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:

• The pressure to be excited
• The anxiety of heaven being the ultimate goal
• The loss of play
• Setting new definitions on success
• Setting boundaries with the urgency desire

Check out Episode #77: Summer Series: Taking a Break From...Setting Goals on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website

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:

• Real life examples of how to not conduct yourself on social media
• Virtue signaling and shame
• How to resolve conflict on social media effectively.
• The dangers of short form content.
• Building community, both virtually and in real life

Check out Episode #76: Summer Series: Taking a Break from...Social Media on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website.

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 (@badbelievercommunity), Adaline (@adalinemusic), 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
• Hierarchy in Sin 
• Binaries and Sexuality 
• Co-Opting Coming Out 
• Stories for Her Songs "Part of You" and "Waist Down"
• Building Personal Strength 
• Trusting Desires
• Family Systems: When Your Pastor is Also Your Father
• Embracing Your Body
• Sensuality and the Music Video 
• Coming Out and Guilt 
• Her Nonprofit, Bad Believer

Check out Episode #68: Coming Out in Evangelical Families, with Singer-Songwriter, Adaline, part 1 of 2, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Show notes and transcript are on the SV website

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 (@zacharycwagner), author of Non-Toxic Masculinity, on Sexvangelicals this week. Zach talks with us about:

• The Books of Deconstruction
• The Narrative of Sex and Conquest
• Broadening the Script
• Male Sexuality
• Injecting Shame 
• Shame & Desire
• EMPish Communities and Being “Counter-Cultural”
• Internalized Narratives 
• Desire 
• Starting Sex Ed Early

Check out Episode #67: Banned Books: Non-Toxic Masculinity, by Zach Wagner, part 2 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.    Show notes and transcript are on the SV website.

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 (@zacharycwagner), 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:
• Generational Understandings of Masculinity
• The Power of the Purity Movement
• Purity Books 
• The Effects of Christian Literature
• Purity Culture and Sex 
• Violence as a Result of Purity Culture 
• Purity Camp 
• Reducing Each Other's Humanity 
• Healing 

Check out Episode #66: Banned Books: Non Toxic Masculinity, with Zach Wagner, part 1 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website: www.sexvangelicals.com

Are you interested in writing a memoir? Then this episode is especially for you!   We're excited to have Tia Levings @tialevingsswriter, author of the upcoming book A Well Trained Wife, as our guest for Sexvangelicals this week.   Tia talks with us about:

• Hero’s Journey
• Not Exploiting Your Own Story 
• Babies and Resilience
• The Nuance in Deconstruction 
• Finding Light in the Dark 
• Honoring Our Instincts 
• Slowing Down 
• Write the Book 
• The Books of Deconstruction 

Check out Episode #65 Banned Books: A Well Trained Wife, with Tia Levings, part 2 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website.

"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 (@tialevingswriter), 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
• Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop:
• Perfectionism 
• Books that Encourage Evangelical Family Structures
• Tradwives
• Dating Under Purity Culture 
• Covenant Marriage 
• Cosigning Misery 
• The Wellness Industry and Christianity 
• Assigning Credit to Yourself Instead of God

There's a lot of memoirs, social media comments, and dialogue about leaving the evangelical church. However, as our guest, Sarah McCammon (@sarahmccammon_journalist) 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. She talks with us about:

• The history of Christianity and politics
• What religion may offer
• The Bill Clinton Era and Purity Culture
• Evangelical Relationships 
• Performing Gender 
• Loving and Living (and Leaving) the Evangelical Church
• Grief 
• Connection and Trauma Bonding 
• Healing Through Storytelling

Check out Episode #63: Banned Books: The Exvangelicals, with Sarah McCammon, part 2 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website

It's been really fascinating to watch the ways that Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal (EMPish) cultures have begun to be deconstructed and discussed on a wider cultural level.    While some still struggle to accurately name the direct correlation between EMPish cultures and the construction of the modern-day Republican Party, NPR national correspondent Sarah McCammon (@sarahmccammon_journalist) discusses the strategy and implementation of rigid conservative values in her new book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church.   In part 1 of a 2 part interview, Sarah talks with us about: 

• Trump and Evangelicals
• The rise of the religious Nones
• Two target audiences
• The purpose of The Exvangelicals
• Fear of Judgement 
• Empathy and Honesty 
• Why People Stay in EMPish Spaces 
• Lack of Goodbyes 
• Christianity and Inclusivity
• Promises Unfulfilled 
• Salem Witch Trials and Christian Textbooks

The Exvangelicals comes out this week--buy it on Amazon!   Check out Episode #62: Banned Books: The Exvangelicals, with Sarah McCammon, part 1 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website  

One of the most common relational processes that the deconstructing world talks about is boundaries. Evangelical circles encourage the elimination of boundaries. Sexuality is public, as Purity Culture invites people in leadership positions to make a variety of comments about people's bodies. Accountability groups and testimonials favor people who describe the most intimate parts of their stories. 

  When making sense of these harmful systems, it's easy to go the opposite direction with boundaries; in fact, quite a few people in the deconstructing community invite people to do this. But as we talk about with Laura Anderson, author of When Religion Hurts You, the construction of boundaries is a complex, nuanced process, something more complicated than just "Setting those boundaries".   Laura talks with us about: 

• Leaving religious spaces
• Trust development post-religion
• Boundary rigidity
• Differences being dangerous
• Pop psychology messages around boundaries
• Trauma in the context of relationships
• The practice of slowing down
• Healing ourselves first
• Accommodations and understanding

Check out Episode #61: Banned Books, with Laura Anderson, part 2 of 2 on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the Sexvangelicals website.   

What is religious abuse? Dr. Laura Anderson, in her new book When Religion Hurts You, defines it as:   "The improper use of religious beliefs, teachings, doctrines, and relationships against another person. This might include harassment, humiliation, mind control, psychological abuse, isolation, threats, intimidation, minimizing, denying, blaming, asserting spiritual authority, and making it difficult to leave the religious community."
  If you're experienced one or more of the above, our interview with Laura provides some strategies for processing and navigating these experiences. Laura talks with us about:

• Addressing Religious Trauma
• Downplaying Trauma
• How Diagnosing Blames the Individual
• Focusing on the Body
• Eating Disorders and EMPish Communities
• Acknowledging Before Healing
• Two-Choice Dilemmas
• Honoring Grief
• The Demonization of Anger

Check out Episode #60: Banned Books: When Religion Hurts You, with Laura Anderson (part 1 of 2) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Purity Culture is largely embedded within White social and political systems intended to dominate and control bodies through a hyper-moralistic, anti-sex landscape.   However, in this last week of Black History month, it's imperative that we talk about the ways that Purity Culture has impacted Black communities.   To help us, we are sharing our interview with Deesha Philyaw (@deeshaphilyaw), author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, about how the values of Purity Culture have infiltrated Black churches and informed sexual relationships and expectations within the Black community. We talk about:

• Purity Culture within Cultural Contexts
• Values 
• How Sexual Misinformation Informs the Writing Process
• The Lack of Conversation 
• Divorce within the Church
• Fiction and Sexual Health 
• Suffering in Silence 
• “Daddy Issues'' 
• Grief 
• Working Through Self-Hate Through Fiction 
• Sexism within Black Churches 

Check out Episode 59: Banned Books: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, with Deesha Philyaw on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please give us a five star review as well!   Show notes and transcript are found on the Sexvangelicals website.

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:

• Weddings as a status symbol
• The quirks of Evangelical wedding
• KitchenAid Mixers and other ways that society rewards those who get married
• Giving away the bride and patriarchy
• The cringey practices of weddings, like morning after breakfasts and garters.
• Surviving weddings

Check out Episode #75: Summer Series...Taking a Break from the Performativity of Weddings on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.   Show notes and transcript are on the Sexvangelicals website.  

Julia begins, "Unlearning the messages from the church archive is only part of the healing process. The next step is learning new ways to engage relationships and sexuality.    So, together, we are going to begin creating a new library with literature that can support us in building better, more sustainable, and thriving relationships."    In order to unlearn unhelpful messages, we have to understand the systems that propagated these messages.  "If I had a dollar for every time a client mentioned The Five Love Languages in therapy, I'd have close to a thousand dollars by this stage," Jeremiah says.   The problem? The Five Love Languages was written by Gary Chapman. Chapman has no professional training in therapy or the science of relationships. Rather, he's one of hundreds of clergy trained at Wheaton, Moody Bible College, and other conservative organizations who have written about relationships--generally not their scope of practice.  These authors have been propelled by a multi-billion dollar publishing industry who have generated radio shows, books, TV shows, and podcasts to sell complementarian gender roles, a rigid understanding of sexuality, and communication strategies that seek avoidance and compliance rather than negotiation of differences.    In this episode, Jeremiah and Julia talk about:

• History of Christian Publishing Houses 
• Conservatism and Publishing
• Christian Education and Apologetics
• Why Christian Literature is Effective
• Ask Suzie 
• Why Focus on Christian Media? 
• “Sex Ed” 
• The Books of Deconstruction and Music as Manipulation
• Perpetuating Myths 

The Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention, and Acts 29 Churches have all had significant challenges with sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse in their systems, something that becomes even more pronounced when religious systems become intertwined with private and home schooling, sex education, and the expectations of rigid gender norms.   Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women, interviews women who have been victimized within Evangelical systems. And while online spaces provided camaraderie, acceptance, and empowerment, the disclosure of abuse and sexual crimes often gets met with the opposite outcomes.   Sarah talks with us about things to consider when disclosing spiritual abuse, including:

• How the Church Enables Abuse.
• Intertwining of Church and School.
• Homeschooling and Being Insulated.
• Reporting Abuse in Higher Education.
• Parallels Between Secular and Christian Universities.
• Title IX. 
• The Right to Silence for Survivors.
• The Importance of Listening.
• The Internet and Community

Check out Episode #57: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: Things to Consider When Disclosing Spiritual Abuse, with Sarah Stankorb on Apple Podcasts. And please leave us a 5 star review!   Show notes and transcript are on the SV website:

It's well documented that reporting abuse to larger systems is a daunting process. The Southern Baptist Convention is the latest organization to have been outed for the ways that it protects perpetrators of violence, especially against women and children, two categories of people whose stories are commonly dismissed in our larger society.   We're thrilled to have Sarah Stankorb on our podcast. Sarah Stankorb is the author of the national best-seller Disobedient Women. The award-winning, Ohio-based writer talks about religion, politics, feminism, health, technology, and the public good. In Disobedient Women, she outlines how access to the internet—its networks, freedom of expression, and resources for deeply researching and reporting on powerful church figures—allowed women to begin dismantling the false authority of evangelical communities that had long demanded their submission.   In this episode, Sarah talks with us about the emotional and relational processes that empower women to share their stories and hold systems accountable for their actions. We discuss:

• The concept of impact vs. intent
• How the church enables abuse
• Demonizing anger
• The fallacies of untethered empathy
• The weight of speaking up
• Storytelling and journalism
• Defining bravery
• The trad-wife trend, and other systems that encourage women to propagate messages of inequity.

Check out Episode #56: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: How Anger Can Be a Vital Resource for Processing Trauma and Beginning Change, with Sarah Stankorb on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.   Show notes and transcript can be found on the Sexvangelicals website.

Transitions are a natural part of life. There are big transitions, such as a person leaving home or a child aging into adolescence. There are smaller transitions that happen everyday, such as leaving to go to work or switching from topic to topic in a conversation.    A family system has to be adaptable enough to respond to transitions, and many relationship and family problems are rooted in challenges transitioning.   In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah discuss three strategies to help you and your partner call effective audibles and transition effectively. We talk about:

• Transitions and getting stuck
• Unilateral decision making
• Making adjustments
• Sexual content and audibles
• Aftercare
• Preparation

Check out Episode #55: Three Ways to Call Audibles and Transition Well in Relationships, with Julia and Jeremiah.   Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please give us a five star review!  

“Romantic comedies and chick lit reflect messages that are prevalent in both secular culture and religious spaces. Although Christian spaces give lots of lip service to being counter cultural, they usually repackage the same message from popular culture with a different wrapping paper.”

