Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 22

How to Tell if Christian Authors Are Using Junk Science about Gender Differences

How do you know if a book is using junk science to prove a point?

I thought I’d combine last week’s podcast on a DIY test to see if Christian books are harmful or helpful and this week’s podcast on the problems with the way that far too many Christian resources misuse neuroscience research to give an example of how you can do your own research to see if a book is using science properly.

So let’s work through one example that Rebecca mentioned in the podcast yesterday that fits with our tests perfectly.

And, to be honest, this post is a sad one for me to write. We’re looking at Gary Thomas’ new book Married Sex (which he wrote with Deb Fileta). Gary and I were once quite close, and he often consulted me on how to talk about female sexuality in his books. I thought he “got” it, since he had written When to Walk Away and had told women that they could leave toxic marriages, something many male evangelical authors wouldn’t do. But ever since The Great Sex Rescue came out, which he did not support, he’s distanced himself from me.

I wasn’t going to look at his new book, but a number of people kept emailing me with issues from it, so we took a cursory glance recently (I still haven’t read the whole thing). And one thing we found that was concerning was how he’s using neuroscience research (as we talked about yesterday).

In one of the chapters that he wrote, he says:

It may be helpful to remember that your husband has a different brain than you do. Dr. Louann Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist and researcher who studied at UC Berkeley, Yale, and Harvard, points out that “men have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sex drive in their hypothalamus. Sexual thoughts flicker in the background of a man’s visual cortex all day and night, making him always at the ready for seizing sexual opportunity.”

We realize that many wives have a higher libido than their husbands, but for those of you who are married to men with a higher libido, the quantity of sexual activity has the potential to create either long- term gratitude or slow-simmering resentment. Let’s not discount Dr. Brizendine’s surprising scientific truth: your husband has two and a half times more brain space devoted to sex drive than you do. So, yes, your husband is likely to think about sex more than you do.

Gary Thomas and Deb Fileta

Married Sex

Okay, wow. That sounds pretty incontrovertible, right? He’s quoting a scientist with major academic credentials.

But at the same time–this claim seems a little over the top, doesn’t it? A man has sex going through his brain ALL THE TIME, and he’s just waiting to seize a sexual opportunity? And sexually, he is completely different from her?

Yet, a neuropsychiatrist said it, so it must be true.

Well, let’s do some digging using the tests that we mentioned last week on the podcast and see!

Step #1: Check the citation–Is it from a peer-reviewed (academic) source?

Here is the endnote for this finding:

Louann Brizendine, The Male Brain: A Breakthrough Understanding of How Men and Boys Think (New York: Three Rivers, 2010), 4.

Gary Thomas and Deb Fileta

Married Sex

The first thing to notice here is that this resource is not a journal article in an academic journal where it is peer-reviewed (or put to test by others in the field), but is just a book.

Step #2: Check the date of the publication: Is the science up to date?

This book was published in 2010. Last week we suggested that when it comes to scientific articles, a good rule of thumb is to look for something in the last 10 years. Neuroscience is changing rapidly. There are so many more studies out about gender differences and desire and sex since 2010–and virtually all of them show that men and women are far more similar than they are different.

When you see a study that is quite old, ask yourself:

Do we have to rely on an older study because not very much research is being done in this field, so this study is likely up to date? Or has there been lots of research in this field, and so this may be a sign that the author is cherry-picking data?

Step #3: Check the 1-star reviews on Amazon: Have any glaring problems been identified?

I always love checking the one-star reviews for books, because if there is a serious problem, chances are someone has mentioned it in a 1-star review. You can ignore all the stupid 1-star reviews, but if there are many thoughtful ones, that’s a sign that there’s a problem.

One of the one-star reviews for The Male Brain led me to a peer-reviewed book review in the journal Nature for her first book The Female Brain. Nature is one of the most pre-eminent and sought after scientific journals, so a review from that carries a lot of weight. Here’s part of that scathing review, which they titled Psychoneuroindoctrinology, to show how little they thought of the book:

Yet, despite the author’s extensive academic credentials, The Female Brain disappointingly fails to meet even the most basic standards of scientific accuracy and balance. The book is riddled with scientific errors and is misleading about the processes of brain development, the neuroendocrine system, and the nature of sex differences in general. At the ‘big picture’ level, three errors stand out. First, human sex differences are elevated almost to the point of creating different species, yet virtually all differences in brain structure, and most differences in behaviour, are characterized by small average differences and a great deal of male–female overlap at the individual level. Second, data on structural and functional differences in the brain are routinely framed as if they must precede all sex differences in behaviour. Finally, the focus on hormone levels to the virtual exclusion of the systems that interpret them (and the mutual regulatory interactions between receptor and secretion systems) is especially lamentable, given the book’s clinical emphasis on hormone therapies.

Rebecca M. Young and Evan Balaban

"Psychoneuroindocrinology", Nature volume 443, page 634 (2006)

Step #4: Google It

When we googled “The Male Brain” and “review”, a ton of negative reviews came up. One of them was from The New York Times Book Review, where the writer actually looked at all the studies that Brizendine refers to in her book–and finds that many of them do not show what she claims they show–something that Brizendine has frequently been criticized for.

Here’s just one paragraph from the review:

Brizendine has been here before. Her first book got particular attention for the claim that women speak faster than men (250 versus 125 words per minute) and use more words throughout the day, an average of 20,000 compared with 7,000. This was a conversation starter that lined up perfectly with stereotype — Chatty Cathy, quantified! Except that it turned out there were no studies backing up the words-per-minute claim, which Brizendine later removed from the paperback edition. Her claim that women use more words than men fell apart, too, when a paper published in Science found that the average man and woman use the same number of words (about 16,000 during the course of a day). But Brizendine has stuck with that claim, which she says was based on her own “observation,” and on a paper that referred to the vocabularies of 20-month-old girls, whose author disavows the leap Brizendine makes. Emily Bazelon

"A Mind of His Own", New York Times Book Review

In other words, academics and scientists knew this was junk science at the time it was written. 

Another finding from Google was from a neuropsychologist’s blog, who does neuroimaging research projects. He routinely criticizes “scientific” books and articles that don’t use citations or misrepresent research, and his blog is actually called “Citation Needed.” Here’s what he had to say about an article Brizendine wrote at the launch of her book The Male Brain:

[Quoting Brizendine’s article] Perhaps the biggest difference between the male and female brain is that men have a sexual pursuit area that is 2.5 times larger than the one in the female brain. Not only that, but beginning in their teens, they produce 200 to 250 percent more testosterone than they did during pre-adolescence.

Maybe the silliest paragraph in the whole article. Not only do I not know what region Brizendine is talking about here, I have absolutely no clue what the “sexual pursuit area” might be. It could be just me, I suppose, but I just searched Google Scholar for “sexual pursuit area” and got… zero hits. Is it a visual region? A part of the hypothalamus? The notoriously grabby motor cortex hand area? No one knows, and Brizendine isn’t telling. Off-hand, I don’t know of any region of the human brain that shows the degree of sexual dimorphism Brizendine claims here.

[Quoting Brizendine] If testosterone were beer, a 9-year-old boy would be getting the equivalent of a cup a day. But a 15-year-old would be getting the equivalent of nearly two gallons a day. This fuels their sexual engines and makes it impossible for them to stop thinking about female body parts and sex.

