Summary
We delve into the orgasm gap, the impact of evangelical teachings on sex, and the harm caused to marriages and women with sex researcher Sheila Gregoire. Uncover the truth behind popular evangelical books such as “Every Man’s Battle,” “For Women Only,” “Sheet Music,” and “Love and Respect,” and their effects on intimacy and relationships. Join us for a candid conversation that challenges the status quo, empowers individuals, and sheds light on the importance of healthy and fulfilling sexual experiences.
Transcript
Shelby: Today we got to have an awesome conversation with Sheila Gregoire, and she’s the author of several books on the topic of sex and marriage and purity culture.
Probably our most popular, which is called the Great Sex Rescue, which we talk about in the interview. We just talked about so many interesting topics. Everything From vaginismus to masturbation to abuse, and its relation with purity culture and, and all of it’s backed up by research that she does in these really high quality surveys, which I just found fascinating. I Found it particularly interesting because of all the research she’s done, like her books and her topics are very research based and survey based. And so to see, hear some of the statistics was actually really shocking. And some of them absolutely affirmed what I thought was true, and some were completely the opposite.
Nate: Yeah. I even asked her at one point to say what she, cause I remember these Christian conferences I used to go to in high school and we were always broken off into like the boys’ room and the girls’ room . And what would you say to each of those rooms if you were to give the, you know, the breakout session talk to both of those. So that was later in the interview, so stick around for that.
Go get her books. She has courses available on her website as well. It’s bear marriage.com. That’s b a r e marriage.com and go follow her on social and all those kind of things. She has a lot of great and interesting things to say.
And if you want to go deeper with all this content, you want to join the Almost Heretical community. We have a whole second podcast we do where you get raw, unedited versions of this show, but also extra episodes that we do. You get to take part in our monthly Zoom calls. You get to be in a private Facebook group where people can talk openly and honestly about a lot of these topics.
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I want to thank Curtis and David, Sam. Jeff, Jan, Zach. Brett, Adam, Hannah, and many others who in the last couple weeks here have become patrons of the show and supported us to help keep this show going and to help get this message out to more and more people.
Shelby: So here’s our conversation with Sheila. Well, Sheila, welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have you and you’ve kind of become the Christian sex expert, purity, culture, all this kind of stuff.
Nate: And so I’m really glad to have you on the show. And I guess just to kick it all off, like how did you even start to like, want to look at this topic or what was sort of the catalyst for even getting into any of this?
Sheila: You know, nobody grows up thinking, you know what I wanna do when I’m old? I just wanna spend my entire life talking about sex. Like, that’s just a really weird thing. Um, and I didn’t start out that way. I was a mommy blogger. So in 2008 I started, I started blogging. I have several postgraduate degrees, but I was home with my kids and I just wanted something to do.
So I was mommy blogging, talking, parenting, and organizing. And every time I talked about sex, my traffic grew. So I just ended up talking more and more about sex and I wrote some books about sex. Um, and yeah, I kind of became this Christian sex person. And then everything changed in 2019, because I actually read an evangelical book about marriage.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: Which I hadn’t done until then. I was in that space, but I was afraid of plagiarizing, so I just wasn’t reading anything, anyone else. And that’s when my world fell apart, when I realized how terrible the other books were. And I, uh, that’s when our mission totally changed. And I thought, I gotta fix this.
Nate: Are we naming names or are, are we leaving that out?
Sheila: would love to name names.
I mean, I’m on a mission. So yeah, I read love and respect.
Nate: Okay. Yeah,
Sheila: So I was on Twitter and a bunch of people were fighting about whether they needed love or respect. And I thought, yeah, I’m a woman and I need respect. Cuz his whole thesis is that women need love and men need respect. So I thought I have that book and this is a great way to procrastinate.
So I went and got it and I opened the sex chapter, which is only about 12 pages long, and it’s in the men’s section, so it’s what men need.
Shelby: Oh my
Nate: Mm.
Sheila: Yeah. And he said, and I, and I quote, if your husband is typical, he has a need that you don’t have. Um, the need is for physical release. So nothing about intimacy. And if he doesn’t get physical release, he’ll come under Satanic attack
Shelby: my gosh.
Sheila: and that’s what can cause affairs.
And there wasn’t a single word in that chapter about how women can and should feel pleasure too.
Shelby: Wow.
Nate: Wow.
Shelby: And there’s no, there was no sex topic in the women’s section of
Sheila: No, it was a need for men, but not women.
Shelby: Even though apparently women need love.
Sheila: Right. And so and so on the blog, we spent a week talking about how terrible this book was, and we were inundated by messages from women saying, yeah, that book caused Unen enabled abuse in my marriage. And so we created this report, we sent it into focus on the family that publishes the book. And I actually knew Jim Daley, like I had been on the show three times, so I thought they might listen to me, but they completely blew me off.
So we thought, okay, if they won’t listen to a couple of hundred women, maybe they’ll listen to 20,000. So we did the largest survey that’s ever been done of evangelical women’s sexual and marital satisfaction to figure out if there are certain key evangelical beliefs that end up hurting women. And that became our book, the Great Sex Rescue.
Shelby: Wow. Okay. The Great Sex Rescue, that’s the book of yours that I’ve heard the most about, and I think it’s probably the most popular. Could you just kind of like overview, you know, I mean, what is it that you’re rescuing, sort of, and what are you rescuing it from and what are you and what are you rescuing it too?
Sheila: Basically we’re just saying that the evangelical view of sex ends up really hurting couples and especially women. And so how can we talk about this in a way that’s actually healthy and evidence-based?
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: So, which shouldn’t be radical, but apparently it is because the vast majority of books on sex in evangelical circles pretty much ignore women.
Nate: Yeah.
Shelby: So let’s focus on the family selling this book.
Sheila: No, they actually scrubbed their website. If you go to their website and ch type in my name, nothing appears.
Nate: Wow.
Shelby: Wow.
I’m
Sheila: the way back machine, but
Shelby: If you, maybe if
you maybe if your survey was of the men, then maybe you would’ve gotten some traction.
Sheila: Yeah, we did actually end up surveying, surveying men. A year later for our book, the Good Guys Guide, degraded Sex. We found some interesting things there too. And basically the same messages that hurt women hurt men too.
Nate: Hmm. That, yeah. That’s fascinating. Okay, so let’s go back to the, so the study, the big study you did, uh, you get you, yeah. You start getting all the responses back in and you’re looking at the data for the first time. For you, what kind of jumped out as you were like, whoa, what was the shocking thing that you saw?
Sheila: Um, Now it doesn’t seem shocking, but at the time, um, I realized that I had been talking about prioritizing sex completely wrong because if you ask most people what is the main sex problem in your marriage, most people will say, well, someone wants it more than the other. And so we have to figure out like how to get the person who wants it less to have sex more, right?
So how do we get the person who wants it less to have sex more? And, um, what we discovered is that frequency and desire is not the problem. Um, it is a symptom. And when things are going right, you don’t have a frequency problem.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: I’m gonna list five things. Okay? So here you go. Here you go. Five things.
When women frequently reach orgasm, when there’s high marital satisfaction, when she feels emotionally close during sex, when there’s no porn use and when there’s no sexual dysfunction. Frequency pretty much takes care of itself. So if there’s a frequency problem, there’s something else going on.
Nate: Mm-hmm.
Shelby: that is fascinating.