We continue our mini-series Let’s Kick Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse, with Katherine Spearing, co-founder of Tears of Eden and author of Hartfords, a historical romantic comedy. Katherine talks with us about how literature can often reinforce some of the rigid, unhelpful ideas about gender and relationships, and how writing Hartfords positively impacted her own healing process. Join us as we explore: 

 

Chiclit and Romcoms (2:00)

Jane Austen and Subtle Messaging (6:00)

The Fear of Art Within the Church (16:00)

Art as a Means of Survival (21:00)

Psychology, Art, and the Church (26:00)

Rom Coms and the Church (31:00)

Friendship within Hartfords (35:00)

The Power of the Pen (40:00)

Deconstruction and Hartfords (45:00)

Healing (59:00)

Check out Episode #54: Kicking Off the New Year with Spiritual Abuse: How Romantic Comedies Can Reinforce the Worst Parts of Evangelical Culture, with Katherine Spearing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Show notes and transcript are on the Sexvangelicals website: www.sexvangelicals.com

Let’s heal together!

Happy New Year! January is Spirtual Abuse Awareness month, and so we're kicking off the New Year with a couple of episodes with Katherine Spearing (@katherinespearing), host of the Uncertain Podcast (@uncertainpodcast) and founder of the nonprofit Tears of Eden.    Katherine defines spiritual abuse as "invoking a religious text or deity as a way to maintain power and control over both individuals and communities." In this episode, we describe the multiple systems in Katherine's life that practiced abusive dynamics--family of origin, churches, the Evangelical system at large. Katherine talks with us about: 

• Stay at Home Daughters (7:00)
• Women as Property (9:00)
• Double Binds of Womanhood (13:00)
• Arrested Development (17:00)
• Labeling Abuse and Defining Spiritual Abuse Once More (25:00)
• Finding a Voice You Never Had (29:00)
• Individuation (31:00)
• Phobias and Leaving Cults (39:00)
• Silent Patriarchy (45:00) 
• Tears of Eden and Healing (55:00)

Learn more about Katherine's work by visiting tearsofeden.org. We're so grateful for her influence and passion for helping folks in the early stages of deconstruction!

Happy New Year! We hope that you had a safe, peaceful, and festive holiday season with family and friends!   For most of us, this week will be about transitioning out of the excitement and chaos that comes with the holiday season and into the rhythms of everyday life. That transition process can be really challenging on individuals and relationships.   To help us, we invited our marketing and communications extraordinaire, Maddie, to be our first guest of 2024. Maddie talks with us about:

• Reverting and Growth (7:00)
• Applying Growth to the Relational System (11:00)
• Deconstruction Culture and Antagonism (17:00)
• Engaging in Conversations about Deconstruction with Religious Family (21:00)
• Recharging (24:00)
• Little Ways to Reconnect (28:00)
• Holidays as an Adult (33:00)
• Managing Conflict and the Pressure Cooker (44:00)
• Relationship Anarchy (46:00)
• Sexting in Church (50:00) 

This episode is a fantastic way to kick off 2024! Check out Episode #52: Holiday Horror Stories: How to Recover from the Holiday Season, with Maddie Upson, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 sabbaticals
• The anxiety around sexual sabbaticals
• The pressures around sex in Evangelical contexts
• Transitions into sexuality, and ensuing pressures
• The decrease of sexual activity among gen-Z
• The ebbs and flows of sexuality throughout the course of a relationship

Check out Episode #74: Summer Series: Taking a Break from Sex on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.    Show notes and transcript are on the SV website.  

One in six people worldwide experience infertility, according to the World Health Organization.    As the holiday season focuses on the celebration of children and families, infertility creates its own holiday horror story for individuals and relationships who experience it.   We're excited to have Dr. Niko Wilson, director of the Couples and Family Therapy program at William James College, join us for a special episode of Sexvangelicals.   Dr. Wilson's research focuses on the qualitative experience of infertility; also, each of the three of us have been personally impacted by infertility in some capacity. Join us for conversations about:

• Being Seen During the Holidays (6:30):  
• Pressures of Distance and Proximity (12:00): 
• Gatekeeping Grief During IVF (15:00)
• Benefits of Relational Satisfaction (18:00
• Children and the Holidays (26:00)
• Navigating Feeling Invisible (32:00)
• Wanting to be Supportive Without Knowing How (34:00)
• Communicating and Sitting with Grief (38:00)
• Societal Acknowledgement (41:00)
• Grieving within a Positive Moment (43:00)
• Endometriosis During the Holidays (46:00)
• Emotional Aftercare and Rest During the Holidays (53:00)

   

What would holiday celebrations be without women?   No really. They would not exist without women. The holiday season often represents the worst part of Christian relationships, where gender roles define behavior and eliminate collaborative dialogue in the process.   Julia notes, "Even Hallmark movies join the nativity story, relying on women sacrificing--either their singleness, their autonomy, their career, or all the, for the sake of the relationship."   This week, we're joined by the amazing Kelley, Kelly Anne, and Emma of the Woman Being podcast. They talk with us about: 

• The Hallmark Agenda (3:00)
• Gender Norms & Christmas Movies (14:00)
• Bearing the Weight of the Holidays (16:00)
• Shame During the Holidays (19:00)
• Unpaid Labor (22:00)
• Hysteria (28:00)
• Expectations of Vulnerability (34:00)
• Burden of Decision Making (37:00)
• Grief During the Holidays (42:00)
• The Weight of Marriage (48:00)

The Christmas story starts with a teenage girl, Mary, and an angel of God.    Kelley Werner, co-host of the Woman Being Podcast, explains: “She's portrayed as this passive participant in her faith. There's an edification of her. "Lord, whatever you say, I will do. So be it." She's passively impregnated by an angel, and becomes this side character in the narrative of Jesus.    That angle was always impressed upon us as young women: Keeping our posture very open to whatever God or men determine is like our best path.”    The Christmas story, as we talk about with Kelley, Kelly Anne Carter, and Emma Williams, has significant implications on how we, and especially women, engage with our bodies. We talk more about:

• Implications of the Idea of Mary (11:00):  Jeremiah notes how Mary’s passiveness paves the way for women to be treated as weak and passive: "There's a parallel between God non consensually disseminating his sperm into Mary and Mary being like, I guess that just happened...That gets played out in the church..women are expected to be passive people that will just like go along with whatever is suggested.”
• What About Joseph? (14:00): Emma discusses how Christians's obsession with Mary doesn’t translate to Joseph, because he embodies an accepting man who believes his wife: “For men, why don't Christians also say, oh, you need to believe your wife? Why don't we say you need to blindly follow her path?"
• Gatekeepers of Sexuality (22:00): Kelly Anne shares how her family pressures her, not her husband, about when she will be having a child: “I’m the one that's preventing my husband from spreading his genes. Which is kind of interesting to think about because we're sitting with this together." Julia adds: “When we're talking about gatekeeping around sexuality being the role of women, the fact that people ask you about pregnancy versus your husband is super significant to that.” 
• Induced Grief (32:00): The Church is built upon pillars of shame, and the holidays, instead of a time for joy and being with loved ones, are centered on the idea that we are all bad, shameful, sinful people who must repent. Kelley frames this as induced grief: “It's built on the fact that you need to be reminded that you are the worst, and nothing you could ever do would be enough. And therefore, Jesus must come and save you, right? That is why this beautiful baby had to be born. That's, to me, an induced grief...We're talking about an added reminder of insufficiency that doesn't relate to grief in the way that I think of grief.”
• Sensuality Around the Holidays (40:00): Julia talks about how engaging in joyous activities can be perceived as indulgence, thus feeding into the Christian idea that the holidays are for loving Jesus, not gluttonous celebration: “Because sensuality has a connotation with indulgence and indulgence has a connotation with gluttony or excess, all of those things can be demonized in Christian culture, especially for women and especially around the holidays.” 
• The Holidays and Healing (42:00): Kelly Anne describes, “To me, the holidays are a sensual experience and, to me, that is a part of the purity culture recovery. It is reclaiming the delight of the senses. And so the holidays, if you have the capacity, and if it's something that you're in the right place for, can be such a beautiful healing experience.”
• Christian-ish and Incorporating Former Traditions (50:00): Kelley discusses how to incorporate former Christian traditions that bring joy, but adjust them to fit your current stage of life and family: “[What has] resonated most with me is this idea of being Christian-ish and the idea that I was raised within the Christian faith. It's built my morals, it's built my value system, and it's very much my culture and family history. Learning to embrace the parts of Christianity that bring me joy or feel like a part of my tradition feels comforting to me without necessarily having to fully believe everything."

In the initial stages of what we typically call deconstruction, folks tend to focus heavily on meeting individual needs, self-advocacy, engaging the body in different ways, and finding new personal connections.  And while all of this is fantastic, much of the resources within deconstruction communities, and popular psychology for that matter, use the language of boundary setting. 

Just set those boundaries.

And, if we're not careful, individuation comes at the expense of our most important relationships.

In today's episode, we explore how I statements aren't always helpful, how to integrate personal growth into relational growth, and ultimately how to reclaim the "We" in our relationships.

Join us as we talk about:

Crumbling Foundations (3:00): “Even when I got married within a fairly progressive Christian community, at least progressive compared to my growing up community, my ex-husband and I centered our lives around the church community and the social services connected to it. Then the Jenga tower started to fall. When the Jenga tower of my faith crumbled, so did the foundation of my marriage. My ex-husband and I had the choice to get divorced or create a new shared meaning. In my case, I got divorced.” 

Individuation (6:30): Jeremiah recaps last week's episode and the process of individuation: “In the initial stages of what we typically call deconstruction, folks tend to focus heavily on meeting individual needs, self-advocacy, engaging the body in different ways, and finding new personal connections.  And while all of this is fantastic, much of the resources within deconstruction communities and popular psychology for that matter use the language of boundary setting, just set those boundaries and individuation at the expense of our most important relationships.”  

My Voice, Your Voice, and the Relationships Voice (21:00): Julia offers the metaphor of the sports team's health, which boils down to, even if one player is not doing great, the health of the team (relationship) still can be. “Think about a relationship like any team, and if there's two people in the relationship, maybe you're playing doubles volleyball. If you're in a family, maybe you do have an entire football team. And, if a coach only focused on the health of each player rather than the health of the team, the team would probably not do very well. So, what we are going to talk about in the next chunk of time is what it means to consider not just the health of each player on the team, but the health of the team in general.” 

Relationship Anarchy (31:00): Jeremiah explains, “Relationship anarchy suggests that decisions about the function and operations of a relationship are based on the specific desires and needs of the people in that particular relationship.” 

Sexual Menu and Relationship Anarchy (38:00): Julia shares, “This idea of relationship anarchy takes a very common intervention in sex therapy, which is the development of a sexual menu, and says you can have a menu for any other number of functions in your relationship. So if you have a shared business together, hey, you get to create a menu of what that means. If you’re co-parents together, you get to determine what that means.” 

Deconstruction and Sex (41:00): Jeremiah talks about how sex is not the singular most important element of a relationship, and can be de-centered, going against pretty much everything EMPish communities preach about marriage. “In this process of deconstruction and rediscovering what a shared meaning might be,  you may decide that sex plays a less significant role in your relationship, especially during the initial season of deconstruction. Or, as we're seeing in our work, that sex plays a more significant role, but there's a desire to explore sex with other people, often with folks of the same gender.” 

Differentiation and Religion (51:00): Jeremiah covers how differentiation is a process that requires communication: “Healthy differentiation requires us to consider three things in decision-making processes: me, you, and the relationship. And ultimately, relational health requires decisions that lead to outcomes that work for the relationship and each partner communicating in ways that align with their values.” Julia adds: “We acknowledge that this is an especially difficult task for people moving out of religious spaces, because for many couples, some element of the religious world was the shared meaning. And, when you take religion out of the equation, that can be destabilizing for some couples, such as us in our first marriages.” 