If each fiber of chest hair was a tree, a 12-year-old boy would have a Bonsai sitting on the kitchen counter, and a 30-year-old man would own Roosevelt National Forest. What you’re supposed to learn from this analogy, I honestly couldn’t tell you. It’s hard for me to think clearly about trees and hair you see, seeing as how I find it impossible to stop thinking about female body parts while I’m trying to write this.

Tal Yarkoni

"The Male Brain Hurts--Or How Not to Write about Science"

He concludes his article with this:

No one doubts that men and women differ from one another, and the study of gender differences is an active and important area of psychology and neuroscience. But I can’t for the life of me see any merit in telling the public that men can’t stop thinking about breasts because they’re full of the beer-equivalent of two gallons of testosterone.

Tal Yarkoni

"The Male Brain Hurts--or How Not to Write about Science"

This whole process took me approximately 3 1/2 minutes.

It wasn’t onerous. These critiques were published up to ten years ago–they are not new concerns by any means. It took longer to read through the articles, but it didn’t take very long to realize that there was a HUGE problem with this book and its findings–and the author had already been critiqued in peer-reviewed journals.

One has to ask: Why did Married Sex use such outdated and wrong-headed research?

Here’s what we suspect, after seeing it happen again and again in Christian resources (and this is only one example): too often evangelical resources are using science to try to prove their viewpoint, rather than using science to help inform their viewpoint. We can think of no other explanation why people would skip over the most recent research in favour of highly ridiculed pop pseudo-science.

What reason would evangelical authors have to promote out-of-date, largely discredited research instead of more recent findings?

Because it supports their view of male sexuality.

But also, cherry-picking convenient “scientific” findings to prove your point silences anyone who disagrees–it is an argument in bad faith. We truly do not understand why Christian resources seem so afraid to give up stereotypes for truth.

The evangelical community is very wedded to a view of male sexuality where:men have inordinately high sex drives that women will never understandmen are visually stimulated so much that lust is a constant battle for every manThen, once they have asserted these two things, they often draw these conclusions:Men are drawn to pornography because of their lustful nature the way that God made them, and they need women to have enough sex with them so they don’t fallMen have a terrible time not lusting after women, and so women must dress modestlyMen have high sex drives that women will never understand, and they need sex in a way that women will never understand, and so wives have to give husbands frequent sex or terrible things will happen to the relationshipBoys will have a difficult time resisting sexual temptation, and so girls need to be the gatekeepers to make sure things don’t go too far.

(I am not saying that Married Sex says these things blatantly, though it does hint at many of them). 

In The Great Sex Rescue, we found that these messages dampen women’s libido, hurt women’s orgasm rates, and just do terrible things to sexuality in general. We need to do better than this.

In his amazing article “Enough is Enough”, writing about how the evangelical church needed to grapple with the reality of abuse that many women are living with, and help those women get out, Gary concludes with this:

 

I think God wanted me to see the breadth and depth of what is going on, and in this case, perhaps to be His voice.

Gary Thomas

Enough is Enough

We pray that this will apply in his writing not just to issues of abuse, but also to larger issues of how women are treated in marriage when it comes to sex.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! We’d like to suggest a more evidence-based, healthy and biblical view of sexuality.

Instead of shying away from science, really look at it. What you’ll find is that men and women are more alike than they are different, and there is a lot of overlap.

Women are made to be just as sexual as men (and, indeed, we are capable of multiple orgasms and we don’t have a refractory period). We may not all have the same libidos (some can be more spontaneous and some more responsive), but we are all meant to be sexual.

If women aren’t as sexual, it could very well be that it’s because Christian resources have made sex sound so ugly and threatening to women.

And maybe the reason that men are so paranoid about lust, and feel that they need women to have sex so that the men don’t sin, is ALSO based on the messages that boys grew up with.

Get rid of the horrible messages, and you may just awaken healthy sexuality in BOTH men and women–sexuality that is focused on mutual pleasure and intimacy, not just sin avoidance for men and obligation for women.

Wouldn’t that be freeing and healing?

So when you hear a message that goes against everything you know is healthy, check out the citation, and do a little digging.

It’s not that difficult. And then maybe all of us can start demanding more of our Christian resources!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: What To Do if Your Marriage Actually IS Hard

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The post How to Tell if Christian Authors Are Using Junk Science about Gender Differences appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

PODCAST: Are There “Pink Brains” and “Blue Brains”? A Review of the Neuroscience Christian Authors Like to Cite

Ever heard Christian resources tell you that the male sex drive is something that women can’t possibly understand?

That men are visual in a way that women never will be? That sex matters to a man in a way that it doesn’t to a woman?

It’s all over our Christian resources, and much of it is evidently based on claims from neuroscience. Most famously, Shaunti Feldhahn in For Women Only talks about how male and female brains are different when it comes to sex, so much so that we’re almost different species.

And then others have used her work and her claims to say that men are visual and so women must be modest, and this is why men lust and  have porn problems.

There’s only one problem: Is this was science actually says?

It’s Rebecca here on the blog today (and on the podcast) since my mom and dad are on vacation in Maritime Canada. My mother (Sheila) thought this was a great topic for Connor and I to tackle while she was away, since we’ve actually taken neuroanatomy courses and she hasn’t.

So in today’s podcast, Connor and I dissect all the footnotes that Shaunti uses, and that Gary Thomas uses in his new book Married Sex where he makes similar claims, and asks if the science they reference actually says what they say it says. Are you ready?

 

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

We don’t have a YouTube version this week, since they don’t have the equipment to do different audio and video feeds, so it’s just audio for now!

Timeline of the Podcast

0:45 What is a Meta-analysis?
5:30 Why you can’t be flippant about neuropsychology research
11:15 The most recent Male/Female brain research
19:15 The most recent conclusions
22:00 “Men are visually stimulated in a way women can NEVER understand.”
33:30 Sexual differences in the brain
48:00 Encouragement

What Does the Neuroscience Actually Say about Gender Differences and Sex Drive?

Many Christian authors have used neuroscience to claim that men and women are almost different species, to the point that women can never understand men’s visual nature or men’s sex drive. There are “male” brains and “female” brains, and we’re really very different and can’t understand each other. These claims are then often used to support the idea that men face incredible temptation and incredible sex drives, and need women to help them out.

But is this what the science that they reference in their footnotes actually says? These books have been influenced all of evangelicalism–but are their interpretations of neuroscience right?

We’re going to dive in! Building on our work from last week where we suggested that you vet resources to see if they’re healthy, we’re going to walk through how to vet these ones as well and see if the science claims are accurate.

I hope everyone listens to this podcast, because it’s important! And please, share this one! We’ve got to get this message out there.

Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our wonderful sponsor Femallay, a women’s wellness company with reusable menstrual products, vaginal suppositories to make sex easier (and more fun!), teas, and more.Our Patreon! Support disseminating our research for as little as $5 a month (and join our super active Facebook group, get unfiltered podcasts, and lots more).The Great Sex RescueThe 2019 Metanalysis and the 2021 MetanalysisThe Nature review dissecting The Female Brain; the New York Times Book Review dissecting The Male Brain; and the neuroscience blog dissecting it Rebecca Lindenbach

Blog Contributor, Author, and Podcaster

Rebecca Lindenbach is a psychology graduate, Sheila’s daughter and the author of Why I Didn’t Rebel. Working alongside her husband Connor, she develops websites focusing on building Jesus-centered marriages and families. Living the work-from-home dream, they take turns bouncing their new baby boy, and appeasing their curmudgeonly rescue Yorkshire terrier, Winston. ENTJ, 9w8. Check out Why I Didn't Rebel, or follow her on Instagram! Twitter Related Posts How Menstrual Cups Can Make Periods So Much Easier!