Sheila: So you think about all the pastors who are telling people you need to have sex every three days, or, you know, try having sex every day for a week and it’ll fix stuff. And no it doesn’t, cuz that’s not the issue.
Nate: Wow.
Shelby: And what do you, what was the response to, to it? To the, to the book and to the, I mean, that’s, that’s funny. I just feel like, you know, I, I’m, I live in a pretty, um, what do I, what would I say? Liberated space where I feel like I’ve processed a lot that I grew up in and not, don’t, I don’t feel held down by those, um, kind of mentality.
Some of those books that I read for sure. But even so, like, I’ve never heard, even what you just said there, I’ve never give, I’ve never had that framework to think about it. So, um, I’m just, yeah. Curious what the reception was for women all over the place and
Sheila: Well, I think, I think we need to go even back another step further, which is what we were trying to do as well was redefine what sex is. Because if you ask people, you know, what is sex? Or you say like, did you have sex last night? People think you’re saying a particular thing like, did you put penis in vagina?
Move around Tilly climax. Like that’s what we tend to picture Sex is right? Penis and vagina climax, he climaxes. And the problem with that definition is that she could be lying there making a grocery list in her head. She could be in emotional turmoil or she could even be in physical pain and it would still count as having sex.
And this is the problem is that our definition of sex, exclu basically excludes women. And so when you read all these books that tell you to prioritize sex and what they mean is prioritize intercourse, we’re leaving women out of the picture.
Because in the evangelical church we have a 47 point orgasm gap, by which I mean that 95% of men almost always are, always reach orgasm in a given sexual encounter, but only 48% of women do.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: So that’s a 47 point orgasm gap. So that’s a lot of women who aren’t having any fun.
Nate: Mm-hmm.
Shelby: Yeah. Why do, I mean, I, I guess you’re probably pretty used to, uh, just talking about things that are a little taboo in most contexts or just a little more awkward, but like, Yeah. Why do you think that is? Um, why, why is there such a huge gap?
Sheila: Well, it’s funny cuz we, we’ve since done so the great sex rescue we wrote. Two years ago, we just came out with a new book called She Deserves Better, um, where we surveyed another 7,000 women to look at their experiences as teenagers in church and what they were taught in church. And I believe the number I, there’s three authors on each of the books.
Um, because we needed a whole research team. So there’s one person who does all the stats, Joanna Swarski. So I’m doing the stats by memory. I don’t have these at the tip of my
fingers. So some of them I have memorized really well. I think the number is like 35%, but 35% of women didn’t know that female orgasms existed until after the age of 20.
Shelby: I mean, I’m pretty sure I was in that category,
Sheila: yeah. And so, and so there’s a lot of women who don’t even know that they can reach orgasm or what an orgasm is. Um, and when and when we see sex from such a male point of view that he needs this. We portray it as he has needs, she has to provide those needs. Um, then we’re really creating a situation where sex really isn’t for her.
And if she, if he ha if they have intercourse and she feels nothing, the assumption is, well, I guess that, I guess that she’s broken. Cuz when we asked both men and women, does he do enough foreplay? Okay. So we asked, we asked women that and then we asked men that on our men’s survey. And when women frequently reach orgasm, like 95% of men say, yes I do.
88% of women say, yes he does. So excellent. But when she doesn’t reach or them that often, 71% of men still say they do enough foreplay. And so do 52% of women. So it’s like enough for what, like the truth is, we are not expecting women to reach orgasm. We’re thinking that, that that’s a bonus if it happens.
We’re not, a lot of people aren’t even sure it can happen. Uh, and so the emphasis really is we need to have sex for his sake. It’s not about both of us together. And that does a lot of harm for women’s libido, women’s orgasm rates, women’s marital and sexual satisfaction. Everything.
Shelby: And I’m sure from what you’re saying earlier that you would say that in the long run it also does harm to men. What is, um, yeah, what’s the kind of the angle on this for men? Why is, why is this great sex rescue also good for men?
Sheila: I, I think the big thing is like so many guys, Have wondered why their wives don’t want sex and they tend to blame women. And it’s like if we can just put entitlement away, then we can really create the kind of intimate marriages that we want. Cuz everybody wants intimacy. And most guys, if you’re a good guy, you don’t wanna have sex with someone who doesn’t wanna have sex with you.
Shelby: Yeah.
Sheila: But we’re taught women don’t like sex, right? This is something that men want. And so the expectation actually is that she will never want it and sometimes she might give it to you and that’s a terrible way to live.
Shelby: Yeah.
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: Um, and so I thi I think getting rid of entitlement and understanding that we can actually get to something good if we make it something for both of us.
It’s actually what men want as well. They just have never been given a roadmap to get there, at least not in the church.
Nate: Hmm.
Shelby: Would you say that your book, great Sex Rescue, is geared toward women or geared toward anyone?
Sheila: Well, I would’ve said it was geared towards women. It’s funny, when I started writing in this, in this, um, niche publishers told us that women will buy books written by women, but if you wanna write a book for men or couples, you have to be male. Um,
Shelby: I mean, that’s, that’s what I would’ve thought too.
Sheila: yeah. But we’ve been, we’ve been so happy with how many guys have been reading it and how many pastors have been reading it and counselors, so that kind of blew us away.
So yeah, if you go to Amazon and check out the reviews, a lot of them are from men, which we’re really, we’re really jazzed about. Yeah.
Shelby: and then you also did just write a book, or maybe not just write, can’t remember when, but the, that specifically geared toward men. Right? Like the Good
Sheila: The Good Guys Guide The Right Sex has been out for a year. Yeah.
Shelby: Okay. Wow. Now that’s pretty
Sheila: one’s for Men.
Shelby: Nice. Nicely done.
Nate: I’m curious as we, like, you know, our show is almost radical. We talk about the Bible, we talk about like ways that we’ve been misinterpreting this, ways that we’ve been applying this incorrectly, that type of stuff. You know, when you think about the Bible and you think about passages that are often used, um, what ones kind of jump out to you or, or that you’ve covered?
Um, that we kind of have to look at differently or, or like, I don’t know, like, there, I feel like there’s often ones that are just kind of like, none are coming to my head. She, Shelby, do you have any that are like coming to your
Sheila: Oh, I got one. I got one that you’ll jump at. How about the do not deprive versus in first, first Corinthians
Nate: sure.
Sheila: Yeah. Um, and because those are often used right and weaponized, like do not deprive each other, and it goes, it goes, um, uh, you know, for the hus, for the wife’s body, um, does not belong to her alone, but also to her husband and the husband’s body does not belong, belong to him alone, but also to the wife and do not deprive each other.
Accept by mutual consent and for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer and fasting, but then come together again so that you won’t be tempted by your lack of self-control. And those verses are used over and over again
Shelby: But the verse itself is very egalitarian,
Sheila: it is, and it’s, it’s totally, but it’s totally been used to tell women that you can’t say no.
And that is not what those verses are saying at
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: This is actually the only place in scripture where Paul explicitly talks about authority in marriage, and he makes it equal. So in some versions, it’s, it’s like, um, uh, you know, the, the wife does not have authority over her own body, but yields it to the husband.
And the husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields it to the wife. And so everything that he has, she has too. And I think we forget how revolutionary that was, because in Roman times, husbands owned their wive’s bodies. You could kill your wife and not be prosecuted because you owned her. And so for Paul to turn around and say, in the same way she owns him, that’s a huge deal,
Nate: Yeah.
