Still Becoming One
Still Becoming One
Beyond Purity Culture: Healing Sexual Intimacy in Marriage
Could the "purity culture" teachings you received years ago still be affecting your marriage today? In this compelling conversation, we join Pastor Addison Roberts from Grace Community Church to explore the complex legacy many Christian kids received from purity culture about sexuality and how these teachings continue to create unexpected challenges in intimate relationships today.
Welcome to the Still Becoming One podcast. We are Brad and Kate.
Speaker 2:In our more than 20 years of marriage, we've survived both dark times and experienced restoration.
Speaker 1:Now as a licensed marriage counselor and relationship coaches. We help couples to regain hope and joy.
Speaker 2:We invite you to journey with us, as we are Still Becoming One.
Speaker 1:Let's start the conversation.
Speaker 3:Hello everyone, Welcome back to Still Becoming One.
Speaker 2:Welcome back.
Speaker 3:We are so glad that you're here today. We had an awesome conversation that we are sharing with you that we actually got hosted on the Grace Community Church podcast a local church to us that we've worked with man for a couple of years now in doing various things, and they wanted to have a conversation about purity culture and how purity culture is impacting marriages. So we asked them if we could kind of cross post, because their podcast mostly goes out to their attenders and obviously ours is a different audience than that. So but we thought this conversation was so valuable in really thinking through if you or your spouse, or especially if one of you, was raised in purity culture, but even if both of you were, you know, trying to think through what is it, where's it coming from, and how does it still reach into marriages?
Speaker 2:How did it impact us at the time? How did we decipher what was all being told to us? If you were a part of purity culture and figuring you know, boiling it down, figuring out what you believed about sex, marriage, sexual intimacy and yourself, as a sexual creature through purity culture, because I think there's a lot.
Speaker 3:There is. There is a lot conversation that we're kind of talking about. You know how it impacts us and a little bit in how it's impacting us as parents as well. We kind of get into a little bit. So we hope that you enjoy this conversation with Pastor Addison Roberts from GCC and we will see you next time on Still Becoming One.
Speaker 4:All right, Brad and Kate Aldridge, thanks so much for popping in and talking about this, and obviously we've. We've had you here on the GCC podcast before, and then you guys also have your own. So talk a little bit about who you are, what you do for the one audience, and then also about some of the other podcast stuff, and then we'll get into where we're going.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. Kate and I are marriage and family coaches and counselors.
Speaker 3:I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and we have been passionate a bit about marriage ministry for oh man 15 years, a long time now and honestly, that passion came from seeing God change, radically change our marriage and just then starting to talk to each other and then to our friends and some of those things about what was different and how it started to grow, and that just continued us going.
Speaker 3:Wait a minute, god's design for marriage is so much better than we have, I think, limited ourself to, and we knew so many people, we had so many friends who had just kind of settled into. Well, I guess this is what marriage is, and we were very passionate about saying, hey, wait a minute, there is a path to still become one together and continue on that journey. And so that's where the name of our podcast Still Becoming One came out of is this idea that we are on a journey of marriage together and we can keep going and growing and learning as we learn and heal ourselves, as we grow closer to God together and as we work on intimacy and connection together.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Right and you guys are popping. I'm sorry, katie, I cut you off. I'm used to one host thing, oh you're fine.
Speaker 2:Nope, Keep going. Oh yeah, I was going to say thing Are you going to edit that?
Speaker 4:You're fine. Nope, keep going. Oh yeah, I was going to say you guys are spending some time with us here in January on the 17th marriage conference. We might not retain people till the very end, so you want to give a 30 second pitch on what that is?
Speaker 3:Go for it.
Speaker 2:Oh, ok, there we go.
Speaker 2:We're excited to spend time with your church community or anybody that would come, and we're just going to be talking about the different areas of intimacy in marriage and kind of digging through them. But I hope people will give it a shot because I would say it's not the typical way people dive into that and I think it's a really applicable way and really we want to tailor it to you, believe it or not. So yeah, we're going to be spending some time with your community and talking about those topics together.
Speaker 3:So we talk about how do you actually do emotional intimacy? People throw that term around but then what?
Speaker 3:does it mean? Why do you actually do it? What does that look like? Then we talk about spiritual intimacy. What even is spiritual intimacy when we put it in the terms of a couple, and how can a couple use that to grow together? Then we talk about sexual intimacy, which is kind of where we're going to get into a little bit today, and we talk about what does it look like to figure out what healthy sexual intimacy is as a couple?