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Announcing the Debutante Ball for our Dataset in the ARDA

Through the whole process of our survey of 20,000 women, we’ve been committed to doing this to academic standards.

We don’t want to just be another book that speaks about our opinion; we wanted to take our survey and do it right, and then submit it to peer review so that it gets in journals.

We want to raise the bar about what counts as research in the Christian realm, so that it’s assumed that you can no longer just make claims without having data to support it.

Well, our dataset has now been all tidied up and submitted to the Association of Religious Data Archives–the ARDA!

I’m going to let Joanna, our data person and co-author of The Great Sex Rescue, explain this:

I feel like our data set is going to be a debutante at a coming out ball.

I realize it’s ridiculous to imagine what amounts to a very intense excel spreadsheet wearing white gloves and walking down a spiral staircase to the applause of her social sphere (other spreadsheets? Computer code?) but I have become very fond of this data set.

Why?

Because it isn’t a simple spreadsheet; it’s the aggregate data from over 20,000 women. Each data point is a woman’s story and running statistics has allowed me to get glimpses into the broader narratives we can learn from this dataset.

Of course, we wrote up a lot of results in The Great Sex Rescue. And more stats from the data set are in all of the books that are ongoing from Sheila, Keith, Rebecca, and me. I’m working hard on getting our data published in peer review journals and Sheila and I will be presenting our findings at a physiotherapy conference early next year.

I continue to learn so much from running stats from this data set and I feel so profoundly honored to have been trusted with so many stories from so many women.

But there’s only so much I can do. I’ve got limited time and limited knowledge. Plus I can’t be in contact with everyone who would like to use our data set. There are so many more insights that can be gleaned from the data and I’d love to let some other researchers “run with the football.”

That’s why we were so excited when Professor Andrew Whitehead at Indiana University (Purdue) asked us to put our dataset on the database he runs, the Association of Religious Data Archive. We’re posting a de-identified dataset using the US subset of respondents (that means all information that could possibly identify any participant, including the open-ended responses, were not included). I’ve spent a lot of the summer getting some coding done to make the dataset ready for other researchers to use it and I’ve finally hit submit to the team at the ARDA.

Having our dataset at the ARDA means that any researcher will be able to freely download the dataset for their research purposes. Additionally, frequency stats will be available at the ARDA website for journalists and lay people to use if they need to access information about the role of religion in American life.

We are so excited about this opportunity, and I am so excited for other researchers to use my beloved dataset.

Having our dataset at the ARDA means other researchers can use it.

We barely scratched the surface of all the things we can learn from our set when we ran The Great Sex Rescue, because we were only asking very specific questions. But here’s other things that people could learn using our data, just as examples:

How does Christian schooling/homeschooling affect marital satisfaction/sexual satisfaction later in life?How does your mother’s/caregiver’s handling of puberty affect you long term?How does level of education affect marital satisfaction?How does division of labor affect marital and sexual satisfaction?If she is the main breadwinner, how does that affect marital and sexual satisfaction?How does self-identifying as an evangelical affect higher education? Marital and sexual satisfaction? Homeschooling?

And so on, and so on.

We don’t have time to ask all these questions or to develop more, but other people might. And because our dataset was one of the largest that’s ever been done (Andrew Whitehead who runs the ARDA was so excited about it), lots of people are likely to use our dataset for their own academic journal articles.

We’re currently working (and by “we”, I mean “Joanna”) on a paper collaborating with Andrew Whitehead to introduce our dataset to the world, where we’ll have five big picture findings. We’re also working closely with a physiotherapy department from the University of Central Arkansas. We have a graduate student who is helping  us do qualitative analysis of some of our long-form answers, and we’ll be presenting at the American Physiotherapist Convention in February on our findings on vaginismus. We’re also working on a paper on vaginismus, since after we finished The Great Sex Rescue we ran some more numbers, and found even more interesting things!

This is a huge deal, and I’m so proud–especially of Joanna.

You all don’t hear a lot about Joanna, since she’s up in the Arctic and she’s the mom of two toddlers, and so it’s hard to get her on the podcast. She doesn’t have childcare, and trying to time things with her naps is difficult (though if you join our Patreon, Joanna is often on the unfiltered podcast and runs all the book club podcasts!).

But Joanna is a brainiac. Seriously. She’s scary smart. I tend to let Joanna decide what podcasts I start listening to and what books I start reading because she just is very intellectually curious and fun.

I’ve told this story before, but it’s worth telling again how we met up.

A long time ago, in a land far, far away (well, Pennsylvania) lived Joanna. She participated in something called “Bible quizzing” with the Alliance Church, where every year you basically memorize a different book of the Bible and compete on remembering tiny facts about everything. She was very good, and made it to “internationals” (which was really just the best quizzers from Canada and the United States, so more “Northern North America” rather than internationals, but internationals sounds better).

There she met a boy from another land far, far away (Saskatchewan), named Josiah. He was competing for Canada MidWest. They started talking, and love bloomed.

Around this time my daughters started quizzing with Eastern Canada. They both did well, and made internationals, too.

Rebecca in one of her last quizzes before graduating

Katie and her Eastern Canada team

My biggest memory of Internationals 2010, our first year there, was actually Josiah in the final round. I just rememeber one particular answer he gave, and was quite impressed with him, though I didn’t know his name at the time.

My youngest daughter Katie got to be quite good friends with Joanna’s younger sister Gracie, and when Joanna and Josiah married, Katie and Rebecca were invited down to help do the hair for the wedding (Katie’s seriously good at wedding hair). So even though I barely knew them, I was actually at Joanna and Josiah’s wedding.

Fast forward many years, and Josiah is looking for a law school clerkship position, but they’re all filled up in Saskatchewan, so they started looking in Ontario, and didn’t have much luck. Joanna messaged Rebecca out of the blue and asked if we may have any contacts, because they were just going through everyone they knew trying to find a job.

I wrote to a lawyer that I do know quite well, and Josiah got a job.

When they arrived in Ontario, Joanna was pregnant. She did some work finishing up her Master’s degree in the fall, but by the time Mari arrived (3 days after Katie’s wedding, and, yes, Joanna was there), she had finished academia and was looking for something to do from home.

Joanna and Josiah at Katie’s wedding–3 days before Joanna gave birth

So she started helping me out on the blog a bit, with writing posts and researching things. Nothing major.

Then, when we started writing about Love & Respect, and we began to be inundated by women telling us stories about how the book enabled abuse in their marriage, Joanna said to me, “Sheila, just let me run a mixed methods analysis of the comments and prepare it into a report.” I didn’t really know what she was talking about, but I let her run with it (though, to be honest, I was kind of a pain to her because she wanted to do it right and I wanted to get it done, and I kept making her hurry up and she kept saying, “no, it has to be right.”)

That’s what we sent in to Focus on the Family that they ignored.

A few months later, in the spring of 2019, Joanna and I were talking and she said, “It’s too bad I can’t just go back and get my Ph.D., because then I could look at the public health effects of evangelical teachings on women’s marital and sexual satisfaction.” And I said, “we could get a book contract to do that!”

And that’s what we did.

But the thing is–I could never have written The Great Sex Rescue alone.

Never in a million years. I don’t have the skill set.

