purpose: A written purpose statement holds us to prioritizing a particular way of living and existing during a particular season so you don't end up like me on social media, pulled in 50 different directions and completely exhausted."

• Needing More than Vibes (34:00): Julia says, " I love some Obama vibes. However, we can't run on vibes. Now, Obama had some excellent policy. However, many people didn't necessarily know what that policy was. They were attracted to his vibes."

• Values (39:00): Jeremiah notes, " I have the value of nuance. And making sure that any sort of conversation that we have that we're able to name the different variables that might be at play in any given situation … As we consider and reconsider both the purpose of our relationship and also some professional opportunities that we'll talk about in a bit. Especially, the cultural and social shifts that are coming with the Trump presidency."

• Shared Vision (40:00): Julia discusses, " The final way we want to let the dust settle is through reorganization. Specifically, finding people who align with your shared vision and rules of governance. This may be a multi week, if not multi month process. Developing relationships requires a huge amount of emotional, practical, and sometimes financial labor. The people who share those values with you want a similar world as you. And they want to treat other people in similar ways that you want to treat other people. But they may have a different purpose than you have."

• Motivational Speeches (44:00): Jeremiah says, " The audience and panelists used phrases like organizing and community engagement, but rather than giving practical applications for how we can do that in our own communities, and even in this conference, the conversation veered into soliloquies about hope and courage as broad topics. Motivational speeches are not nearly as effective as the people who give motivational speeches think they are."

• Shared Vision, Different Lane (46:00): Julia shares, " I cannot tolerate social media. So that is a lane I do not want to be in. However, I love that Tim Whitaker is doing it. I love that other folks are actually creating real life strategies for that. So I can say, awesome, Tim, that's your lane. I literally asked him at the end of the conference. What can I do to support that? And he asked us, "What can I do to support your work and your lane? Which is both different from his, but still has a shared vision for what the outcome of the next four years could be."

• Letting the Dust Settle (49:00): Julia says, " Letting the dust settle allows us to step out of the reactionary space and evaluate our own lives and relationships. Specifically the shared purpose, vision, and principles of governance or how we enact our purpose. Be that in our intimate partnerships or be that in our communities. Often doing that by yourself or in a private space with your partner can allow you to more thoroughly name what your purpose is for this upcoming season in a responsive sort of way rather than a reactionary way."

• Who We Are (50:00): Jeremiah adds, " The goal is to say who we are, as opposed to highlighting who or what we are not. "

We close our series on How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season with a two part episode called "Letting the Dust Settle".

We now know the outcome of the election. For many folks, there's an enormous amount of fear, anxiety, and dread about the behavior and decisions of the incoming administration. There's also a tendency, especially on social media, to respond to every negative step that the Trump administration makes.

In these two episodes, we distinguish between a reactive sense of urgency and a grounded sense of urgency.

And the most important characteristic of a grounded sense of urgency is taking the space that you need to grieve in a way that's most fitting for you.

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about:

• Defining Grief (8:00): Julia discusses, "As a reminder, the stages of grief developed by Elizabeth Kubler Ross are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It's important to remember that these stages are not linear...Grief often starts with a fantasy outcome not being met."

• How Grief Looks (11:00): Jeremiah shares, "One of the big parts of grief for me is fear. I'm terrified about what's going to come in the next couple of years and looking at statistics, looking at what other people are writing about helps me pretend anyway, like I have a sense of control over the completely uncontrollable outcome from election night."

• Funding & Media (16:00): Julia covers, "Local news and media companies also receive the majority of their funding from conservative groups. So when Republicans complain about the mainstream liberal media being more dominant, that is simply not true. You and I have discussed in the last few days that there are no equivalent structures that support liberal media and values."

• Advocacy & Funding (20:00): Julia highlights, "Our limited resources do not allow us to always do the advocacy work that we would like to do. And we're seeing the disparity between our lack of resources and the resources that funded the Trump campaign and other more conservative platforms. Grieving acknowledges not just the individual impacts, but the communal impacts of a negative outcome."

• A Vote for Trump (26:00): Jeremiah explains, "Another way to say what you're saying from my perspective, a vote for Trump is the equivalent of my house being on fire., you being aware that my house is on fire, and you choosing not to do a damn thing about it because you want to protect your own interests rather than actually being my goddamn neighbor."

• Love Thy Neighbor (27:00): Julia says, "People feel betrayed, particularly people who voted for Kamala Harris, whose rights depended on her election, and know people they loved, including family, did not support them. The biggest source of betrayal is that folks who taught me to love my neighbor, to treat my neighbor as I wanted to be treated, to do justice and love goodness and walk humbly, are the most consistent source of folks who voted for Trump."

• Fear on the Horizon (34:00): Jeremiah says, "I've noticed a lot of similarity between the last few weeks and the first few weeks of the COVID pandemic. A lot of fear. A lot of uncertainty, a sense that something really harmful in society changing is on the horizon. 

• We are not alone (35:00): Julia shares, "I experience a deep sense of sadness and grief for these people who I love, but in a way that pulls me closer into relationships with them.  A few weeks ago, you and I had some meaningful conversations with a few women in the exvangelical world. And while I leave these interactions with a lot more information to process, I also feel held by these folks in a way that reminds me that whatever crazy shit happens in the first hundred days of the Trump administration and beyond, I'm not alone."

• Family Estrangement (37:00): Jeremiah discusses, "For most folks who decide to go no contact though, that decision comes after years of attempting to negotiate and renegotiate new family expectations to no avail. The decision to go no contact is seldom an impulsive one.  But, going back to the definition, family estrangement refers to a myriad of options that someone can make to diminish communication and contact, often out of a recognition that values and needs no longer align."

• Conversations Post-Election (40:00): Julia says, "A conversation with direct language in which you say, Here is what happened. This is how you voted. And the consequence of this is that. For example, I am no longer going to share with you about my fertility journey, given limited access to abortion care."

• Two-Choice Dilemma (41:00): Jeremiah continues, "The two choice dilemma. You have two hard things.  You can't have both, you have to pick one. And as we talk about in relationship therapy, holding people in that two choice dilemma is an emotionally exhausting, painful process. Both for, in this case, the family member who voted for Trump and the family member who voted for Harris."

• Evangelical Political Alignments (44:00): Julia notes, "We have to sit with that grief. We have to reckon with it. It's by no means the first time that we've seen Evangelicals align with abhorrent behaviors from politicians and lawmakers. But each time there's a part of me that hopes maybe this is the moment that the evangelicals who I love will realize that the behavior of the Republican Party do not align with the behaviors  And once again, I and others are devastated by the outcome here."

• Mental Health First (48:00): Jeremiah says, "From a personal standpoint, your mental health and your relational health is really, really important. So, if that means getting off of social media and risk losing some of the tech capital that comes with that in terms of likes and engagement, Do that. Your mental health is really, really important."

We've tried to hold two seemingly oppositional positions during our podcast series "How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass".

1) We do not support fascism, most notably showcased by the 2024 Republican Party.

2) We support having relationships with people who think differently (and may vote differently) than we do.

To help us navigate this, we invited Sarah and Nippy from the A Little Bit Culty Podcast to join us. They talk with us about the parallels between leaving NXIVM and leaving the Evangelical Church/Republican Party. And they also talk about ways that Progressive folks can effectively dialogue with folks leaving harmful organizations. We also talk about ways that Progressive folks can get in their own way.

• Parallel Process & Christian Nationalism (3:00): Jeremiah starts us off, "21st century Christian nationalism relies on creating an us versus them perspective around a number of political issues, such as abortion, religious liberty, culture wars, and a libertarian economic structure.  Sometimes in order to understand something, it's helpful to talk about a parallel process. How does what's happening in one organization or system repeat or mirror itself in another system?"

• Progressive Circles & Moral Superiority (5:00): Jeremiah says, "Progressive circles have their own version of moral superiority, and also the ensuing avoidance of hard conversations.  Nippy, Sarah, and I talk about how structures in progressive circles prevent healthy dialogue and the ultimate humanization of everyone."

• Proselytizing (10:00): Sarah shares, "I knew that we were pushing NXIVM and that we were proselytizing. The thing that we're pushing is Keith, right? And here I am, like judging Jehovah's witnesses going door to door, when we were doing our version of that hosting networking parties where we could also recruit."

• Breaking the Delusion (13:00): Nippy describes, "I felt like NXIVM was a great idea, bringing ethics to the world and those sorts of things. Once your wife comes to you and says she's been branded and lied to and coerced, all that delusion immediately evaporated and like, we're not doing that. My delusion was revealed to me abruptly. And so I was immediately on a mission to protect my family."

• Struggling to Assert (20:00): Sarah says, "So after we left NXIVM, I was very much averse to telling anyone that they needed to do anything. Teachings of NXIVM were often like, "You have no needs other than survival needs, right? There's no emotional needs, there's no connections, safety, security, support. Those are all things that you've made up based on your own trauma and deficiencies." So for me to come out and be like, express any of those things was even hard. So I was grappling with that."

• Creating Change (28:00): Jeremiah reflects, "It's really, really beautiful to listen to both of you talk about and make reflections on like, this is how I wanted to use my own emotional experience to both communicate what was going on and also the hope that that would create change in a larger system. And in some cases it did for both of you, it seems."

• Reaching Out (31:00):  Sarah and Nippy recall an interaction, where Nippy tells Sarah, "There's going to come a time where you have to like, walk over the dead bodies  and you're not going to be able to help everybody." Sarah responds, "Like, and I was really trying to help everybody."

• Parallel Process (35:00): Jeremiah notes, "Nippy, what you're describing again, just wanting to name the parallel process going on in the larger system as more and more information comes out about the Trump administration and the corruption at minimum that that's happened with that, that the doubling down that's happened with a larger group of people. Just wanted to keep in mind that as we're having this conversation, that there's a larger kind of macro version of that going on."

• Not Defining (38:00): Jeremiah continues, "Julia and I are both therapists first who happen to study Christian nationalism. One of the ways I think that the field of psychology has really harmed 21st century discourse is through the language of diagnosis and the utilization of diagnosis as a weapon of power. You're in a cult. You are racist. You are fill in the blank without defining what that actually means."

• No Nuance (40:00): Nippy says, "Whatever group presents themselves, it's kind of a, you're with me or against me. Us versus them. They don't really leave room for nuance. And in the last four or five years, you've seen it in climate change. You've seen it in politics. All these things that are coming up right now demand that you take a side if you don't then you're somehow guilty of some sort of internal crime."

• Exiting a High Control Group & Covid (46:00): Sarah says, "Ccoming out of a high control group--you, me, Nippy, and your listeners all did this. Okay. Now we're free. We don't have anything controlling us. Let's just say, let's take an example of COVID. That happened. And my first instinct was, "Wait, you're going to tell me what to do to my body again?  Go f--- yourself". And people go, "Oh, you're an anti-vaxxer."  And I'm going, "Wait, you're calling me a name. You're putting me in the us versus them. I don't like that one bit." And it was very easy for people to know if they understood my story, why I would be a little bit defensive." 

• Informed Decisions (48:00): Jeremiah notes, "Understanding that any sort of decision that we make, there's a lot of tensions that are there. And it's important to talk about those, not from the perspective, say, of positioning myself in one group, but from the perspective of helping people to understand, these are really complicated things that we're working through that have relational impacts that have family impacts. And we need to talk about the nuances of them so that people can make more informed decisions."

• Deconstruction (56:00): Sarah discusses, "I had a friend say, "What if a little bit of that [information about Keith] is true?" That was a bit of dissonance. It was like sort of cracking the plate … Of course you wouldn't be here if there weren't good things. You're not willing to look at the bad.  And I realized that that was true somewhere in the back of my mind. So I see that right now, both sides aren't willing to look at whatever side they've chosen has done some shady shit."

For many Exvangelicals, there's an enormous pressure to move into spaces of advocacy for civil rights, especially two weeks before the 2024 Presidential Election. However, advocacy can easily replicate systems of criticism, moral superiority, and shaming, especially when there's un- or under-addressed fear, trauma, anger.

We're thrilled to have Sally Gary and Karen Keen from Centerpeace to talk with us about how to navigate the tension between advocacy and healing part of our series How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass. Centerpeace is a supportive space for LGBTQ+ folks who desire a continued relationship with the church and Christianity. 

We talk with Sally and Karen about:

• Classic Therapists (4:00): Jeremiah kicks us off, "I think becoming a therapist was a way of bypassing personal healing. Classic therapists. Now, obviously I didn't recognize that at the time. I was 23. I had very little reason that the idea that I wanted to do relationship therapy was because of my own family of origin."

• Evangelism (6:00): Julia notes, "Karen discusses how the true root of evangelism is the sharing of good news. However, in fundamentalist spaces, evangelism has become a form of coercion and control, and those who don't conform receive criticism and rejection. If we're not careful when we move out of those harmful religious spaces, we might be prone to enacting those same communication strategies."

• Infighting (11:00): Julia describes, "So you're ultimately describing how folks within the same field of study with different specialties use infighting to criticize each other when ultimately we could be working together. Advancing sexual health as a whole through education, through counseling, through therapy, but we're too stuck in our own superiority to get above that or get through that."

• Evangelical Families (19:00): Karen shares, "I don't see myself as against the evangelical family that has raised me. I see myself in conversation with, wrestling with that family. And in terms of the difference between healing and advocacy, I think one way to tell whether we need to focus on healing or on advocacy is what comes up in us emotionally, what's in our chest, what's in our gut and our stomach. And if we are feeling a pit in the stomach, if we are feeling a bitterness, a rage, then probably I'm going to want to look at how can I heal, which is going to be more with a supportive restorative community versus advocacy." 

• Advocacy v. Healing (21:00): Sally says, "For me, the difference is about a personal space versus a public space. Healing space is very personal and any advocacy that I might be a part of needs to arise out of that healing. And, I know in my own life there had to be a lot of healing before I could take on any kind of advocacy role."

• Food for Thought (25:00): Julia asks, "What's the difference in advocacy when we are looking at systems that can be particularly harmful? And then what does that look like when we're having conversations with the people that we love, who we share our holidays and our houses with? I'm sure that we'll probably talk about that a little bit later, but that's good food for thought."