Speaker 3:And then we do a fourth one that's kind of unique, that we call story intimacy. Story intimacy and just the real quick is we see that every one of us has a story that we've grown up in, that have shaped who we are both beautiful, good things, but also hard and wounding things. And while our spouse often knows the facts about those stories, they often miss the deeper things that still come into today and what we find at those our stories, our past have written some things in our heart that still interact today and when we work with couples we see them stepping on each other's stories, not because they don't care, but because those things still become triggers and become wounds. So learning how to interact with that is the goal.
Speaker 4:Well, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Which leads us really well into our topic today.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so our topic today came from. Actually, I was listening to a podcast and it was a more secular podcast and it was an author who had written a book and they were talking about Gen Z, by choice or by lack of intimate relationships more than kind of any previous generation. That a, I think. I think the stat was one fourth of 16 to 28 year old Gen Z, or say that they've never had a sexual encounter. And and the podcaster mentioned was was actually a secular person. I'm always fascinated when a secular person is speaking against pornography because it's always like, yeah, and and they said, she said, she said, you know, the sad reality is is that the only positive vision that a lot of these kids get, where sex is reflected positively is, is in pornography and that is not a realistic depiction of sexual intimacy. And that led to me calling Brad and saying, hey, what are you saying, what are you doing? And let us down a conversation about how I think the fear for me as a parent, as a, as a. You know, I'm 36, our kids are 10. I, one of them, just turned eight, so I've been, I've been saying 10, seven and two for a whole year, 10, eight, and will be three on here on about five days and a realization of.
Speaker 4:I was raised in what would be called purity culture and I saw the landmines of it and experienced some of the landmines of it, and watched my colleagues and my classmates in Bible college experience some of the landmines of it and experienced some of the landmines of it and watched my colleagues and my classmates in Bible college experience some of the landmines of it. And as I prepare to go through and navigate that with my kids, I'm going okay, I don't want them to have those emotions, but I don't. How do I? I only have what I have. You know, I only have like more or less work for me. You know what I mean but you know, with some landmines and so what I'm hoping to kind of wrestle with, and I know I said a lot and if you want to pick something off and say something to it, go ahead. But let's talk about purity culture. What is? Maybe people are listening and like I don't know what purity culture is. What are we talking about when we say purity culture?
Speaker 2:That's a great question. How would you define it? The reason I want you to define it first is I'm very transparent about I didn't grow up in purity culture, but I was a youth pastor towards the end of purity culture. I mean Joshua Harris's book was coming out, so there was still and I definitely have influences and thoughts but, I, didn't grow up as a kid in it.
Speaker 3:I'm the one who grew up in it, for sure, and had that influence of the church trying to figure out how do they get around the sexual revolution of the 60s and communicate. Well, that, hey, wait a minute. The value of waiting until marriage is still important. That's where it came out of the heart of it is super good, right. It is the church saying we can't ignore this anymore because forever it had just been. Everybody knew you're supposed to wait till marriage and even if people didn't, there was so much cultural pressure around that the expectation was still that people did. That was changing in the 70s and 80s and because of the sexual revolution, and the church was trying to respond to that by saying no, wait a minute, we still have to wait until marriage and trying to say why they never did a good job of saying why what they did was use fear to say that if you do not meet some standard, that you aren't worth anything anymore.
Speaker 1:And so what they tended to say was sex is evil.
Speaker 3:What they tended to say was sex is evil, sex is bad, sex is so bad that we don't want you to even think about it until you're married, and then everything's fine and we don't really want to talk about it then either. That's kind of the message that ended up happening.
Speaker 4:And I would say, beyond that, a messaging of almost a canonization of what I would call an asexual preference. Correct, you know, it's like the good kids in the youth group were the ones that were like, yeah, I don't have any desire to masturbate, I don't have any desire to lust, I don't have it. You know A hundred percent.
Speaker 3:And you are exactly right. A canonization like that's the ideal is that you just don't have any sexual desire. We turn all of that off until you get married and then somehow it magically turns it back on. And you can tell from my language where we run into this all the time is in married couples who are now struggling sexually and they don't know why. And those messages are so internalized of. You know I'm going to be bad if I do this, if I actually even enjoy sex somehow I'm bad, like some of those things. Even though it is in a Christian marriage context, they're still believing and feeling many of those messages that they grew up with.
Speaker 2:I think too, like we came out of you were talking about the 60s and 70s, but I do think it's worth mentioning there was the sexual revolution, and then there was the other side that was like let's not talk about it at all, and so you had these two extremes. So you're either growing up in one or the other, but I think a lot of times, the let's not talk about it at all, and so you had these two extremes. So you're either growing up in one or the other, but I think a lot of times, the let's not talk about it at all. I'm going to overgeneralize here. We're more of the church people and so then out of that, I believe, came this need of like. Let's talk about it more.