When we decided to do the survey, I had two people with unique skill sets working for me who could do things I couldn’t do. Rebecca had taken multiple courses on psychometrics (or study and survey design–here’s a post where she helps me explain what’s wrong with a survey question in For Young Women Only), and Joanna actually knows how to run complex statistical analyses.

I can write, but that’s about it. Without Joanna and Rebecca I couldn’t have done this.

So when I think back to us starting Bible quizzing,

Rebecca brought her quiz book along to study while we were in Africa in 2010.

I never could have dreamed how important that ultimately would be in my life, for very strange reasons.

And now our dataset is live–or about to be.

And it can be used in academic studies. And we really can change the conversation about sex and marriage in the evangelical world, and raise the bar. And I’m grateful.

 

By the way–you may all be wondering–“But how did Joanna end up in the Arctic?”

Well, Josiah lost his job in Belleville (where we live) because of COVID, but then he got a job with the government of Nunavut (one of our Canadian arctic territories). He loves his job, and it’s been a great change for him, even if they’re so far away.

He likes to say that even though it looked like they were moving to Belleville for HIS job, God had other plans. If they hadn’t ended up here, I would never have partnered with Joanna (I didn’t really know her that well).

So often things aren’t what they seem–and you don’t understand God’s leading until after the fact!

My mom had this cake made for a party when Joanna was visiting this spring!

Check out The Great Sex Rescue Want to Support Our Research? Yes Please, Take Me to Patreon!

Have any questions about our dataset? Or have you ever seen God work in mysterious ways–that could only be understood afterward? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts PODCAST: Do-It-Yourself Tests to See if a Marriage Book is Harmful

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Top 10 Marriage and Sex Red Flags You Must Never Ignore

Marriage red flags–all of us have marriage issues, but how do you know if an issue crosses the line into dangerously weird territory?

I receive many emails from women in crisis, and since we’re talking about doing marriage on hard mode all month, I thought I’d share 10 marriage and sex red flags that really shouldn’t be ignored.

Often we don’t realize when something is off, because we’re new at this whole marriage thing, and most of us don’t share personal and intimate details with our friends. So how can you know if something that worries you is actually a red flag for something quite serious?

I first ran this post a few years ago, but I’ve updated it because it’s such an important one. 

What is a Sex or Marriage Red Flag?

 

A sex or marriage red flag relates to a situation which will not get better by you being nicer, by you being more understanding, by you trying to talk it through with him, or by you being more patient.

This is something which is a serious issue that will likely require a third party, like a licensed counselor, to help you through.

If you ignore it, your marriage will only get worse, and your husband will only fall deeper and deeper into sin or more and more away from God and your family (depending on what the issue is).

In this post, I’m not talking about abuse–though this, too, will not get better on its own, and is a huge red flag. If abuse is your issue, please see:

You can’t provoke someone to abuseHow do I admit to myself that I’m being abused?Why marriage wasn’t meant to be a power struggleToday, then, I want to talk more about sexual red flags in marriage.

These problems represent an issue that your husband has–not something that you have caused, and so you cannot make it better. You can, however, make it more likely that he will get the help he needs by taking it seriously. And that is the most loving thing you can do.

Are you PeaceKEEPING or PeaceMAKING? There’s a huge difference between the two. And if you don’t get it right–you’ll never be able to feel truly intimate in your marriage.

There’s a better way!

Take me to it!

My heart aches for women in these situations, because they often are so taken back with surprise that their husbands are acting this way, and they truly don’t know what to do. I’m sorry that some of these seem so extreme, but I’ve had multiple emails about each of these types of situations, and I know that there are women dealing with these things. So let’s get it all out in the open today!

Here are 10 Sex and Marriage Red Flags that shouldn’t be ignored:1. If your husband says he enjoys sex, but he never or rarely wants to make love–Red Flag!

Men, in general, have a higher sex drive than women do. That doesn’t mean that if you have a higher sex drive than your husband that there is necessarily something wrong with him.

But if your husband never wants to make love (say, less than once a month), even if he says he enjoys it, then that is a red flag. Even if his sex drive is lower than yours, he should want to make love at least sometimes. Here’s a more in-depth series on what to do if your husband doesn’t want sex–and when this really is a red flag.

This could be a sign of psychological issues, pornography issues, ultra low testosterone, or, in some cases, even a different sexual orientation.

2. If your husband considers lack of sex to be a spiritual virtue–Red Flag!

One wife of a busy, hardworking pastor sent this in:

About two months ago I was really feeling the abandonment and disconnect from my husband due to the demands of ministry. I was reading your blog and saw a comment where a woman stated that she never lets her and husband go more than two nights in a row without making love. I thought: how genius! Maybe this will help us stay connected even with his crazy schedule. This went on for a few weeks, then all of a sudden he started refusing. He would leave me laying in bed naked and alone. Again, confused and rejected, I voiced my concerns. He said, we’ve had sex more this month than we’ve had our whole marriage. He proceeded to tell me that our marriage is not based on sex but God. And he felt like I was trying to fill a void of rejection by having sex all the time instead of letting God heal me.

This marriage was already distant because this husband (and father!) was spending most of his time and energy away from the family. When the wife tried to bridge the gap with sex, he told her that she should rely on God instead (presumably like he does).

We do need to rely on God, but we also were created for intimacy with our spouses. When someone consistently rejects sex, while also rejecting an emotional relationship with their spouse, they are likely running from intimacy in general. In this man’s case, he may be lacking intimacy with God, too, thinking that activity for God is the equivalent of intimacy with God. It’s not.

He likely needs a counselor to sit down with him and talk through his priorities–and also a counselor who can walk him through why he’s running from intimacy and believes that self-sufficiency is the highest good. This attitude will make him an ineffective father and husband, but it will also ultimately make him an ineffective pastor.

3. If your husband has never been able to “complete the deed”, especially if he’s young–Red Flag!

I remember one woman who wrote me who married when she and her husband were quite naive and ignorant about how sex worked. She told me that she didn’t think she had ever had sex, and didn’t understand how it even happened.

After more questions, it turned out that her husband had never had an erection.

Young men should have no problem maintaining an erection. If he is unable to with you, then he has either major sexual issues, major psychological issues, or major physical issues (very unlikely in a younger person). Or, alternatively, he may have trained himself through masturbation to only respond to direct stimulation, as in this case:

My son-in-law has been unable to fully complete sexually. After a year and a half of marriage, during which they’ve never managed to “finish”, my daughter came to find out that he does masturbate quite a bit, and had looked at porn a lot. So my daughter has blocked the internet sites that she can and he is very limited to the time he is on the computer. He has been attending an accountability class at a Church that they are attending. He tried going without masturbating for 30 days and he thought things might have seemed better, but didn’t last long.  Oh, I know he was abused as a little boy by his older brother. Inappropriate touching and sodomy that she knows of. He doesn’t want to talk about that.

He asked and asked about seeing a urologist. Basically, my daughter came away thinking because there doesn’t seem to be a problem. He can ejaculate, therefore the urologists says everything is working fine. Could he have masturbated so long that he doesn’t get the same feeling inside her?

Masturbation could definitely be contributing to the problem–but so, likely, is the abuse that he won’t talk about it. Insisting that he go for counseling and getting trauma therapy likely is even more important than a recovery group (though that can help too).  And you can retrain yourself to be aroused by a person, but it takes a while.