• Obligation to Advocate (28:00): Karen says, "One of the ways that I can see, okay, I need to maybe step back, is if that resentment is coming up, and if I'm feeling like I'm operating out of pressure, rather than choice, sometimes I start to feel like, oh, I don't have a choice, I just have to do this, and I start to feel this pit in my stomach, and it feels like obligation."

• Reclaiming Evangelism (31:00): Karen states, "I want to reclaim the word evangelism because it's good news …  Where it went wrong is when it wasn't, 'I'm so excited about this. Let me tell you what I'm excited about.' It was, 'let me coerce you. Let me manipulate. Let me assert my dogma indoctrination on you and my moral superiority.' Which is not evangelism. Evangelism is a way of life. It's a lived embodied way that I am."

• Listening First (35:00): Sally discusses, "Jesus said the most important things were to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself …  I care more about learning that and listening to your story and getting to know you and what is really important to you, than I do cramming what I think down your throat."

• Relationships (42:00): Jeremiah notes, "I'm also reminded that Julia, the work that you and I do in relationship therapy is ultimately about navigating differences. How can two people be clear about what they align on, but not necessarily have the expectation that they align on everything, which, I think at their worse, conservative evangelical communities can encourage, and how can we encourage folks in a relationship to navigate even to celebrate some of the differences that they have. And we talk about that on a dyadic level."

• Centerpeace Conference (44:00): Sally discusses, "There is a specific call to respect other people's views and to listen to those views that we're not there to argue. We're not there to express  those disagreements in that context. This is a space for LGBTQ plus Christians to come who have been wounded by those kinds of arguments, who have literally been removed from family, from churches and are still longing. And that's the theme of our conference is  the fact that we are still desirous of relationship with God, relationship with the church, to find a faith community to be a part of. That's what those 500 people are coming to look for."

• Groundwork from Minute 1 (45:00): Jeremiah highlights, "I love the intentionality about saying that. Not just night one, but also like minute one. These are the ground rules in therapy. We call this the battle for structure. These are the ground rules. We're going to be nice. Disrespect is not going to be tolerated. I really appreciate that as a starting space for how you navigate differences in large groups of people."

• Supporting LGBTQ+ College Students (54:00): Sally shares, "It was for LGBTQ students on campus. They met once a week at my home in the evening, and it was absolutely beautiful, and I learned so much from those students. I began listening to their stories, and I realized, okay, if I'm going to really understand this, the number one thing to say is tell me more. Tell me more about who you are and how you got where you are. And I began to listen and I realized very early on that this is not as simplistic as I was led to believe. The cookie cutter answers I had been given in the 90s from Christian sources that were again, best motives trying to help, but we're, yeah, but were not helpful at all."

• Thank God We All Grow (1:00:00): Julia shares, "I remember listening to an interview with Hillary Clinton and, and the interviewer was really asking what I thought were poor questions about stances that she had previously had on gay marriage. And of course, Hillary Clinton supports gay marriage, but she didn't at one point in the 90s.Of course, I don't want to minimize or invalidate the history of folks who have not had civil rights, and at one point in the interview, you could tell that Hillary Clinton was getting frustrated, and she said some version of, Thank God we all can grow and evolve."

• Need for Growth (1:03:00): Karen says, "Because it took me a long time to where I am to get to an affirming place and there are things that I said that were not good, they were harmful. I thought I was doing good, but was keeping people  trapped and I had to see that I was trapped too to be able to stop using my own words to trap others. But I think that there's some of the stridency I can see on the left or the right, the frustration that there needs to be growth is really a remnant of that conservative fundamentalism"

• Advocacy in Relationship (1:08:00): Karen notes, "When you add on to that, the stress of advocacy work, the stress of the confrontations, the emotional, spiritual abuse that comes at you, the holding and listening to pain day after day after day of people who are maybe suicidal or who have been pushed out and trying to be a space. That I think we're still sorting out how to care well for that trauma that comes from advocacy work in order to protect our marriage to not, because I think it's very easy if we don't recognize that if we don't recognize the triggers and the traumas that are going on, we can turn against each other."

• Reflecting (1:15:00): Jeremiah ends us off, "That was a really, really special experience to reflect on, some of the things that I missed. when I was 20 and,  and getting to grieve that a little bit, but also getting to celebrate with Sally and to see just the beautiful work that she and Karen are doing with Centerpeace. It was a big honor."

One of the biggest sources of stress this election season has been the publication of Project 2025. As we continue our series How to Do Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass, we recognize that many of the policies in Project 2025 are dehumanizing, as well as unwise.

While the content inside Project 2025 is infuriating, it's nonetheless imperative that we familiarize ourselves with it, while also taking care to communicate effectively about its dangers. To help us, we invite Andra Watkins, author of the Substack How Project 2025 Will Ruin Your Life. Andra is one of the leading experts on Project 2025, and she talks with us about:

• Jackass-dom in Liberal Spaces (2:30): Jeremiah kicks us off, "One of the themes that we've talked about in this podcast is moral superiority and virtue signaling, and this episode could easily kind of move into virtue signaling and moral superiority because one of the ways that liberal groups and progressive groups move into those kind of jackass spaces is through the specific way that knowledge and information gets communicated."

• Weaponizing Education (5:00): Julia notes, "In this episode and in all episodes of this series, we are trying to walk that really difficult line between the importance and power of education and knowledge without weaponizing that as a tool to further create harm."

• Undaunted Courage (21:00): Andra talks about, "I was really fortunate in the first book that I picked up, Undaunted Courage. It's just one of the best books I've ever read, and it presented this very different picture of that expedition [Lewis & Clark]. I was like, if I could have learned all this when I was 13, I would have majored in history because this is fascinating because the youngest guy that went on the expedition was just 15 years old."

• Pushback in Deconstruction (23:00): Jeremiah notes, "So often the experiences of deconstruction, the pushbacks happen in relationships. And Andra, you were talking about the relationship that you have with your mom, some of the pushback that you have. And we want to keep that in mind throughout this episode and name that, but also know that there is a mutually reciprocal relationship between education and pushing back against the family relationships, pushing back against the mythology."

• Withholding Information (26:00): Julia says, "When we think about sex education, we think about it in more explicit terms around sexuality or relationships. But I think that the sex education the church didn't want you to have can now expand into the Lewis and Clark expedition and, and all the other parts of history that point to facets of our humanity, including relationships, including sexuality that are intentionally withheld from teenagers and adolescents who are learning."

• Project 2025 (31:00): In detailing her inspiration for the substack Andra says, "I was reading along. And I said, this is a Bible verse that I'm reading. It's not presented that way, but this is almost verbatim, a Bible verse."

• God's Law Because God is Perfect (34:00): Andra says, "They all use this same lens though, to say America is a Christian nation. America is a white Christian nation. We need to use the Bible as the basis of our laws. That's what the founders meant for the Bible to be our law, not man's law. And we have to override anything that violates God's law like abortion, even though abortion is not in the Bible. That's how they justify all of those stances to themselves … I was taught you never compromise because it's God's law and God is perfect. God knows all we can't ever give an inch."

• Expertise (37:00): Andra shares, "Expertise by life experience and that's really what gives me my expertise.  Americans don't respect that as much. It's not uncommon for me in left leaning circles to be introduced as a self proclaimed survivor of Christian nationalism. Like there's some reason to question whether I really am."

• Indoctrination (40:00): Andra says, "I don't think a lot of Americans realize that when you sit in a pew and listen to this for 40 or 50 years, many of you are very, very radicalized in their thinking. So having had adult experience with watching people that I knew who were still in that world and how they had morphed and changed over time because of this dogma. All of that experience  and study of Project 2025 and the groups involved  I felt like that was enough to claim to be an expert. And so many people who write about Christian nationalism have no pain or trauma or suffering from it. They didn't grow up in it. They just became curious about it."

• Dog Whistles (45:00): Jeremiah says, "That's good information about considering Colleen Hoover. First of all, considering it quote "pornography". Second of all, what Project 2025 says about pornography. And third of all the dog whistle for pornography that this is actually about domestic abuse and at what point does that then get into like the banned books and get thrown in like the critical race theory?"

• Dealing with Trolls (51:00): Andra says, "I got some trolling commentary in the past couple of weeks and they were upset that I was calling Republicans, fascist Republicans, because they were Republican.  So they took issue with my name calling. And so I explained to them what fascism is and what it looks like. And gave examples in the United States of where it's happening.  And said, if it hurts your feelings that I'm calling Republicans fascists,  then, you know, I'd encourage you to educate yourself a little better about what fascism is."

• Staying Grounded (54:00): Julia notes, "What I'm hearing and learning from you is that education can also keep you grounded when the understandable and justified emotions that you're feeling might threaten to hijack you. You're not ignoring those emotions, which is equally dangerous. You're allowing them to be present.  You're sitting with them. You're honoring them. I think anger is a highly important emotion to respect, especially in terms of advocacy. And when you wait those 24 hours, when you can bring your work back to the education that you do, that can be helpful personally, but ultimately that's what. It has the power to, to change conversations and ultimately to change policy."

This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. We often hear folks talk about their sexuality in negative ways, comparing their sexuality, consumption of porn, and masturbation practices to that of addiction. 

We self-diagnose as sex addicts, or we diagnose our partners as sex or porn addicts. And in doing so, we eliminate the opportunity for curiosity, to learn about our fantasies, our curiosities, our erotic templates, and our hopes. 

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Eric Sprankle, author of DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation, about what we miss when we rely on the language of "porn addiction":

• Porn & Masturbation (12:00): Jeremiah kicks us off, "One of the reasons that we wanted to start with masturbation as a way of moving into a conversation about pornography is that masturbation and porn are very commonly linked from our perspective. There's a lot of negativity around masturbation, self-pleasure that's connected with pornography."

• Historic Roots of Anti-Masturbation (16:00): Eric shares his research: " I didn't realize how identical that is from a historical perspective as to what's going on right now. And it's just the language that has been updated. So people are online today spouting nonsense, like masturbation causes depression. Well, 200 years ago, 250 years ago, Dr. Kellogg was saying that masturbation causes melancholy. Same thing, right? People are saying that masturbation causes acne today."

• It's Not The Porn (20:00): Eric explains, " Porn can definitely be a problem for people and in their lives and in their relationships. No one disputes that. But the reason it becomes a problem has more to do with the individual or the relationship that they are in than the porn itself. And that's the part that gets missed."

• Talking to Adolescents About Porn (23:00): Julia discusses, " We had several folks in our presentation ask about adolescents and how to talk with adolescents about explicit material, especially porn. And the conversation that Jeremiah and I had was, well, this is actually an opportunity to talk about media literacy. It destigmatizes porn because most people are engaged in media to some degree, whether that's intentional or just living in the world and looking at billboards."

• Dealing With Disgust (27:00): Eric says, " We certainly do not want to like over-pathologize sexual interests that don't harm anybody. We certainly don't want to institutionalize people for having kinky sexual fantasies or behaviors if it's not hurting anybody, like we have done in the past. But this idea of dealing with disgust, I think, objectively, there are a lot of sexual behaviors that are objectively disgusting. And so I think it's fine and normal. I think we can validate that emotional response of like, oh, gross."

• Masturbation As A Scapegoat (31:00): Julia notes, "Often objections to porn are really a scapegoat to something else. And within conservative religious groups, one of the reasons, probably among many, that masturbation is so demonized is because a person is considered sinful. If they have any kind of fantasy or desire for someone outside of a very exclusive partnership, that would be lust, that would be sinful. And then if you masturbate to whatever that fantasy is, that is even extra, extra sinful."

• Breaking An Agreement (36:00): Jeremiah says, " That relationally speaking … really highlighting the secrecy and that the breaking of the agreement isn't really about the porn, it's about the privacy and then also the potential ensuing attempts to hide."

• Privacy Not Secrecy (39:00): Eric continues, "Privacy is acknowledging that this behavior exists that I'm not necessarily a part of, but I don't need a full accounting of everything that's going on. I can have a certain degree of privacy around it. So for a relationship where porn and masturbation were allowed and private, not secret, but private, it would be like, yeah, I know my partner Masturbates, I don't really know the last time they did it."

• Pornhubs Rewind (42:00): Jeremiah discusses, " They start that by talking about kind of the 10 trends that we notice … and the pornhub people don't say that but if you're decently engaged in like current events, current politics, like you can make connections pretty quickly. They almost always have to do with something that is actively going on, some sort of active social trends."

• Porn Literacy (47:00): Eric notes, " Porn literacy is kind of like getting into like behind the scenes as to why some of these porn scenes are shot in the way that they are, or why certain body types are selected more than others to work better on film, but also to separate that. You know, it can just be fantasy. Right, and that we can be aroused by more than one type of stimulus."

• Diversity of Attraction (50:00): Julia says, " We're talking about media literacy, we're talking about solo sexuality, and we're talking about the diversity that we all have in being attracted to all different types of people. Just like if we go to an art museum, well, maybe we like modern art and also we like photography, and those don't have to be threatening to each other. Maybe there's actually something cool about having multiple, multiple different interests."

A series called "How to Practice Social Justice This Election Season Without Being a Jackass" wouldn't be complete without an episode in which we talk about the scene of many crimes of jackassdom: social media.

After all, the ways that we communicate in virtual platforms are quite different from in real life interactions. We can edit the things that we say. We lack the nonverbal context of understanding what happened before the interaction. We don't see how other people respond, which makes it easier to disconnect and dehumanize.

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah explore:

• Hiding Behind Avatars (11:00): Jeremiah discusses, "I had a client that explained, I talked with this other woman that I met on a dating app about what my fantasies are.  I interrupted.  Actually, you didn't talk with this person. You wrote out an idea of a sexual fantasy on your computer or your phone, and you sent it to this person … you're not present for the response that this other avatar has. You have no idea how they're receiving it."

• Bodily Responses (15:00): Jeremiah notes, "Your avatar has the emotional status that you as a human being have. When you read something upsetting that someone posts, your cardiovascular system responds in the same way it would if it were to see that interaction played out in real life. Your heart rate picks up, your breathing shallows, and you respond behaviorally and verbally in similar ways. Your fight or flight system is convinced that you're engaging with a real person, and more than that, A real threat."