Speaker 2:But the way purity culture chose to talk about it, I think was a really brave attempt. But I think, as you said, addison, it led to some of those landmines and we weren't actually giving kids the information that they needed and we were then using that fear. I think it—I have lots of thoughts on this. But I think it also led and I'd be curious, brad, to hear what you think about this of like it probably ramped up pornography. Oh, because it didn't give the right information. And then there is what if I do have this desire? What if I don't understand what sex is? Well, my parents aren't necessarily going to be the ones to tell me.
Speaker 2:so I'm going to go figure it out, or somebody's going to tell me at school, and then I'm going to go explore something.
Speaker 3:No, I mean 100%. And I've been pretty open with my journey with pornography, which started for me around 12. And I was the church kid. I was the good kid. My parents, you know, my dad, was an elder Like I was in church all the time. I was a youth group kid, I was a young life kid, I all of those things on the outside. I was the purity culture ideal, 100%. Everyone from my childhood would have said that.
Speaker 3:But I was wrestling with pornography from 12 on and I remember it was probably around 15 after I had been years in pornography. Now okay, I'm old enough that most of that was magazines at that time, but still I was involved in it. Um, I had already had girlfriends that you know had had been somewhat, you know, active with, although not sexually active, thankfully, um, and it was at that point probably like 15, almost getting into like 16 and driver's license and stuff that I think my dad kind of entered my room at one point let me know that was it and, to be honest, like, yes, I read the whole book because, of course, right, but I knew absolutely a whole lot more already learned, like I already educated myself on all of these things way too late right.
Speaker 3:And then obviously what had happened? Like his I love my father is not saying anything against him, but his body posture of backing out, incredibly embarrassed, certainly did not welcome more conversation right like, and that was it.
Speaker 4:We never had a single conversation about it yeah, I mean, my experience was raised in a single mother home. You know, um, and I don't. Yeah, you talk about like the talk or whatever, and I and I think it was just like I think one of my sisters who are seven years older than me said like if you ever do anything, wear a condom. And I was like OK, you know, yeah, and that was that was it, you know.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, and I think, I think that's one of the first things that purity culture unfortunately Didn't do. Well, it's actually. The information is too late believe it or not?
Speaker 2:Purity culture really impacted the youth group ages, which is understandable. You're not going to do this in a, you know, like Sunday school setting with younger kids, but the reality is kids between eight and 10 already need their parents to be helping them understand their body, helping them understand, like in age, appropriate ways what's coming Right. And many times I do think families are kind of waiting for youth groups to do the talk because, well then, we don't have to do it right. And I will tell you, brad and I were passionate about we're having these talks with our kids. At the same time I remember when I was about ready to talk to my daughter, thinking I can't do this, I can't do this.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's terrifying.
Speaker 2:I don't want to tell her these things because she's going to figure out what her dad and I are doing, Like there are pieces that are very uncomfortable even for people who feel how important it is and how important, but I think that's one of the first things you know you need to be having age appropriate conversations with your kids about their bodies, and that it's good, but and I think that it's good is.
Speaker 4:I don't want to stop you from what you're saying, that it's good. Stop you from what you're saying that it's good it's is is such a thing there because it was like the way, the way I think the message of purity culture was that abstinence is good sex is not right and and, and it was this idea. There's this, uh, famous illustration that happened of of passing a rose around a room with 400 students in it.
Speaker 4:Right. And then you know I've never in there with it or whatever, but I can imagine you know it's like and it's like well, who's going to want the rose? Sorry, I need to explain more the idea of altar call teenagers pass a rose around the room, the rose gets beaten to heck and then the guy speaking gets it back and it's all damaged and it's like well, who's going to want this rose? And I think the messaging of purity culture a lot of times was well, you're investing in your future marriage. And it was this idea that I am delivering a product to my wife and the purity of this product is dependent on my decisions.
Speaker 4:And I was in my I was 21 before I heard a preacher say it's not about delivering some product, it's about practicing, practicing faithfulness in advance, like it's. It's purity is actually about a self-control practice more than it is about delivery of a pure product. And I. That was a change for me, because it was this idea of oh, if, once you get married, you're carrying all your sexual partners into marriage and you're yeah, I mean you. You've heard all this stuff I'll tell you, addison the.
Speaker 3:The analogy that I remember seeing in youth group and having then to work through myself is the band-aid principle, one where they stuck a band-aid on somebody and then ripped it off and stuck it on somebody else and ripped it off and stuck like and did that long enough and then it doesn't stick.