That brings us to this one:

4. If your husband chooses masturbation over intercourse–Red Flag!

I’ve had several women saying that they have been going for months without sex–but then one woman walked in on her husband masturbating in the shower. He says he does it every day, and suggests she does it, too, she they don’t have to be bothered with sex.

Solo masturbation is selfish and steals intimacy. If someone chooses masturbation over sex consistently, they likely have withdrawn in other ways and have stunted their emotional development, because they’re becoming self focused rather than relationship focused.

I speak more about masturbation in marriage here.

The next three sex red flags are quite common today, and often result from an addiction to pornography:

5. If your husband refuses to share passwords, let you see his phone, or let you on his computer–Red Flag!

A marriage should have complete trust and openness. If he is adamant that his phone and computer are private, that is practically a guarantee that he is doing something he should not do. If you ask him, he may end up attacking you: “don’t you trust me? Are you that insecure?”

I have never known a marriage where a husband or wife refuses access to their phones who isn’t also either texting inappropriately or watching porn. Never.

If he refuses to let you see things, that’s a definite sign there’s something wrong. One more tip: If you do find something on his phone or computer, take a screen shot or a picture with your phone, so that it can’t be denied later. Then insist on talking with a counselor about it.

Find freedom from porn!

Your marriage, and your thought life, do not need to be held captive to pornography.

There is freedom. 

Beat porn–together!

I want to find freedom! 6. If your husband is not interested in pleasing you, and seems almost disconnected during sex–Red Flag!

If your husband becomes almost a robot in bed, closing his eyes and refusing to talk to you, then he’s disconnecting, perhaps because he can’t become aroused without picturing something else–or someone else–in his head. If he were to talk to you, it would break the fantasy. If sex is impersonal, there’s something wrong.

Note: this may not be a huge sin issue. If a guy grew up masturbating to porn, but doesn’t watch porn anymore, he could simply be having a hard time getting aroused now because he’s trained his sexual response wrong (that’s one of the side effects of porn!). It doesn’t mean he’s watching porn now (though he could be). Talk to him about it and try to work through it together, though an accountability group or counselor may be necessary.

7. If your husband seems to only enjoy sex if you are in discomfort, pain, or inconvenienced–Red Flag!

So much of pornography is focused on dominating or using someone. As I’ve said repeatedly in our Bare Marriage podcast, sex and pornography are not substitutes for one another: they are polar opposites. Sex is an intimate knowing and sharing between two people; porn is a one-sided using of another for your own gratification. And sometimes that involves needing to emotionally distance yourself in order to become aroused.

We shared an anecdote like this that raised major red flags to us in The Great Sex Rescue:

From The Great Sex Rescue

If you only become aroused when someone else is in distress or discomfort, that is a problem. One woman wrote to us with concerning sexual dynamics in her marriage:

There will be times when I initiate and my husband says no, which I am okay with. But then he will want to a few minutes later. Today I had to go to work and knew I would be leaving in a half an hour. I offered for us to have a quickie before I had to go. He said he was okay. Then right before I had to leave, he asked if we could go into the bedroom. I got frustrated but didn’t want to deny him, which of course killed the mood for him and he got frustrated. At night, when I initiate, he often says no. Then as soon as I fall asleep, he wakes me up and says he is horny, or I wake up and find him having sex with me on top of me.

As we explained in chapter 10, waking someone up for sex without their consent is sexual assault. But looking at the other things she described, we see even more red flags. She initiates when it is a good time for her, but if it’s a good time for her, he’s turned off. He only wants intercourse when it’s inconvenient for her. It sounds like, for this man, power has become an aphrodisiac. When you operate under a kingdom of power, rather than under the kingdom of God (as Jesus contrasts in Matt. 20:25–28), then power over the other becomes the gateway to arousal and sexual response. When you operate instead under a kingdom where love and sacrifice reign, then love becomes the gateway into sex.

If your husband is operating with a power sexual response cycle rather than a love one, that’s a problem.

8. If your husband is not interested in intercourse, but only wants other sexual acts–Red Flag!

Porn depicts sexual acts that are more degrading, and thus often more “photograph worthy”, than simply making love. Add that to a porn habit which is self-focused with masturbation, and many men are not interested in actual sex because it requires mutuality. If your husband prefers other sexual acts (or consistently “degrading” things) to intercourse, he likely has a problem with porn.

Note: if your husband simply wants some variation in bed, there’s nothing wrong with that! But if a man only wants oral sex–red flag!

Finally, the last two red flags represent a man with a seriously disturbed sexuality, which really does need a counselor (and unfortunately I’ve had several of these types, too):

9. If your husband has to role play himself or get you to role play to become aroused–Red Flag!

If he has to pretend to be very young, or that you are very young–or any variation on this sort of thing–that’s a danger sign. If he has to pretend to be a different gender, that’s a warning sign. Many couples like to role play; but if the role play is necessary to his arousal, then there is something at work that really does need to be dealt with.

10. If your husband wears strange clothing in private–Red Flag!

One reader wrote in with this story:

I have a friend who basically walks on eggshells whenever her husband is around, so as not to disrupt his delicate moods. Yet then he expects her to want to have sex more! She does not keep sex from him, she tries her best even though her emotional needs aren’t being met, yet SHE is the one who has to initiate if they do have sex. Any time she tries to talk to him about their marriage, he ends up crying, and so she never really says exactly what she feels because she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. Lately he’s done some weird things, such as he got a thong and began wearing it to bed. No explanation, no asking her what she thought about it. She asked him why and he said “I thought you might like it.” She told him it was a big turn-off for her, yet a month later he ordered 3 more on-line.

I can imagine how bewildered this wife is. She’s trying to have a good marriage, to be good to him, to be sexually available–but he’s crying, moody, rejecting her, and now wearing lingerie!

If a man starts wearing odd clothing, especially in bed, this is a sign of a serious psychological issue that needs to be dealt with.

Note: I am not saying thongs are weird or wrong. But in this scenario, there definitely seems to be something else going on, and it’s associated with clothing.

BONUS Tip: If he won’t accept your no–Red Flag!

I guess this one’s really #11, but it needs a spot all on its own, because it’s so important.

When we did our focus groups for The Great Sex Rescue, we were amazed by how many women told us stories of sexual assault in marriage which they didn’t understand was sexual assault. If she wasn’t kicking and screaming, then it wasn’t rape, right? Or maybe she was kicking and screaming, but they were married, so rape wasn’t possible, right?

Chapter 10 in The Great Sex Rescue shows how too often our evangelical advice about sex has ignored issues of sexual abuse, and even enabled coercion. Remember this one simple test:

If you do not feel as if you can safely say no, then you can’t freely say yes, either. 

For more help:Let’s talk marital rape and what coercion looks likeMarital rape and obligation sex podcastI’m sorry to talk about such distasteful things today.

I know that this is not what the vast majority of you deal with. But what scares me when I see some of these emails is that the wives don’t seem to realize how serious many of these red flags are, because it’s their “normal”. So I want to say, loudly and clearly, these things are NOT normal. They ARE red flags. And you really, really do need to get help, for the sake of his own spiritual and emotional health, and that of your relationship.

If you want to see what normal sex is, and what God created sex to be, our book The Great Sex Rescue explains it all, and it may help you put words to what you instinctively feel is wrong.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! My sympathy for any of you who are walking through this.

Please know that God is big enough to get you through–and your husband is never so messed up that God cannot redeem him and redeem your marriage. He may not choose to do so–we all have free will to reject God’s help, and some people won’t change. But God can do amazing things when we let Him, and I pray that this will be evident in your marriages!