• What Not to Do on the Internet (25:00): Jeremiah shares an experience he had trying to solve an internet dispute through conversation: "I re-read one of his comments and he threatened to, quote, blast us on his social media channel. Specifically with the intent to publicly shame us despite our conversation about shared values and similar work interests. Despite the fact that when I shared my full perspective including my own vulnerable stories of navigating racial challenges as a Hispanic person growing up in a white community he was vocally in agreement with me."

• Social Justice Warrior Olympics (27:00): Julia summarizes, "When you acknowledge perhaps a shortcoming or a blind spot within his own response to you or others, he wasn't willing to engage in self reflection on his end."

• Virtue Signaling (27:00): Jeremiah highlights: "While companies in actual law enforcement use suspension, fines, or contract termination as punishment for bad behavior, in the absence of that oversight from meta, discord, and fellow tech companies, shame becomes the primary consequence for bad behavior."

• Internet Shame & EMPish Systems (30:00): Julia draws the connection, "This reminds me of what [Jesus] said about praying in your closet versus making ostentatious shows of how righteous you are or how liberal or progressive you are. Sometimes the ex-evangelical world actually repackages the same shitty patterns of behavior that we learned within the EMPish systems."

• Shame & Virtue Signaling (32:00): Jeremiah notes, "As we've learned from our research on evangelicalism and from the broader shame experts like Brene Brown, shame has a lot of power and not the good kind of power. I think ex evangelicals can be especially susceptible to doling out shame to attempt to resolve their problems because as you said, that's primarily what we were taught in our religious communities of origin."

• How to Resolve Conflict on the Internet (36:00): After a similar anecdote, but with a happier ending, Julia reflects on how it impacted her, "I was frustrated and burnt out that the world of social media can be so reactive and frankly mean even from those who are potential collaborators, which is true for both Kevin from the internet and Jamie from social media. Sexual health work, especially in ex evangelical spaces, is challenging work, and if our own team can't learn to pass the ball respectfully, what the hell are we actually even doing?" 

• Online Criticism & the Gottman's (39:00): Jeremiah says, "Criticism invites one of two things. Either for the person to shut down, or, defensiveness, which is another of the Gottman Four Horsemen. The Gottman Institute defines defensiveness as self protection in the form of righteous indignation, innocent victimhood, or any number of processes in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack."

• Gotcha! (41:00): Julia describes: "I'll define gotcha moments, [they] are when folks screenshot or repost some sort of exchange with another person or group showing how they one upped the other […]  So those gotcha moments, although they are trying to solve an important problem, actually reinforce the problem that they're trying to solve."

• Short Form Content (46:00): Jeremiah urges, "For the love of God, I implore you do not diagnose yourself, your partner, your ex partner, or your relationship with anything that you see in short form content, especially when not posted by a licensed professional. You have ADHD if and only when you have been diagnosed by a licensed professional." 

• Social Media To-Dos (50:00): Jeremiah says, "Part one, speak within your own scope of practice and experience. Part two, when you are speaking outside of your own scope of practice and experience, when you're giving opinions about things, for instance, please make sure to state that opinion and expertise are not the same thing. And three, be sure to follow people and engage with folks who are doing the same thing." 

• Lead with Empathy (52:00): Julia notes, "If you would not make that insult in public, and I would like to believe, although perhaps this is naive, that most of us are kinder in person, then don't say it on social media. Check yourself, ask yourself, would I say this to a person if we were sitting across from each other at a coffee shop?"

• Building Community (54:00): Jeremiah ends on a bright note, "Get as personal as possible. Build relationships with other people. We encourage direct messages. We absolutely encourage whenever possible Zoom calls. Or, best case scenario, in person meetings. Take folks out to coffee. Have a nice lunch date with people. Get to know the folks on a personal level to the best of your ability that you're able to."

Healthy systems, be they families, organizations, or countries, require healthy leadership. In our work as therapists, coaches, and cultural critics, we pay attention to the following question: How does one communicate to the larger system that they are a healthy leader?

This week, we talk with Matthew Remski (@matthew_remski), co-host of the Conspirituality podcast (@conspiritualitypod) about two strategies that folks use to develop influence.

Charisma.

Vibes.

Of course, these are notoriously difficult entities to quantify. And as we talk about with Matthew, there are significant consequences to a system when it assesses success primarily through one's charisma and vibes. 

A system that places high value on charisma and the construction of vibes is one that is prone to practice jackassdom. The projection of an emotional experience at the expense of healthy discussion about policies, positions, and context encourages moralism, virtue signaling, and blaming.

Matthew talks with us about:

• Experience v. Expertise (8:00): Jeremiah starts us off, "Too often a social media brand will post something based on their own individual experience, not connected to any sort of larger research, cultural or historical precedent, and identify it as truth …  But expertise requires years, if not decades, of practice, study, asking questions, and wrestling with the complexity of one particular area."

• Experience Informing Expertise (10:00): Julia adds, "You and I have a theoretical model based in an understanding of the science of relationships and sexuality that informs the way that we operate and informs the way that we operate at any given time. Our experience shapes the way that we consider the scientific process. The scientific process includes expertise and our new practice of science creates new experiences."

• Charisma & Substituting Scope of Practice (21:00): Matthew says, "Because of that fragility, that underlying anxiety, this person in this leadership position always has to try to generate a kind of halo effect. They always have to reach beyond what they're actually doing to make it imply more than what it actually does. […] Charisma itself is anxious, and it must always come up with something else to justify what it's offering."

• Yoga & Charisma (24:00): Julia shares her experience of being a yoga teacher at one point, "Some classes are more popular than others, and they tend to be more popular based on who teaches it. And that teacher doesn't necessarily have any additional qualifications, and often they are speaking outside of the scope of practice when the person leading the ovarian health yoga probably is not an expert in women's health or anything related to the ovaries."

• Yoga & the Industry (26:00): Matthew discusses, "There is an outsized percentage of top yoga instructors over the last 20 years. who come from theater and film or from the professional dance world […] And I think a lot of people actually come up against a block. They're like, "Oh, I have this Aesthetic skill. I can move through space. I can sing and I can dance. But now I'm using those skills to communicate spirituality. Is that okay?" The wellness world  brings that contradiction into a lot of sharpness."

• Manufactured Charisma (29:00): Jeremiah highlights, "The other way that you can develop charisma is through outside production processes. We see things like film editing on Tiktok, for instance […] I imagine we're going to see different ways of people developing this manicured image that I am the expert because I have this really well produced film or that I have figured out how to engineer my voice to sound in a particular way."

• Healing & Reparative Engagement (37:00): Matthew offers, "I think that many people who are disillusioned from church life because of institutional abuse, and rightfully so, will often find themselves, in positions in which it feels like it is impossible to trust that community can be safe, or that people can actually be earnestly helpful and dependable and not betray each other, right?  And so, it becomes an existential threat to the health of a person's recovery after coming out of a high demand recovery group or an abusive church environment. And so what Eve Sedgwick recommends is what she calls reparative reading. Looking to the people around you to see what are the things that are actually enjoyable or pleasurable or generative that you can actually focus on and through your attention."

• The Loudest Voices (41:00): Matthew points out, "Sometimes the loudest voices are the most abstract voices. They're the stickiest voices. I think that's really the problem. The more you can simplify something, the stickier it will get."

• The -isms & Moral Superiority (43:00): Julia says, "Something that I've noticed in liberal groups, especially the exvangelical groups, is that there's a moral superiority that can come with the paranoid reading. Like, well, I know better now because I left this group. So I see all the isms, right? I see the sexism, I see the homophobia, I see this, and you don't see it. You don't see that power differential."

• Self-Flagellation (53:00): Matthew highlights, "It's very easy for the politics of material change to be subsumed by this sense that as a person, I have to become a perfect vessel of something in order to be the change that I want to see in the world or something like that, right? […] Self flagellation that comes along naturally with the feeling of demoralization in late capitalism, that it's very, very difficult to be successful."

• Being the Perfect SJW (56:00): Julia says, "We have to be the perfect social justice warrior because God forbid we'd be called out or even worse called in. And then at the same time, we're also obsessed with self flagellating and talking about the work that we're doing and all of the ways that we're confronting our internalized stigma, and we're trying to do both at the same time: Avoid being called out while also making sure that we self flagellate and tell everyone I know about my privilege and I'm gonna preface every single thing I say by recognizing these are my areas of privilege."

November's presidential election represents a comparison between two forms of government. One, a democracy, driven by the principle that many people have voices, and ideally a government that works for a large sum of people. Two, an autocracy, driven by the principle that few people have voices.

Autocracies, such as the 2024 Republican Party, often communicate via jackassdom, including blame, repression, and fear-mongering. In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah talk about common communication ploys from autocracy, and ways that progressives and other pro-democracy voters can avoid responding in ways that reinforce jackassdom. We talk about:

• Frustration & Empathy (6:00): Jeremiah starts us off, "We recognize that this podcast series is happening because so many people are some combination of confused, enraged, and exhausted by the horrendous behavior of the 21st century Republican Party. Behaviors that dehumanize and segregate need to be named as such. However, there are ways to do that that lead to productive conversation and change. And there are ways to do that that continue to reinforce the negative interaction cycle."

• Strategies of Autocracy (12:00): Jeremiah names, "We have a responsibility to understand, to talk about, the psychology and communication strategies of autocratic governments. Almost all of which includes three things. One, disinformation, or the active distortion of information. Two, propaganda, the presentation of information specifically for the activation of a particular emotion, typically anger or fear.  And three, acts of violence, as we see through Proud Boys showing up and camping out in Springfield, Ohio." 

• Populism (14:00): Julia says, "So there's two elements here, it seems. One, there is a singular leader who says that they, and they alone, have the solution to the world's problems. A real life savior complex. And two,  an element of gaslighting is occurring. Sure. To promote that the majority wants one thing when the majority certainly does not want that thing involves a combination of disinformation, deception, and propaganda."

• Trump's Bad Behavior (22:00): Julia reflects on Trump's startling introduction to his election, "I heard from even Christians that I respected that this was just an example of quote unquote, "locker room talk." Which is one narrative. But actually what this is, is bragging about sexual assault. In 2016, I had been a practicing therapist for  some years and I and many women had an awakening to experiences that we had had that were assaultive and abusive. This gave us some language. But it was also fueling massive disinformation on the side of Republicans."

• Populism & Anti-Intellectualism (24:00): Jeremiah discusses, "Moffitt in the book Populism describes three major communication strategies that populists use. First, he explains that populism goes hand in hand with anti intellectualism, or a resistance to expertise and the scientific process … So what does anti anti-intellectual populist look like in real life?  Again, we have a lot of examples of this. Over the last year, we've been following the banned books process in Florida and other states, where Ron DeSantis and others have railed against critical race theory."  

• Moralism v. Moral Critique (30:00): Jeremiah says, "[McKibben] distinguishes between moralism and moral criticism. McKibben defines moral criticism as a well reasoned and thoughtful critique of another person's actions. Most importantly, these reflections acknowledge a basic sense of respect for the other person. Moralism happens when that blame becomes, using her words, inappropriate or excessive. It presents a clear villain or scapegoat who can be blamed for the ills of society. It places blame and namecalls people who may confront or operate differently from the populist actor and suggests that others who join the populist in this blaming absolve themselves from their own issues."

• Social Media & Limiting Empathy (33:00): Julia notes, "Mediums of communication such as social media and texting formats exacerbate those forms of dialogue because you cannot see and physically engage with the non verbals and humanities of someone's avatar, which prohibit you from experiencing empathy and other inborn physiological systems of relational checks and balances."

• Why We Define Terms (37:00): Julia highlights, "The lack of defining terms could create confusion. Two different people could have different understandings of the word, which gets in the way of finding solid ground. It also opens the door to a populist individual or group, creating pressure to narrowly define the term in a particular way, at the expense of the historical complexity of the term.'

• Different Sides of the Same Coin (40:00): Jeremiah sharply says, "Evangelism works, populism and jackassdom are all common bedfellows."

• Relationship 101 (42:00): Julia discusses our first relationship 101, "All of us to be aware of the times that we have moved into moralistic jackassdom territory.  I really want to spend a moment talking about the myth of the perfect social justice warrior.  So in so many liberal circles, especially with cancel culture being so high, we've set up this standard of what it means to be a good liberal, a good progressive, a good social justice warrior. And frankly, it reminds me a lot of growing up in a highly fundamentalist Christian community."

• My Way or the Highway (46:00): Jeremiah shares, " I've mentioned on this podcast before that I got kicked out of the church, which is 92% very much what happened. The other 8% of that though, I think in my own version of that was as I was learning more about sexuality, learning more about sex therapy, I think rather than kind of saying to church leadership, like this is the direction that I want to go with this and saying, 'can we have some conversations about this?' I wish that I had facilitated more of a dialogue between different people in the leadership. And, and who knows what the outcome of that would have been. But I think in general, any time that I move into a space where it looks like I think I have the answers, sometimes it's just like, we need to make a decision and like, I'm just going full steam ahead."

• Moral Superiority (50:00): Julia points out, "Liberals in particular tend to use academic words and either one they use it not knowing actually what it means I am sure that many people use language around heteronormativity or decolonization without understanding it Or, they do understand it, choose not to define it, and use that as a moral superiority context."

We are less than two months away from the 2024 Election. This Election season is a bit different, because rather than voting for separate political parties, we're voting for two systems: democracy and autocracy (specifically, a Christian Nationalist theocracy).

Autocratic governments tend to rely on disinformation, propaganda, repression of voter rights, and fear-mongering in order to develop their power. The 2024 Republican Party is no different. A lot has been written about how the public can ethically respond, and quite frankly, there aren't a lot of great answers for the next 6 months, other than voting en masse. 

We know responses that make it worse. Name-calling and blaming, while potentially cathartic, only entrench the polarization. Communicating around social identity ("White people do ____." Women think ____.") reinforces the stereotypes that progressivism attempts to reject.

From now until Election Day, we will be releasing a series called "How to Do Social Justice Without Being a Jackass." We'll talk with our guests about how to hold our anger and fear without responding in dehumanizing ways. In our introduction episode, we talk about:

• EMPish Spaces & Being a Jackass (13:00): Julia notes, "To put it bluntly, folks from Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities, or EMPish folks, can be jackasses when it comes to communicating and upholding the values of purity culture. There's obviously overt, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic messages often expressed directly from the pulpit or from Christian publishing houses. That can translate into some abhorrent behavior on social media. I think a lot of people are sick of it."