Speaker 3:And the message in there was if you have sex with all these people, then sex isn't something special for your marriage and stick on your yeah, well, and it yeah, because they were talking about attachment and connection and all these things that basically were saying, if you do this, sex won't work later. But the promise and this is what we see so often in couples now that it's this promise of wait a minute, I did it right. Why is this so hard now? It was supposed to be easy and good when we followed all the rules.
Speaker 2:Yes, we've dealt with that quite a bit People, yes, and then they've struggled and it's like but wait, the promise was Right. If we did this all correctly, sex would be easy and amazing. And unfortunately, we also sold that. We sold that story as well.
Speaker 4:We did.
Speaker 3:We did.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think the tragedy there too I don't want to stop you from what you're about to say, Brad the tragedy there too is, I think, sometimes that that promise might deliver for a man, but but but not for their spouse Right, and we've actually had both believe it or not, but you're not wrong that that's the more common that we hear and I was going to say and then I'll let you say whatever you're going to say, honey but um, that, the whole rose principle, the band-aid maybe not as much, but I have heard the rose one and many times it was directed more women women, girls in the group than it was at the guys, and that's another thing I think purity culture has to recognize.
Speaker 2:It put a lot of pressure on the girls, the women. It was putting it on the guys too, but there was some sort of well, because that was also the time of dress modestly, Don't, you, don't want to cause another person to stumble. All of that was also a part of purity culture, and so there was this sense of I am responsible for my brother meaning brother in Christ for causing them to stumble.
Speaker 1:Correct.
Speaker 2:And so then, I think that brought in that challenge as well, which speaks to what you were just saying, addison, of that could have worked for men men potentially, but then there are a lot of women who then struggle. I absolutely.
Speaker 3:I don't think we can talk about purity culture without talking about the gender differences in that because there is a really strong identity of that women have to protect the men because somehow we're not strong enough to actually not sin if they're wearing a tank top right? That message was sent so often and I just think how twisted that message is and I see it all the time in men that I'm working with through dealing with pornography or unwanted sexual behaviors is there is this idea that they are not responsible if they're being tempted by something. And it's shifted it that we told youth group women don't tempt any of the men, but we never really told the boys like, hey, that's your responsibility If you're tempted, you have to think about where your eyes are right, because the message is about lust in scripture, not really about temptation. Now, did we teach our kids to dress modestly? Yes, we taught all of our kids that boys and girls right, and so we care about those things. I don't want to say we ignore that.
Speaker 2:But we came from the perspective of this is you.
Speaker 3:We did it for them and their bodies, not because of what they're going to cause somebody else to do and we wanted them.
Speaker 2:our focus with them was we want you to respect yourself, body included. And so we like, and we got to a point where we let them be more expressive with their clothing, but after we had made that a priority, especially when they were younger and, like, not even sure why you're wearing these outfits or what you're doing. And then right, but that was our. We want you to respect yourself enough not to be showing parts of you that the general population does not need to see, kind of thing, but not because you're going to make one person or another stumble the other place that this still plays out, even before we get to thinking about our kids, is how it plays out in marriage, because there is still in purity culture.
Speaker 3:it is taught that men, you are going to pursue this and want this and it is up to the women to be the limiting factor. And there's this communication that says in marriage, even guys you're going to want it all the time and women, you probably really won't like it a whole lot, but it's your job to make your husband happy. There's so many of those messages that have been very inappropriate about what sexual intimacy in marriage actually is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's an inbuilt objectification, it's built into the scaffolding of it. It's this idea of, yeah, it's just this, oh you know, ready for the wedding night, and the guy's going, yeah, and the girl's going, it's going to. You know, it's just like, it's almost cartoonish Like and it's and I. So you see people on every level of well, I thought my husband would be interested in me and he's not.
Speaker 3:Right, we always kind of say we end up using the language of the person in the relationship who is the higher desire spouse, which is not always the man. Right, we see it when it's reversed and there's all kinds of emotional problems when it's reversed because culture has told them wait, something's wrong. So for women who actually want sexual intimacy, they're like oh, I guess I'm bad, and there's so many words.
Speaker 3:I guess I'm weird, yeah Well there's so many other words that get tacked on there that are not podcast friendly, but we all know what they are, that they're thinking these words in there, that just because they desire their husband, that somehow that's a bad thing.
Speaker 2:Right, well, yes, it makes them other things.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Which I think you brought up the word that's so important, that which I think you brought up the word that's so important that purity culture missed. It was helping people understand desire, and desire for sexual intimacy, or to recognize that that is happening to you as a teenager, is normal. It's sometimes overwhelming, and how and what do we do with that? While we're in this period, as you said, addison, of faithfulness, or Brad, and I call it fasting, right, the Lord asks us to not take part in this until we're married. But, like, the desire itself isn't bad. God actually designed you that way.