While individual growth and self-discovery are vital to our healing and human evolution, we live in the context of a myriad of relationships. And the end-of-year holidays are a time of year in which many folks are engaging in a lot of different relationships at the same time or in close succession.   This December, we're presenting a series called Holiday Horror Stories. The holiday season replicates the most narrow practices of family, gender, and relationships; spend three hours watching The Hallmark Channel for more information. Sometimes the advice from the psychotherapy and wellness world is helpful, and often it isn't. This series is focused on surviving through laughter.   We're joined by our editor and creative genius Nicole Marinescu, who shares her experiences of:   Orthodoxy and Culture Shock (22:00): While discussing how the Orthodox Church functions, Nicole shares her experience with culture shock, "When I went to my first Catholic service with my boyfriend, he stood there the whole time and he spoke in English, which shocked me. Because I genuinely thought all of these services were just Latin, or Greek, or whatever. And it was only an hour, people shook hands and they left.” Romanian Orthodox Christianity is not approachable, even to its own followers, and like EMPish communities focuses on dedication to God and the Church, even if that Church does not function in an accessible lounge.    Opulence (27:00): When discussing differences between EMPish Churches and Orthodoxy, Nicole points out how Orthodox Priests wear lavish gold gowns and big headpieces. Though both Church and State are intertwined in America and Romania, one tries to hide it better from the public eye: “We're opulent. So I think if you see a picture of [the Priest], then you understand politically how the church functions within these countries and how they're held in higher regard than the actual government that gives you most of the context you need.”   Blood in Context (32:00): During a discussion of how pig’s blood is openly cooked with, Julia points out the disparities in our societal view towards different types of blood: “Jeremiah and I were recently on a menstruation podcast and I'm thinking we're obsessed with the blood of Jesus, the blood of pigs, but we can't even talk about periods using accurate language. We just have sanitary items. It makes me sad that the blood of a pig would be more important than the blood that I lose every month.”   Relationships During the Holidays (35:00): Jeremiah notes societal and religious pressure on spending the holidays together as a couple, when the choice to do them apart may be healthier and more beneficial for certain people. “During the holiday season, American culture commercializes what many religious contexts do--the idea of marriage, the enmeshment of relationships, the two shall become one. That's really cool, Nicole, to hear how you and your partner have said, no, you know what, we're not going to practice that.”    Holiday Advice (43:00): Nicole discusses her favorite tip for surviving annoying Uncles who ask silly questions during the holidays, who are looking for an argument: “The best piece of advice I heard is when he says, "What do you think about gay people?" You look him dead in the eye and you go, "Kind of weird that you asked me that, why'd you ask?" Their faces go blue.” Sometimes we do not or cannot always argue, but we can make them feel uncomfortable for asking a silly question.   Bad Holiday Tips (47:00): Julia notes how the pop psychology advice of “just put up boundaries” does not work in a multitude of contexts, immigrant families, EMPish families, etc. “I was having a conversation with my best friend about this, who is also a part of an immigrant family. And Jeremiah, you and I have had conversations about this ad nauseam, the super simplistic pop psychology language of setting boundaries and just cutting toxic people out drives me fucking crazy for a lot of reasons.”

Deconstruction can be an exciting time for folks. We read new books. We explore the world and build relationships with a more diverse group of people.

The world gets bigger. We see numerous amounts of options for living a happy life.

However, especially for folks in long-term relationships, deconstruction can result in some really challenging relationship dynamics.

As we talk about in this week’s episode of Sexvangelicals, individuation, the practice of self-discovery for the sake of learning about oneself, independent of the larger world, can result in quite a bit of relational harm, especially if you and your partner don’t have healthy ways to navigate differences.

And if you grew up in the Evangelical or Pentecostal church, you likely did not learn healthy ways to navigate differences with your partner.

Julia and Jeremiah talk about how self-discovery interfered with our ability to build collaborative dialogue with former partners. 

And we provide ways that you can begin to talk with your partner about the new things that you’re discovering about yourself, without threatening the relationship or trying to protect the other person.

Shared Meaning  (3:50): “Couples, or folks in other relational structures, create shared meaning by developing a purpose or vision for the relationship, which incorporates both individual and joint dreams and goals.” Julia then adds: “Each person in the relationship has a strong individual voice. They have their identity as I or me. The relationship has a voice too. This is the We. In healthy relationships, we can hold on to our autonomy. Without losing the strong, secure foundation of We. Of course, this is easier said than done, especially if you grew up in an Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal {EMPish} community.” 

How the Church Skews Rituals (8:00): “The Gottman principle of creating shared meaning through the development and use of rituals, roles, goals, and symbols might be challenging for folks from EMPish communities whose experience with these things were damaging or limiting.” Jeremiah talks about how relationship rituals and symbols may be tough for folks from EMPish communities to create due to a painful callback to the Church’s rituals. Part of the deconstruction process is taking elements the Church may have created painful associations with, such as rituals, and redefining and re-contextualizing them into meaningful and helpful things. 

Christian Marriage Model (19:00): “Here's the script.  A couple meets,  courts each other with the intention of marriage, gets married, and then lives in this codependent state for the rest of their lives. Leaders hold up this enmeshed relational model as the standard of excellence. Enmeshment goes by the name of, quote, unity in these cultures.” Jeremiah offers the script used for EMPish dating which creates unhealthy codependency patterns, Julia then adds: “Within EMPish communities, many folks like me meet, date, and get married within that two to three year window before the bonding ends.”

Differentiation v.s. Individuation (22:00):  

Jeremiah defines: “Differentiation is the active ongoing process of defining self. Revealing self, clarifying boundaries, and managing the anxiety that comes from risking either greater intimacy or potential separation. {Ellen Bader’s Definition).”

Julia defines: “Individuation is the process of individual growth and self-discovery that exists within isolation without any consideration of the myriad of relationships that exist in that person's life.”  

Sacrifice Seesaw (28:00): “Think about this like a seesaw.  In, mutually engaged relationships, differentiated relationships can move like a seesaw in which sacrifice moves back and forth between partners, different seasons of life may require more sacrifice from one person than the other. And we think about not then as a vacuum, but in a greater context, Jeremiah, I like the language that you used around damn the consequences, because what I've heard in pop psychology and what I've heard from friends is exactly that damn the consequences. And while that might be an important step towards self-growth. Well, Damn, the consequences mean that there could be some very real consequences from those choices. And we have to walk into that with some awareness.” Julia discusses how sacrifice in a relationship functions like a seesaw. 

Seeing the Light (36:00): “We see these two dynamics a lot in couples where one or both people are leaving behind religious ideas and communities or are beginning to deconstruct. One person will begin to quote, see the light, so to speak, perhaps they'll have conversations with their partners about it, but in having conversations about it, that injects anxiety and destabilization into the relationship, or perhaps they won't talk about it, as what happened with me and my ex, the decisions that get made about community, faith practices, and communication will become unilateral, will become secretive even.” Jeremiah talks about how when the deconstruction process begins, one partner may be moving more rapidly through that process, leaving their partner behind. 

Ultimatums (41:00): “I started with a differentiated approach in which I wanted to really kindly and sensitively explain my experience to my ex-partner. When he understandably had some difficult emotions arise,  I very, very quickly... moved into that ultimatum space. I didn't give him much time to sit with it. The really challenging situation that we were in. Now, ultimately, we got divorced. And even if I had practiced a more differentiated approach, we still might have ended the relationship. My regret and what I failed to do was to practice this conversation  about other sexual relationships from a differentiated perspective. I said, I'm doing this and you can get on board or you cannot get on board. That is not a healthy relational process.” Julia talks about how offering an ultimatum instead of an ongoing conversation about boundaries and practicing a differentiated approach hurt her and her ex-partner. 

Relationship 101 (48:00): Julia and Jeremiah go through four tips in today’s Relationship 101

#1: “Talk to your partner about your new interests and self-discoveries, or ask your partner about their new interests and self-discoveries.”

#2: “Assess what shared interests still remain.” 

#3: “Find new ways to bond with your partner.”

#4: “Stay calm and patient. Don't panic.”   

Desire discrepancy is a set of differences about the quantity, quality, or types of experiences that a couple or a group want to have.

As we mentioned in the last episode, desire discrepancy is not inherently a source of conflict. The difficulty or inability to negotiate these differences is what leads to conflict.

So how can we talk about the different ways that two (or more) partners might access sexuality?

And not just who wants it more? But the different fantasies, preferences, scenarios needed for a positive sexual experience, and much more?

Julia and Jeremiah talk more about a different way to think about desire discrepancy, including:

Defining Terms (7:54): “Simply put, desire discrepancy is a set of differences about the quantity, quality, or types of experiences that a couple or a group want to have. As we mentioned last week, Desire discrepancy is not inherently a source of conflict. The difficulty or inability to negotiate these differences, that's what leads to conflict.” Jeremiah defines desire discrepancy and how it does not spur conflict, but the lack of communication around it does. Julia adds, “EMPish communities tend to discourage conflict and encourage enmeshment within couples and families. Lack of conflict in EMPish communities is a sign of moral superiority and successful marriage, at least according to their rules. EMPish communities tend to view conflict as a threat to the relationship and ultimately the unity of the couple.” She contextualizes the definition within EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal) context. Building upon last weeks episode, Julia, and Jeremiah discuss how working on desire discrepancy often has pitfalls within the sexual health context.

Orgasm Gap (24:00): “According to Jennifer Rubin and colleagues, typically speaking, in opposite-sex relationships, You find that 90 percent of straight men consistently orgasm while only 65 percent of women consistently orgasm […] So Jennifer Rubin and colleagues also write about how the prioritization of the male partner's sexual pleasure, as well as larger gendered cultural scripts, were negatively associated with the female desire for sexual activity.” Jeremiah discusses how the perception that women have a lower sex drive than men is inaccurate because a majority of the studies on the topic fail to include the orgasm gap as outlined above, the domestic labor women typically are burdened with, and fears that men do not typically associate with sex. Julia then adds: “That is just so deeply depressing. Considering how often women fake orgasms and accounting for the shame of not being able to orgasm, I would highly suspect that 65 percent is high.  The super sad part is that women don't actually have a refractory period as men. So if anything, women should be having way more orgasms than men, like way more.” The orgasm gap between men and women is influenced by a load of factors, however, as Julia notes, since women do not have a refractory period, it is insane how big the gap is. 

Spontaneous v.s. Responsive Desire (28:00): “Spontaneous desire is a desire that comes fairly naturally, fairly quickly, fairly innately. Whereas responsive desire requires context, requires space, requires time, requires an on ramp, requires a lot of different variables in order to be able to access.  So although the field of sexual health has been considering a more expansive definition of sexual desire beyond spontaneous desire in recent years, there's still a move in our field to equate desire with spontaneous desire. When in fact, spontaneous desire and responsive desire or both are equal forms of desire.” Jeremiah talks about the difference between spontaneous vs responsive desire, and how the field of sexual health tends to hold spontaneous desire as the best form of desire. Julia then shares a metaphor for understanding the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire: “The metaphor that Emily Nagoski used during her talk to describe spontaneous and responsive desire. She described spontaneous desire as waking up in the middle of the night Remembering that you have a piece of your favorite cake in the fridge and then thinking Oh my god. I want cake. I want it now. I'm going to get that cake and it's going to be amazing. That's spontaneous desire. Responsive desire is you received an invitation to a birthday party. You responded to that invitation. You go to the party. You might not even really be especially in the mood for cake, but you're at the party. You're with your friends. You see the cake. Your friends are eating the cake. You remember that you love strawberries and chocolate together. You take a bite. You take a couple of bites and oh my god, it's amazing.  So the cake is great. The cake is equally good in both scenarios. I would maybe even argue that the cake at the birthday party might even be better. That's just a personal preference. That's one way to consider an image for spontaneous versus responsive desire.”

Falling into Gendered Scripts (36:00): “This second pitfall within the field of sexual health, which is the emphasis on more desire rather than co-creating a quantity of experiences that works for any group. So to link back to the pitfalls within the field of sexual health, the field of sexual health does not help folks negotiate sexual differences when they either reinforce the unhelpful, untrue messages about gender scripts or when they focus too heavily on creating more desire rather than helping folks co-create an experience that works for all involved parties.”  Julia describes how the sexual health field is eerily similar to the Church is pushing desire over healthy conflict and communication. Without an effort to navigate desire discrepancy, folks tend to fall into their gendered roles, in and outside the Church, as a default to avoid conflict. 

Relationship 101 (45:00): Jeremiah lists the four tips: 

• #1: “Refrain the idea that spontaneous desire is the only or superior form of desire. Responsive desire is just as important and meaningful.” As previously mentioned, spontaneous desire is not the only valid form of desire, and a tip Julia adds on how to foster responsive desire is sexy texts throughout the day.

• #2: “Consider accelerators and brakes or exciters and inhibitors. Dr. Emily Nagoski has a fantastic and brief assessment on her website called the sexual temperament assessment.” Julia expands on this tip by adding: “Accelerators or exciters are whatever helps you to move into a sexual experience. It doesn't have to be fast, but they are the factors that contribute to you enjoying a sexual experience with a partner or a partner's. Breaks or inhibitors are the things that get in the way either before a sexual experience starts or in the middle. That doesn't allow it to continue or doesn't allow it to be pleasurable in the way that you want.”