• Deconstruction as a Political Process (15:00): Jeremiah highlights, "Deconstruction, especially from EMPish communities is inherently a political process.  My guess is that in two months, most of you will likely be voting for Kamala Harris in the election. Not necessarily because you agree with her strategies or policies, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But because you've walked away from communities that enact the same policies of Project 2025."

• Persuasion & Pointlessness (17:00): Jeremiah notes, "Trying to convince someone that they're wrong only entrenches their position, especially when that someone is fully convinced that they are right, as EMPish Republicans often do, as they've convinced themselves that Trump is sent from God to deliver a troubled American nation out of exile."

• Responding to Hate (20:00): Julia says, "We can talk about misogyny, but responding to misogyny with, I'm now unfriending all my friends who are misogynists that I didn't know were misogynists, is not a great way to actually respond to misogyny. Because even if they are harmful, dangerous people, dehumanizing is actually maybe only going to fuel their dangerous fire."

• Accessibility (25:00): Jeremiah discusses, "Our country has a pretty sordid history of removing accessibility and affordability to these basic things, be that through the reduction of taxes, which reduces government services to provide quality education and safe infrastructure, gerrymandering and other strategies to reduce voting power, or straight up discrimination that bars groups of people from receiving services and entryways to success." 

• Relational Health (27:00): Jeremiah defines, "Relational health is a process of developing sustainable, healthy forms of collaboration with other important people that allows small groups of people to meet common shared goals, such as sexual flourishing, emotional connection, or financial support. Relational health focuses specifically on how two or more people interact with each other to solve problems and meet their goals." 

• Jackass Distinctions (29:00): Julia says, "I'm considering how individuation is often an act of protest, which is vital. However, protest is an act of separation rather than collaboration. You and I are experts in communication and as experts in communication, we always prefer collaboration over separation. However, in the face of oppression, protest and separation, is often the only option. We'd like to distinguish Jackass-dom, which is communicating in dehumanizing ways from the important work of political protest and separation, which is necessary to preserve human rights."

• "Jackass-dom" Continued (31:00): Julia adds: "As relationship experts, we would love differentiation to be the dominant practice within political advocacy. That's not always the case. What we're facing in our country is not just an unwillingness of one party to acknowledge the role that the history of discrimination plays in our country, but their active recreation of discriminatory practices. Which sometimes means individuation is the only option rather than a differentiated approach."

• Power & Shame (34:00): Jeremiah details, "I think that's actually one of the primary ways that liberals end up being social justice jackasses.Connected to that, there's a vocabulary that liberals have developed that has linked power with shame. The more privilege you have, the more untrustworthy of an individual you are. Change takes an AA approach. The first step is admitting that you have a problem or that your privilege is a problem."

• Behavior v. Values (36:00): Julia draws the connection, "Behavior focuses on what a person or relationship decides to do. Value focuses on what a person or relationship chooses to do. I think liberals can do the same thing, except rather than talking about behaviors, they talk about identities. And a huge caveat, Identities are really, really important. We're not suggesting that we don't talk about it. The work of social justice in many ways requires it, but we can't end the conversation there."

• Reposting & Unfollowing Without Context (40:00): Julia discusses, "For starters, it pits two people or groups against each other, the Christian and the non Christian, the racist and the anti racist. Or, to go back to the example that I gave earlier in the episode, the misogynist and the anti misogynist. Look at me, I am unfriending all those people who are misogynist.  How does that help anyone or anything and I actually mean that like with curiosity, I don't know how that helps anyone or anything except further reinforcing that you are virtue signaling to your echo chamber that you are a good social justice warrior that you are on the right side of history." 

• "I'm Better Than You!" (44:00): Jeremiah notes, "Jackass-dom also includes virtue signaling and the creation of a moral hierarchy. I am a better human, or you are less evolved than me because you have these specific beliefs."

• Relationship 101 (46:00): Jeremiah discusses one of today's relationship 101's: "The third thing that we want to name is to take a relationship approach. As you mentioned earlier, Julia, identity is really important. However, when we start with identity, such as our gender, orientation, or race, we're talking about a large group of people and ourselves as one member of a large group of people. And as such, we become more prone to stereotypes, essentialism, or black and white thinking, and moral superiority. Instead, consider the dyadic relationships that are the most important to you. Your siblings, your partnerships, your family relationships, your best friends, and speak from the perspective of what might help those two and three person relationships thrive rather than a large group of people who may have different understandings of what it means to be a member of that orientation."

It's the first week of school for many students and families. The excitement of a new school year comes with new relationships, new beginnings, and setting goals. For many folks, especially those who grew up in conservative religious environments, setting goals can carry an enormous amount of anxiety with it. 

This week, Julia and Jeremiah explore what it might look like to engage with the back-to-school season without the pressure of setting goals. We discuss:

• Goals (2:00): Jeremiah kicks us off, "The pressure to constantly be achieving goals is not unique to Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal communities, or those coming out of highly controlled communities. However, if you are in the exvangelical or deconstructing types of communities, you may struggle with concepts of productivity or purposes for some pretty unique reasons."

• Pressure to Be Excited (5:00): Julia notes, "Those back to school ads seem to suggest that we should all be getting back to something, even if it's not school. There's a pressure to be excited about it."

• Heaven: The Ultimate Goal (10:00): Jeremiah highlights, "The biggest goal in these communities is getting to heaven, which you can do through a variety of methods. There was much more dialogue around the behaviors that would get you rejected from heaven than the behaviors that would allow you into heaven."

• Double Binds & Goals (12:00): Julia discusses, "I learned that the most important thing I could do was help the non Christians get to heaven through the process of evangelism. However, here was the double bind. I also learned that these secular folks were dangerous. So I had very little contact with anyone who was not in my fundamentalist community. The double bind was to save as many souls as possible and don't spend too much time with the people that need saving because they're dangerous."

• The Goal of Play (13:00): Jeremiah points out that in EMPish circles, "Play can't be play. Play has to have a goal. It has to have a function to it."

• EMPish Communities & Developmental Loss (18:00): Julia notes, "Folks who survive high control religious groups experience what a previous therapist of mine would call a developmental loss. In the context of today's episode, this might mean that the anxiety of witnessing to your friends, the hypervigilance about modesty, and the learned denial of needs for the sake of the kingdom that impeded your ability to play, use your imagination, and so forth."

• The Concept of "I'm Third" (20:00): Julia shares, "The concept was I'm third, which means that the goals of the kingdom of God and the needs of others always supersede your own. For me, this meant that even basic human needs like sleeping, eating, and engaging in leisure activities were either discouraged or came with a deep sense of guilt denying myself was something honorable."

• Athletics & the EMPish (23:00): Jeremiah draws the parallel, "I actually think that there are a lot of similarities between folks who grew up in evangelical communities and folks who do either professional or collegiate athletics. The requirements are often the same. The outcome of that is people who have this sense that I am only successful when I'm able to achieve high quantities of things." 

• The Weight of Heaven or Hell (26:00): Julia says, "Small decisions can still provoke anxiety for me. I often have to remind myself that what I eat for dinner or how I spend an hour of leisure time are decisions that don't hold the weight of heaven or hell. They can actually just be neutral choices. I also don't think it's a coincidence that for many folks, these small decisions that hold so much anxiety are often around basic needs. Sleep, food, exercise."

• Westminster Shorter Catechism (29:00): Julia shares, "So let's say my friend is quizzing me on a question. If I use the article "A" rather than the article "The", that would be a point off. And we would dock each other to the most extreme degree. The absolute vicious rigid perfectionism that the adults enforced on me and my peers created a culture of anxiety, perfectionism, and competition."

• Rubrics for Educational Success (31:00): Jeremiah discusses, "I'm also thinking about education and what the purpose of education is. And do we know that we have successful students by their ability, ability to think critically, to be creative or their ability to fall into line and repeat back and regurgitate back what adults are giving them? And in your system that you grew up in, it's very much the goal is getting it right, getting it perfect, rather than stretching yourself, or imagining something new, or being curious, or any other rubrics for potential success in education."

• Guilt (34:00): Jeremiah says, "The fourth consequence to the Christian obsession with evangelism directly ties to the theme of this episode, which is that taking breaks from goals can come with massive amounts of guilt and shame. When a person's soul is in a balance between heaven and hell, how can you even consider taking a break? Even after a person leaves a high control religious group, the guilt and shame that can follow them makes it extremely difficult to take a break without spiraling."

• On-Ramp/Off-Ramp & Taking a Break (38:00): Julia says, "Something that Jeremiah and I talk about with our clients, and something that we talk about on the podcast, is the on ramp and the off ramp towards a sexual experience. Thinking about sexuality as more than what happens with foreplay and genitals is highly essential. The on and the off ramp may be longer, or a person might need to make more modifications. You are not obligated to power through your exhaustion to have a sexual experience. In fact, it might be better not to"

• Making Decisions (42:00): Julia offers, "Ask yourself, are you the kind of person when you are feeling anxious about a present moment decision? Ask yourself, are you more prone to make a reactive knee jerk decision? And then the best step is going to be slowing that down. Grab a drink of water, go to the bathroom, move your body for 30 seconds, really gently challenge yourself to slow that decision making down. If you are like me and you are more prone to getting stuck in paralysis, actually the best thing to do is to speed that up a little bit."

• Pressure & Sexuality (47:00): Jeremiah gives a piece of advice, "Let's reframe the performative, goal oriented approach to sexuality.  Orgasm and penetration is not the pinnacle. It's not indicative of a positive, successful sexual experience. It could be, but it doesn't have to be.  Ask yourself what the relationship might need. If that's laughter or play, consider a touch experience, a physical experience, a sexual experience that allows you to access that without putting too much pressure on it."

• Urgency Trap (50:00): Jeremiah discusses the last bit of Relationship 101, "Be aware and avoid to the best of your ability, the urgency trap and the urgency trap is this anything that tells you, Hey, the best time to do this is now."

• Rushing Desire (54:00): Julia notes, "Rushing into sexual scenarios is not typically a great recipe. Now, if you've got the capacity and you want to have an orgy every weekend, awesome, by all means, have so much fun with it. But what I have noticed within myself and now after many years of practicing within this community is that often the desire for those more diverse experiences comes from urgency rather than a personal internal desire. Two different types of desire. An urgency desire versus a personal internal desire."

Social media has the capacity to bring out the worst in us as communicators. Julia and Jeremiah talk about strategies for communicating as effectively as possible on social media, which can include taking a break from it altogether.

We explore:

• What Not to Do on the Internet (6:30): Jeremiah shares an experience he had trying to solve an internet dispute through conversation: "I re-read one of his comments and he threatened to, quote, blast us on his social media channel. Specifically with the intent to publicly shame us despite our conversation about shared values and similar work interests. Despite the fact that when I shared my full perspective including my own vulnerable stories of navigating racial challenges as a Hispanic person growing up in a white community he was vocally in agreement with me."

• Social Justice Warrior Olympics (8:30): Julia summarizes, "When you acknowledge perhaps a shortcoming or a blind spot within his own response to you or others, he wasn't willing to engage in self reflection on his end."

• Virtue Signaling (10:00): Jeremiah highlights: "While companies in actual law enforcement use suspension, fines, or contract termination as punishment for bad behavior, in the absence of that oversight from meta, discord, and fellow tech companies, shame becomes the primary consequence for bad behavior."

• Internet Shame & EMPish Systems (12:00): Julia draws the connection, "This reminds me of what [Jesus] said about praying in your closet versus making ostentatious shows of how righteous you are or how liberal or progressive you are. Sometimes the ex-evangelical world actually repackages the same shitty patterns of behavior that we learned within the EMPish systems."

• Shame & Virtue Signaling (15:00): Jeremiah notes, "As we've learned from our research on evangelicalism and from the broader shame experts like Brene Brown, shame has a lot of power and not the good kind of power. I think ex evangelicals can be especially susceptible to doling out shame to attempt to resolve their problems because as you said, that's primarily what we were taught in our religious communities of origin."

• How to Resolve Conflict on the Internet (18:00): After a similar anecdote, but with a happier ending, Julia reflects on how it impacted her, "I was frustrated and burnt out that the world of social media can be so reactive and frankly mean even from those who are potential collaborators, which is true for both Kevin from the internet and Jamie from social media. Sexual health work, especially in ex evangelical spaces, is challenging work, and if our own team can't learn to pass the ball respectfully, what the hell are we actually even doing?" 

• Online Criticism & the Gottman's (20:00): Jeremiah says, "Criticism invites one of two things. Either for the person to shut down, or, defensiveness, which is another of the Gottman Four Horsemen. The Gottman Institute defines defensiveness as self protection in the form of righteous indignation, innocent victimhood, or any number of processes in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack."

• Gotcha! (22:30): Julia describes: "I'll define gotcha moments, [they] are when folks screenshot or repost some sort of exchange with another person or group showing how they one upped the other […]  So those gotcha moments, although they are trying to solve an important problem, actually reinforce the problem that they're trying to solve."

• Short Form Content (27:00): Jeremiah urges, "For the love of God, I implore you do not diagnose yourself, your partner, your ex partner, or your relationship with anything that you see in short form content, especially when not posted by a licensed professional. You have ADHD if and only when you have been diagnosed by a licensed professional." 

• Social Media To-Dos (31:00): Jeremiah says, "Part one, speak within your own scope of practice and experience. Part two, when you are speaking outside of your own scope of practice and experience, when you're giving opinions about things, for instance, please make sure to state that opinion and expertise are not the same thing. And three, be sure to follow people and engage with folks who are doing the same thing." 

• Lead with Empathy (33:30): Julia notes, "If you would not make that insult in public, and I would like to believe, although perhaps this is naive, that most of us are kinder in person, then don't say it on social media. Check yourself, ask yourself, would I say this to a person if we were sitting across from each other at a coffee shop?"

• Building Community (35:00): Jeremiah ends on a bright note, "Get as personal as possible. Build relationships with other people. We encourage direct messages. We absolutely encourage whenever possible Zoom calls. Or, best case scenario, in person meetings. Take folks out to coffee. Have a nice lunch date with people. Get to know the folks on a personal level to the best of your ability that you're able to."