Speaker 2:But when we've preached those other messages, it sounds like there's something wrong with the desire and so, or well, the men are allowed to have desire. There's all these like mixed up messages, but that is one of the things you know, you said, you know, as you're raising your kiddos and ours are all young adults at this point but it's desire is good, the desire is good. So then what do we do with it until marriage? And I think that's a really important message to be helping these kiddos realize, because the purity culture did not, it's just said shut down desire.
Speaker 4:And I think you catch kind of the absurdity of purity culture messaging, because it's this idea of I'm never supposed to feel attraction, I'm never supposed to feel what I call lust, but I'm supposed to eventually get around to getting married. You know, it's like that's really silly, like like it's like what are we? What are you talking about? You know, yeah.
Speaker 3:Like Kate said, we started when we were doing a lot of premarital work. We started using the term fasting, that's really good.
Speaker 4:I like that.
Speaker 3:Because and then we've used it with our kids, right, To kind of think through what does it look like to forego something that we really want? Right, Because we fast from food. We want the food, Everyone's okay from going. I want the food, but we're saying, because of a greater purpose, for right now I'm going to not have that, and so that shifts the concept a little bit and I think it's something that kids can start to get a hold of, that we can talk about of going. You know what? Because I want to have more of my relationship with God, because I want to honor the person I'm dating, I am going to fast from this desire that I have. But the fact that you have the desire, that's good, right, it's normal, and this has happened. If somebody came to us saying, hey, we want to get married, but I don't really have any desire for this person, I'd be saying I'm not sure you're supposed to get married, Biblically right.
Speaker 3:Biblically, it says the reason to get married is I'm burning in passion for this person. Yeah, we've ignored that right and going no, no, no. You're not supposed to burning in passion for this person. Yeah, we've ignored that Right and going no, no, no. You're not supposed to burn in passion until you are married.
Speaker 4:What Right Right Until just riffing on purity culture. I do want to get into the the raising kids part of it. Um, I I feel like we have a unique opportunity to name some of the messaging that people carry in the marriage, that they're embarrassed about or that they're afraid to talk to somebody about, and if we can get get it through for a listener or two, I think it could be valuable and I will ask I'll be the idiot in the room and just ask some questions Do you find that spouses in Christian marriages struggle to express appropriate sexual desires, like what they would like to do in the bedroom, because they associate it with dirtiness or you know whatever?
Speaker 3:I would say even before it's what we want to do. They struggle to express that they want to do it. Most couples do not have a language to say desire sex with you, my spouse, they, they don't don't call them my spouse, that would be weird.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm trying to say husband wife right like they don't.
Speaker 3:They don't have a language to do that in a healthy way. So it either becomes what I kind of I used to do of like the sherlock holmes are you in the mood? It may be tonight, like, and then you know I'd hear her go man, I had such a long day and be like, oh okay, all right, I guess not right automatically right right.
Speaker 3:So like that kind of thing doesn't work at all, right, that creates all kinds of problems. I used to do that all the time, or, yeah, got you know guys kind of get pretty vulgar about it and inappropriate. Sure, we see a lot of couples that just get into a routine. Okay, thursday night is that night. So, hey, it's thursday night, like that's it's Thursday night, like that's it, which isn't necessarily a problem. No, that's not terrible, but there's still no dialogue, there's still no place of being able to even talk about that desire.
Speaker 3:So like that's the problem, then you kind of add in Addison, like what do we do? Yeah, how do we even have a language of I'd like to do this thing? And how do we even have a language of I'd like to do this thing? And how do we interact around that? And how much of that is based on porn culture versus healthy sexual interaction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a challenge for sure, I think. Those are the really, I think starting with the language of desire just in general. But I also think you can learn to. Any one of these things can be learned, but we have to recognize where those negative messages are coming from and where it feels awkward and uncomfortable. But the reality is we can work on a language of desire in general. A friend of ours, Jay Stringer, who wrote the book Unwanted he talks about, can we talk about what other things we desire? Because as humans and, I think, as Christians, desire is a word many people are scared of, because if you desire something, then is it not proportionate?
Speaker 3:Often is where they're coming to it, from different places and different levels, if you will. And then just the fear of what does it mean that my spouse really wants to do this thing? Is that okay? What does that mean about me? That's where those internalized messages of purity culture that to be often. It's often women who end up saying if I want that, does that make me bad?
Speaker 2:well, and then also saying where did you come up with that?