Is there a red flag that I missed? What would be #11? Or do you think one of these is not that big a deal? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts It’s Time to Hold Teachers Accountable for How They Treat the Sheep

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MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: What To Do if Your Marriage Actually IS Hard

For some people, marriage honestly is hard.

We’re concluding our marriage on hard mode series this week. All month we’ve been looking at whether or not we’re doing marriage on hard mode–or making marriage harder than it needs to be. We looked at how our beliefs about marriage can make marriage hard; how gender roles can make marriage hard; how financial decisions can make marriage hard; and so much more. We even did a podcast on doing sex on hard mode!

And all along, I’ve been assuring you that it’s not normal for marriage to be hard.

Life is hard, yes. But marriage shouldn’t be something that makes life worse for most of us. Yes, someone can get sick and then we need to care for them, and that’s hard. Yes, when you’re married, you inherit their side of the family, and that can be hard.

But these things are about life. Sometimes life is just hard, and when we get married we have more life things that can be difficult–life with kids is busy, in-laws are frustrating, or you both get job offers in different cities and have to make a tough decision about whose dream job to pursue. But again, these are not issues with the marriage–they’re just life.

These kinds of “life” things can make marriage hard, though, when they aren’t handled well because of really bad relationship dynamics. Bad relationship dynamics in a marriage can definitely make life harder–and we’re concerned that when some people say “marriage is hard,” they really mean “life is hard, even if you’re married” but people in bad marriages here, “What you’re going through is normal.” 

Your relationship dynamics should not be something that makes your life harder, and if they are, that’s a sign that there’s some attention that needs to be paid so that it doesn’t remain like this.

But what if relationship dynamics seriously are hard? What if marriage really is rough?

Let’s look at five questions to ask if your marriage honestly is hard:

Is marriage hard because you’re in an abusive situation?

If you find yourself always walking on eggshells trying not to set your spouse off; if your spouse never admits any wrongdoing, or makes you feel like you are crazy; if your spouse blames you for everything in the marriage–it may be a sign that you’re in an abusive relationship. 

If you feel in danger, please call a domestic abuse hotline. Otherwise, please see a licensed counselor who is trained in abuse issues by yourself to decide on next steps (you shouldn’t seek couples counseling when abuse is involved). 

The Emotionally Destructive Marriage Is It Me? Making Sense of Your Confusing Marriage Boundaries in Marriage 2. Is marriage hard because you need to deal with some stuff?

Sometimes what makes marriage hard is our own expectations.

I’m not talking about expecting fidelity, expecting an equal partner, or expecting your spouse to care about you. These expectations are entirely reasonable and right! Not all expectations, after all, are bad.

But sometimes we’re miserable because we have our own issues. We notice what our spouse does wrong, but we don’t notice what we do wrong. If your own attitude could be causing your marriage to falter, please read 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage!

And sometimes one or both of you have deep seated issues from childhood that haven’t been dealt with that are taking their toll on your relationship. If you’re just not connecting, or you always go around and around about the same issue and never get it solved, then it may be time to see a licensed counselor. If you have untreated mental health issues in your marriage, then talk to your doctor and a therapist about medication and therapy options to help treat whatever issue you or your spouse is facing. Whatever the help is that you need, there is no shame in seeking it out–and it can make a world of difference.

 Many times marriage is hard when there are personal issues that need addressing because you simply don’t have the tools–whether relational, emotional, or psychological–to cope in a healthy way, relate in a healthy way, or communicate in a healthy way. This does not need to be your life forever, you and your spouse can learn these skills, and there is help for you. 

You may also enjoy:10 Truths of Emotionally Destructive RelationshipsHow Do I Admit to Myself That I’m Being Abused? What’s holding you back from a GREAT marriage?

Do you find yourselves taking each other for granted?

Has marriage lost that “spark”?

Learn how to feel connected again–and how changing the way you THINK about marriage can make all the difference.

Take me to it! 3. Is the difficulty in your marriage something temporary?

When my husband was in residency for pediatrics, life was just hard. He was barely home, and when he was home, he was exhausted.

We knew, however, that this was only temporary. So I made an effort to build things into my life that gave me friendship and fun outside of Keith, so that I wasn’t just sitting around waiting for him to get home. I kept busy with the girls anyway. And we made it through those years just fine.

However, I could not have sustained that long term. What kept me going was that it was only temporary.

If you’re going through a temporary season that’s hard–say a military deployment; living in two different cities; job or education demands that are abnormally high–have grace for both of you. Realize that this will be rough. If you can, spend some money on things that make life easier, like hiring a cleaner or ordering in meals more often. Prioritize the time you do have together.

But most of all, build some fun things into your life, even if you’re having fun by yourself. Doing nothing and waiting for when things get better only builds resentment.

4. Could big life changes make your marriage easier?

If you’re in a situation that is untenable in the long term, like I talked about in my post on how Keith and I grew apart, then do something about it as soon as possible. If life is untenable now, it isn’t going to get any better by seeing how long you can keep going like this. You’ll only wear each other out.

If you need to make a job change, then it might mean one of you going back to school for a few years. That may cause even more problems in the short run, but perhaps it gives you a better life in the long term.

It may mean moving to a different city, either one where you have more child care and support, or one that’s cheaper where you can work less. It may mean moving away from family that’s toxic.

Just remember: If you’re going to eventually have to make a change anyway, it’s often easier to do it sooner rather than later!

5. What if you feel that it’s just gotten too hard, and you don’t know if you can keep going?

We hear from spouses all the time who are in marriages without abuse or infidelity, but who are not sure their marriage is going to last–or if they even want it to last. They’re exhausted and have felt that the entire responsibility for the household is on their shoulders, and they’re not sure they can keep going any longer. They’ve tried talking to their spouse, tried to get them to see, and every promise that things will change lasts about a day or two and then things are back to normal. 

It’s like their spouse has emotionally checked out of the marriage and takes no responsibility for the household–and these spouses (most often women) tend to see it as, “Frankly, life would be easier if I were a single parent because at least I wouldn’t have to pick up after my spouse, too.” They don’t want to get divorced, they still love their spouses, they just don’t feel like they can stay married like this.

If that’s where you’re at, here’s a suggestion: look at how your life would change if you weren’t married, and implement some of those changes now. Often what happens is couples split up and then all the changes happen at once: she gets a job, the kids go in daycare, they start swapping babysitting time on weekends with friends so the errands get done, etc. 

But if you’re struggling in your marriage because of emotional burnout, carrying the entire mental load for the household, or feeling like you’ve lost all joy in your life and don’t know how you’re going to find it again, it’s prudent to figure out if this is a “grass is greener” kind of situation. If your options are either stay married and have the kids at home or get divorced and put them in daycare, why not add a third option: stay married for now and put your kids in daycare and see if that gives you some emotional breathing room to be able to deal with the deeper issues in the marriage. 

If you communicate to your spouse that you are at your breaking point and so you are starting to make changes now, that may be the wake-up call your spouse needs, and it also gives you a chance to recoup some emotional energy to be able to figure out what you want long-term and give your spouse a clear view of what needs to happen to save your marriage. 

Marriage isn’t supposed to be hard; it’s supposed to be life giving.

Yes, adjusting to living with someone can be difficult, and it can be a refining experience. But marriage should be a blessing, and if it’s really, really hard, that should be a sign that things need to change, not a sign that “well, this is just what everyone goes through.”