Sheila: you know? But, but beyond that, like, do not deprive. Okay. What is it that you aren’t supposed to deprive each other of? Because if the answer is intercourse, she’s already being deprived. Like, like if she isn’t orgasming, if she does not feel emotionally close during sex, but she ends up feeling used, she would’ve been better off not having sex.
Like she, she would feel worse after sex than before sex. And 18% of women in our survey say that their primary emotion after sex is feeling used.
So, So when you, when they’re saying do not deprive, they’re not talking about intercourse. Paul is talking about a sexual relationship which is categorized, you know, by mutuality and intimacy and pleasure for both.
And if that’s not present, she’s already being deprived. And these verses don’t even apply. Like you cannot use them to pressure someone into having sex that they, that they don’t want and that isn’t good for them.
Nate: Hmm.
Shelby: When I’m thinking about, okay, I’m thinking about the Bible and, and then just the history of, you know, how did, how did we even get here to begin with? And I’m like, well, it’s not, it’s not really hard to think about how we got here because, uh, just it feels like it’s, um, very much a product of just the oppression of women in a lot of ways.
But, um, it reminded me of, of something that I’ve probably mentioned somewhere on this show before, but I think you might find a particular interest that I studied in my, my master’s program. This is gonna seem like a weird rabbit trail for a second, but I studied Deads Sea Scrolls, specifically studied, um, Genesis Apocryphal, which is this retelling of Genesis found in the Deads Sea Scrolls.
And there’s this whole scene with, um, Batino and Lak. Lamek is the father of Noah, and Batino is his mother. So they’re these, this married couple. And, um, Noah is born and right when he is born, he’s like glowing and standing up and singing the praises of God, which is highly unusual for a newborn to do.
And so naturally the Llk, the husband is like, What is going on here? This is not my child. You, you must have like, had sex with an angel or something, which was a very big concern at this point in literature. So a couple hundred years BC was just the, uh, the mixing of humans and of angels was like a big concern.
So, so her then she goes into this long argument, which I was studying, um, essentially the voices of women. And so that was why I was in this passage cuz she actually got to talk, which is pretty unusual. And she goes into this long explanation of why, uh, to prove that this is his child. And her, um, her proof is essentially, don’t you remember the, the panting of my breath and like this des description of her having an orgasm and.
Which is cool, but then to our minds we’re like, okay, that doesn’t, still doesn’t really prove anything that just proves that you had an orgasm. But so when, when I dig into the, the science behind it and the, the history behind it at that time, the in Greek kind of science and philosophy, um, they believed that, and women’s orgasm was essentially equivalent to like a male ejaculation and that both were necessary for conception.
And I was like, wow, that’s, you know, incorrect science, but probably had a lot better sex back then if that’s you’re trying to have, have a baby.
Sheila: It is so interesting that at different, at different points in history, that was really stressed. Whereas today it, it really isn’t. It’s amazing how, um, like power of a praying wife when when she talks about sex, she says, you know, to do the right thing and give him release that men need release.
So again, it’s, it’s very, um, male-centric. Uh, every man’s battle is especially bad for this. They, they call women methadone for their husband’s sex addictions. So, yeah. So when he quits lust and pour cold Turkey, they tell women be like a merciful vial of methadone for him.
Nate: Wow.
Sheila: So you need to give him release so that he doesn’t lust after other women.
Shelby: Yikes.
Sheila: Okay. It’s, it’s just atrocious. It’s really atrocious. So we measured those, um, those ideas like, um, for instance, um, a woman should have frequent sex with her husband to keep him from watching pornography. And when women believe that orgasm rates go down, rates of sexual pain go up. Um, when women believe a wife is obligated to give her husband sex when he wants it, again, orgasm rates go down and rates of sexual pain skyrocket.
And that’s something that a lot of people don’t realize, but evangelical women suffer from, um, vagus, which is a sexual dysfunction disorder at two and a half times the rate of the general population. So we found, we found an incidence rate of around 22.6%. Um, and a lot of it is due to messages like this obligation sex message.
So when women believe that when they’re married, their chance of experiencing vaginal mis increases to almost the same statistical effect as if they had been abused. .
Because our body’s interpret obligation is trauma.
Nate: Wow.
Shelby: Okay. So then you, cuz and I, I, I know this is true because I know a lot of friends with vaginal mis and I didn’t necessarily know what it was compared to the general population though, and that’s crazy. Um, and are, so are you saying that. That, does that develop like usually in marriage or like approaching marriage or does it develop cuz I mean, purity culture starts very early.
I mean puberty if not earlier and the, the messaging there and um, when, yeah. When do you think this kind of trauma around those messages begins and where does it come from?
Sheila: We see it as well. In our latest survey of teen girls, we saw the modesty messages are highly linked to sexual pain. So teaching girls that, um, boys can’t help but last if you’re dressed like you’re trying to incite it, or a girl has responsibility not to be a stumbling block to the boys around her. If you believe those messages as well, your chance of experiencing sexual pain increases 50%. So, um, I, I think a lot of it is the messaging that we get early. We tend to see it when women first start a sexual relationship, especially when they first get married. But you can have secondary vaginal mis after postpartum issues or some other kind of trauma.
So vag MIS is really multifaceted and it isn’t only due to the messages that we believe. It can also be, um, like I had vag mis and I also did a lot of ballet, and so I just always held my pelvic floor wrong for like a decade and didn’t realize it. So, you know, plus I believed toxic messages. So it was all just very multifaceted and a
Shelby: yeah. Perfect storm.
Sheila: Yes.
Shelby: So then It sounds like you’ve probably had a very personal journey, uh, that maybe, I mean, maybe that’s what led to you first writing about these things on your blog to begin with.
Sheila: It was, and, and I think when we did the survey, that’s one of the reasons why we really wanted to come. We really wanted to figure out that sexual pain piece because we knew that women, um, who were more in the church were so much more susceptible to it, and we didn’t know why. And it was so interesting to see the numbers coming in and realizing.
Oh my gosh. That was part of my story and I never, I never put the pieces together, but I read the book, the Active Marriage, um, about three months before I was married. And until then I had really been looking forward to sex. Like I had no hangups. I knew everything about sex. Like, it, it just wasn’t a big deal.
I loved my husband it or my fiance. It was all great. Um, but then I read that book and it was all about how you need to have sex even if you don’t want to. And suddenly it wasn’t my choice. It was like, this is gonna be an obligation for me. And it changed the nature of sex. And I think that triggered a lot of it.
And I talked to, we talked to so many women in focus groups who read that same book. I mean, it was the only book that we read in the eighties and nineties. So, you know, it was the only book that was around. Um, and that was their, that was their, uh, story to do.
Shelby: Purity culture, I mean, just comes with, I mean, the trauma I think is, you know, heavily associated with shame. Like, I think about that word and, and there’s a lot of different, I guess, You know, it’s not just sex within marriage that, uh, if anything, that’s supposed to be the one area where there’s no shame, but we just, you know, you can’t, as a lot of my friends have said, you can’t just turn the light switch on and off, um, from the day before your wedding to the day after.
And I, I, I remember, I mean, growing up in youth group, like pornography was just this huge topic. And, um, and I still, I honestly don’t know that I’ve like mentally revisited it a lot lately. But, but I wonder like, what would be like for someone who is, you know, much more sex positive than, you know, maybe the culture that we grew up in, you know, what is your perspective on pornography now?
Like, is there some place for it? Should people feel the shame that they were maybe told they should feel? But then also, you know, are there still con negative consequences that, you know, what, what, what’s your, I’m guessing you have a more nuanced approach to it than maybe we did growing up.