Speaker 4:right that too, it all yeah I was gonna say that I think maybe somebody would say I desire X, I desire this, but if they, if they unpack where it came from. It comes from pornography, it comes from something they watched in, or even like a movie, or even like an inappropriate conversation, or even a and so how do you kind of coach couples through, through that?
Speaker 3:That that avenue.
Speaker 4:It's so great right?
Speaker 3:This is kind of my short answer and I want to hear what you say because I know you work with a lot of women on this. But my short answer is I would like guys to think about why is it that I want that thing? Because I do see an attempt sometimes to go after their arousal template, which is like the type of pornography they want, and people don't realize that the type of pornography they go to is very related to their own past and wounds and things that they're wrestling with. They don't recognize that, and so then they try to bring that into a marriage relationship and it doesn't work and it's not healthy. So that would be the place that I would go. Nope, nope.
Speaker 3:We need to work through why you're looking to do that, and that includes fetish things, that includes power things. There's a lot of different elements that that brings in, and entering that into a marriage is often very unhealthy and it ends up not being healthy. Now, what's different than that is some of the sexual acts, and I'm not going to be too specific here, but there are various sexual acts that people enjoy and have, and, yes, they are created and seen in pornography, but that's because there's only so many things that you do with the body, right? So, yes, are they replicating something that other people do? Sure, but that doesn't mean that's what it's all about, right, and so I do think there can be places where certain acts can be healthy in marriage, but it's all about our motivation of why do I want that, that we need to start with, why is that? And then, how do we make it safe for both people, emotionally safe, physically safe for both people, for both?
Speaker 3:people emotionally safe, physically safe for both people. That's the key of how do we bring any of that kind of stuff healthy into our relationship.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, I think the same can be said for women as well, and, believe it or not, the rate of women watching pornography is constantly on the rise as well. It's just so accessible, and we all have wounds and we all cope, and so it's not unfamiliar to women, and lots of women I work with have experienced pornography.
Speaker 3:Or reading pornography, if not watching.
Speaker 2:Yes, but believe it or not, viewing it as well, and so I think you know what you just said can be very true too. We need to think about where is that coming from? And then I think the question is, like looking at it, of if I'm really opposed to something. Is there a reason Right and I'm not talking about the things that we're talking about that are fringe and scary and power and somebody's you know doesn't feel safe. But if your spouse wants to do something and like, are you dead set against it and is there a reason, that's absolutely okay. Is it something you're like I don't know, I might be willing to try it, but I'm not certain. You're like I don't know, I might be willing to try it, but I'm not certain. Or is it a yes, right?
Speaker 2:And I think, reminding ourselves that we can go through that process where we can ask ourselves where am I on the scale with this, so that I can understand my own self, my own fears, my own whatever, and ask those questions, because I think it's a normal process for people to be like I don't know. If we are told impurity culture and if we did wait, not saying that the people that didn't, that's the end of the world by any means. But for those of us who did wait, it's like, well, now I'm just supposed to be open to all the things and I don't really understand all the things and why would we do that? And right there becomes this closed off, like we didn't educate, and so now it's like I don't know. So I think we have to kind of go through a kindness process of why is this a no, and that's okay, but I think it's important to go through.
Speaker 4:How do you guys coach couples to have? I mean, this is probably a one-hour answer all by itself, but how do you kind of coach couples to have those conversations?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it depends on what stage they're in. You know, a lot of times we're ending up talking to this to premarital couples who haven't experienced it yet and they're just trying to go wait. How do we get our heads around this?
Speaker 2:Poor premarital couples. We just go there, right, we're like, this isn't going to help if we aren't going to go there?
Speaker 3:So we're pretty forward in kind of saying, hey, let's remember, this is an educational process and it is going to be something you learn around your lifetime as a couple together, so do not expect it to be amazing, glorious, perfect the first 10 times, right, it is a process of learning. So that's first, and then it is starting to talk about a. Do you feel a freedom of what they talk about in Corinthians? This verse in 1 Corinthians 7 is used against people so often, but it is meant for freedom. My body is my wife's and she gets to enjoy and explore that. I get to enjoy and explore her body. It's meant for freedom.