Sometimes the change is in us–we have personal issues we need to deal with. Sometimes we need to do life drastically differently because we’re way too burned out and disconnected. And sometimes we need to address deep-seated issues.

But I hope that we can start talking about marriage in a more nuanced way, after this series. Telling everyone that marriage is hard can prime people to marry people that aren’t good matches–because relationships are difficult, after all. And they can prime people to put up with difficulty instead of trying to get to the root of the problem.

Jesus is the way, the truth, and the LIFE. Living in Jesus is life-giving. That means that our closest relationship, when rooted in Him, should also be life giving. Let’s prioritize that, and then maybe we’ll help people see that marriage at its best doesn’t need to be hard. And instead, it can be one of the biggest blessings to walk through inevitable hard seasons of life with someone you love beside you.

Posts in the Marriage on Hard Mode SeriesPodcast: Are We Making Marriage Harder Than It Needs To Be?6 Ways You May Be Doing Marriage on Hard ModeIdentifying the One Thing that's holding back your marriageAre You Doing Too Much as a Family?Why Downsizing Can Be Worth ItPodcast: Are We Doing Sex on Hard Mode? How Gender Roles Can Make Marriage Harder than it Needs to beDealing with the Primary Breadwinner Stereotype so it doesn't hurt your marriageWhat if Marriage Honestly is Hard?10 Red Flags about Marriage and Sex

And SIGN UP for my emails to get our end-of-the-series activity to work through this with your spouse! 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts (from Keith): I’m Disgusted by How Some “Christians” Talk about Women

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How Menstrual Cups Can Make Periods So Much Easier!

In the last few years, menstrual cups have become a much more mainstream period tool for women.

Rebecca here today, and I’m gonna give you a good old warning right at the beginning of this post: we’re going to get real personal here! And the reason for that is what caused me to switch over from disposable period products to a reusable menstrual cup was actually hearing the real-life, nitty-gritty details from other women. So now it’s my turn to give back!

A menstrual cup is a silicone cup that’s super flexible and sits inside your vagina. It creates a vacuum seal so it traps everything and can even be worn up to 12 hours if you have a regular amount of menstrual flow. Then whenever you need to empty it, you simply remove it, dump the contents in the toilet, rinse it off, and pop it back in. It takes some getting used to, putting it in and taking it out, but once you’ve got it it’s actually really easy and quick (I actually now find it easier than using tampons)!

Today’s post is sponsored by Femallay, a really great company who’s been a long-time supporter of our blog. Here’s some information about Femallay and what they do:

Femallay is a feminine care company that’s run by women, for women. Their products are really tailored not towards what Cosmo says women should want or need, but what actually helps women enjoy life more by meeting their real needs in a way that helps the environment, their relationships, and even boosting their sexual confidence.

We love supporting other women who are working hard to make life simpler and more enjoyable for others, and Femallay really is doing just that. We’ll be talking later this month about their flavoured vaginal suppositories and how they can help your sex life, but today we want to talk about their menstrual cups!

So how do you use a menstrual cup, anyway?

Menstrual cups are used by folding the opening of the cup and inserting it into your vagina until the entire cup is inside. Then you either wiggle or rotate the cup until it opens fully and the vacuum seal is in place. You can use your finger to feel to make sure it’s fully open. To remove it, you insert a finger into your vagina up the side of the cup, break the seal, and then pinch it slightly and simply pull it out! If you break the seal properly first, it’s really quite simple to remove.

The trickiest part of using a menstrual cup is simply getting used to it. If you’ve never used one before, many people (including me!) suggest you give yourself a 3-month learning period where you’re planning on wearing a pad at the same time to catch any leaks. It often takes a few periods before you really get the hang of it, but once you’ve got it you’ve got it, no more leaks–even overnight!

Femallay actually has a really cool cup that allows you to empty it while the cup is still inside of you. There is a stopper in the stem of the cup that you simply pinch up and down to “open” or “close” the valve. Especially if you’re a woman with heavier periods who finds she has to change even a menstrual cup more frequently, this could be a fantastic option to make your periods easier to manage!

Yes! Take me to the menstrual cups!

In terms of maintenance and cleaning, you simply rinse out the cup with water every time you remove it to fully dump out its contents and re-insert it. No soap needed while you’re on your period–you don’t want to be putting soap into your vagina, so just water works great. Then between periods you sanitize your cup by simply boiling it for 5 minutes, store it in a breathable cotton bag, and that’s it! It’s so simple, I find it even easier than dealing with the garbage created during a period every month.

So that’s what a menstrual cup is and how you use it, now I want to tell you 5 reasons I really like menstrual cups and think they’re a truly great option for managing your period:

1. A menstrual cup replaces your other period care items.

Listen, I’m one of those people who thinks pads feel like a diaper. I just don’t like ’em, they do not make me feel feminine and pretty like the women in the commercials seem to feel, I just always feel like I’m bulky and I hate the feeling of sitting down while I’m wearing a pad.

Menstrual cups are so much more comfortable for me because it’s all very contained. I’m not self-conscious about how I’m sitting, worrying about leaks, any of that. I can just go about my life like normal while on my period and it genuinely makes me feel much better about myself. Because the menstrual cup creates a vacuum seal, if you have it in correctly you will not leak at all. (I’ve been using one for four or five years now, I have not had any issues with leaking since the first 3 months of figuring it out.)

Even little things wiping yourself after using the washroom are easier because, again, it’s all internal and contained. No worrying about tampon strings or having having to use four times the toilet paper to clean up from the blood left from the pad (I told you this was going to be a bit personal). It really is like just using the washroom during a non-period time.

2. Menstrual cups make intimacy easier and less awkward during your period

And no, I’m not actually talking about sex (although many women who want to have sex during their periods but don’t like period sex due to blood find that menstrual cups can help because they can engage in non-penetrative sex while the cup is in and there’s no blood to worry about, so there’s that, too!).

I just mean that everyday moments of intimacy are much easier and less awkward when using a cup. Snuggling while watching a movie in bed? You’re not worried about him feeling the giant night-time pad you’ve got on or leaking on him. Getting changed? There aren’t bloody pads or tampon strings to deal with, so getting changed in front of each other or even just walking around in your underwear is more like normal. If you’re someone who’s more private about period stuff, or just bodily functions in general, menstrual cups can help you “take back” that time of the month for intimacy and closeness without the self-consciousness that many of us face with feeling just plain gross during our periods.

I know there are many couples who are really not at all bothered by period blood or seeing period products in use, but I’m just not one of those people. I’m very period positive (obviously I’m fine talking about it in public, because here we are) but to me, subjectively, being on my period feels very similar to the incontinence many of us deal with during pregnancy–I’m not embarrassed by it, I don’t mind if people know I’m on my period, but I would just rather other people not be particularly involved in it, even my husband. So I love that this allows me to feel more comfortable because self-consciousness is a real romance killer.

3. Menstrual cups can offer relief to women who struggle with painful periods

This is one of the main draws for me with menstrual cups–I am one of those unlucky women who finds the first few days of periods quite painful. And honestly, being able to just put a menstrual cup in in the morning and then not have to change it until the night is such a relief to me. I can just lie in bed, with my heating packs, and work or rest and I don’t have to get up every 3-4 hours to change out pads or tampons.

There are many anecdotes from women who found that switching to a menstrual cup helped their cramps get better, too. I did not personally find that, but I did find that not having to agitate the area as often helped me feel much more comfortable, and it makes what is a pretty unpleasant time for me a little less unpleasant.