Sheila: I mean, my, my take on pornography is that it is absolutely always wrong. Cause it’s a justice issue.
Shelby: Um,
Sheila: You know, it’s, it, I mean, those are real people being trafficked. And even if you look at so-called consensual porn, if you look at the studies, those women are not consensual. The vast majority of them, they’re victims of sexual abuse themselves.
And so how consensual is that really? So when you’re looking at the biggest driver of sex trafficking in the world and that it is abuse, I mean, you look at how violent the vast majority of porn is and that it include, it, it, it’s basically the degradation of women for men’s pleasure. There is, there’s no way That’s okay.
Shelby: All right.
Sheila: So yeah, it’s just, it’s just a justice issue
Shelby: That makes sense.
Sheila: But I think the way we talk about porn and lust is very problematic. Um, First of all, we make, we make lust seem universal. So the whole every man’s battle idea, right? All men struggle with lust. It’s every man’s battle. Um, 4 million copies of that book series sold.
And that book literally says, um, men don’t naturally have that Christian view of sex. And that when we’re looking for another reason for sexual sin, we got there naturally simply by being male. So in their minds, male sexuality and the objectification of women are one in the same thing.
Shelby: Oof. Wow.
Sheila: That that is, that is God sanctioned, that men cannot help but objectify women.
And that is just so wrong on every level, and it’s simply not true too. And when women believe that their libidos are are real, that was one of the biggest effects that we found on that belief, is that women’s libidos are majorly, artificially lowered. Because seriously, who wants, who wants to be sex positive?
In a world where all men are gonna see you as an object? And the idea of intimacy and actually getting to know you, or wanting to know you in any other way is just not a thing cuz he can only ever think of you as the sexual. Being that he can get his pleasure from. Like, that’s just, that’s just so wrong.
Shelby: Yeah.
Sheila: Um, but that’s what we’ve been taught. So, so that’s wrong. But I think the bigger issue for boys is that we’ve conflated noticing with lusting. And so we raised this whole generation of guys to think that, that they are evil and helpless and hopeless because you’re 12 years old, you’re just starting to have sexual feelings, and you notice a girl has a chest and now you’re like, oh my gosh, I have lusted.
And so the object has to be to never ever be attracted to any woman, ever, or to never notice that she has a body because that is somehow sinful. Well, that’s a terribly shame based way to live. I mean,
Shelby: I’m setting someone up for failure.
Sheila: yeah, and, and that isn’t lusting. No noticing someone’s attractive is not lusting. So we need to talk about this differently.
You know, when we, when we did survey men, um, we asked them, do you have a daily struggle with lust? Okay, so is it every man’s battle basically? And 75% said yes, they did. So not every man, but three quarters was still a lot. But then we broke it down and we gave guys like I th four or five scenarios that they could possibly lust in.
And then we gave a bunch of different options of what they would do in each of those scenarios. And when you look at that 75%, about half of them would not lust in any of our scenarios, don’t have issues with porn. Like they just, they don’t show any signs of lusting at all. And so you have to wonder, do these guys really have a daily struggle with lust, or do they just simply notice that women are attractive when they’re out in public and they think they’re
Shelby: that’s what it is. Wow. So then how, like, how did you break it down? Like what do, how do you define lust then, and how would you say, you know, those men maybe were myst defining it and hurting themselves that way?
Sheila: I mean, I think lust is using someone for your own sexual gratification. So, you know, and whatever that might mean, fantasizing about them pulling up their picture in your mind and just imagining them for a while. I don’t know, thinking about them naked explicitly for a while, but like, yeah, no, like, okay.
Ryan, I’m Canadian. Ryan Reynolds, really good looking Canadian man. Okay. I, you know, he just is, I’m not lusting after him. I’m just, I just have eyes, if he were to show up at my door and say, Hey, do you wanna have sex? I would say, get out of here and call the police. Like, no matter how good he looks, because I love my husband, you know, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s attractive.
But that’s it. That’s as far as it goes. And, and we need to allow that kind of nuance more, uh, cuz I think we are causing a lot of shame when there doesn’t need to be shame.
Shelby: Yeah. And then I think the, the other side of the every man’s battle, you know, that just mindset that is unhelpful is, uh, the saying that it’s only men, whether it’s LT or lust or porn. And that was, that was a big topic, um, when I went to a Christian university. And, um, I think it was a good conversation that people, like in the women’s groups, people were bringing up, like porn is not just something that men can get addicted to.
And, um, and yeah. And, and that if, you know, if you’re a woman who has these feelings, there’s nothing wrong with you. In
fact, we, that’s pro that’s something that’s right with you.
Sheila: Well, and, and even the idea that only men are visual. You see this in all kinds of books. Like for women only, that’s the famous one that talks about how men were made to be visual and women weren’t. There is no scientific backing for that.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: The most recent meta-analysis there, there was one in 2020 and one in 2021 of brain scans.
Um, so they combined like all the studies from the last 20 years that they could and analyze them all together to try to find a definitive answer. Basically, men and women are both visual. It’s just that women’s don’t always register our arousal subjectively. So our bodies can be physically aroused, but our minds are like, eh, now I don’t like that.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: Or we’re aroused by different things. Um, it gets more complicated than that, but, but women are visual too. And so this thought that men are visual and women aren’t just, isn’t true. And you can you ask any Gen Z girl or Gen Alpha girl and they’ll tell you that girls are aroused as well. By visual, I mean just look at TikTok.
But in, in older generations, there really still is that idea that that women aren’t visual and men are.
Shelby: Yeah. Wow.
Nate: Should we do some listener questions? We’ve got a lot of listener questions that we’ve compiled over the last, actually couple years. So these are a lot of patrons of the show that have reached out. Is that cool if we,
if we do some listen. Okay. So I weeding through these cuz these are just on the topics of some of us wanna, like, they wanna dig into the Bible, they want to, and so I, I’m gonna just kind of go through these a little bit here and we’ll see.
Okay, so let’s start here. Rick, a patron of the show said, my understanding is that women in scripture, primarily in the Old Testament, are viewed as property of their fathers. We touched on this a little bit here already. I know there’s plenty to be discussed around the, the purity movement junk, but aside from that, I’m curious as to whether we can put together a decently informed sexual ethic that isn’t primarily concerned with maintaining a virgin’s monetary value for a suitor’s dowry.
What moral constraints on sexuality can be inferred from scripture?
Sheila: That is a really big question because when you look at what marriage meant back then, like the, the general, the general evangelical thing is that sex is meant for marriage. And I think you can make a a, a good scriptural case for that. I think the bigger question today is what is the marriage?
Cuz if you compare today’s idea of marriage with the Old Testament’s idea of marriage, it’s quite different. Like my ancestors I’ve done a lot of genealogy and my ancestors left the Church of England quite early. Uh, and so we were like Methodists and Wesleyans before that was cool, you know? and so I had a lot of people who baptized their kids.
And got married on the same day because the pastor only came through the town every six years, you know, so, cause there weren’t a lot of them. Right. So, so, you know, you get married and you baptize little five-year-old, little three-year-old little baby. Um, and were they married beforehand? I mean, that’s a good question.
And so, you know, I think these things are open for debate. I’ll tell you what our research says. When you look at people who have had sex only with one partner and you control for abuse, so we, we exclude the people who were sexually abused in the past. if you wait for marriage to have sex, your chance of having vaginismus increases by 25%.