Speaker 3:That verse has been misused to mean responsibility. Oh, you have to give me you right, like a taking. It's not supposed to be that. It is supposed to be. Look, this is enjoyable, this is passion. Let's explore each other's bodies in freedom, not obligation. Right, that's where it gets twisted and I think if we can learn that there is beauty in that, that there is. You know we encourage couples to read Song of Songs together because there's such beauty and passion in the Bible about desire and sexuality that is written into that poem that you read it as a married couple who's had sex, you go. Oh, that's what that metaphor meant. I had no idea when you saw it earlier. Those kind of things are so important that we start to learn how to enjoy sexuality.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, I think there's, yeah, I think there's a huge part that impacts this is just body right, and I think I end up working I'm just going to speak for myself with a lot of women who you can't be a woman in the United States and not have trauma around your body. I haven't met one yet, and we're talking about the gamut of how people appear, although that doesn't really matter, and I think that is a challenge for much of this, and I am uncertain how much purity culture played into that, but I do think it did, yeah, and so that is one thing I would mention too of just needing to do some healing work around my body in general is good, because many women do not feel that way. It has not been expressed to them that way, and I'm not saying there isn't the same message for some men, but I don't think as many men got that in purity culture as women did, so that's another one that we kind of have to tackle when we're helping couples through that.
Speaker 4:Well, again, I mentioned that I think purity culture lifts up kind of asexuality as the ideal.
Speaker 2:And I think if that's true, you're almost punished. If you're an attractive person.
Speaker 4:I mean that sounds weird, but it's almost like that's your fault or something and that's really confusing messaging.
Speaker 3:And there's then harm on both sides of that message. Right, yeah, for sure. If you are that attractive person, then it's like oh, my body is sinful because it's drawing all these people in looks and that's bad. Right. So they're being taught that their body is now bad. They're also being taught their body is now bad, they're also being taught. Their body gets them gets them seen and heard, and and so that becomes its own.
Speaker 3:Yeah and then there's this other side that so many people believe that they're not the world standard of beautiful. Then they don't. Their body doesn't have any value and it needs to be hidden. And so there's such strong messages there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and maybe your teen boy is like sitting in youth group and is hearing the other guys say like yeah, you know girls, whatever. And they're thinking like, yeah, girls right, yeah, absolutely. That's happening to me too. But, like you know the struggle, what you're saying is like the messaging exists for girls, also for guys. This like you almost and this is where, like the messaging of purity culture is such like an internal battle, because it's like the good is also the bad, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:It's like the bad is also the good um but I want you to think through what I know, what I was taught when I was in youth group, and what is told to men. So often in those situations, the answer that is given is you have to just bounce your eyes off of this person who is attractive. Now I want to go on record. There is a place for bouncing eyes. It is for the cheerleaders that pop up on the game that you're watching. It is for the billboard that you're driving by. That's inappropriate. There are places for bouncing your eyes, but think about the dehumanization that happens when it's taught in a youth group setting, when it's taught in a church setting that now I can't even look at you. That's so inappropriate, right?
Speaker 3:Instead of teaching and this is what I tried to teach my boys is great, that person's attractive. There's nothing wrong with them being attractive. They are also a child of God and we need to see their humanness, not just their physical appearance. And we can't just ignore them because oh wait, I might have thoughts. That's your responsibility to control those thoughts, not just dehumanize them and pretend they don't exist because I'm seeing a person here, right? So I think that message is so important that we communicate to boys like, yeah, it's your responsibility. If you find somebody attractive, fine they're. They're attractive, that's. There's nothing wrong with them being attractive. What do?
Speaker 2:we do about that Attracted to them.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:It's just then. Where do we go?
Speaker 3:Where do you go with that?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think that is, and maybe we could start to transition into the kid piece, because it's like communicating the difference between like, attraction and lust, because like, so good, I'm not even sure if, if a teenager asked me what's the difference in attraction and lust, I, I, you know I experience attraction to my wife. Yep, also, it, it's also. It's also like I don't know how to, how do I parse that for them?
Speaker 2:You know what I mean Like and being married is tough because it's like it's can you still lust in your marriage?
Speaker 2:Yes, but like those lines are very different because you guys have mutually decided to do life together and therefore marriage and sexual intimacy together. I think lust and this is going to sound very drastic, but Dan Allender says it this way and I think it kind of gives a different perspective Lust is wanting to consume just people. Right, we can lust after lust lots of things, and I think that's very different than wow, I found that person attractive and you know. And then I dealt with my thoughts and moved on, and maybe, brad, you can speak to that more. Then I stayed there and I allowed myself to get to the point where I want to consume that person, and I think that can give a very drastic different picture. What would you say, babe?
Speaker 3:So I deal with this a lot when I'm dealing with men with unwanted sexual behavior is where is this line of lust? And I will say I think most of us guys have trouble defining it, but we absolutely know when it's happening. Right, it is that it's that kind of gray area where it is hard to know, like, exactly how to put the words to it, but we know when our eyes go past wow, that's an attractive person to ooh, I want that Right and I want to possess that. I want to take that. I wish I could have that right.