Thanks so much! Hope you have a great week!

Our work as relationship therapists invites couples to consider the variety of ways that their relationship could look, based on the values, traits, and preferences of the people in that relationship. Plenty of couples choose monogamy because it best aligns with these characteristics. However, performative monogamy refers to cultural aspects that reinforce explicit and implicit expectations of sexual exclusivity. 

On that note, we're talking this week about the performativity of weddings. Evangelical weddings take this a step further as the marriage and wedding ceremony represent the socially sanctioned way for two people to become sexual persons.

We're joined by our marketing and communications director, Maddie, for this episode. The three of us talk about:

• Too Hot Too Handle (5:30): Julia kicks us off by discussing the Evangelical undertones of reality dating shows: "In these seemingly sex saturated types of shows, they're not as liberal as one might expect. There are usually puritanical rules underneath it."

• Capitalizing on Performative Capitalism (11:00): Julia notes: "I immediately think of how the wedding industry simultaneously creates and then capitalizes  on the concept of performative capitalism … wedding dresses made of elaborate materials that folks typically only wear once are sold for thousands of dollars."

• Weddings as a Status Symbol (13:00): In discussing his own wedding Jeremiah highlights, "I think this is true in a lot of weddings that the bride becomes the symbol of the family's success. Both their success financially, and their success in raising a Christian daughter who is following all the rules of purity culture.

• Evangelical Weddings (29:00): Maddie says, "With my evangelical background, the idea that you have to wait until marriage to have sex. And so the engagements are super fast. So you might date like on average, it was about a year before he would propose. You'd say yes. And then you're married where statistically you're not even at a point where you've started to have tension as a couple and are learning how you're going to navigate that. You might be a year into a marriage before you even hit that."

• Giving Away the Bride & Patriarchy (32:00): Julia notes: "Patriarchal structures are about relationships between people. And relationships between social systems. So Maddie, when you talk about the giving away of the bride, that is still describing a relationship system in which the woman has some sort of belonging to the parental structure …  And then ultimately say, our relationship between father and daughter is now transitioning to daughter husband, because of course the dominant norm, even in secular context, is a heterosexual wedding."

• KitchenAid Mixers & Marriage (37:00): Maddie shares, "When I moved to Boston …  I remember I really wanted a KitchenAid stand mixer when I graduated college. But my mom actually said, don't get one now,  they're really expensive just register for it for your wedding. So I never bought a mixer. The idea that there were a lot of basic kitchen implements I didn't buy because my mom actually said, 'just wait until you can register for that for your wedding.' Because she's bought a million KitchenAid mixers for all her friends. And it was going to be my turn for her friends to buy me something like that.``

• Who Society Rewards (43:00): Jeremiah highlights, "Weddings remind us that society doesn't necessarily value the people that are most in need. Society values people and funds people who, like, follow the gender scripts and the family scripts." 

• Lack of Modernization (45:00): Maddie says, "The wedding, at least in the U.S., the whole thing around them, it hasn't evolved to fit modern society. In the 1800s, you would leave your family's home and get married and you had nothing. So  like people were going to like help you furnish your house and, you know, build out your food stockpile … But it hasn't adjusted to how society functions now. And we're still rewarding financially and with our attention what was kind of necessary 200 years ago." 

• Morning After Breakfast v. Garter (51:00): Maddie answers, "At least at the breakfast, it's going to be like more elbowing and winking at the couple, as opposed to the pressure is on the woman, it's like, she's just an object that is undressing and you're just sitting there pretending to smile when it's like really far up your thigh. Everyone's watching you and you're just kind of reduced to like who the action is being done to." 

• Surviving Weddings (01:05:00): Maddie offers a piece of advice, "Find one ally. Like, if you can bring a plus one, I would always just bring one of my close friends because then we are guaranteed to have a better time."

• Relationship 101 (01:11:00): Jeremiah shares, "You don't have to go to every wedding. If there are weddings that you don't want to go to though, and you feel pressure to for certain reasons, take a minute to think about what might happen either if you don't go or if you don't go to every event right in the wedding." 

Let's heal together!

One of the biggest myths about sexuality is that the more sex you're having, the better the relationship is. Perhaps that's true, perhaps that isn't. But the myths around quantity place extreme pressures to perform sex, and a lot of panic around seasons with a lower quantity of sex. 

This week, as we continue our summer series "Taking a Break From...", Julia and Jeremiah talk about:

• Sexual Sabbatical (3:00): Julia kicks off todays topic: "Sexual sabbatical is the intentional choice between sexual partners to either take breaks from certain sexual experiences or to scale back sexuality in some way for the health of the relationship or individuals within the relationship."

• Eroticism in EMPish Spaces (9:00): Jeremiah says, "Purity culture fuels eroticism fuels sexual tension, eroticism being attraction plus obstacles, and the obstacles being the heavy dosage of morality and sin based language around sexuality."

• Anxiety and Sexual Sabbatical (16:00): Jeremiah notes, "Taking a break from sex could be extremely anxiety provoking for an individual or a couple. If you learned that sex was the primary and most important way to communicate affection to your spouse, and also to communicate affection to God, any decrease in sexual behavior would come with a degree of religious or moral failing."

• Christian Sex Books (18:00): Julia reads a quote from The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller, a book she had to read as a part of her pre-marriage course: "Sex is perhaps the most powerful, God created way to help you give your entire self to another human being. Sex is God's appointed way for two people to reciprocally say to one another, I belong completely, permanently, and exclusively to you. You must not use sex to say anything else." 

• Pressures of Sex in EMPish Context (21:00): Julia shares, "I specifically want to focus on the pressure around the frequency of sex. In the early days of my marriage, my ex-husband and I would pray before we had sex because we thought that might heal what was so painful, both literally and figuratively about sex. If what Keller says about sex is true, if everything that I learned about sex was true, then something was deeply wrong about my experience"

• Transitions and Pressure (25:00): Jeremiah names, "The transition point between pre marriage and post marriage. Pre marriage, you have this excitement and then marriage comes, the honeymoon comes, and then that's when the weight of the crushing expectations gets felt and experienced in, as you've described before in this podcast, really debilitating ways."

• Spiritual Pressure (28:00): Julia shares, "The thing that I learned from before I could remember that would be a source of joy, fuel my marriage, and represent my commitment to God and my husband actually became a massive source of emotional and physical pain. This has eternal ramifications when you consider the spiritual element here or the religious element here. Although I would have never admitted it, I got married to have shame free sexual experiences. And it was this very thing that ultimately tore my marriage apart."

• Frequency (30:00): Julia highlights: "The most important point for today's episode is that the frequency and quality of sex will change throughout the course of the relationship in all types of ways. Not only is this normative, but this is also healthy. Despite what we learned from Tim Keller and a myriad of other sources, frequency of sex changes."

• Turning a Narrative on its Head (35:00): In discussing a conference they both attended, Jeremiah says, "The presenter asked the question and I thought this was brilliant. What would happen if we assumed asexuality rather than sexuality with all of the subsequent assumptions that come with it?" 

• Sexual Activity Statistics (41:00): Jeremiah reads, "In the U.S. we found through the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior that between 2009 and 2018 there was a rise in adolescents reporting no sexual activity from 28.8% of young men in 2009 to 44% of young men in 2018. 49% of young women in 2009 and 74% of young women in 2018." 

• Looking at the Decrease (43:00): Julia notes: "You and I have mused about how the use of social media, particularly the ways that we all exist as avatars, have not allowed young people to develop necessary social and sexual literacy skills to engage sexuality. Especially in moving from the digital world to quote unquote in real time. That being said, we must also remember that young adults may be giving themselves more permission to engage relationships differently, including decreased sexual activity. So even for myself, I need to remember that this decrease is not necessarily Inherently problematic."

• Pleasure (48:00): Jeremiah says, "Pleasure requires planning. It doesn't just happen."

• Deciding to Take a Break from Sex (52:00): Jeremiah answers, "I don't think there's any right way of fully distinguishing between the need for a break from sex versus the need to explore it in a new way … That being said, I think asking yourself questions can be helpful. One of these questions might be,  does the thought of stepping back from sexuality, the quantity of sexuality, bring me peace, excitement, or comfort? Or does the thought of taking a break from sexuality, reducing the quantity of sexuality fuel more distress, anxiety, or dissatisfaction?"

• Ebbs and Flows (54:00): Julia highlights, "Taking a break from sexuality could be a week, a year, a month, forever. It literally could be anything. So don't get too fixated on any kind of permanence here. The whole point of this episode is that the frequency of sex ebbs and flows, despite the crushing pressure that you inherited from EMPish structures, you get to decide what you want for your relationship." 

• Relationship 101 (55:00): One of the Relationship 101 points of today from Julia: "Talk about sex with some humor and some levity. Talk about your bodies in honest, silly ways."

Happy first official week of summer! We recognize that for many folks, summer requires a reorganization of scheduling and routines for parents, who have three months in which they cannot rely on schools to partner with them in rearing their children. 

While some parents see these three months as exciting, others face these months with growing trepidation. This week, we're talking about how to create structures that can hopefully make parenting a little less overwhelming for the next few months. Julia and Jeremiah talk about:

• Expectations (8:00): Jeremiah details the core of today's episode: "The pressure to be a fully present and engaged parent at all times can be really crushing. We'll discuss how EMPish communities model ideal parenting structures, and how this can harm both parents and children."

• Evangelical Parental Structure (14:00): Julia says, "Women were the primary nurturers of children, while fathers played the role, to use the language of my church growing up, head of household, which meant that men took the lead on major family decisions, including child related decisions, despite being less involved in the quantity of parenting than the mothers were. The father might consult with his wife. But, ultimately, the father had the final say."

• Fear-Based Parenting (18:00): In discussing EMPish communities, Jeremiah notes: "This parenting model is about control and controlling, about adults being able to control children, to put parameters around them. The point of parenting is to create parent child interactions where that sense of control is created. Corporal punishment is often a way to create that through a sense of a fear based parenting."

• Policing Parenting (20:00): Julia shares her friend's anecdote about parenting within EMPish structure, "My friend described the ensuing hyper vigilance that developed for her knowing that teachers and other parents at the school were keeping tabs on her and her husband's parenting. This is important, not from the position of offering support, but from the position of policing both parenthood roles based on gender and the gender development of my friend's young daughter."

• Performative Parenting (27:00): Julia says, "The main point though is that many parents may struggle to escape the pressures of parenthood because of the pervasiveness of all types of unrealistic expectations, which don't ultimately support family or relational health."

• Let Your Kids Be Bored (29:00): Jeremiah discusses, "The importance of giving kids unstructured space free of regulation from adults so that children can learn how to problem solve and make effective creative decisions for themselves."

• Easiest Lift (32:00): Julia outlines one of the relationship 101's: "Maybe an easier lift to budget in 15 minutes at the beginning or end of the day to check in with a partner and to and to let children be bored or absorbed in other ways."

Let's heal together!

This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. 

Growing up in a high control religious space means that queer people often have to repress their sexuality, and may not come out until their late 20s, 30s, or later, which has significant impacts on sexuality and relationship development. 

We are thrilled to have Dr. Joe Kort, host of the Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast and author of Side Guys, to talk with us about how Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities negatively impact the coming out process. Joe talks with us about:

• Shame & Self-Acceptance (6:00): Joe kicks us off, " I believe that when you tell children that they have to oppress their sexuality, erotic orientation, sexual orientation, romantic interests, and role play, and then people don't discover this until later in life because they believe as children, that I'm straight, that I'm cisgender, that I'm whatever, you know you have attractions, you know you have interests, but you're being shamed out of them."

• Culture Of Trauma (7:00): Julia notes, " Sometimes I'll have clients come to therapy and they will say, "Well, I grew up in this very negatively sexual religious space, but I wasn't abused by my pastor or my youth leader, or I don't have this explicit incident of trauma." However, what I hear you describing and what I and so many of my clients have experienced is that the culture around some of those religious spaces, especially around queerness, is in and of itself a culture of trauma and abuse."

• Coming Out Later in Life (10:00): Jeremiah discusses: "There's a 2006 study, The average age of coming out to others was 27 for women, 24 for men. So for the sake of our conversation, let's consider later in life to be after the age of 25. Even then, later in life is still a large span of time, and a person who comes out as a late 30-something millennial, let's say, may experience different psychological and social reactions compared to a Gen Z  or a boomer who comes out."

• Building Community (14:00): Joe shares, " I might say to them to get online and build community, do it anonymously if you can do that so that you don't have to worry about your identity or that you'll be outed prematurely … Get out there and go to the centers, go to the affirmative places. Really get an understanding of all the different types of ways to manifest being not straight."

• Losing Privilege (18:00): Jeremiah notes, " You're holding onto all of the secrets, the manifestations of shame. You have the loss of heterosexual privilege that you experience when you come out later in life."

• Making Up For Lost Time (20:00): Julia discusses, "Jeremiah and I have noticed that when folks have grown up in a community that demonizes queer sexuality, and then they come out later in life, whatever that later is, they've experienced some sort of developmental loss. They didn't get to explore the way that other 15, 16, 21-year-olds did, and so they might be 35 and to have an advanced degree and have met other significant developmental milestones. But then they're in these relationships trying to catch up doing the work that some 13-year-olds have done."

• Stages of Coming Out (23:00): Joe says: " There's stages of coming out. I show it to them, stage five of coming out, and help them. Because they'll even think they might be a sex addict. And the religious community likes to put that label on them, right? … It's like a teenager. If you tell 'em to stop, they're not gonna stop … But I help them see that this isn't gonna last, but that they're going to meet some disappointment during that time. They'll have lots of pleasure, but they're gonna meet some disappointment too."

• Grief (26:00): Julia notes, " Some of the grief that a formerly religious person might have is, "Oh, well. I don't get to be seen as my full authentic self." Now on one hand, the straight presenting relationship might protect them from some oppression, and they still might feel a certain sense of closetedness."