Shelby: Wow .
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: Um, now I don’t think that means that everyone should be having sex before marriage. I think what it means is that we’re doing sex very wrong.
Nate: Yeah.
Sheila: Because if you think about it, if you have two people that really love each other and about to get married and they have sex before marriage, when they meant to wait, what probably happened was they were making out and they got carried away, right?
And so they’re having sex for the first time when she’s aroused. Whereas if you wait for the wedding, often you’re having sex because now we’re married and we’re supposed to do it. And very few women are actually aroused on their wedding night like that cuz they’re exhausted and there’s a lot of pressure.
So I think that’s the sign that if you’re gonna wait, you gotta do it properly, which is don’t just rush for intercourse cuz that can really backfire. And so many women, when we asked them to describe what sex was like on their wedding night, they said it was very bewildering.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: You don’t want that to be the word that you used to describe
Nate: that’s not the best word there, right? Yeah.
Sheila: You know, so I don’t know. The way that, the way that we tend to talk about it is, you know, there, there’s a lot of evidence that, um, having one sexual partner is good. Um, and I, I do believe that sex is meant to be sacred and that sex is something intimate. And I think that there is real benefit in waiting.
but I think the shame and the rules based thing that was attached to that doesn’t work. And so it’s really important just to help people make decisions based on what they think is wise for themselves and what they’re comfortable with, and figure out what their boundaries are. We do know that multiple sex partners has a lot of big downsides, and that’s pretty clear in pretty much all the research.
So, you know, I think, I think those are quite safe things to say. I’m not a biblical scholar, so I can’t tell you what the Hebrew says. I can only tell you what our research says.
Shelby: yeah. Well, but I mean, I think research is actually really important because, I mean, most of us grew up in a context where what the Bible says is all that matters. And, um, and so yeah, research like what you’re doing, I think is, is really important. But you had just mentioned something that actually is another listener question. Um, that a, about kind of this idea of wisdom and using wisdom to make ch the choices that are best for you.
And essentially I think there’s a lot of listeners who. Are are in a place where they feel like they have used their wisdom to make the choices to where they are at in life. And, and they feel good about them and they feel like it’s, um, a, you know, that they’ve done well. They feel confident about where they are and healthy and, but they have Christian families who may maybe don’t feel that way and don’t, don’t support their decisions and don’t, um, and, and are feeling that way largely because of the Bible.
And actually, when I was talking to, um, some various friends in preparation for this interview on this exact question, um, they asked, okay, they wanted to know what you would think about or how you would respond in a conversation with families who, you know, when you, if you present this idea that like I’ve, you know, tried to use wisdom to make.
Um, good choices that there’s, um, there’s a verse. What is that verse about how the, you know, the wisdom, basically our wisdom is like foolishness and, um, and, and all the verses about, you know, you can’t trust your, your heart is fickle and all of that kind of thing.
Nate: First Corinthians one. Yeah. Foolishness of God is wiser. The man’s wisdom and the weakness of God. Yeah, that one.
Shelby: Yeah, and I mean, I found that, and I mean so many more topics than just this one that, uh, we don’t seem to, we don’t live in a Christian culture where wisdom is emphasized. It’s obedience to the apparent interpretation of. The scriptures. That is, that’s all that matters. So I’m, yeah. What advice would you give to, to someone who say is, is in a, a serious long-term relationship with someone that, you know, they maybe are hoping to marry and that’s the direction they’re going but maybe they’re living together in their families are, you know, really see them as in sin and defiance of God?
Like what advice would you give to that person for how to maneuver that situation?
Sheila: You’re not gonna change your family’s opinion. Like, you know, I’m, I’m not quite sure what to, what to say there. Like, your family believes what, what they do and, um, I think you just need to be sure about what you are doing, you know? Um, we do know there’s a lot of benefits to commitment. There’s a lot of be, and, and I think that that is, you know, I personally believe that sex is meant for committed relationship, but people get to do what they want.
I’m just not gonna tell people that their choices mean that they are far from God because we’ve done that about so many things and we’ve been wrong in the past. And so you need to figure out what your boundaries are. And if those are your boundaries and you’re confident, then be confident, but you’re not gonna change your parents’ minds.
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: And maybe that’s, I wish I had a better answer, but y you know, you’re not gonna change your parents’ minds.
Shelby: Yeah. It’s true. But that is, I mean, I think even just hearing, you know, hearing those words can be helpful for people of just the, the affirmation that you are not far from God for,
Sheila: And I think, I think what I would say to parents too, cause I’m on the other side, right? Like I’m Gen X, I’ve got kids in my twenties and they’re both married, but like we have family members that aren’t married not necessarily Christian, but seriously committed to one another and like they’re just not married because they don’t have the money yet and they’re waiting to buy a house. is there a big difference there? Because for so many people, the commitment comes before the marriage today.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: And that’s just the way our society is. And we’re not used to that in the church. But I think when we start judging people, that doesn’t really help and you know, to expect people to live up to our standards. When they may not have the same standard is actually not fair. And Jesus doesn’t tell us to do that. and so I think the best thing to do is just support and love people. They’re allowed to make their own decisions.
Nate: Yeah.
Shelby: Do you use the Bible as the foundation for a sexual ethic or, I think it’s, would be tricky to say that we are gonna use the Bible for a sexual ethic because the Bible is, uh, well for, I mean, for one, I don’t even love the term the Bible anymore because it’s not one text, it’s many texts over centuries.
And we’ve got polygamy all over the place and I think it would be hard to nail down like a one affirmation that the Bible says this is the way it should be done. So how much would you say the Bible does play into that for you versus wisdom and research and, you know, the, a decision of what seems best for either best for you or best for society?
Sheila: Well, I think my starting point is Jesus. It’s not the Bible, so it’s the person of Christ. And I think that scripture is meant to point us to Christ, and we interpret scripture through the lens of Jesus. We don’t, we don’t interpret Jesus through the lens of scripture, if that makes any sense. And I think a lot of people focus far more on other verses in the Bible, and they tend to ignore the person of Jesus.
And what Jesus did was he just embraced people. And being with Jesus made people love more and do the right thing more and be less selfish. And I, I think that is a really good ethic, is let’s be let less selfish, let’s, you know, die to self in the sense of, I’m not going to concentrate only on what I want, but I am gonna, I, I am gonna live in order to make other people’s lives better too.
Um, and that’s what Jesus did. Using the Old Testament for a sexual is highly problematic, I think because it, the patriarchy was the backdrop of it.
And patriarchy’s the backdrop of the New Testament too. It’s just that we can see Jesus walking around,
Shelby: Yeah.
Sheila: um, in that. But y y you know, how exactly do you get a sexual ethic from a book where women were property, um, in the majority of it. Uh, and, and so you, and, and sex, sex didn’t mean the same thing? I think so. I, what, what I see in the Bible a lot is more and more revelation as you get closer to Jesus as people are trying to understand who he is or who God is. And then Jesus shows us, um, and I, and I think our work is really focused on Jesus’ words in Matthew seven, that a bad tree can’t bear good fruit and a good tree can’t bear bad fruit.
And you can recognize things by their fruit. And so that’s why we’re so committed to research, um,
Shelby: absolutely.
Sheila: I think you can, you can start, you can start to actually judge a lot of these teachings that have been so prominent in the church about lust, about obligation, about entitlement. And you can say that’s not it. But what is it? What really gets great sex is intimacy. It’s being emotionally connected. It’s being able to be vulnerable with each other. Um, it’s feeling really close to one another. It’s feeling committed to one another. Those are the things that make sex great, and that’s what creates safe relationships.