Speaker 3:There is a place that that is different, and I always point to the temptation of Jesus. I would encourage your listeners to go and read especially the second temptation of Jesus, where he is brought to the top of the temple, and the temptation specifically is look at all that is before you. I will give you all of this and more Now. We only have to flip back a couple of chapters to know Solomon, to know what the kings of Israel got, and that includes what 600 concubines and more wives. You can't tell me that Satan didn't utilize the fact that all of these women could be his. He was fully human as part of that that is part of the temptation. The temptation itself is not sin. This could be yours. Nope, I want something different, right? So we have to separate out that just seeing something is not sin. It's then going ooh, I want that, I want to possess that, I want to take that for mine. That isn't yours. That's where lust starts to come in.
Speaker 4:You're reminding me of a really good Lewis quote. Cs Lewis has this quote about this idea and he says in the Four Loves he says we use a most unfortunate idiom when we say of a lustful man prowling the streets that he quote, wants a woman. Strictly speaking, a woman is is just what he does not want. He wants the pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. He cares how much he cares about the woman, as much as such may be gauged by his attitude toward her five minutes after fruition. And he puts in parentheses one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes I think that's man that is.
Speaker 3:That is spot on the difference between desire and lust.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah right, because a a desire pushes you towards someone. It pushes you towards relationship with someone. It cares about their emotions, it cares about their personhood.
Speaker 3:It cares about them right yeah, and I would argue, even in marriage. I know we're kind of starting to talk about teens, but even in marriage we as guys but both sides have to be cautious of when we are coming to our spouse just for sexual release right.
Speaker 3:And not for the engagement of intimacy that is the wholeness of sexual desire, right, because I think there are times and I'm not going to define this as sin, but I think there are times that I hear I work with guys mostly, so I hear guys going and saying, oh yeah, well, if she just did that, then everything would be fine, I wouldn't be thinking about pornography. That's a lie, right. That's a lie that we have believed in this and we have to be cautious of just seeing our spouse as a way towards sexual release, and that comes out of exactly that quote.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's a, it's a baby of purity culture, right? Because if my wife is the solution to my sexual problems, if getting married, is married, is the solution to my sexual problems, then if marriage didn't solve my sexual problems, I must've bought a bad product, Right, and that's. That's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's insane, but it is so often something I hear.
Speaker 2:And I want to be cautious, like there are women who struggle this thing, like it's not always gender specific, but I do think purity culture kind of had women mostly in one camp and then mostly in another, but sometimes it's reversed.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:Because we do see a fair amount of couples where that's the case as well.
Speaker 3:Yep. Thank you guys so much. We hope that you enjoyed that. It was certainly a really fun conversation that we got to have. It's something that we honestly work with so many of our clients around yeah.
Speaker 2:Sadly.
Speaker 3:Sadly, yeah, sadly, sadly, true, but one of the things that happens when you're doing marriage work is you end up talking to people about sexual intimacy. Of course right, because that is a part of marriage. And just more and more as we've become more aware of where some of the hurts and harms of sexual intimacy are, we just see some of the tentacles of that side of unhealthy teaching from the church. Should be healthy teaching and healthy encouragement and healthy, you know, relationship things, and we just see so much guilt and shame sometimes coming to marriages where you want to be promoting that freedom.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So we hope that that was beneficial for you. I really encourage you to talk with your spouse through like what did they learn about sex and intimacy as they were growing up? Is it something that?
Speaker 2:they were taught what did their parents model, even if they didn't grow up in the church. Like me.
Speaker 3:Right, like what were the tentacles of this? So I was recently listening to Devil in the Deep Blue Sea, a podcast put out by Christianity Today that was talking all about the satanic panic of the 80s and the interesting thing. I mean, yes, it certainly impacted church culture and church kids more than others, but they're talking about how it reached into kind of all culture. You know on Oprah and it was on you know a lot of news organizations about these, you know satanic things and so, just because you may not have been raised in the church, the tentacles of some of the expectations of you sexually, whether that be purity or something are still there, right, and so I think it's such an interesting conversation to think about that and how it impacted you and then your relationship.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:So we'll certainly be talking more about this. We enjoyed having the conversation. Until next time, I'm Brad Aldrich.
Speaker 2:And I'm Kate Aldrich. Be kind and take care of each other.
Speaker 1:Still Becoming One is a production of Aldrich Ministries. For more information about Brad and Kate's coaching ministry courses and speaking opportunities, you can find us at aldrichministriescom For podcast show notes and links to resources in all of our social media. Be sure to visit us at stillbecomingonecom and don't forget to like this episode wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to follow us to continue your journey on Still Becoming One.