• #3: “Have a conversation with your partner or partners about the sexual experiences that you want to have. Be as specific as possible. Paint the picture like an erotic scene.” It can be hurtful when a sexual experience does not go as planned, so put the time into communication. 

• #4: “Foreplay is a 24 to 48 hour long experience.” This can be anything from flirting via text throughout the day or while doing something non-sexual together. Foreplay does not begin 10 minutes before sex, but almost two days before. 

Desire discrepancy is one of the most common challenges that we see in sex therapy. 

Desire discrepancy is ultimately a difference in a couple or a group's interest in frequency, quality, or types of sexual interactions.

Desire discrepancy does not necessitate conflict. Conflict occurs when folks are unable to manage those differences, which is a necessary skill inside of and outside of sexual interactions. 

However, what happens when you grow up in a system (i.e. the church) that both refuses to talk with you about sexual health, and also encourages you to avoid having conversations that may result in one of you being angry before you go to bed?

Julia and Jeremiah talk about how the discouragement of talking about sexuality negatively impacted their former relationships. Listen to this week’s episode, and learn more about:

Defining Sexual Conflict (10:00): “Sexual conflict and inability to name and navigate sexual differences is still a leading factor in divorce and relationships ending. If we want sustainable and fulfilling relationships, we need the skills to address sexual conflict with a partner or partners.” Jeremiah defines the term that is the focus of today’s episode. This is a principle from the Gottman’s research, which is explored in this series through personal experience and professional training. 

Reasons for Divorce (12:00): “So in 2014, Relationships in America conducted a national poll with over 15,000 people in the U. S. 3, 000 of those folks who took the survey said they were divorced, with 2,100 providing specific reasons for divorce. The top five reasons, all of which approximately 30 percent of the respondents identified, were spouse unresponsive to my needs, grew tired of making a poor match work, spouse's immaturity, spouse's sexual or romantic infidelity, getting back to what you said, and emotional abuse.” Jeremiah outlines a study on the reasons couples get divorced. It’s important to note that the top reason, infidelity, is a sexual conflict. Infidelity does not exist in a vacuum, and there are a multitude of reasons for it to occur, Julia then adds:  “Infidelity is a complicated topic that deserves its own series.  You can also reference our Episode from The Seven Deadly Sins, Don't Commit Adultery. But for the sake of today, infidelity often involves a sexual or erotic component, which I would argue puts infidelity in the sexual conflict category. If it was a factor for divorce by more than one-third of research participants, then that's obviously significant and also significant in terms of research.” 

Desire Discrepancy (18:00): “Desire discrepancy is about more than the frequency of sexuality. So often folks say desire discrepancy and are referring to frequency. Desire discrepancy encapsulates so much more about a couple or a group's sexual experiences. The most important thing that I want to note right now is that sexual discrepancy is actually just a difference or a set of differences within a couple or within some sort of other relational system, which is not actually an inherently bad thing.” Julia discusses desire discrepancy which is a sexual conflict. With EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, Pentecostal) communities, it is encouraged to avoid any and all conflict, which leads to issues such as desire discrepancy not being discussed. Jeremiah adds: “EMPISH communities encourage couples to avoid conflict altogether, both explicitly and implicitly. Mitigating conflict of all kinds, about sex, money, child-rearing, and anything else, is usually a sign of moral and marital success in the EMPISH Christian world. EMPish communities rely on rigid gender roles to prevent conflict, and they tend to promote a relational style that we would call enmeshed in the family.” Enmeshment as defined by Jeremiah is “Someone in an enmeshed relationship is overly connected to a partner or partners and needs to meet the other person's needs so badly that they lose touch with their own needs, goals, desires, and  feelings.” An enmeshed family does not allow healthy conflict to exist, because the very existence of conflict go against established gender norms. 

Defining Christian Gender Norms (22:00): “Just in case any of our listeners are unfamiliar with genitalia-specific gender roles, I don't know how you found this podcast, but so that we're all on the same page, let me give you a quick little Christian sex ed lesson. This will be very fast. Penis owners, who are exclusively men in EMPish communities, require sexuality in the marital context due to their uncontrollable sexual urges. This means that they are the sexual initiators, which reinforces their dominance and authority within the Christian sphere. Don't let those women be preaching, and don't let them have sexual desires. Sexuality is their right, and wives show respect and deference by being sexually available at all times. In return, men are the providers and protectors for the family system, encouraged lightly to show their wives some nurture because women crave a dash of emotional coddling after their long days caring for the domestic needs of the family.” Julia offers a breakdown of Christian gender roles that sustain traditional marriages. Essentially sexual conflict will exist in these dynamics, however it has no room to develop into an actual conversation which leads to people being angry or upset with themselves and their partners because they have no room to express these feelings. This also creates dangerous ideas for what it means to be a man or woman. 

Lack of Sexual Health Principles (37:00): “So once again, our conflict management style was really just conflict avoidance without language about consent, really any of the other sexual health principles, honesty, shared values, mutual pleasure. We avoided talking about sexuality altogether. We had sex fairly consistently, actually. There was a routine that we went through on Saturday morning that we seldom talked about, but both of us knew, both of us participated in, with brief check-ins on each other afterward.” Jeremiah shares how gendered roles affected his marriage and created conflict avoidance. Without any of the sexual health principles, it is difficult to engage in a healthy sex life, and thus can foster resentment. 

Sexual Script Theory (40:00): “I’ve noticed as a sex therapist in my work with Christian or ex-Christian couples that sex tends to hold a high degree of routine, which I suspect is due to the lack of language about Sexual conflict and sexual conflict management.  Once you've got a routine, whether or not you like it, whether or not you want it sometimes or all the time, you can rely on that and the gender norms to get a pass on the hard and vulnerable conversations, which was, again, a big theme in one of my client sessions last night.” Julia talks about how routine is common within Christian couples because of gender roles and a lack of engaging with sexual conflict. Routine makes sex less exciting and does not allow room for a couple's sex life to grow and explore. Jeremiah then details the sexual script theory:  “Sexual script theory, and there's a lot to this, but the way that we see this in the sex therapy room is couples will end up having sex the same way in the majority of the sexual experiences, which much like the, the performance of gender in the church. Which restricts options. So, so part of what we want to do in sex therapy is to help folks create more options, create more diversity, more variance within, the way that they have sex.” He explains how a sexual script mirrors that of gendered performance within the Church. Most elements of EMPish communities center around routine, which is dangerous because it does not allow space for people to break out of it, and if they do, they are seen as going against the norm. 

Double Bind (48:00): “I really enjoyed the sexual experiences that I had with my ex, limited though they were by purity culture restrictions while we were dating. I felt a high degree of desire for my ex, and I felt a high degree of desire from my ex, which was really exciting and affirming. Now, that being said, I rarely initiated kissing or any other physical exploration because I had internalized the messages around female gatekeeping of sexuality and also the idea that I should be less interested in sex than my male partner, even though at the time I was highly interested in sex.” Julia describes the inner conflict many women experience within EMPish communities, where the lessons they are taught within the Church do not align with the feelings they are having themselves. 

Examples of Discrepancy (1:00:00): “So to go back to the gender roles, What I knew as a woman is that my sole worth was in being a sexually desirable partner. And that was so difficult to access because one, I hated sex to my partner, my ex-husband. was not initiating sex in the way that I wanted or the way that I expected. The way that you were taught.  So I learned that men wanted sex all the time. Not an exaggeration. Every day, multiple times a day if possible. My ex did not initiate sex every day or multiple times a day. Now, what I know now as a sexual health professional is that, News alert! Not all men want sex all the time, or think about sex all the time.” Julia exemplifies how desire discrepancy looks like for EMPish couples, where what you are taught does not align with real life and real people. Once again, couples are not allowed to engage in sexual conflict, and that conflict typically finds its cause within the way sex is taught in EMPish communities. 

We did it! We just released our 100th episode!

And we could not have a more fitting episode than with Nicki (@broadeningthenarrative) and Stephen Pappas. Nicki and Stephen answer the question:

What happens when one person in a partnership begins the deconstruction process before the other partner?

This can be a really intimidating, vulnerable process for a lot of folks, and Nicki and Stephen talk about their process of simultaneously navigating exploration, discovery, hope, grief, and fear of abandonment. We talk about: 

Function of Dreams Within the Church (3:00): “Last week, we talked about the unique challenges of identifying and pursuing a life dream when you grew up in an Evangelical, Mormon, or Pentecostal context, or Empish, E M P. In these Empish contexts, women support the dreams of their husbands […] And then husbands support the quote dreams of the larger church, which is really dictated by the pastor and the broader goals of the American Christian church, often supporting white nationalism and other questionable conservative agendas.” Julia contextualizes how ‘dreaming’ functions within the Church. It exists in a hierarchal system that mirrors that of the patriarchy and is ruled by it. Jeremiah then adds the context of dreaming within the deconstruction process: “This [EMPish Communities] is not a context that fosters dream development individually nor relationally […] Some of it is super exciting and magical. Some of it is downright gut-wrenching, especially while trying to do all of this healing work in a partnership with someone who is deconstructing and healing in different ways.” Being able to dream while moving through the deconstruction process is incredibly challenging, as a whole new world and way of thinking has been opened up, however, this presents unique issues within a partnership. 

Jesus: The Foundation of a Marriage (18:00): “I want to acknowledge how much it shakes a couple that your very foundation is no longer that foundation. […] The language you've entered the covenant and our sand symbolize, like here's the white sand on the bottom. This is Jesus. Here's his brown sand and my blue sand. Swirling together, becoming so enmeshed because the two become one, the whole reason you're joined together, the whole reason you were attracted to each other, the whole reason you decided to marry was Jesus. That was the foundation. That's the thing you found that you loved about each other. And so when that is gone. What do you have?” Nicki describes how deconstruction shakes the very foundation EMPish marriages are formed on, which is Jesus. Once Jesus is removed from the equation, and thus from the foundation, it is challenging to build a new foundation not based on biblical principles. 

Deconstruction is Disorienting (23:00): “My whole bearings are off. Like what I believed about the world is not the reality and what I believed about Christianity or about this life or the afterlife or God is not what I thought it was. And it's just like really disorienting. Yeah, I think a lot of it would come back to if what I had always believed the Bible taught, and now it's being questioned, that would be a really hard conversation, because then it's like, that's the last firm foundation. Cause if I let this go, then what is there?” Stephen talks about losing the foundation Christianity provides and profoundly speaks about a common feeling most folks who are deconstructing experience, which is disorientation. It is a confusing experience to realize a majority of ideas you built your life upon are not right, or do not resonate anymore. Deconstruction affects every element of our lives from our profession, our relationships, our friendships, and more. Julia then synthesizes upon what Stephen says: “That when folks often and I can relate to this move through deconstruction we move through deconstruction, taking this quote-unquote liberal or progressive lens to, to the Bible and to Christianity, so you still have that foundation, that foundation just looks different, and you have new values coming from that same foundation, and at some point for one or for both of you, that foundation eroded, and and and you couldn't fall back on that in the same way you would use the language of disorientation, great language. It also sounds like destabilizing in a literal and a figurative sense.” Julia talks about how attempting to apply a progressive lens to EMPish values causes them to fall apart, and once that progressive lens is applied it is nearly impossible to unsee. 

Non-Monogamy (37:00): “I don't think that love is a finite resource. And so people who will say they're not monogamous as a lifestyle choice like they choose to be this way. And for other people, it felt like another coming out of, okay not only am I queer, but this is also like who I am and I've been shamed. There's a stigma about that. Not just in the church. There's a larger culture built around monogamy, you know, so just that whole thing there. But again, I embrace this part of myself, even if like, you know, I have not explored it. We haven't opened our marriage. That kind of thing, but I can embrace that part of myself and stop shaming that part of myself and be grateful for that part of myself and the capacity of love that gives me for humans.” Nicki discusses the larger cultural perception of non-monogamy in and out of the Church. The Church has no room for dreaming, and thus has no room for folks exploring their sexuality and coming into their sexuality later in life. It takes active communication and generosity to have these discussions with a partner, as deconstruction is a foundation-shaking process from which new dreams and challenges arise. 