And, um, and so I think that’s what we need to be aiming for, if that makes any sense. I wish there was an easier way to say it like I do. I do think that there, there are parts of the Bible that say some really cool things, like even the fact that the Old Testament word for sex is so often the word knowing, like a deep knowing and deep intimacy to show us that it’s more than physical.
I think that’s cool.
Shelby: of Solomon’s pretty
Sheila: the mutuality in First Corinthians seven, or even the fact that in Song of Songs, she says more words than he does, so she’s having a really good time. Like, I think these things point to things about sex for us, but the backdrop of the Bible was really patriarchal. So I, I do think that we need to ask more questions.
Shelby: I think the good fruit bad fruit is a beautiful way To analyze the world and go out things, and I appreciate you bringing Jesus into the focus because for someone who was teaching some of the most important things that could be taught, he didn’t spend a lot of time talking about who to have sex with and when and where, but the topic of good fruit and bad fruit, have you done much research on abuse within the church, within Christian relationships, just cuz I know, I mean, especially over the last few years we’ve just seen rampant scandals in that demographic.
And so yeah. Wondering, and you know, to me that’s, that’s bad fruit. Like, um, something’s going wrong there. So yeah. Curious what your interaction with that’s been?
Sheila: Um, so in the grade sex rescue, uh, here’s an interesting finding that we had. Uh, so when we look at, um, do you believe the husband should make the final decisions? Do you believe the husband’s head of the house? Do you believe there’s authority in marriage? Um, the majority of our respondent said yes. Okay.
But only I think 21% of those who believe that actually acted it out. So the majority of people who believe the husband is in authority and makes the final decisions actually practice totally mutual decision making.
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: As soon as you act, as soon as you act out, the husband being that tiebreaker though, though, terrible, terrible things happen.
So as soon as he.
Shelby: you saw
Sheila: Yeah. So as soon as he does make the final decision, even if he consults with her first, the divorce rate increases 7.4 times.
Shelby: Wow.
Sheila: Um, marital satisfaction plummets. All kinds of markers do so much worse. And those are very similar numbers to what John Gottman found in the Gottman Institute, which is one of the foremost research, um, platforms in the secular world on marriage outta the University of Washington.
He found that when men make that final decision, you have a divorce rate of 82%. So this is what is constantly being taught that men have authority. Men were put in charge, many to make the final decision. Most people who believe that don’t act it out, and when they do, bad things happen.
Shelby: So then, I mean, I’m curious because you know, we’re saying in most, I mean, when you say that 82% number like that, Like marriages where that’s the, like the male makes this final decision most of the time has this way higher rate of divorce. And yet, I mean, I know we both come from communities where divorce was really not an option.
Um, and, and I would say there was very little divorce and yet probably a lot of, um, this, the man is the head of the house mentality. So what do you think like that, you know, maybe that’s a small percentage of society, but within that dynamic of male headship and divorce not, is not an option. What do you think’s happening there?
Sheila: Okay, so I have a theory on that. No fault divorce came in, um, in the United States across all 50 states, staggered over a 15 year period, kind of between the early sixties and mid seventies. And when it came in, divorce rates started to skyrocket. Because there was such a pent up demand for divorce. So as soon as you were permitted to divorce without having to prove that you had grounds, divorce rates went through the roof and they’ve been falling ever since.
So the divorce rates were highest in the late seventies and they’ve been falling ever since. So the, the, the thought that the divorce rates are like that we have a crisis of divorce is actually not true
Shelby: May like it’s, you can see why they would’ve felt that way then, but looking at
Sheila: divorce rates are actually come down now, I believe in the evangelical world, we are a, we are about to enter a period where it’s kind of the equivalent of no fault divorce being allowed because there’s been more and more conversations around how you don’t need to stay in abusive marriages.
Um, even Wayne Gredo changed his mind two years ago. Like we’re starting to see people say, Hey, you’re allowed to divorce for abuse. And I think there is such pent up demand in evangelical circles that over the next 10 years in the evangelical world, we’re gonna see the divorce rate go through the roof.
Shelby: Hmm. That’s really interesting.
Nate: Yeah. I’m curious. Uh, you know, I went to like high school conferences right? And I was, grew up in the church, and so we went to retreats and there’d be thousands of kids in rooms in this room.
And then, but then we’d have these breakout sessions, right? And all the girls would go into one breakout session and the guys would go to another and they would talk to us about porn. I don’t know what they were talking to the girls about. I’m not sure, but yeah. But okay. You, yeah, you both can probably speak to this, but,
Sheila: Yeah,
Nate: so I’m just curious.
I’m just picturing like this high school, uh, high school retreat and, and you’re the speaker and you’re, you, uh, for both, like, let’s say you’re in the breakout for the guys and then you’re in the breakout for the, for the girls. Like, what would you say to each of those groups? Um,
Sheila: I’d say the same thing to both. I, I think this is the message that teens need to hear in the church and outta the church is like, look. It’s totally natural to have sexual feelings. Okay? You got hormones going, you’re trying to notice people are attractive. And when you’re in a relationship and you really like someone, you’re probably gonna wanna have sex with them.
And that’s why, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But having sex is not the wisest thing to do at your age. There’s a lot of reasons not to. And really good idea to decide what your boundaries are And plan to stick to those boundaries. But even more important than that, you need to stick to the boundaries of the person that you’re with.
And if you’re ever in a relationship with someone who doesn’t honor your boundaries, that is a red flag that that relationship isn’t safe and you need to get out.
Nate: Hmm.
Sheila: that’s the message that was never given.
Nate: Yeah.
Sheila: Um, we were never, kids were never taught about consent. Instead they were taught, um, well let me give you an example.
Shanti Felden in her book for young women only, um, shared a stat from her survey, and I do not believe this stat is accurate cuz I think her survey question was extremely poorly worded and the possible answers they could choose from were poorly worded. But her conclusion was that 82% of boys feel either little ability or little responsibility to stop in a make out situation.
So, and her conclusion was, if you want to stop, it is safest to not even start.
Shelby: Hmm.
Sheila: I’m sorry, but 100% of boys have the ability to stop.
Shelby: Yeah.
Sheila: And 100% of boys have the responsibility to stop if she says no. And to say anything else is rape culture. And yet this is what was constantly taught is boys can’t stop. And so girls need to be the gatekeepers and that message has disastrous effects.
Um, long-term women have a much harder time with arousal if they are taught that they always need to be on alert and that they always need to be the gatekeepers and need to be the breaks. Um, but even more than that, it makes girls blame themselves if they’re date raped
cuz they think, well, I let ’em start.
What did I expect? And that phrase, what did you expect is actually in books like Every Young Woman’s Battle.
Shelby: Wow.
Nate: right. Well,
Shelby: Yeah. That’s just such a culture of, of yeah. Setting up men like their animals. I mean, Nate and I talked a lot about this in the beginning of our relationship when we were dating too, of just, um, because I still had a lot of that mentality, like it was the first re relationship I’d ever been in, and I.
Really, I think I had just very low expectations for him, and, and he just kind of proved that, like, that’s ridiculous that men have every ability to control themselves. And I mean, I was, it’s, it’s crazy to think that I was like shocked by that.
Sheila: But guys also want intimacy as well. You know, not every guy I know there are some guys who have totally, um, channeled all their desires for intimacy into sex and can’t talk about their feelings. And that is a real issue that guys can work on. Um, but men were made to be intimate too, like emotionally intimate and vulnerable.