• Client Questions (29:00): Joe shares, " You're gonna have to start from scratch, right? You're gonna have to do your own sex education … Can you strengthen yourself to recognize that when you say certain things, being an open marriage, non heteronormative interests, like can you tolerate the fact that people are gonna wanna judge you? And if you're gonna have a reaction to the trauma of being judged from your religion?"

• Misunderstanding Kink (32:00): Joe discusses, " We have really good research now that show there's no more or less trauma in somebody who's not kinky. So I point them right to the research and then even if it is from trauma, and I tell my trauma clients. All over the board, you can go from trauma reenactment and trauma repetition to trauma play."

• Finding an Affirmative Therapist (37:00): Joe continues, "An affirmative therapist isn't gonna say alternative lifestyle, right? Because for me, straight life is an alternative lifestyle. We're not gonna use the term homosexual because homosexual is only used by anti-gay religious zealots who say there's nothing gay about being a homosexual."

• "Side" & Grindr (39:00): Joe shares his proudest career moment: " Side is mine. Nobody taught me that side was just me coming out as a guy who doesn't like intercourse and only likes outer course. And the reason it became popular is I became brave about it at gay men's workshops in the two thousands … Then I wrote about it on Huffington Post in 2013 … it caught the attention of people at Grindr and  then somebody said, I wanna start a Facebook group … then Grindr people, we got their attention … And then one day I woke up my name was everywhere, and it was attributed to side"

• Substack, Lisa Diamond, & Sexual Fluidity (43:00): Jeremiah shares the research, " In the subset article we reflected on, I think Lisa Diamond has like four different processes by which sexual fluidity commonly happens and, and talks about the importance of context situational, getting back to what you were talking about regarding, erotic attraction and the circumstances and situations that might derive that."

• Finding Humor in the Serious (44:00): Julia highlights Joe's social media impact: " I wonder, even for folks who are listening who are unsure how to connect with their values, they can go to your social media, you ask a lot of amazing questions. Yeah. And you also have some good playful content because sexual health can be pretty serious, and yeah. It is serious for a reason. We also need some giggles along the way, and Joe, you provide that."

This week, Sexvangelicals has teamed up with the I was a Teenage Fundamentalist podcast, to bring you their thought-provoking conversation with Tracey Phalen. She herself was a teenage fundamentalist, and details her experience as a member of the Last Days Ministries. The episode begs the question, was Keith Green a cult leader? 

Many folks who grew up in the 90s and 00s grew up with an extreme amount of sex negativity. Regardless of whether or not they grew up in Evangelical churches, Gen-X and millennials were impacted by a culture and policy that reinforced negative messages about bodies, sexuality, and gender.

And it's on us to make sure that future generations aren't saddled with equally negative messages and practices about sexuality and relationships. 

We talk with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast @holyghostingpod about how they have navigated talking with their kids in more effective, affirming, and healing ways. Check out our conversations about:

• Project 2025 (5:00): Jeremiah starts us off on an important note. "Project 2025 is a legitimately scary proposition. In good news, the Heritage Foundation has published the entire 900 page document on the website, so you can read it. Read through what they are planning to do with a Trump presidency. If you don't want to read the 900 pages, which I fully get, there are fortunately a lot of really good resources that are breaking down Project 2025 and other trends in Christian nationalism." 

• Imposter Syndrome (9:20): Lindsey shares, "I think there's like a a little bit of imposter syndrome happening as a person who, it took me so fucking long to figure out sexuality and pleasure, and I feel like I'm still figuring it out. I don't want that for my child, but it still feels like this big limit, how do I even do this?"

• Discussing and Demystifying Masturbation (11:00): Meg discusses, "I was really nervous about the masturbation conversation as well. Of course there's a lot of shame around that subject growing up the way we did. lustful thoughts were not allowed, much less anything self pleasure or pleasure with anyone else. But when it came to self pleasure and knowing yourself and knowing what your body needs were, I was so in the dark about that. But it turns out it's actually kind of easier to have those conversations when you aren't including shame."

• Shame (14:00): Sarai insightfully says: "I feel like the reason why people shame other people is because their shame is triggered when that's happened."

• Engaging with Sexuality at Different Ages (15:00): Jeremiah highlights: "5 to 11 year olds engage with sexuality in very different ways than adolescents do kids say, like funny things, but also very direct, very curious, very pointed things about sexuality in ways that adolescents, at least American adolescents, tend to not to."

• The Pain of Saving Yourself (22:00): Meg shares, "Any kind of sexual or sensual touching was not okay, with me, with boyfriends, because I felt like if I turned that light switch on, that was bad, because that was sexual promiscuity, which could lead to sexual things. All kinds of sexual things were villainized for me. But when I started to shift that language in myself about how do I now define sex, given a non heterosexual perspective partnership, like that just blew my little brain." 

• Relational v. Behavioral (28:00): Julia notes, "I appreciate that you're talking to your kids about sexuality from a relational communicative perspective rather than a rigid behavioral perspective. Because all of us grew up with behavioral restrictions dictating sexuality." 

• Discovering the Importance of Sex (32:00): Sarai shares, "I'm really grateful that I've had the time and the space and the specific kind of experiences to help me feel empowered in my sexuality and being able to prioritize that for myself and not feel like that's bad because sex shouldn't be important, right? We were taught to repress. Sex shouldn't be the most important thing in your life and you shouldn't change how your life is just for sex. I just don't think we need to be in self denial all the time. I want to be in communication and alive and progressing and learning and growing."

• The Gravity of the Deadly Sexual Sins (34:50): Lindsey details, "I had HPV and had some complications due to that and had pre cancerous cells and ended up having to have two LEAP procedures, which is like a biopsy, but then they take a part of your cervix out. It was before I was married, and so because of that I had to tell my parents that I had had sex. I wanted them to know about this cancer stuff. It was pretty serious. And I remember sitting in my car and talking with my mom about it. And she was truly more upset that I had had sex than the fact that I might have cancer."

• New Generation and Liberation (38:00): Meg says, I think that watching and seeing the liberation from the Christianity that I grew up with, seeing those kids be liberated and be able to live and be themselves. And really when they expressed themselves to me, my only reaction was how lucky I am to know you, how lucky I am that you feel safe with me. That I'm a person that you know is not going to reject you or give you grief about this, but is actually going to become like a really loud advocate."

Mother's Day was this weekend, and is a complicated holiday for many folks. On the one hand, the celebration of women's expected unpaid labor for one singular day seems trite, at best. On another hand, women navigate a myriad of challenges on the pathway to motherhood, from obnoxious questions about timing, to pregnancy loss. 

Ideally, parenting is a collaborative relationship between two (or more) parents, with each parent contributing an equal amount to the development of their children. We talk with Lindsay, Meg, and Sarai from the Holy Ghosting Podcast about their experiences co-parenting, both while in religious communities, and during the deconstruction process. We discuss:

• Co-Parenting Wins (10:20): Meg kicks us off, "I think one of my favorite co parenting wins has actually been the way that we have been able to shift our focus from teaching our kid to be a certain way into who are you and who do you want to be? And encouraging and accepting just like who the kid is for who they are." 

• Born Sinner (14:00): Sarai shares, "I think that having him (her son) was actually one of the last sort of straws in holding up any part of that mythology for myself, which really started with my idea of I am connected to this human being. He is born of my body. And I just could not reconcile any part of the idea that we're born evil into this world, and when we come out and breathe our first breath, we're already a sinner. That's so gross to me."

• Trusting Yourself Outside of Religion (18:00): Meg says: "I think that's the shift for me that just went, I don't need an organized religion or other people telling me what to do or how to parent. I can trust myself. And I can trust that I know my kid and that I'm a person who's responsible not just for their safety but for them to have their own personal safety as they age."

• Choice in Motherhood (23:00): Lindsey notes, "I freaking love being a mom. I love it with my entire heart, and I do not feel like I have lost any of myself. I feel like I'm a better version of myself, and I'm really grateful that I had the freedom to make that choice when I was ready to make that choice. And I was even older. I had my daughter at 34, for a Christian is quite old, so I'm really glad that I was able to take my time, and I think having a kid has opened my eyes to reproductive rights and how important that is and I'm really grateful that I had a supportive partner and was given the space to make that choice when I was ready."

• Missing Pieces (24:00): Julia says: "Christian communities have a hell of a lot to say about abortion. And one of the million missing pieces in that dialogue is the importance of abortion care for folks who are trying to become pregnant or have a wanted pregnancy."

• Stillbirth (28:00): Meg shares her experience giving birth to her stillborn while still in an Evangelical community, "It was like my life didn't matter. My life was not the thing that we needed to worry about; this fetus, this baby's life, that we just had to make sure survived. My first protest was at an abortion clinic in middle school. So I saw The Silent Scream as a movie and that was all I knew. And I just was like, there's no way I'm going to let you murder my baby, with this medical procedure. And my God is greater than that."

• Lack of Structure and Support (31:00): Jeremiah notes, "Evangelical circles prevent dialogue from happening between partners. There's this expectation that you go along and move into roles of parenting. And we see this with the couples that we work with the negative consequences of that … On top of that, when things go off the rails, when things go wrong, there's also no structure for either the individual or the couple to figure out how to come together and talk in a comprehensive way about what the hell just happened to us."

• Creating Space for Grief (35:00): Julia discusses, "Just because the numbers around pregnancy loss are high doesn't make it any less traumatic. And I can speak from personal experience and friends and clients. However, as both of you are saying, the message from women and men and religious structures and medical structures is that this is what you do, this is what you endure as a woman, and you just keep going, rather than giving space for individual and relational grief."

• Spiritual Warfare (38:00): Meg shares, "That concept of me just being un-wanting to this child felt like a big reason that, if we believe in spiritual warfare, then we certainly believe that our thoughts have power over whatever. I really did think for a very long time that it was my fault and that my husband would blame me. Luckily for me, he's a wonderful human being who has loved me for a very long time and did not respond in that way. We both were grieving a lot together. It was the loss of the idea of a family that we were starting."

• Not Believing is Not an Option (45:00): Sarai shares the roots of her deconstruction journey, "That was sort of the initial part of my deconstruction, which just started when I was at Christian college. And one of my professors made a comment about who he would vote for. It was the first time I realized that some Christians aren't Republicans and it blew my mind. So that was like my initiation into it. And so by the time I got together with my ex husband, I was through that and not really in it anymore, but I wasn't not, I didn't know what to call myself because I didn't want to not believe in something. And that was like the only option I knew."

• Pre-Existing Conditions and Shame (49:00): Lindsey shares, "I went to go procure my own health insurance and I couldn't get it because of my preexisting condition. Let me tell you if you already had shame about having sex and then getting an STD from having sex and then not being able to have birth control, like the guilt was, it was really intense."

• Mirroring Healthy Disagreements in Coparenting (52:00): Meg says, "We kind of found ourselves getting upset at each other for not backing me up in front of the kid or not agreeing or not showing a united front. And I realized that all of those things were just shutting down one person's opinions or one person's perspective, and is saying, "We have to always agree in front of our kid and never disagree." And I realized that that was just going to teach him some negative things. It's healthy and important to have dialogue when there's disagreements."

• Parenting Post-Deconstruction (56:00): Sarai shares: "My moment of change came when I finally was like, I don't need to suffer through my whole life because it makes it easier for this other person … it was really about shrinking and shielding and it just made me unwell. And so I left because I wanted to be a better parent and I didn't want my kids to grow up and think this is how you treat your intimate partners. Like I did not want them to see me being diminished by their dad. And then go and mimic that behavior."

Pride month next month is going to be especially important. 

Based on the threats from Project 2025 and the behavior of other religious nationalist groups, federal bills that prevent states from discriminating against queer folks are at risk. 

Coming out, already a stress-inducing process, especially for folks in conservative areas, would have far greater anxiety connected with it under a second Trump administration.

We invite singer-songwriter Adaline, founder of the nonprofit Bad Believer, to help explore the anxieties that come with coming out. Adaline talks with us about:

• Hymnal (4:50): Adaline discusses her new album: "Hymnal really is, to me, a response to Dear Illusion, my first album.Dear Illusion was written where I was processing who I am. I was going through a really hard time of reconciling the spiritual, religious part of me with my queerness, with my identity. And then of course when Bad Believer happened, and I was having hundreds of conversations with people, where themes would start to really emerge. So when it came time to make a new album, it would have really been impossible to not write about this, because it had consumed my life since 2020."

• No Hate Like Christian Love (7:30): Adaline says, "There are a lot of people that were coming in through Bad Believer that were either not yet out or had experiences of coming out that were really traumatic and hard. They experienced general themes of how frustrating it can be for God for the church to not be showing the kind of love that they preach."

• One Size Does Not Fit All (10:00): Adaline discusses: "I think because when I write about love, there's so many unique experiences of love. These experiences that a lot of us have gone through are so palpable and so universal in some sense that it is empowering and freeing to know that there were so many other people feeling the same way. You're going to find out tons of people are going to look back on that time in their life and realize that that was an imposed process of thinking coming from a place of power and shame and that the un-nuanced teaching of those kinds of things when it comes to human sexuality, the one size fits all method caused tremendous, problematic trauma"

• Erasing Love (14:00): Adaline says, "So the idea of true love waits as we fade away was me trying to say, first of all, the audacity of us to even claim that the only kind of love that can exist is one that waited.that also erases a beautiful love stories from existence. If we're going to say that if you didn't make it all the way that that wasn't true love. So that also was frustrating for me."

• Rebecca St. James & Waiting (19:00): Julia discusses Wait For Me by Rebecca St. James: "Wait For Me is this really cringy artifact that advocates for purity culture through Rebecca St. James sitting in the back of a car or a cab in the rain singing to her future husband, pleading for him to wait for her. That's where it starts. The song shows Rebecca singing in the backseat of a car, which reinforces this idea that women are both passive participants to purity culture and also the gatekeepers. She is saying, wait for me, versus the other way around."

• Not Being a Part of Your Own Story (21:00): Jeremiah shares, "In my own experiences in my former marriage, the role that passivity played, the role that avoidance played, this idea that you can tell your story, but also not be a part of your story."

• Christian Rap (24:00): Adaline raps, "So just wait for the mate that's straight from God and don't give it up till you tie the knot." This line perfectly highlights purity culture, as Adaline used to perform this back in her EMPish days.