Dogmatic Beliefs (40:00): Jeremiah poses the question: “Stephen, as you've been watching Nikki kind of make some of these acknowledgments begin to talk about identifying as queer, what does this look like in real-time? I'm also curious, you know, what are some things that you've begun to explore about yourself as well? Related to or not related to sexuality?” Stephen then responds: “A big change for me has just been not being so dogmatic in my beliefs. Anymore or trying to not be, and a lot of that has been because of the journey we've been on and just the nature of changing beliefs. So it's like if I was off before, then I could be off about whatever it is now. So not to try to hold things so tightly, so dogmatically […] I just try to actually get to know myself better and like who am I really and why do I do the things I do? And why do, why do these things happen to me? Why do these things that happen affect me this way? And what are some tools I can put in place to help me try to live from a more centered and grounded place and not just my instinct, but from my true essence? And so that's still a long process for me to go, but that's been really helpful for me as well.” The concept of unwavering belief is instilled in folks within EMPish communities from the moment they are born, and it is a challenging thing to begin to question things within the Church. Opposing change, differing opinions, and having absolute loyalty is the foundation of EMPish Churches, and it is why deconstruction so often leads people to be ostracized from their communities of origin. Stephen highlights one of the many benefits of not being dogmatic about beliefs, which is gaining the ability to ask questions, to think about actions, and to think about emotions. 

The Myth of Scarcity (46:00):  “I think too, so much of my journey too, has been detaching from the myth of scarcity. And so then I can engage in a conversation, like we may never open our marriage, right? Like I can accept that that may never happen. And like I've told Steven, there's not a timetable for this. There is no scarcity. There's not an urgency. So I think that when we can approach a conversation like this or any other potentially charged conversation. Believing the best about each other. You know, like I believe the best about this person.

I'm not going to assign, you know, nefarious motives or think that he's trying to keep me from growing or from freedom and have a ton of compassion for realizing that what I'm putting out there completely. You know, goes against this whole thing and has the groundedness that comes from saying, there is enough, there is enough time. There are enough resources. There is enough love. There is more than enough. And I think that that's a huge game changer, just not operating from scarcity, because I'll say, like, we had a conversation where I said, I married so young out of scarcity mindset. I married because I was told it doesn't get better than Steven.” Nicki highlights on of the greatest achievements of the Church, which is convincing folks that the scarcity myth is real. When folks are encouraged to get married right out of college and to live within prescribed gender roles while only “ideally” dating the person they’re going to marry, it creates the perception that dating and romance are finite experiences. This idea is then carried on into other aspects of life, including communication, and it stifles conversations because of the fear of running out of time. “And I appreciate what you said about having the conversation without urgency. I'm thinking about what I wish I had done differently when I was married and conversations around queerness and opening the relationship were conversations that I did not handle well. And one of the reasons, probably the primary reason that they didn't go well is because I came to those conversations with my ex with so much anxiety and uncontained sadness about what I had lost that I wasn't able to have The generosity that so clearly exists between the two of you because I couldn't envision life without this need met.” Julia offers an example of how the myth of scarcity affected her previous marriage and how if that had not been present the conversations may have gone differently. 

Relationship Anarchy (54:00): “This is written about kind of in the poly community, but I think it's applicable to every relationship, this idea of relationship anarchy and relationship anarchy is basically this idea that your relationship can serve any function really that it wants to […] maybe the function of this relationship is I only talk with this person about money. I actually have a friend that, that actually fits into the bill. Like, the function of our relationship is we talk about financial growth, professional growth, and that's kind of it. That's the function of that. There's some emotional connection that happens as a by-product of that. It's not a sexual relationship. We're not interested in parenting, family of origin, or anything like that.” Jeremiah talks about the concept of relationship anarchy and how we can focus specific relationships on specific things. One relationship can not, and should not, fit all of our needs. This is why we have romantic and platonic relationships because they fulfill different needs within our lives. 

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:

• Setting Realistic Expectations
• The Expectations of Parenting in Evangelical Communities
• Fear-Based and Performative Parenting
• Policing Parenting
• Letting Your Kids Be Bored
• How to Collaborate and Share the Responsibility with Your Co-Parent and Your Community

Check out Episode #73: Summer Series: Taking a Break from the Expectations of Parenting on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast

What did you want to be when you grew up?

In EMPish (Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal) settings, growing up is commonly centered around finding your soulmate, getting married, having kids, and enhancing the church community.

Or, as Julia says, “A person's dreams must serve the greater purpose of evangelism.”

“When we consider gender,” she continues, “the complications get worse. Women support the “dreams” of their husbands. Husbands support the “dreams” of the larger church dictated by the pastor and the broader goals of the American Christian church, often supporting white nationalism and other conservative agendas.”

We talk with Nicki and Stephen Pappas, authors of the upcoming book Becoming Egalitarian, about how, by attempting to adhere to the standards of the church, they lost themselves and their dreams. They talk with us specifically about:

Making Dreams Come True (2:00): This episode explores the Gottman principle of making dreams come true, individually and within a partnership. Jeremiah gives the example: “So when we consider life dreams from the partnership perspective, we may be referring to individual or shared dreams. For example, Julia and I have individual dreams of writing two different books. And we also have a shared dream of what we want to create with Sexvangelicals. Nurturing and supporting both individual and shared dreams are vital for the health of a relationship.”

Gender and Dreams Within the Church (7:00): Julia explains “Sadly, a person's dreams must serve the greater purpose of evangelism. And then when we consider gender, the complications here get worse. Breaking it down. Women support the quote-unquote dreams of their husbands. Husbands support the dreams of the larger church dictated by the pastor and the broader goals of the American Christian church, often supporting white nationalism and other conservative agendas.”

Gearing up for Marriage (19:00): Nicki shares what the confines of dating within the EMPish Church looked like: “There was kind of a lighthearted playfulness between us—flirty, just fun. Because of the pressure and the whole movement bolstered by I Kissed Dating Goodbye, it becomes this serious vibe of ‘Would I marry this person? Because if not, then we can't waste time.’ And I can't be emotionally cheating on my future spouse by being flirty with this person. That very much dampened our playfulness in a big way.”

Motherhood and Marriage (27:00): Nicki describes existing as a woman within a Christian structure: “I want to be the definition of success in a space, right? And so when I'm told that being a wife is what I'm called to do, and then that being a mother is God's highest and holiest calling, this is what gets me like the currency in this space. This is what gets me the social capital is to be the best helper.” All desires and dreams are stripped, and the only true callings are motherhood and marriage. She goes on to say: “I can't be the best teacher and be the best wife and mom.” The Church however does not set up structures to aid people through this emotionally or physically. It is challenging to chase after dreams that are not allowed to exist within the confines of the Church walls.

Lack of Sex Education (41:00): Stephen talks about how men and women were taught about sex, and how women are taught to never deny sex and to consistently encourage it once married, while men are taught no sex before marriage and that men have naturally high libidos which will activate on the wedding night. “[Nicki] was told you either can't say no to sex, you say yes or convince me. That was this model that was upheld. For me, you know, growing up in the church, it's always like no sex before marriage, that's sinful, right? And so, I didn't. And even got to the point where it's like, okay, no kissing because it's too tempting to do that and not go further.” This idea plays into the light-switch theory once again, and how the second “I Do” is said, all the knowledge and desire of sex will just flow through your veins with no education or knowledge.

What Happens When You Don’t Perform the Gender Scripts, Sexually or Otherwise (45:00): Jeremiah adds: “Thinking about the cultural messages, not just the religious messages around, you know, what happens to women who have very quick sexual accelerators, the slut shaming that happens, all the negative language, that women are given both inside and outside of marriage. And then also the same thing for men who have a higher brake system, the shaming language, often the homophobic language that gets directed towards men who have a stronger brake and the dual response cycle that you were referring to.” The Church tends to hurl homophobic and sexist language at people who differ from their idea of the norm, harming folks who do not fit into the rigid mold the Church prescribes to people.

No Room for Dreaming (49:00): Stephen talks about how challenging it is to realize how controlling the Church makes life. ”It can seem so weird, like how could you live like this? Looking back on it and talking about it now, it made so much sense to me. It just seemed like this is the way It's supposed to be and this is what the Bible says, and this is what it means. Therefore, this is what we're supposed to pursue, and on so many levels, whether that's relationships or how we live in the world, how we spend our money, how we spend our free time. I was just thinking about how controlling it sounds and because it is, and, I'm really just starting to see that more clearly now. It's a big process for me to heal from.”

Nicki and Stephen will talk with us next week about how they rediscovered ways to build dreams individually and together. We can’t wait to share that episode with you.

Let’s heal together!

 

Purity Culture isn’t just a collection of pithy quotes and misappropriation of Scripture about bodies and relationships.    It’s a creation of a myriad of businesses, media, and political systems that work together to showcase and reinforce the existence of particular types of relationships.   We’ve learned that understanding the larger context of Purity Culture, from the intersection of theology and American history to the cultural icons and legislative processes that these create, has helped us in our own deconstruction process.    Which is also true for our guests this week, Teddi and Nick from the podcast Oh God I Forgot About That. They study cultural and literary artifacts from the 90s and 00s and talk about how each of these got used and enhanced to propagate the larger goals of Purity Culture. They talk with us this week about:  

Cosmic Consequences (10:00): “I say this basically every single episode. When you attach cosmic consequences to anything you guarantee it's going to be messed up. You're creating trauma. You're creating anxieties. And that's what I did.” Nick highlights the quintessential issue within the Church, and that is attaching God-given consequences to actions. For instance, if you have sex before marriage, you are going to go to hell. This type of thinking fosters intense anxiety within folks because it gets rid of their ability to explore life without feeling like they will be punished for stepping out of line.

Deconstruction Within Relationships (12:00): Julia and Jeremiah both speak on how deconstruction happens within relationships, romantic or not, and how it is not the solo experience it is so often pictured to be. Julia says: “I’ve also noticed that some folks in the early stages of deconstruction can sometimes understandably overcompensate because they've been in these enmeshed communities for maybe decades. And so understandably, they want to start making their own individual autonomous choices as we should. However, as Jeremiah and I are relationship therapists, the deconstruction world doesn't always give good resources for how we still live in relationships all the time, not just with partners.” She mentions that many folks may struggle with moving too far into an isolated space as a form of regaining autonomy. Jeremiah adds:  “And a good reminder that deconstruction happens in relationships. This isn't a person like sailing away on their own solitary boat out into the great blue ocean. This happens through the conversations that y'all are talking about and, sometimes with partners, sometimes not with partners and that's exciting. It's complicated.” He talks about how deconstruction is happening within the context of our relationships, and it’s important to have these conversations because deconstruction looks different for everyone, however we all have people in our lives and it’s important to figure out how to navigate this enormous change.

Physical Contact Through a Sexual Lens (22:00): “My partner said something brilliant, we were just having this conversation about the reason men misunderstand their sexual urges and desires. Especially men in the church are two-pronged. The first is what we've already talked about, which is you're always already in sexual temptation. But the other is, that men are conditioned to not be physical with each other, except in the context of violence. Or competition, right? So you can, you can have a football huddle. You can do the bro hug where you do the weapons check and the smack on the back. You can punch fists. But, there is no physical intimacy encouraged or allowed in masculine spheres. And then when you're man to woman, boy to girl, forget it, it's off limits. You are, as a human being, boxed into this corner where no physical intimacy, except maybe your parents. So then because the only valence for physical contact that you as a man in the church are given is sexuality, right? Yeah, all of your desire for any sort of physical contact or physical intimacy that isn't necessarily sexual. Gets filtered through that sexual lens.” Nick describes how the Church creates an environment in which physical touch is only offered to men through a violent lens or sexual one. This also creates a world view where sexuality is informed by violence and feeds into the idea that men are inherently violent. 

Creating the Podcast (27:00): “Eleanor Roosevelt said something along the lines of like you'd be like delighted and disturbed to know how little people are actually thinking about you. And that proved true with the podcast. Like I have heard from no one about it. I mean, they could all be listening. All the people from my youth could be listening and discussing it behind my back. Perhaps they're not. I've had a few people who are more in the deconstruction stage of their faith, say that they're listening and that it's helpful to them, they almost presented in a kind of envious way, like, I can't wait to be on the other side and be able to talk about this the way you guys are talking about it, but for those who are deep in the church, like, I haven't heard anything from them and occasionally I will wonder what they're thinking, because how can you not?” Teddi talks about the challenges that come along with creating a podcast that talks about the Church, after years of being deeply rooted within it. The Church creates a Panopticon system, where everyone has the fear of being watched and told on, but is not sure if they are being watched at that moment. It generates an environment where trust is a challenging thing.  