And the idea that guys cannot be, that is a very low view of men
Nate: Mm-hmm. Yeah. But it could start to, you could start to like play into it. Right. And like, so I was just even thinking about that study that you said was maybe done, the, the question was maybe worded incorrectly or whatever and, and where the, the boys, uh, believed that they couldn’t, what was it? Couldn’t, didn’t have the ability.
Shelby: And
Sheila: or the responsibility.
Nate: responsibility and from the ability side of things, like they may, they may have been just so cultured to believe that they don’t have the ability, like you, you’re told something long enough that like you, you know, this is just the way, whereas both women and men might believe that, you know, it’s cuz we’ve been told this message for so long.
And so in similarly, like, you know, you almost, uh, it’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that you, you tell young boys. Like you don’t, it’s kind of like, we were talking about this the other day, Shelby, like the idea of like, boys will be boys and just how frustrating that that line can be because it ends up becoming true that if you, from a young age are telling boys like a different message, then you’re telling girls of like, yeah, boys, you just can’t really control ’em.
You can’t really stop ’em, you can’t really put, you know, walls around them at all and they’re just gonna kind of do whatever they’re gonna do. But with girls, we have these expectations for them. That’s so problematic and it, it tends to become true. What we’ve created tends to actually tends to become true.
Shelby: Yeah.
Sheila: And it’s, and it really becomes very problematic even once you’re married, because then boys feel helpless, like, or men feel helpless. You know, if, if I’m sexually frustrated and she doesn’t give me sex, she’s my only outlet, and so what am I supposed to do? And there’s a lot of entitlement and anger because we’ve never taught people how to deal with.
You know, sometimes you’re not gonna get what you want
Shelby: Yeah,
Sheila: and
Shelby: you’re gonna be fine.
Sheila: you’re not owed sex. So let’s work on how to work on your relationship,
you know, and how to honor the person you’re with, because if you do, you tend to get sex anyway.
Nate: Right.
Shelby: If everything, like you said, if everything else is going well, the frequency will probably not be an issue.
Nate: Okay. Another patron named Paige asked, is there any value to Christian purity? Even if it’s not in the way we think of it typically.
Is there any value from scripture for purity? What might it look like to reframe purity? We talk about, you know, purity culture a lot, right? And we’re obviously all fairly negative on that. I guess they’re just saying, anticipating that they’re saying. Is there any, any, any positive thing to,
Sheila: Well, I think scripture is very clear that hedonism is not good. You know, hedonism is not a Christian virtue, right? Like, like we don’t, we’re not living to experience, um, pleasure at all costs. And, and I think, I think self-control is definitely a fruit of the spirit. And, and so when we are thinking about how we are to live, it’s like, yeah, how are we to live in a way that is dig that, that we honor our own dignity.
We honor the dignity of the person that we’re with. We put first things first. We’re not overcome with physical desires. Um, which doesn’t mean that we don’t celebrate passion in its proper place, but I think putting things in their proper place is important. Uh, and, and to me that’s what chastity is like.
Chastity is just simply putting sex in its proper place. Um, you know, and, and. And re recognizing that our primary need is not for sexual release, but for intimacy, which can be expressed sexually, but it can be expressed a whole bunch of different ways as well. And if we, if we focus on that in our lives, I think we’ll be a whole lot better off and we’ll end up enjoying sex more too.
You know, if we are, if we are having it, um, with our partner,
Shelby: What do you think is the role of masturbation inside or outside marriage?
Sheila: we haven’t studied it. And so, like, I actually, I actually in our next survey, we’re gonna look more deeply at it because I want, I’m, I’m very curious to see if, especially within marriage, the, um, The idea that masturbation is wrong actually contributes to entitlement because this idea that she is my only sexual outlet, and so if she can’t have sex, I, she is sitting against me because I am stuck and I am desperate.
I think that contributes to things like, for instance, there’s so many, um, Christian books that tell women that on their postpartum period, so just after you’ve had a baby, you need to make sure that he gets sexual release. So you need to give him a handjob or oral sex because he desperately needs it. So Kevin Lehman, um, tells women in sheet music that in that postpartum period you can use a handjob so that he’s, when he is ready to climb the walls.
Gary Thomas, in his recent book, married Sex, talked about how, um, or describe women getting excited, giving hand jobs postpartum, so breathing heavily, getting aroused. I mean, I don’t know who he was talking to, but because.
Shelby: Oh man.
Sheila: really sounded like a porn fantasy is what it
sounded like the way he described it.
There’s multiple books that say that he needs sex every 72 hours and he needs sexual release every 72 hours. So even if you’ve had a baby, that can’t stop because he needs that. And, um, I think the no masturbation in marriage contributes to that. So my general rule of thumb is, is this something which is contributing to intimacy or is this something which is taking away from intimacy and detracting from intimacy.
So if you’re just super frustrated, but she’s just had a baby and like, this helps you care for the baby more, I see that in an entirely different light than, um, we’re fighting a lot and I don’t want to make up with her and I don’t wanna figure out what’s really going on, and so I’m just gonna go masturbate in the bathroom cause it’s easier.
That’s a totally different thing.
Shelby: Well, it kind of comes back to the good fruit, bad fruit thing
Sheila: I don’t think it’s about the act as much as it is. Is this building us closer together or is this, is this allowing distance to grow?
Shelby: And then, okay. I mean, I’m, but I’m curious also about this topic for people before they’re in a relationship at all because, um, I mean, I, I really didn’t even know a masturbation was, uh, as a, a young person and into my twenties. And, and I mean, at this point I feel like it’s, uh, I mean, I’m glad that I actually did discover what it was before I was in a relationship because I got to learn things about my own body that I’m glad I didn’t have to have someone else essentially show me.
Um, so anyway, um, yeah. I don’t know if you have thoughts
Sheila: Yeah, this is a difficult one because when you look at studies, um, masturbation today is so paired with porn use that it’s very difficult to separate the two, um, to look at the results. So, you know, I, I have a difficult time with that one. Um, studies have shown that for women especially, um, master masturbation can help you have orgasms through, um, manual stimulation.
It doesn’t necessarily help you orgasm through intercourse. So there’s a lot of Christian books that say if she wants to figure out how to orgasm, she should masturbate. It doesn’t actually help, um, that much in orgasm impaired orgasms. If you want him to give you an orgasm, it’s gonna take more than just you masturbating.
You’ve gotta figure out how to communicate about sex. So that, I found that kind of interesting. Um, One funny thing about the studies around masturbation is that the time between masturbation sessions, when you look at teenage boys around the world is different based on country and culture. So it’s not biological like Swedish boys.
I think masturbate far, like there’s, there’s greater distance or greater time interval between masturbatory sessions than in the United States, for instance.
Shelby: Huh?
Sheila: So, so the idea that guys have this biological sex drive, which must be met at a certain time is, is not true if you look at
Shelby: Wow. We do, yeah, we do not talk about that being a cultural thing very much at all. Huh? That’s very interesting.
Nate: you know,
A lot of our listeners have children and they’re starting to teach these things to children and they know they don’t want to do the purity culture thing that they were raised with.
I think there’s a temptation to swing the pendulum, right? And be like, okay, no boundaries, no rules, no anything. and like, we also know that’s not great for kids either. And it’s just
Shelby: And that’s what a lot of our parents grew up with, which is why their pendulum swung the other way.