• Myth (27:00): Julia highlights, "The music video and hearing your song and experiencing this deep, deep grief. And then watching the Rebecca St. James, wait for me. And the happiness of it was actually in some ways the most distressing part of rewatching it because it highlighted this infantilization of women and it. It painted this picture of a myth. It painted a picture of something that doesn't actually exist. Your music video and your song is the opposite of Rebecca St. James presentation of purity culture through an idealistic lens rooted in false promises and myths around sexuality and relationships that the field of sociology and sexual health have long ago debunked."

• Autonomy (29:00): Adaline says, "The difference is that it's having the autonomy and the agency to make those choices based on how it's sitting in your body. So if you're like I don't really feel comfortable to do this until I'm married, that's one thing, but it's another thing to be like constantly messing up and then down at the altar on Sundays and like in the secret hidden pain that no one wants to talk about and I went to Bible college and everyone was like super sexually frustrated."

• The Waiting Game (31:00): Adaline describes, "The fetishization of the waiting game that happens within relationships. That when you all of a sudden have permission to have sex, that it actually feels like not as exciting. It can lead to a very strange fantasy life."

• Choosing Yourself (35:00): Adaline shares, "I think it's a beautiful thing to be able to look at yourself and say, "I am brave." But really the central message of the song is, "Can I be this brave? Like, can I do this? In the midst of all of these circling questions, will they still love me? Will they see me as their child?" When you are able to do it, there's a sense of incredible pride of knowing, I looked that monster in the face and I did it. I chose myself. I chose my freedom and my life and my light."

• Love Songs (41:00): In discussing her song "What Love is All About", Adaline says, "This is definitely a love song to my mom and dad. It was one of those beautiful gifts in my life of experiencing unconditional love, which I don't think a lot of us really fully experience. For someone in Evangelical spaces to choose loving you is them overcoming an insane amount of programming, an insane amount of indoctrination, that you know that in that moment, them choosing you is like they went to war for you."

• Radical Acceptance (42:30): Adaline shares her experience coming out to her parents, "It was wild to me to see how quickly they chose me. I told them what I was feeling or I told them what was going on. My father said, "Today is a beautiful day for our family because now there are no more secrets." That was his instinct.

• Jesus and Unconditional Love (45:00): Julia states, "[Jesus] loves me unconditionally and no matter what happens, I can go to Jesus and he will love me and I will be okay no matter what. That's what I learned. However, that wasn't what so many communities that I have experienced and that others have experienced actually witnessed" 

Hymnal was released March 22. Download it today!

Let's heal together!

One of the most common targets of Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) communities in the 21st century are queer people. The moralizing of straight, married relationships places people who are attracted to folks of the same sex/gender and folks who are curious about sexual experiences with same sex/gendered people in terrible double binds.

Folks can accept and practice sexuality in alignment with their sexual orientation in the face of name-calling, loss of relationships with family members, and threats of violence.

Or they can squelch or hide their sexuality, or practice their sexuality in more secretive ways, which itself can have negative impacts.

Coming out in EMPish communities carries a ton of undue emotional and relational pressure. 

To help us navigate that, we've invited singer-songwriter and founder of non-profit Bad Believer, Adaline to share how she navigated her own coming out process. We talk with Adaline about her first album, Hymnal, as well as:

• Body Talk and EMPish Communities (4:00): Julia kicks us off by discussing the song Body Talk: "EMPish communities train folks to disconnect from their bodies, which has detrimental consequences. I love how this song expresses the power, wisdom, and inherent beauty of bodily experiences, which quite the different messaging we learn from folks like Paul or St. Augustine." 

• Hierarchy in Sin (9:20): Adaline shares, "Anyone who grows up in any kind of church system, being LGBTQ in any kind of way, … [there was] definitely implicit reality that it is a big sin. I think we all knew that there were certain ones that just had a lot more emphasis and a lot more weight thrown behind them."

• Binaries and Sexuality (13:00): Adaline says, "When things started to get more fluid in society and we started to see women or non binary people moving away from traditional gender norms, I think that's when it really hit me that it's not necessarily gender I'm attracted to. It might be a certain feeling or a certain situation."

• Co-Opting Coming Out (16:00): Jeremiah notes: "Some families and communities co-opt the coming out process of an individual by misappropriating, say for instance, the trauma that queer folks experience in religious spaces onto themselves. So for example, highly religious parents may experience judgment from their community by having a queer child and act as if the trauma is theirs rather than fully recognizing the literal demonization that queer folks receive in evangelical communities."

• Part of You (23:00): Adaline discusses her song, Part of You: "There's a secondary adolescence that can happen when you start to feel feelings for someone that's really different than you grew up believing."

• Building the Strength (27:00): Adaline says, "I have always dipped my toes in, but always like very cognizant of knowing that I might have to talk to family about it, that I might have to talk to religious friends. Everything has felt like I've had to well up all of the energy I have inside of me and just be like, "I need to say it," Almost every time I've released music, I've had to drum up the strength and be like, okay. And just know that I can't be controlled by it because if I'm controlled by it and I can't make music."

• Trusting Desires (28:00): Jeremiah offers, "All of us in evangelical Mormon and Pentecostal spaces are taught not just not to have our desires, but for the desires that come up to to not trust them. That they are of something else that is quote not of God"

• Double Authority (30:00): Adaline recounts, "So when someone in a power position or pastor or even my father, which made things even more confusing because my father was my pastor, so there was like a double authority thing happening. He was a good man, but he was also my father and my pastor. So everything he said had a ton of weight for me. So when I'm being told this as true, and I'm seeing something that makes it seem like it's true, When someone is like this thing you're feeling is of the enemy, that's it. You shut it down."

• Embracing Your Body (33:00): Adaline says, "I think there's two things going on with my body. I think that I've felt uncomfortable around the sensuality of my body for a long time because of growing up in purity culture narratives, but also I've always been curvy. So I think there was also this part of me that felt like no one wanted to see my body, or that that was something I needed to hide in order to appear more artistic, or more, palatable. I never really embraced or celebrated my body."

• Waist Down (38:00): Adaline discusses, "It's really the only true connection you have. And so you're actually noticing that parts of your relationship are flailing and not working. And you're kind of using that, the sexual connection, the sensual connection to put a big bandaid over everything else that is going on. I had done this in the past. The title itself is evocative and I think it invites people right away to know, okay, well, what, what is going on there?"

• Sensuality and the Music Video (40:00): Julia highlights: "This really lovely layer of nuance, we've referenced multiple times already, the 80s, 90s, and early aughts, and I cringe thinking about the way that women are portrayed in those music videos because they are so objectifying in this awful, misogynist kind of way. And what I love about your music videos is that they are sensual in this celebratory kind of way. And even the colors and the fabrics and the tones highlight the lovely sensuality that you're describing in this song."

• Coming Out and Guilt (44:00): Adaline shares, "I don't know if there's many more moments anytime someone has to come clean about something or unveil or be vulnerable in a way that feels like your body is like shutting down how scary it is. I am very lucky because my parents showed up for me in a really beautiful way and never said to me, "Now we have this thing they had to carry." But I still feel these feelings of guilt and shame and having to disappoint or not being like the gold star religious family, especially growing up as a minister's daughter and growing up a pastor's daughter."

• Story Behind the Non-Profit (48:00): Adaline discusses her non-profit, "So the song Ghost aired [on TV] in August. The fans were just like, what song is that? So they started Googling and found out what the song was. And then they went to YouTube and because they were curious of who I was, they read the description. So then I woke up to like thousands of emails from people all over the world saying, "This is my story. Like I'm in a small church community and no one knows I'm out." Or, "No one knows I'm gay and like I don't know how to come out." I was like, "This is wild. There's so many people who are struggling and who also feel you."

Let's heal together!

What are the messages that we wish we learned about masculinity? What are messages that we'd like to teach younger generations about masculinity, and in conjunction, how we might do relationships more effectively, more collaboratively?

We are thrilled to have Zach Wagner, author of Non-Toxic Masculinity, on Sexvangelicals this week. Zach talks with us about:

• The Books of Deconstruction (3:10): Zach highlights the books that aided him in his deconstruction journey including: 

• Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

• Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch

• Embodiments by James Nelson

• Church Too, How Purity Culture Upholds Abuse and How to Find Healing by Emily Joy Allison

• The Right to Sex by Amiya Sreenivasan

• Conquest & Sex (13:00): Julia says: "The toxic forms of masculinity that the church promotes not only impacts relationships between men and the women in their lives, but also between them and the other men in their lives. And men don't typically talk about sex in ways that are human with each other in Christian contexts. Men often talk about sexuality from the perspective of accountability groups and rein in their sexual desires. In other contexts, men will talk about sex in a really dominant, aggressive kind of way, in terms of how they can conquest women. And neither of those conversations among men are particularly helpful."

• Broadening the Script (15:00): Zach discusses, "Broadening the script of what sexual experience as a man might look like broadening the very kind of narrow, hyper hetero script around sexuality, and the way that is tied into whether or not you're a real man. 

• Male Sexuality (18:00): Zach says: "Living out your sexuality as a man can look different ways, and even the way you experience sexual desire can look different ways. We don't need to like live into this Every Man's Battle narrative where to be a guy is to kind of have this constant struggle against, and the only way to lock this down is to like find a smoking hot wife that can then be your "release valve"  for your pent up sexual energy like it's obviously dehumanizing to women, but I think it's also just really dehumanizing to men and at the same time."

• Injecting Shame (20:00): Jeremiah says, "Zach, as you're talking about that, I think that you're naming something really important. How do we have these conversations without injecting shame or injecting sexual exceptionalism into them?"

• Shame & Desire (22:00): Zach shares, "That the experience of sexual desire or the acting out of certain sexual behaviors can cycle back on itself to a negative view of self as bad or evil or uniquely broken in some way. And I think starting from the premise that one can experience  a certain sexual desire, or even acting out of a certain sexual behavior does not compromise your value as a human being."

• EMPish Communities and Being "Counter-Cultural" (28:00): Julia notes, "Christians are so obsessed with sex. I learned that the secular culture was obsessed with sex. And what Jeremiah and I find in our work is that Evangelical Mormon and Pentecostal structures pretend to be more countercultural than they are, when actually models of masculinity are actually pretty similar in Christian and secular context." 

• Internalized Narratives (32:00): Zach shares: "It took my therapist saying point blank,  Zach, you don't need sex. And also to [my wife], Zach doesn't need sex, he'll survive without it. It's not like you're asking him not to drink water for a week, or not eat food for a month. It's a human desire, it's a human need in a certain sense, but it's not something that's gonna kill him. That was like a huge moment where I realized the way that through various avenues, including the teaching of Mark Driscoll, I had internalized this narrative about masculinity and maleness that marriage was kind of the solution to all of my sexual frustration or all of my sexual desires."

• Desire (37:00): Jeremiah says: "Just because you have a desire doesn't mean that that desire has to have an end goal. Sometimes the desire is just a desire. I have a desire to go to Iceland and hike the ring road for three weeks. Yeah, it's a desire. The likelihood of that happening, probably not going to happen. I'm also not going to invest a lot of energy in that. And I'm fine.  I think that there's also something to be said about giving more permission to folks to have people's desires. It makes sense that you would desire that. Something that would be fun without moving into, okay, how do we want to operationalize that?"

• Sex in Different Frames (39:00): Zach shares: "I think it's like so often the case that Christians will be like no, sex is sacred. And like, I do believe that. I do believe on some level, of course, it is a really beautiful and sacred and intimate part of the human experience. But I also know, like, when you've been with somebody for a long time, and sometimes it is pretty just like, yeah, sex for sex."

• Starting Sex Ed Early (47:00): Zach shares how he discusses sex education at an appropriate and honest level with his son. "I think that can start early. This is part of yourself. That's not something that you need to be embarrassed about. You need to be respectful of these parts of your bodies and parts of other people's bodies. And these are private to you and other grownups shouldn't be touching you in these ways or seeing you in these ways and stuff like that. But we also try to create a boundary between that as like, this isn't a gross and dirty and disgusting and bad part of you, which I think can easily be a message that a kid receives."

Healing from Purity Culture involves conversations of how Evangelical communities have created undue amounts of anxiety and pressure for men as well as women.

We talk with Zachary Wagner, author of the new book Non-Toxic Masculinity, about the importance of deconstructing simplistic, reductive practices of manhood and reimagining new ways that men can conceptualize themselves and create meaningful relationships.

Zach talks with us about:

• Why Does the Book Matter Now (6:00): Zach kicks us off, "We need to grapple with the crisis of masculinity broadly. Post industrial revolution, sexual revolution, technological revolution--these types of things have made for some unique challenges for male identity and the concepts around masculinity in the western world in general. Everybody should be thinking critically about and thinking about what it means for themselves."

• Generations of Toxic Masculinity (10:00): Jeremiah says: "Every generation has its own organization, structures, cultural narratives, iterations, that reinforce these ideas. We're all millennials. And one of the most significant cultural institutions that have really fueled and played into unhelpful ideas of masculinity as this idea of purity culture. You write: Purity culture refers to the theological assumptions, discipleship materials, events, and rhetorical strategies used to promote traditional Christian sexual ethics in response to the sexual revolution."

• The Power of the Purity Movement (14:30): Zach discusses: "Conservative Christians saw that kind of broader cultural movement and the fallout from it and wanted to recommend something different to the young people within their communities. This was an appeal to a traditional quote unquote sexual ethic. I think there was something new and unique about the purity movement."

• The Non-Banned Books (19:50): Zach talks about the books he read within the Church walls: "Every Man's Battle, and books by Elizabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity, Quest for Love. These types of things view romantic affection for another person as potentially ranking above your love for the Lord. That's one of those strange double binds where Christian marriage is so highlighted as the picture of God's love for his people or the church."

• Effects of Christian Literature (21:00): Julia highlights: "Then looking back, I read these books or I talk to my clients, and I know from myself that there's a deep well of shame and anxiety and all kinds of distress caused by these materials."

• Purity Culture and Sex (24:00): Zach shares: "Our intimate life never clicked in the ways that these messages that we had received in purity culture would have led us to believe: If you don't have this baggage or sexual history or, quote unquote, all these ways of talking about it, you'll be able to engage with your partner in a shame free, enjoyable, easy, free flowing, fulfilling way."