Separating the Individual and the Institution (32:00): “That's a conversation I've had with a few people in my life about the podcast because I know a lot of folks who are still in the church are still in conservatism and they have listened or they've like known that I've done it. […] I'm in a much better place where I can let everyone have their spiritual journey, and that's a very beneficial and important place for me, but the thing that I emphasize in those conversations is, again, the difference between the institution and the individual, right? When we look at somebody like Rob Bell, or we look at something like the Eldridge, you know, John and Stacey Eldridge's books, right?  They feel fluffy, they feel vapid, anodyne, but they're put in this context where they become defining for not just the culture, but patterns of thought.” Nick talks about how it’s essential to let everyone have their own spiritual journey. Many folks who deconstruct are confronted by the people in their lives who still subscribe to Church ideologies, and many of those people feel personally attacked when someone is deconstructing. What is important on both sides is allowing folks to have their own relationship with spirituality and religion. Another point Nick covers is how Christian authors define thought, despite clearly lacking deep and meaningful research. As discussed many times on Sexvangelicals, Christian authors will use small sample sizes in their research, will fall back on Biblical principles, and sometimes, just straight up lie. What is dangerous however is their impact on thought within the Church and especially on young folks to whom these books are distributed too. 

Doctrine Over Relationships (46:00): “Jeremiah and I always come back to the idea of a relationship. We had a conversation with Tia Levings, who people probably recognize from Shiny Happy People, and she describes fundamentalism as anything that puts a doctrine or a dogma over a human relationship.” Julia discusses a fundamental issue within the Church, which is putting doctrine over people. A key example of this is an unmarried couple who will abstain from sex because they believe they will go to hell for engaging in sex or with their sexuality. This is putting doctrine over relationships because this can and will harm many folks and their relationships because it makes sex the enemy and then sex becomes an enemy that has to be engaged with for the rest of their married lives. 

While much attention has been given to the Evangelical contingent of American conservative Christianity, it's important to note that even though systems of worship may be different, Pentecostal Christians navigate sexuality, relationships, and bodies in similarly troubling ways as Evangelical and Mormon communities do.

This week, we're thrilled to have Teddi and Nick, co-hosts of the podcast Oh God I Forgot About That, to talk more about how their upbringings in Pentecostal communities impacted understandings of gender, dating relationships, and sexuality. We talk specifically about:

Defining EMPish (10:00): “So in the post-Christian, in the deconstruction world, the denominations and the language that gets used most commonly is Evangelical. But what we find is that Mormon churches and Pentecostal churches, that their structures are very similar to Evangelical churches, Baptist churches, and non-denominational churches. So the styles of worship may be a little bit different, but the leadership structures, the communication patterns within the church for the sake of our expertise, the communication around bodies and sexuality, very, very similar.” Jeremiah highlights and defines the similarities between the EMPish circles covered. Even though some of these churches may come off as more charismatic by incorporating music and fun, they still project the same messages around sexuality, marriage, and purity. 

Purity Rings (20:00): “So we worked at a stable together and I remember her like showing me this like glistening ring on her fourth finger and she was about maybe 14, 15. And she explained the promise ring concept to me. And you know, it was all so exciting. It was like, she got to pick out the ring and her dad gave it to her. And then the Pentecostal church that I was in, we had something called the Missionettes program for girls. I want to say around 14, you had the opportunity to do a promise ring ceremony where the girls wore white and then they got their ring from their fathers. And then the whole church attended. So there was just so much excitement built up around it and I, it was one of the first times that I like paused and was sort of like, oh, like, this is like something that I'm planning for that I am anticipating, which the great irony of this being, I wouldn't have been thinking about sex had the church not brought it to my attention, like I was still very innocent.” Teddy shares her experience around purity rings and talks about how the Church brings sex to the forefront of children’s minds when sex would not have been on their minds if not for the constant shame. The Church consistently shames people for thinking about sex and sexuality all while making that the main focus of sermons, learning, and life. Jeremiah adds: “Teddy, thinking about the role that fathers play in this fairy tale as well. The father-daughter relationship in the evangelical and Pentecostal church. The connection between the father-daughter relationship and the purity ring ceremonies. The fact that father's jobs in theories are to simultaneously protect their daughters from objectification. But Teddy, also like what you're saying, protect their daughters from objectification when they're like eight.” 

Double-Edged Sword (23:00 - 25:00): “[This] two-pronged thing where sexuality was always pitched to me and the other boys as a source of temptation. It was exclusively and explicitly a temptation that was inevitable and shameful. And any single woman or girl you know could be the target of this uncontrollable thing that you unleash, right? So it created sort of this two-pronged, like, struggle with any sort of friendship that could be potentially viewed as a romantic relationship, you know? Having friends that were girls. When I was a boy, just, oh, are they thinking this about me, or, oh, you know, I try to just do something that's a normal friendship thing, and it gets misconstrued as an advance, or something that needs to be defended against” Nick speaks about the double-edged sword the Church presents young men with, which is that they cannot control their sexual impulses and any attempt at friendship is misconstrued into an advance. Julia then adds: “I think I say basically every single episode that what you're describing around the gender construction is this awful combination of both misandry and misogyny at the same time that you as a man are this inherently sexual predator. And that women exist as floating bodies that are the object of objectification. And also, for men, there's this double bind that they are these sexual monsters, and that's how God made them. But also they have to fight it, and it's such a mindfuck!” She highlights once again this idea that God made men sexual predators and they must fight this instinct, but also how this idea shrinks women down to essentially objects because they cannot and do not have any sexual desires or thoughts. 

Passiveness (32:00): “It was just boring as hell and at its worst it made you passive in your own life. It made you just a spectator to your own life. So I think that that probably explains why I didn't even become really all that interested or willing to pursue relationships until college, or even like curious about my identity until college because there was no script for what it looked like for women to pursue, talk about these things, explore these things because you were just waiting.” Teddy talks about how women were given no script or support or even an idea of what sexuality looked like for them. This plays back into the light switch metaphor touched on last week, and how the script essentially does not exist until your wedding night, and suddenly it’s just supposed to flip on then and there. “And you could argue that that passiveness also creates another narrative about women being objects in the passivity. Prior to marriage, women are essentially these asexual beings, and that asexuality is what protects the purity of the relationship.” Julia highlights how the idea that women are asexual pre-marriage, protects the integrity of the relationship from the sexual predator man that they are dating, feeding into the misandry/misogyny the Church spews.

Infantilization (42:00): “That double bind is perfectly encapsulated by these two moments that I very vividly have in my mind. The first is, I remember going on a trip with her church, and her youth pastor had taken over the church, and we sat next to each other on the church van, and he leans in the church van over her, and he starts, like, jamming his hand between our thighs. And like doing this and I scooted over and he goes, just making sure there's room for the Holy Spirit. And then he closed the door ominously on and we went off. So there's that like infantilization.” Nick covers an aspect of the Church’s approach to sex and sexuality which is the infantilization of teenagers and adults. Within EMPish circles, people are encouraged to get married incredibly young, which is a very adult decision, yet they have hands jammed between their thighs in Church vans to leave room for the Holy Spirit.

 

 

 

 

SHOW NOTES

 

Positive Perspective (4:00): “Let's very quickly review what we mean when we say the positive perspective, specifically as it relates to sexuality. As you may be, and are probably intimately aware, folks from Evangelical, Mormon, and Pentecostal communities, EMPish communities, often struggle to have a positive perspective about sexuality when dominant messaging from these communities focuses on no.” Julia starts us off by defining positive perspective in the context of EMPish communities, as most of the sexual education is focused on denying sexuality. Jeremiah adds: “Positive perspective is not necessarily about the emotional expression. It could be about emotional expression. But it's more so about supporting you in creating an openness to possibility. The possibility to have a mutually pleasurable sexual experience.” A positive perspective focuses on a positive outlook rather than just positive emotions, and a positive outlook on sexuality is not fostered within EMPish circles.

 

The Post-Marriage Script (9:00): “The enmeshed nature of Christian relationships, which we will come back to at the end of this episode. In one of the classes about sexuality, the instructor talked about the importance of abstinence during the dating and engagement period because, and I quote, this is the only time in the course of your relationship that you won't be having sex.” Julia shares her experience during “Leap of Faith” in which an instructor perpetuated the EMPish myth that a healthy non-stop sex life will come about the second people get married. Jeremiah says, “So that's a perfect example of what I mean when I say that the post-marriage script not only focuses on the expectation of sex but the expectation that sex will always be present on a very regular basis.” The post-marriage script essentially promises people that sex will be regular and consistent but gives them no tools to actually create a healthy sex life.

 

Communication (14:00): “Communication skills for navigating sexuality are essential for couples to develop a sense of sexual positivity. In EMPish communities, couples do not learn about how to solve problems or negotiate differences between couples outside of prayer and these weird metaphors for sacrifice like washing feet.” Jeremiah talks about how the only system in place for couples to negotiate differences is prayer, but no other systems are put in place to aid in communication. He continues: “EMPish communities also say that sex is a representation of Jesus caring for the church. Which, going back to the Joshua Butler book that we talked about a few months ago. When you're representing Jesus and the body of Christ, that puts a lot of pressure on the sexual relationship without either general communication skills or sex-specific communication skills.” 

 

Light Switch (29:00): “That is actually the myth that we are debunking. So I'd like to come back to the idea of the light switch that both of us referenced. The myth from the church is that upon getting married, we transition seamlessly into marital sexual bliss. I've noticed that a similar myth in the deconstruction and sex therapy world […] So when folks leave religious communities, or maybe they are still a part of a religious community and they are unpacking and unlearning some of these negative messages, they expect a similarly fast transition for healing to occur.” Julia speaks about the light switch metaphor which essentially boils down to the idea that the second people get married, their entire sexuality and sexual life just switches on. This is harmful because when that doesn’t happen, people feel ashamed of themselves. The light switch metaphor also applies to deconstruction, because many folks find themselves confused that after they leave the Church that all their problems have not disappeared overnight. It is important to give ourselves patience and time to heal and grieve. 

 

 

Enmeshment, Individuation, and Differentiation (35:00): 

“I want to talk about three things. One is enmeshment. Two, individuation. Three differentiation:

• ENMESHMENT: “Enmeshment is a relational marker. Enmeshment is essentially a lack of healthy boundaries. One way this looks is that a person's sexuality belongs to the community or a spouse. A person's not allowed to make individual choices. They must conform to the dictates of the community. And if you are a woman, you must submit to male authority.” Jeremiah defines our first term, which is key to understanding EMPish relationships. The relationship is not private, it is held to the standards of a group and thus has no room for individuality and choice.
• INDIVIDUATION “In the early stages of deconstruction, they sometimes overcompensate when moving into individuation. And individuation is a process of doing things for yourself, regardless of what other people might say.” Jeremiah notes that as people move through their deconstruction journey they may go too hard into individuation, which then erases the needs of their partner and relationship. 
• DIFFERENTIATION: “Differentiation is a process of doing things for yourself in a relationship with other people. This means that you have to take into account that your partner may want to do something completely different. Or their style or personality traits means that the way that they do the thing you want to do is different from the way that you want.” Jeremiah closes out by defining differentiation, which Julia and Jeremiah use examples to contextualize further. 

Relationship 101 (51:00): “Relationship 101 today is in two parts, and both of these will sound very basic and very simple. In some ways, they are basic in the sense of being foundational, but not so simple in practice. So number one is talking about a sexual experience before, during, and after. And number two is paying attention to differences.” Julia lays out foundational relationship 101 for today. One of the key elements is talking about and engaging with sexuality before, during, and after. Sex does not begin with foreplay, a sexual experience can begin hours before with sexting or flirting with your partner, which can make for a more extended and meaningful experience. 

We're back from our month off hiking the Alpe Adria in Austria, Slovenia, and Italy. And we pick up today where we left off, talking about the Sound Marital House model from couples therapy gurus John and Julie Gottman.   For a friendly reminder, the first three levels of the Sound Marital house are curiosity, appreciation, and leaning toward your partner. And this week, Julia and Jeremiah talk about the fourth value: the positive perspective, including:

Defining Terms (10:00): “For the sake of today, we're going to say that being positive about sexuality in a partnership means being positive about the existence of eroticism in a relationship, which to be clear is not the same as sex. […] To simplify it for today, eroticism is ultimately about the presence of sexual desire, whether or not you consummate that sexuality. So we'll be focusing on positivity about the presence of sexual desire, and since this is a relationship podcast, We'll talk about the presence of sexual desire within a partnership or whatever other relational structure you have.” Julia defines positive perspective, eroticism, and sexuality in terms of today's episode. Defining clear terms is an important value for Sexvangelicals, and it is important to have a clear understanding of how we will be using these terms to navigate our topic.