Nate: right? That just tends to happen, right? We just swing back the other way. So I guess I’m curious for parents of those kids that are, that are growing up and they’re getting in their teenage years, or like, yeah. What, what advice would you have for a parent that’s trying to kind of think through these things? like what do you give your kids. What kind of framework do you give them?
Sheila: So first of all, please buy. She deserves better cuz that’s at least if you have daughters, cuz that’s what that book is. And we, we, we talk not just about the purity culture stuff like, not just about modesty and consent and dating. We also talk about emotional health and drawing boundaries and how to identify toxic people.
So all kinds of really important conversations and we dissect what youth groups often taught and then we walk you through conversations you can have with your own kids and role playing scenarios, all kinds of fun things. So I think that’s, it’s, that’s really helpful. Um, and I can only summarize a little bit, but what I would say, um, I’ll, I’ll say two things.
First of all, there is no downside to more information. So the more information you give your kids, the better. And probably the younger they get that information, the better. Um, we, we had a list of 10 vocabulary words, like sex ed vocabulary words, and we asked women, how many of these did you know at high school graduation?
And the more words that they knew, the fewer sexual partners they had, the, you know, the more likely they were to wait for marriage, the better their self-esteem, the less likely they were to marry an abuser. Like there was no downside.
Shelby: And I feel like that’s the opposite of what, like, I think that’s the fear of a lot of us is like, if I talk to my kids about sex, then they’re just gonna become like sex obsessed or
Sheila: Right, but it’s actually the opposite because if kids know they’re gonna have higher self-esteem and if they can come to you and talk to you, they’re gonna have higher self-esteem. And kids with higher self-esteem don’t make so many bad choices. So, so, you know, give your kids information. Um, one of the biggest, one of the biggest factors in girls marrying abusers later was being embarrassed of your period, which sounds like what’s the relationship there?
But when you’re embarrassed of your period, it’s usually because you didn’t get good information around puberty. You felt like you are you, you are a source of shame. And girls who feel that have really low self-esteem think that they’re a bother to everyone and they’re gonna tend to marry someone who agrees.
Shelby: Wow.
Sheila: So that’s
Shelby: Wow, wow. Wow.
Sheila: yeah, give kids as much information. Only about 26% of evangelical women said that they had a good understanding of consent at the time they graduated high school. And again, the more kids understand consent, the less likely they are to be abused at church, the less likely they are to marry an abuser.
Like there is no downside to information. So that’s the number one thing I would say is just talk to your kids and you don’t to talk to them perfectly. I messed up so badly telling my kids about sex and puberty when they were like 10 and 12. And now I do this full-time with my oldest daughter, and my youngest daughter edits my podcasts.
And it, it was fine. It it, but the point was even if you make a mistake or even if you’re awkward, just keep talking. The kids don’t care. They just wanna keep talking to you. So, you know, you don’t need to do it perfectly and that’s okay. I think that’s a big thing to remember.
Um, the second thing I would just say is one of the dangers of purity culture is that they gave the same advice whether you were 13 or 23.
Like it was all the
Nate: Yeah, that’s true. Wow.
Sheila: Right? And I think we just need to be a lot more nuanced because for instance, we found that the, that the best, the, the best thing, um, on the whole, if you want high self-esteem, low likelihood of marrying an abuser and better marital and sexual satisfaction is to be allowed to date as a teenager, but to choose not to date.
Shelby: Wow.
Sheila: But parents can’t control that. You can’t say, okay, you’re allowed to date, but I don’t want you to like that. You can’t do that. Right? So that’s the best. Um,
Shelby: essentially you’re trying to raise kids who you can’t allow to date, but who already have this foundation of, of self-esteem to where they’re not gonna date someone unless they’re someone really fantastic.
Sheila: Exactly. Yeah. And they’re just gonna be busy in high school. They’re just gonna be having interesting lives and it’s like, nah, I’m too busy for this. You’re not worth it right now. You know, like that’s, that’s what ends up, ends up best in the long run. That being said, that’s very different from saying you’re allowed to date when you’re 13.
Like, there aren’t a lot of upsides to dating when you’re 13 or 14. So, you know, I, I just think we need to have a lot more nuance. Um, and I think there also needs to be a realization that once, once your kids are adults, they really do get to make their own decisions. And it’s time for, for adult, for parents of adults to back off and, and just love your kids and be there for their, for your kids.
So this idea that everything is the same no matter how old you are, you know, don’t, don’t date unless you’re gonna get married. Don’t kiss till the wedding. Whatever those, those rules might be. Um, yeah, we need to really rethink that.
Shelby: Oh yeah, no. Amen. I mean, we, we grew up in the, um, kind of, uh, Josh Harris, I kiss dating goodbye community. Like literally, those are the people we know. Um, so that was, that was a lot for us to unravel and I’m sure a lot of of our listeners have gone through that too. So glad we can Yeah. Experience dating as not getting engaged essentially.
Well, as we wrap up, I, I would love to hear what are your number one resources that you would give people who are kind of in the process of maybe unpacking the impact of purity culture on them? Or maybe they’re hearing this message from you and are realizing, oh my gosh, this is what’s wrong in my marriage.
I mean, obviously your books are gonna be probably the number one resource, but like what other, I dunno if there’s support systems or documentaries or something that you would recommend people as they, um, um, am I correct in thinking that you offer courses?
Sheila: Yeah, I can mention some of those. Sure. So if you’re, if you are married or if you’re, You know, thinking about getting married and you’ve read some of the terrible books, like Love and Respect for Women Only, power Praying Wife, active Marriage Sheet Music, these kinds of books, every man’s battle scored really badly on our, on our rubric.
Read The Great Sex Rescue. It’s a really fun read. Um, it it, it’s like watching a train wreck, but in a good way. Like cuz every chapter it’s like, no, they didn’t say that. Like it’s
Shelby: Oh
Sheila: is worse and worse and worse. Um, but it, if you read the reviews on Amazon, so many people say it was just so validating.
Like, I just feel so free. So, so get that. If you’re still having issues, I, I wanna say especially for women with vag Ms, please, please, please see a pelvic floor physiotherapist. Um, just cuz it is so high in our community and there really are treatments available now, so there weren’t, when I. When I was married many years ago.
But there are analysis, please see a pelvic floor physiotherapist. Um, we also do have a course on our website@bearmarriage.com, so that’s p a r e marriage.com. If you click on courses, we’ve got an orgasm course, we’ve got a course to talk to your kids about sex and marriage, um, and sex and puberty. Sorry, we’ve got a boost your libido course.
So lots of lots of those are fun. Um, but if you’re raising kids, our new book, she deserves Better is awesome. And my goal is to get every parent to read this and then teach this to their kids so that in 10 years or 15 years, nobody needs the great sex rescue. Like, let’s just get work me outta business.
Shelby: Yeah.
Nate: We’re not doing these podcasts anymore. Yeah,
Sheila: let’s stop the cycle. Um, yeah, and you can, you can always, finally, you can always just listen to us at, uh, the Bear Marriage Podcast every Thursday. Um, we talk about all this purity culture stuff and, and how to get a healthy view of sex.
Shelby: Well thank you so much. This has just been really exciting and interesting and I’m literally gonna go order She Deserves Better. Cuz this is just so needed and I just appreciate your optimism and positivity and excitement for the whole topic.
So thank you so much for coming on.
Nate: Thank you.
Sheila: Thanks for having me. It’s been great.