• Violence as a Result of Purity Culture (26:50): Zach discusses the mass spa shooting: "I saw the connections between the most kind of extreme form of violence that you could imagine. Given explanation because of compulsive sexual behavior and a temptation towards sexual sin, that's when some of these things started to click together in a really clear way for me."

• Sexism Taught Through Literature (27:00): Jeremiah notes: "Most straight men don't begin to realize the harmful impacts of purity culture until they're in relationships with women and until they see the ways that women have been significantly impacted, by the shaming messages, the misogyny that comes out of the literature that we're talking about."

• Purity Camp (32:00): Zach reflects on his time at purity camp: "As it relates to men, the main message was just this kind of inevitability of this hyper-erotic, hyper-sexual way of viewing the world."

• More Reflections on Christian Camp (34:00): Julia says: "Christian camp in general, but particularly these purity camps, I see as this most awful pairing of misandry and misogyny in which men are these sexual monsters and that women are a walking set of breasts or their bodies in general, rather than full humans, and so neither the men or the women, or girls and boys, actually, in these scenarios, get to be fully human, because they are reduced to being sexual monsters or sexual objects."

• Reducing Each Other's Humanity (41:00): Zach discusses, "I think purity culture has a tendency to reduce men and women to their sexuality as the sum total of their humanity.The woman as a seductress is a way of reducing female humanity to her sexuality. Then if there's a woman who is not sexually interested in a man or he doesn't find sexually attractive or by some standard she is not sexually attractive, her value as a person becomes radically diminished."

• Healing (46:00): Zach shares: "It was a very healing thing, where I just had to slowly learn not to hate my sexuality and hate my sexual desire. And view it through the resources of Christian theology, as a creative good, as a beautiful thing, and not something that God is frustrated about. Wouldn't it be better if that wasn't a part of who Zach is?"

Are you interested in writing a memoir? Then this episode is especially for you!

We're excited to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our guest for Sexvangelicals this week.

Tia talks with us about:

• Hero's Journey (4:30): Tia starts us off: "It's a way to externalize the trauma so that you're not constantly re-traumatizing yourself every time you tell the story. My character goes through this trauma. It's a very emotional journey, and ultimately it's a character arc and the best novels all have these kinds of journeys. It's called the hero's journey. 

• Not Exploiting Your Own Story (6:20): Tia describes: "I had a trauma informed memoir coach, that meant there was a lot of talk about self care and there was a lot of talk about not exploiting myself through the story. Every scene had to earn its place in the story, and it was told in a way that is just what happened. It's like a factual, this is what happened. And then I wrote about the emotions that I took from it, the story that I took from it, the wisdom I gained from it, just like we do in our life."

• Babies and Resilience (8:05): Julia says: "Babies get such a bad rap and I think babies have to be the most brave human beings on the entire planet. So to consider, oh, okay I'm actually going to treat myself a little bit like a baby. And to reframe that in such a positive way to me is brilliant."

• Children and Exploitation (11:00): Tia discusses: "This was also very intentional on my part, they (her children) had already been exploited through fundamentalism. That's it from the time they were born. In dominionism and Quiverfull children are born for a purpose. And that's an agenda and they lose their identity and their humanity in that process."

• Nuance in Deconstruction (17:00): Julia states: "We love the nuance that you bring, because so often the world around deconstruction can be overly simplistic when we view things like gender, among many other things, and in fundamentalism, we learn a simplistic, rigid perspective of gender, and I hope that your book can, in the healing process, get us out of those binaries to a more compassionate perspective for all of us."

• Finding Light in the Dark (21:00): Tia shares: "Something that got me through a lot of the suffering in my whole life is if I'm going to have to live through it, I'm going to make something from it. I cannot get the time back. I know that's a loss and I do a lot of work around grief work. I'm going to make something positive of it. Take something and make this worth something in your life, help someone with it."

• Honoring Our Instincts (24:00): Tia says, "One of the things that happens in captivity, is that there's lots of little mistakes you make along the way before the big thing is made. And when you're groomed, there's lots of little introductions that happen before the big betrayal. And we train ourselves to blow past them, to lean not on our own understanding. I read somewhere that we're the only mammal that regularly shuts down our own instinct and denies our own instinct."

• Slowing Down (29:00): Jeremiah shares: "Julia, you and I have had different interactions between the two of us where both of us have practiced slowing down before we respond to each other. I think it's a little jarring for you when I do it. It's a little jarring for me when you relationally move to that space. But also being able to trust yourself and then also in the relationships that are trustworthy in your life, being able to, to kind of practice that together."

• Write the Book (32:00): Tia offers a tip: "If you're wondering if you should write, that right there is your answer. Start. Don't spend any time debating if your story is going to be valuable. Don't spend any time, especially in the beginning, trying to think of what the outcome of it is and that it's got to be marketable in order to be of value. That is a capitalistic, fundamentalist attitude that's been bred into us. The work of the book will benefit you, period."

• The Books of Deconstruction (35:20): Tia discusses the books that helped her deconstruction journey, "It was the key that was missing from so much of my healing efforts. I couldn't understand why I just couldn't get past things, but grieving turned out to be the reason. Another one that I use frequently is No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. It was my intro to internal family systems and the multifaceted mind, which I always thought of myself as."

We hope this episode is a source of encouragement this week!

Let's heal together!

"While this story is my own memoir, the situations in this book are far from unique. With me stands a choir of invisible fundamentalist women, too silenced to tell their stories for themselves." 

We're honored to have Tia Levings, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our podcast guest this week. Tia shares her research, wisdom, and immense bravery with us; we focus our conversations around:

• How the Evangelical Church is a Microcosm of a Bigger System (12:00): Tia explains: "What happened to me in my little home is a microcosm of what is playing out in our headlines every day. And there are very few people who live behind the scenes who are able to convey that story and demonstrate the subtle ways that it is transforming families, relationships, communities, churches, faith groups."

• Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop (15:00): Julia quotes from Tia: "At any moment, the cup could spill, the glass could break, the arrow could fly. The only way to soothe an angry god is to make sure you tiptoe quietly. To make sure you're pious enough to never break any rule." She reflects, "I remember growing up hearing the sermon from Jonathan Edwards in which he describes humanity as sinners in the hands of an angry god. So, in that quote, you're reflecting the same sentiment."

• Perfectionism (20:00): Julia says, "What a mind fuck to be living in a world in which your depravity is total and perfectionism is expected with the consequences of hell, threatened at any moment in time."

• The Books of the EMPish (26:00): Tia discusses Debbie Pearl's book and its effect on her: "You're holding something that's so horrifying and so relatable. You're living through abuse and the answer is you should still be radiant and you should still smile. And the radiant language comes from fascinating womanhood. I was already trying to cultivate radiance in the face of suffering." 

• Tradwife (29:00): Tia says: "If I was a fundamentalist wife today, I would probably have a very large Tradwife account on Instagram. That is probably what I would do because I'm good at honing an image. Nobody has to see what's behind the scenes, but also the secrets that you're really keeping. And you're not necessarily embarrassed that you're keeping them because  it's kind of glorified that you would protect your husband's image at all costs."

• Dating Under Purity Culture (32:00): Jeremiah reflects on a picture from his wedding: "The photographer captured the first time in five years that I had taken a breath. And that it's a sense of exhalation, but it's a sense of relief that we survived kind of the gauntlet of dating under purity culture rules."

• Covenant Marriage (33:00): Jeremiah states: "Covenant marriage is church sanctioned domestic abuse."

• Cosigning Misery (37:50): Tia shares: "There are some certain points where it's really hard for me to extrapolate older me and younger me. That's because I can in hindsight see the warning bells much more loudly than I heard them at the time. I was so consigned to misery. I wasn't gonna leave there. I figured my life would be miserable, but I'd accepted that a long time ago. It was harder for me to accept that my children's lives would be miserable. And that ultimately played into our escape."

• The Wellness Industry and Christianity (41:00): Tia says: "Christians find a home in non religious fundamentalism because they're fundamentalists. Same thing happens in the yoga community. Fundamentalism can be in anything because once you realize fundamentalism is not inherently religious, now you can look at it in different expressions. And so I think they piggyback and co opt these movements, because it's comfortable for them. Very similar to politically, how the Catholics and the Evangelicals will get together on abortion. They're not really together. They really do not see themselves as the same kind of Christian, but they'll get together on a single voting issue."

• Assigning Credit to the Higher Power (47:00): Tia shares her escape from her abusive marriage, "In Christianity, especially, where even your accomplishments have to be attributed to your higher power. You didn't do anything on your own power. You, it was all because Christ did it through you, and at that point I realized, no, I'm on me. Christ isn't coming. Nobody's coming to save me, we are about to be another headline and I could see it in my mind because I read People Magazine and they have those headlines of murder, suicides, situations, and we were going to be, I could see the big font and my babies. and I was the only person there to do it. So, I'm not giving that credit to anybody."

This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. In the last few years, we've increasingly heard couples asking about play parties, sex parties, cuddle parties, and the like. Opportunities to practice touch, sexuality, and play in intentional spaces.

We are thrilled to have Ally Iseman, founder of Passport2Pleasure, as our guest. Ally helps couples and communities organize play spaces, establish clear expectations for what happens at play events, and explore their own sexual styles and preferences in the process. Ally talks with us about:

• It's All Okay (7:00): Ally kicks us off, " We're gonna look for the next question. Every question is gonna lead to another question. This conversation is not about answers. We're looking to understand why, where the curiosity is, where the fears are, and the landscape of that. So I have a good understanding of where they're coming from and the most important part of that is regardless of what comes up … It's all okay."

• Healing Words (7:30): Julia adds: " Having someone tell me that I am okay. Coming from the background that I had was just healing in and of itself."

• About the How (9:00): Jeremiah notes: " We talk a lot about how relationship therapy is much more about the how. How two or more people decide to make arrangements and agreements, rather than the what, rather than the final destination. And I love the idea of curiosity as a driving value for building that with folks."

• Defining Sex Positive (13:00): Ally defines, " Sex positive space acknowledges that sex is a perfectly natural part of life. It's something we can talk about, explore, educate ourselves about. Just like any other topic."

• Play Party/Sex Club (14:00): Ally explains: " The crowd that you're generally in are people who have an elevated awareness of their own desires, their boundaries. They're able to communicate that they're aware of, you know, your body language and how you're coming across. It's just a heightened level of awareness."

• No Expectations (17:00): Julia says, " I'm glad that you gave the piece of advice around going for the first time without expectations, because when I've talked about this with my clients. Sometimes they have the assumption that going means some sort of participation. It isn't obvious to folks who might not know. The expectation is not there."

• Knowing How to Say No (19:00): Ally notes, " So really practicing honesty. These spaces are actually really great ways to practice saying no. And that just impacts every area of your life. Knowing how to say that, owning how to say no, and knowing that it's not, there's nothing wrong. "

• Sitting with Assumptions (20:00): Jeremiah checks in: " Check in and really think about what are the assumptions that you had about sex clubs and about play spaces coming into this."

• Aftercare (29:00): Ally discusses:  Look at it like a nerd like us. Break it down. What are the elements at play? What can I learn from this? And first and foremost, above all else, know that it is okay and totally common to have that (overstimulation) experience no matter how long you've been in this space."

• Play Party & Inspiration (32:00):  Ally notes "Really getting that inspiration again, coming from curiosity, knowing there's no wrong answer here. It's just new information like art."

• Opening up (34:00): Ally says, " When you're looking to open up, you don't even know what that means. So you might think you wanna open up to include other people in your relationship, but you might just wanna open up more authentically to each other. Learning about this will help you not only figure out which one of those it is, but how to do that."

There's a lot of memoirs, social media comments, and dialogue about leaving the evangelical church. However, as our guest, NPR National Correspondent Sarah McCammon, says, "you can't really understand the leaving without understanding loving and living the evangelical church."

Sarah is the author of the new book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. She talks with us about:

• The History of Evangelical Christianity and Politics (3:58): Sarah starts us off, "As s I talk about in the book that meant that had implications for queer people. It had implications for how we were taught about science and about sexuality. And so I've organized the book around all of these themes that for me and a lot of others were tension points, or points of cognitive dissonance or breaking points in some cases."

• What Religion May Offer (6:13): Sarah says: "It never left me.  I think about these questions and this is actually something I'm mostly grateful to my parents and my religious upbringing for, is that I feel like it taught me to think about important things, like what's true, what's good, how should we live, what is our obligation to one another?"

• Bill Clinton Era and Purity Culture (13:22): uded to in our first interview was the following of rules in the conversation we're having right now. You're talking about a pastor who broke a sexual rule. And you also mentioned that in that Bill Clinton era during the scandal, you were being told to dress modestly, do this, do that, primarily, don't do this."

• Evangelical Relationships (15:30): Sarah says: "Evangelical Christianity treats relationships like they're a formula. Do X and Y will come out. And that's not just that's not how human beings are."

• Performing Gender (18:00): Jeremiah offers: "What we've discovered is that evangelicalism is almost exclusively about how well you perform gender."

• Breaking Down the Title (23:00): Sarah breaks down the title of her book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church. "The title highlights the nuance of all of this because for good reason, it can be easy to demonize the entire system and the entire system of white evangelicalism has caused all kinds of harm for many different people from many different groups." 

• Grief (24:30): Jeremiah says: "That's also the hard choice that a lot of folks are left with. It's really hard to move through talking about deconstruction sociologically, therapeutically, without talking about grief and without constantly that some of the hard decisions that we've all faced."

• Connection and Trauma Bonding (30:30): Sarah shares: "You meet the other person who grew up Southern Baptist or grew up evangelical or Pentecostal or whatever, and you wind up like in a corner somewhere like, you know, trauma bonding. And I hope that this book will make it a little bit easier for people to feel like they don't have to hide in the corner. They can just talk to each other and also their nonreligious partners or their colleagues in an appropriate way about who people that you run into who might not understand what this is." 

• Healing Through Storytelling (32:00): Julia says: "I am thankful that you, to repackage some Christian language, decided to hold on to the calling and to tell your story, but also allow folks like me to have my own story seen and reflected by someone else. I personally am a fan of live storytelling events, and that's because I believe that so much healing occurs through the power of the human narrative."

Let's heal together!