Hierarchy (17:00): “The gatekeeping around marriage creates an exclusionary social hierarchy in which you've got married Christian folks at the top, accessing all their God-given sexual rights. And unmarried Christian folks, one rung below, who are either dating or pursuing marriage in some sort of explicit way. Eventually, those folks may have full access to the post-marriage sex script. But until marriage, they are inherently limited. Unmarried folks who by choice or not by choice will not ever get married are the next level lower. They are not able to access the joy of sexuality in marriage.  […] And all of this is important in setting up the episode today because we are highlighting that dichotomy of the pre-marriage sexual script and the post-marriage sexual script. And I suppose if we have this hierarchy... The secular folks are just outside of this system because they refuse to participate because they're relishing in their heathen ways. Like us. Us unmarried folks who are still having sex.” Julia highlights the hierarchy within EMPish communities based on marriage status. EMPish Churches only have two scripts, one for those pre and post-marriage, creating a system where only those two realities exist. This is incredibly damaging as all your relationships in the “pre” sphere exist as a march to the wedding, as Julia will go on to share today.

Preserving Purity (19:00): “So due to the gatekeeping around marriage, the dichotomy between the pre-marriage and post-marriage scripts inherently function to protect the system of social and sexual hierarchy that we just described […] So, if the pre-marriage script focuses on preserving the purity of your sexuality until you can access the post marriage script, folks hoping to get married face some, some unique sexual challenges.” Jeremiah talks about how the pre-marriage script is incredibly limited in fundamentalist communities and that the only information people hoping to get married receive is that they will unlock all these secrets about sex when they’re already married. This causes a lot of pain and grief, because the reality is without proper sex education and knowledge around sex, most of people confronted with the post-marriage script do not know what to do. He also says: “Depending on the level of fundamentalism in a person's community, the rules limiting access to sexuality may vary in strictness while still serving to protect sexual purity.” This statement encapsulates the issue at hand because the rules around sexuality in fundamentalist communities are structured around preserving purity, however, once you are married, your “purity” goes away. 

It’s All About Sex (28:00): “Because I wanted to have sex. Even at the time, I had some shame around that because I knew, according to the church, that I as a woman was not supposed to have those sexual desires. Interestingly, by eradicating any meaningful sexual expression, the church's teachings actually make dating relationships all about sex.” Julia speaks about how by repressing any means of sexual expression, the church inadvertently makes dating all about sex. A lot of young couples instead of enjoying their time dating, spend time focusing on “not giving in to sin.” This puts sex on a pedestal, which in turn makes people want it more. 

Shame and Grief (40:00): “The reason that this story is so essential to this episode is that you met someone that you liked, you briefly dated, you enjoyed some sexual experiences, which would be completely developmentally appropriate for a 19-year-old who's working during the summer months while in college, but instead of enjoying it, instead of learning about yourself and exploring relational and sexual values, you obsessed over your sin.” Jeremiah says in response to Julia’s story. He talks about how instead of being able to relax into developmentally appropriate desires she had to spend her entire relationship worrying about sinning. Julia then adds: “Yes. I'm sad for my 19-year-old self, and I know that this story is not unique. I can't tell you how many times I've supported clients in grieving what they lost due to sexual shame. And I'm not specifically grieving the relationship itself, I'm grieving that I lost the opportunity to get to know myself and I'm grieving how much pleasure and fun not just sexual pleasure and fun that the shame stole from you.” She shares the grief of not being able to have those “normal” experiences because of the fundamentalist community she was in. EMPish communities have a focus on teaching people shame, not on teaching people about sexuality, and shame dictates the pre-marriage script. 

Lack of Eroticism (49:00): “Sex was finally allowed. And that actually killed a big part of the eroticism for me and for many people. The massive barriers to sexuality created by purity culture actually make sex pretty sexy. But folks like me and like so many others didn't know how to create and build eroticism on their own without those barriers. Which often causes sex to be pretty disappointing after the barriers of purity culture are no longer present.  […] Second, sexuality was now not only allowed, it was expected. Which I know you'll discuss more in your episode, Jeremiah, and that generated a lot of sexual pressure for me. This thing, intercourse, was expected, but I didn't have relational or individual literacy about sexuality or tools to co-create a pleasurable experience.” Julia shares how after the barriers to entry were removed, there was no eroticism present nor was there a way for her to engage in sexuality due to the lack of resources and knowledge. EMPish communities foster an environment where people are forbidden to have sexual desires and thoughts up until their wedding night, and they are just expected to know right after they say “I Do.”

 

Beginning the Conversation Around Neutrality (1:04:00): “Neutrality means that you do not actively want sex. And you are open to go full circle to the possibility of a sexual experience. So, I learned that you don't have to wait until you really want to have sex to have a great sexual experience. So, if the responsive desire is a big part of the sexual template for many individuals, many couples, or throuples or whatever your group, then we've got to actually figure out what to do with that. Simply knowing that responsive desire is important for folks or the dominant template for folks isn't enough. And in future episodes, we're going to be talking about what does it mean to take that neutrality. Take that responsive desire and build something that hopefully is really fun and pleasurable.” Julia explains what neutrality and responsive desire are, a topic that will be explored more in the coming months. It is important to highlight in this Relationship 101 that sexual desire looks different for everyone and to not hold yourself to the same standard as everyone else, because it looks different for everyone as Jeremiah notes:  “And one of the things that we'll come across when we do this, just to skip ahead a little bit, is the idea of conflict. Yes. Because... How you access sexuality, Julia, is going to be different from how I access sexuality. And we've got to figure out how to navigate those differences and to create something that works for both of us. That both of us really enjoy. And conflict doesn't have to be scary, it doesn't have to be fighting, anything like that. Even though some emotions will probably come up for folks, even for you and I, as we navigate this.”

         

After our month-long foray into the disturbing literature from the Evangelical Christian publishing industry, we continue our new series The Sex Ed We Wish We Had.

Last month, we interviewed Doug Braun-Harvey, who describes the six sexual health principles that we and many other sexual health providers use as their rubric for co-creating healthy sexual encounters.

We begin with a two-part series on consent, which, to quote the Harvey Institute (8:40):

“Consent means voluntary cooperation communicates permission to try and reach sexual satisfaction and intimacy with willing partners. Consent transforms the act of sex from invasion, intrusion, or violation into an act of transformation. Establishing consent throughout each step of a sexual interaction provides each sexual partner space for sexual safety and pleasure that's consistent with their sexual desire.”

We also address:

• Consent in Church and the Country (9:50): “Consent in our country has been about folks, primarily men, getting as far as they can sexually while escaping rape allegations or charges. Similar to the church, American culture has given women the responsibility of gatekeeping men's sexuality. While keeping themselves safe from violence,” Jeremiah says. Consent is a tool used by men to absolve themselves from any hurt or crime they may have committed. It is not seen as something that should be intrinsically tied to sex. Julia then makes the connection that, “so often the Christian Church establishes themselves as countercultural. However, in terms of sexuality, the status of so many sexual health principles are quite similar. Within and outside of church walls, we have long taught women best practices for avoiding assault.” The conversation around consent usually centers around the metaphor of wearing a bulletproof vest instead of just banning guns. 

• The Process of Affirmative Consent (11:55): “Learn that consent is the proactive negotiation of pleasure. To catch onto this concept, a religious university in Ohio was the first to develop a model for affirmative consent.” Julia notes as we give props to a Christian institution on this podcast for probably the first time. They then list the seven principles of affirmative consent: 

1. Explicitness. A yes must be expressed verbally.

2. Voluntariness. The yes must be given voluntarily without pressure or coercion.  

3. Ability to consent. Intoxicated people, people under a certain age are unable to give consent.

4. A shift of responsibility. They mean the person who initiates the sexual act has the responsibility to obtain the consent of all participants in non-coercive ways.

5. Freedom from presumption. Consent must be obtained repeatedly for each new sexual act.

6. Informedness. All participants must know what consent is being given for, in particular, when we think about the role of the receiver, what would it be like to have a sexual experience where the initiator says, hey, this is what I want to kind of work through.

7. Revocability. A previously given consent can be withdrawn at any time. 

   These seven principles are without nuance, which we will dive into next, but still are a strong framework and guide to affirmative consent. As well as, great starting points and rules for someone to follow. 

• The Simplifying of Consent (15:40): “Consent is actually very complicated. Even in more progressive circles, I've noticed this impulse to try and make consent as simple as possible. We actually have so many different contextual factors to take into account with each sexual scenario. With each of the seven principles, we can't actually package consent into a simple formula.” Julia adds to the conversation about affirmative consent, saying that even though this is a great framework, consent cannot be distilled into a simple idea. It is okay that consent is nuanced and complicated, and that is what they are exploring today.

• Heteronormativity (21:00): “Heteronormativity relies on narratives about how men and women enact sexuality differently inside the church. As we talked about in reading the Butler series and in the seven deadly sexual sins according to the church, but also outside of the church, we have the false narrative that men are inherently more sexual and that women have the duty to perform sexuality according to the socialized norms of what men crave sexual,” Jeremiah says. We explore the effects of heteronormativity throughout different episodes, but pertaining to the idea of consent, this heteronormative dynamic affects how consent is given and received. Many women in heterosexual relationships feel the need to say yes, and many men feel the need to initiate sex, even if they do not want to have sex. 

• Sex Therapist Training and Consent (31): Jeremiah talks about his experience how, in one of his sex therapy training classes, he learned what consent actually looked like, and also how his heterosexual relationship fit into a larger context within society. “I was also so stuck in the emotional cycle of protecting my ex at the time, that I didn't have the wherewithal to realize the larger societal context for our relational interaction. But in this particular class, I internalized this.” He then talks about his experience unpacking much of the ingrained ideology about martial consent within the context of Christianity. 

• Christianity and Consent (39): “The most heartbreaking part is that we were both trying hard to be the best partners that we could be, and the patterns that developed from our best efforts, which were modeled to us by Christian culture and Christian leaders were strong contributors to our divorce and set the stage for both of us to have years of non-consensual sexual experiences," Julia talks about how Christianity establishes that consent happens only once at the altar, and never again. This has negative repercussions as sex does not equal an enjoyable and safe experience for the people involved, but quite the opposite. 

These are hard conversations to have, and next week, we’ll talk more about Julia’s experience navigating sexuality and consent in her marriage, before concluding with some Relationship 101.

Let’s heal together!

16 years ago, Linda Kay Klein embarked on a storytelling journey that would change her life (and the lives of many others).

In her 2018 book Pure: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, Linda captures the experiences of hundreds of women, herself included, who grew up within and confronted the consequences of the Evangelical purity culture movement in the 90s and early 2000s. Through Pure and her nonprofit, Break Free Together, Linda has created numerous spaces to bring folks together to share their stories about repression, bravery, and ultimately freedom. We are thrilled to have her as a podcast guest!

Freedom comes in expected and unexpected ways. For instance, in this episode, learn how shrimp tails and boxes drawn on a dorm room wall were formative experiences that helped Linda access the bravery to tell the story that she was so afraid to share.

“The great thing about doing something that you’re really, really afraid of is the feeling when you survive.”

Linda, Jeremiah, and Julia also discuss:

• What makes purity culture particularly appealing and damaging to adolescents (10:00): At a time in which youth are particularly vulnerable, leaders within the purity culture movement combine language of belonging and intense emotionality to create a culture of conformity. Linda describes, “When I left Evangelicalism, I had to contend with how damaging it was. I went in with a pretty good sense of myself and the world.” Sadly, the confines of purity culture had long-lasting, devastating consequences.

• The grief and anger that accompanied the writing process (21:30): Initially, Linda was hopeful when she met other women who could relate to her story. “But then, when the numbers started to add up, and it became clear that this was a lot of people who are hurting, that became something to grieve over time.” Additionally, the systemic coverup of overt and covert sexual abuse in churches and the ensuing silencing of survivors showed that the people who were supposed to protect a generation of women had failed to keep them safe.

• The confusion in finding your freedom (30:00): As a sexual health coach, Linda’s clients often want to dive right into “fixing” sexual problems. Linda wisely takes a step back and asks people to explore simpler decisions. After all, purity culture’s rigid binary system increases the anxiety around the decision-making process. Identifying what you want sexually is really challenging when you’re not even sure how to decide what you want for dinner.

• What it’s like to have relationships with people who are “worried” about you (42:00): When a person leaves Evangelicalism, those within the community tend to worry about your wellbeing, and even your salvation. Linda describes her experiences of navigating this, and Jeremiah and Julia introduce a potential support group: Moms of Millenials Straying from the Church.

• How motherhood impacts sexuality (58:00): Linda describes how she talks about sexuality with her 19-year-old stepdaughter differently than she experienced in the church, and how parenting a newborn can introduce a new type of intimacy within the couple and family relationships.

Wherever you are in your journey toward sexual freedom, we hope that you can find comfort and healing in the power of telling and sharing stories.

Let’s heal together!

Tia Levings is a writer and content creator whose work explores the female narrative in patriarchal spaces. A survivor of church-sanctioned domestic violence, Tia shares the realities of Christian Fundamentalism, and sheds light on the strategic influence high control religion has on our society and headlines today. Her memoir releases in 2024 with St. Martin’s Press and you can find her videos on Instagram and Tiktok.

We are thrilled to have Tia share her experience of surviving and escaping a religious fundamentalist community, discovering healing and self-exploration, and using her story to help others find their own versions of healing. In this episode, Tia talks with us about:

• Religious fundamentalism (6:00). Tia defines fundamentalism as “putting ideals over people. Nothing is more important than the idea. Human-to-human connection gets shunned because there’s danger about connecting around a human need.” For three decades, Tia’s cultural context was rooted in “a base human fear, and someone else in a position of power who presents an attractive solution. These folks can take the things that mean the most to me to exploit and serve their purposes. When it doesn’t work out, the person gets blamed, not the system. They never want to admit that their system may not be working.”

• Women in fundamentalism (12:00): Tia reminds us that "Christianity teaches at its heart that a young girl [Mary] was impregnated by a deity and became a vessel. She is objectified and used for a purpose.” This young woman gets very little character development, despite her importance, and Tia draws upon the parallel process to describe the role of women in these systems: “I had one job—satisfy my husband and bear babies. A woman’s brain never factors in. What’s necessary is her hands, service, womb, and vagina.”

• Messages around sexuality (24:00): Tia describes purity culture as such: “My job as a Christian girl was to stay pure and refine my Christian sweetness. No touch, no hand holding, no relationship, no crushes because you don’t want to hold someone else’s spouse’s hands. You’re pure. You’re sweet. He [because same-sex marriages are unacceptable in conservative Christianity] decides that he wants you and says that he’s sent from God. That’s how engagement worked.” Tia was married by 19 and had three children by the age of 23 in the name of being a “good Christian girl”.

• Deconstruction (43:00): Tia’s marriage and community gradually became more conservative and, in her case, extremely dangerous, but Tia found online platforms, specifically blogging, as her first system for practicing deconstruction. She says, “The virtual spaces gave me a space to exist. I wasn’t allowed to be me in the real world, but online, I had control and agency on how to present myself. The relationships with these people were folks who hid me when I was on the run. There’s power when you have a space to exist and grow.”

• The dangers of change (58:00): When one person in a system begins to change, typically, the other members of that system will do whatever they can to keep said person stuck in their known, familiar roles. Tia compares her change experience with war, an especially potent metaphor given the fact that conservative Christianity is invested in war. She explains, “Your life is preparing for the war so you can usher in the second coming in Christ and bring the rapture. You’re either going to get raptured in the beginning, middle, or all the way through, which is the big Armageddon. This becomes self fulfilling prophecies because they’re creating the end times in the ways they’re behaving.” Tia’s change resulted in her being excommunicated from her religious community (she’s in good company, having her life threatened, and having to go into hiding.

• Knowing yourself and the nervous system acclimation (1:23:00): Healing involves learning and listening to the type of person that you are based on your own traits and needs, rather than the type of person society tells you to be. In Tia’s case, this involved reengaging with her high sense of sensitivity, which involves creating buffers for transitioning in and out of certain experiences. We discuss differentiation, and Tia says, “you’ll know you’re in a differentiated relationship when someone will take care of you whenever you start taking care of yourself.”

Tia concludes, “I had been waiting for rescue my whole life. Someday my prince will come. Someday God will save me. When it came down to it, I had to get us out of there. I’m the heroine of my own story.”

The healing process from navigating and leaving religious fundamentalism is extremely daunting, and we hope that Tia’s story provides courage, imagination, and resilience for those who are in similar contexts.

We heal best when we heal together!

This week we highlight a few of the reasons we began Sexvangelicals and what is to come in the following weeks. We will be doing a Summer Rewatch Series highlighting three of our favorite episodes, which include new content at the beginning of each episode. It is important to reflect and realize how we have grown and evolved and we want to share that with you. In this mini-episode (or trailer) we reflect on some of the reasons we started this podcast to begin with and what episodes we will be covering in the next month!

Relationships and Deconstruction (6:00):  “Our focus within the sexuality and deconstruction sphere is on the relationships that have survived a church exit or the relationships that are forming for the first time without the rigid confines of the dictates of purity culture.” Jeremiah talks about their work within the sex and deconstruction sphere is centered around what happens to relationships after you leave the Church and a big portion of this podcast is dedicated to exploring that question from multiple angles.  Julia adds: “Building flourishing partnerships and sexual relationships after leaving an Evangelical Mormon or Pentecostal community, or as Jeremiah has coined, EMPish religious structures are uniquely hard work.” These organizations make it so that it is hard to leave and just jump into fulfilling relationships, and friendships, and just have a healthy sex life in general. 

Deconstructing the ‘Right Way’ (6:30): “I’ve noticed that folks leaving EMPish communities put a lot of pressure on themselves to deconstruct the quote “right way” and transition smoothly to a whole new way of engaging themselves in the world.” Jeremiah notes this idea that there is only one way to deconstruct and that it is linear, clean, and simple. None of that is true and that is another motivation for this podcast, to highlight different deconstruction processes, to show that it is inherently messy in nature and that’s not a bad thing. 

Positive Sex Ed (7:30): Engaging in positive and pleasurable sexuality takes time to build and develop, especially if you received sex-negative messages for years and maybe even decades of your life. Something that we talk about in our interview with Amber Wood several months ago. What happens when you haven't received good relational and sexual health education until sometime in your adulthood? So you might be for me, 27 - 30. Operating in some ways with the sexual resources of a teenager.  So that's part of what I mean when I say, oh, I was 28, but perhaps engaging with sexuality for the first time.” Julia shares how because of the system under which she grew up she was working under the sexual resources of a teenager as an adult when she left the Church. It is essential to give ourselves space and to reflect on the resources we have been given and not shame ourselves for not being “ahead” because there is no such thing, there is only our journey, our pace, and our lives. 

We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we discuss how sexual health is relational health, and relational health is sexual health.

We’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman.

Last week, Luke and Lauren from the amazing podcast Filled to Flourish talked with us about the ways that Purity Culture encourage turning toward God, and as a result, away from oneself and one’s partner.

This week, they discuss the ways that they learned to turn toward each other, and the ways that protected the relationship as larger systems began to turn against them. This is a really sad, difficult episode, but also a celebration of their relationship and a source of encouragement to others who may be actively experiencing something similar.

We discuss:

• Unconditional Positive Regard (9:00): Lauren describes, “Gottman uses this idea of unconditional positive regard. We saw each other in the best light and we knew we were doing the best we could amidst all the dysfunction unhealed trauma we were still swimming in. We had this regard for one another, and that helped us to weave this beautiful tapestry versus imploding.” 

• Messy Work (17:00): Jeremiah sets realistic expectations around the work of deconstruction and relational healing: “Problems tend to begin three to four years before the beginning of couples therapy Shifting and development of new interaction patterns takes a lot of time. This isn't just something that happens overnight. You walk out of the church. You leave the church, whew, thank god that's over. And then I can live and skip into a new life. There's a lot of work that happens after that and it sounds like y'all did a lot of coming back to each other, getting messy, coming back to each other, getting messy, coming back to each other. I think that that's really important to name that that's a realistic part of the process.”

• Turning Toward Each Other (25:00 - 29:00): There are a few horror stories throughout the episode, including the involvement of a missionary organization criticizing Luke and Lauren for not enacting traditional gender roles. Luke summarizes, “Where I think the starting of us turning towards each other and not feeling safe and saying like, babe, I'm safe with you, but I'm not sure we're safe here.” He notes that this rejection led them to turn towards each other because the Church labeled their relationship as “bad,” and when they both knew that was not the reality, they chose to be with each other and on each other sides, instead of playing the blame game. 

• White Saviorism (35:00): We have a side conversation about transracial adoption—Jeremiah is a transracial adoptee, and Luke and Lauren have adopted children of color. The elections of 2016 and 2020 enabled Lauren and Luke to speak out against racism and sexism, which the Church did not like. Lauren explains, “So it wasn't so much I started questioning gender roles. But what happened was my outspokenness prior to this was more of a value to a lot of folks, family included, because it was their agenda and their narrative. So I think this is the very confusing thing about outspoken women in the church.” Luke and Lauren chose to turn towards each other because the Church and their families did not agree with their ideas. 

• There is no Hate like Christian Love (40:00): Luke describes, “I was healing and so I started getting more of a voice and speaking out and having more conversations and being more educated. And every person that we had a conversation, invited a conversation. It became hostile, angry, and abusive. We got stuck in America for Covid. So 2020, we were in America and we ended up losing 25% of our support because we were speaking against racism and our church told us to stop talking about it or they were gonna stop supporting us 'cause we were missionaries and we represented them and they didn't agree with us. […] We didn't feel welcomed at the church anymore.” This encapsulates the Church perfectly: We love you until you don’t agree with us. Lauren expands, “We were no longer the tool that we once were. And as soon as you're not a tool in a system of power that only uses people, you are invaluable to them. Your inherent dignity and worth as a human is not a consideration. It's irrelevant and everyone thinks that they are exempt from that.” When the Church deems you not useful you no longer have a community or support or anything. They push people out who have their own thoughts and ideas. 

Again, a huge thanks to Luke and Lauren for their vulnerability and wisdom. Please check out their business, Flourish Therapy.

Let’s heal together!

We are continuing our summer series called Partnership Building, where we discuss how sexual health is relational health, and relational health is sexual health.

We’re talking about seven principles of healthy relationships, according to relationship experts John and Julie Gottman. In the first four episodes of this series, we’ve discussed two foundations of healthy relationships: curiosity and admiration/appreciation.

In the next two episodes, we’ll talk about the third principle of healthy relationships (according to the Gottman’s): turning toward each other.

And we have amazing guests, Luke and Lauren Smallcomb from the brilliant podcast Filled to Flourish. Luke and Lauren are the founders of Flourish Therapy. They live in Chiang Mai, Thailand with their kids and 3 cuddly dogs. Luke and Lauren talk with us about:

• An Unquestioned System (6:00)

• The Unforgivable Sin (14:00)

• Eroticism (20:00)

• Lack of Freedom (25:00)

• Falling Back on Gender Roles (34:00)

• Good and Bad (49:00)

Luke and Lauren will talk more with us next week about how to turn toward each other when your systems of origin begin to turn away from you. You won’t want to miss it!

We are continuing our series on Partnership building by comparing the messaging from a classic relationship book in Evangelical/Mormon/Pentecostal (EMPish) circles, Love and Respect, by Emerson Eggerichs, alongside the work of couples researchers John and Julie Gottman, and their principle of nurturing fondness and admiration.

As we talked about last week, practicing this principle can be challenging when you've grown up learning that admiration and fondness exist along problematic gendered norms of the Love and Respect model.

Julia explains, “Admiration roughly translates to respect, which women show through deference to male authority and obligatory sex based on socially conditioned standards for male pleasure, love roughly translates to affection and emotional intimacy. Which is good, but in manifestation, often coddles women dismissing their intelligence and erasing their sexuality. All under the guise of love.”

We also talk about

• Earning Respect (12:50)

• God Made You This Way (18:00 / 26:00)

• Gendered Lines (28:40)

• Surviving a Gendered World (35:24)

• Power Dynamics (53:00)

For those of you who have read Love and Respect, what are some parts of the book that stood out to you? What are you trying to unlearn.

For those of you who haven’t read Love and Respect, we highly encourage you not to.

Let’s heal together!