4. Menstrual cups can remove some of the mental load of your period

One of the things that made me one of those “never-go-back” women when it comes to menstrual cups is that they just made periods so much easier and less complicated.

Genuinely, I have found that using a menstrual cup saves me mental energy when it comes to my period. I don’t have to worry about if I’m almost out of tampons, how many pads I’ve got left, if I’ve got overnight and day-time options–it’s all just one little cup in a little cotton bag. It is so much more simple, I’m never panicking because my period started and I don’t have enough supplies (maybe you are all more organized than me but yes, that happened to me a lot), and the clean up is so much easier and quicker than dealing with the garbage created from even just one period.

I’m a really scatterbrained person, so making things simple and streamlined is really important for me. And I am quite stereotypical in that I get very easily overwhelmed and frustrated due to hormone swings, so it just helps to remove any potential source of frustration by choosing an easier option–just change the cup twice a day!

Especially after having a child, I realized just how different periods are when you’re using a cup versus pads or tampons. After my traumatic delivery I had to use pads for a while when my period returned, and the first outing that we did with our son while I was on my period was, frankly, really annoying! I was really not used to the lack of spontaneity because I had to remember “Oh right, I’m on my period” rather than just being able to live life like normal on our day to the beach. I was thrilled when I had progressed enough in my recovery to be able to ditch the pads again.

5. Menstrual cups are simply far better for the environment

This is how I originally found out about menstrual cups–I was researching some zero-waste swaps to try and I found tons of recommendations for these little silicone cups to use during your period instead of pads and tampons.

It’s a no-brainer that reusable products are better for our planet than disposables. What I love about cups in particular is just how long they last–you buy one cup and it lasts you for years. I calculated that after buying my first cup I broke even with the cost within the first year easily and then every period after that was virtually free while also not contributing to landfills. That’s a major win in my book.

(Also, Femallay has some great reusable pads, too, if you’re looking for an environmentally friendly option but cups aren’t what you’re looking for, but we’ll be talking about those later!)

Yes! Take me to the menstrual cups! I really think menstrual cups are a great way to handle periods.

I personally find it makes me feel more feminine, more comfortable, and less self-conscious during my period. And considering how big of a percentage of my life that includes, I’m thrilled that menstrual cups exist as an option. They make periods easier, they help the environment, and they can help women like me, who just feel generally gross on their periods, have a much more pleasant time of things.

And if you’re interested in trying one out, check out Femallay’s selection–they’ve got some great options!

Have you ever tried a menstrual cup before? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments below!

Rebecca Lindenbach

Blog Contributor, Author, and Podcaster

Rebecca Lindenbach is a psychology graduate, Sheila’s daughter and the author of Why I Didn’t Rebel. Working alongside her husband Connor, she develops websites focusing on building Jesus-centered marriages and families. Living the work-from-home dream, they take turns bouncing their new baby boy, and appeasing their curmudgeonly rescue Yorkshire terrier, Winston. ENTJ, 9w8. Check out Why I Didn't Rebel, or follow her on Instagram! Twitter Related Posts MARRIAGE ON HARD MODE: How Gender Role Ideas Can Backfire

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The post How Menstrual Cups Can Make Periods So Much Easier! appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

PODCAST: Do-It-Yourself Tests to See if a Marriage Book is Harmful

We had FUN doing this podcast!

And it’s a hands-on podcast, too. We’re going to walk you through how to tell if the marriage/parenting/sex books on your bookshelf are healthy or not.

So grab a couple of books and a cup of coffee or tea, and let’s get started!

Oh, and for those of you watching on YouTube, I meant to mention my shirt, but I never did. We had these shirts made for a woman who was attending the American Association of Christian Counselors. It has our book cover on the front, and “ask me about a study of 20,000 Christian women” on the back. We’ll make them more widely available soon if anyone else wants one!

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast

Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube:

Timeline of the Podcast

0:30 How to figure out if you can trust a book
4:30 There should be basic standards
7:00 Footnotes 101
18:00 Anecdotes should MATCH the teaching and caveats
23:45 The Steps to Check if a Book is Healthy
46:00 Interview with Neil Schori on how to approach your pastor

Main Segment: A Litmus Test for whether or not Christian resources are healthy

We’re drawing on yesterday’s post on my two tests for how to tell if a book/teacher is healthy or not.

We look at:

Do they use peer-reviewed research?What counts as good research?Do they understand basic statistics?Do their anecdotes line up with their explicit teaching? (If not, the anecdote reveals what they really think)Do they change their advice when research changes?Do they go back and correct old stuff?Do they platform people that we know are harmful?

It may sound intimidating–but I promise it’s not! And we show you how to look at these things in the books that you likely have on your bookshelves.

And don’t forget to download our rubric for healthy sexuality teaching! Apply it to the marriage and sex books on your shelf!

Download the rubric! Interview with Neil Schori: How do you approach your pastor about a problematic book/speaker?

Neil Schori is an amazing pastor with a heart for domestic violence and abuse victims. He was unwittingly thrust into the nation’s spotlight when a woman he was counseling–Stacy Peterson–was murdered by her husband Drew. That started he and his wife on a big journey of learning more about abuse dynamics. 

He answers a reader question today about how to approach a pastor who is using a book you know is harmful for a book study, or recommending it from the pulpit, or inviting a problematic speaker in to speak. 

Neil Schori is the lead pastor of The Edge Church in Aurora, IL. Neil Schori’s passion for assisting victims of domestic violence was fueled by the tragic disappearance of Stacy Peterson in 2007. Over the past 10 years, Neil has served full-time in several pastoral roles ranging from family care and counseling to community groups and assimilation. As the lead pastor of The Edge, with a Master’s degree in counseling from Lincoln Christian Seminary, Neil has actively promoted the church’s role of assisting victims of intimate partner violence for the past several years.

In 2008 Neil Schori and Susan Murphy-Milano devised a tool that would give victims of domestic violence a voice. At that meeting, the Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit© was born. Murphy-Milano subsequently wrote the book, Time’s Up: A Guide on How to Safely Leave an Abusive Relationship with explicit instructions and blank forms for victims and advocates of domestic violence to use. These forms provide individualized safety plans, which document the abuse in the form of witnessed, notarized and video-taped testimony should she/he go missing or become incapacitated.

Neil and his wife, Brandi, reside in the Chicago suburbs with their beautiful daughters Hannah, Mia, and Ava.

Be sure to watch Neil Schori on Dateline coming up in the next few months!

Neil Schori

Lead Pastor at the Edge Church, Spiritual Director and Domestic Violence Prevention Coach

Win a copy of The Orgasm Course!

We’re giving away ONE copy of the Orgasm Course to someone who signs up to our email list this week–and ONE to someone who is already signed up.

Join our list! Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our Patreon! Support our research and getting our message out for as little as $5 a month and get access to our super fun and active Facebook group, behind the scenes podcasts, and more!Sign up for our email list!Our big post on the two tests for whether or not a speaker or resource is safeThe Great Sex RescueFind Neil Schori on Twitter, and join his Facebook Page for his spiritual direction and domestic violence prevention ministryOur Open Letter to Focus on the Family about Love & RespectOur Rubric for Healthy Sexuality Teaching--and our report of our findings from The Great Sex Rescue (you can download both at the same place)

 

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Does it Matter Who is the Primary Breadwinner?

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The post PODCAST: Do-It-Yourself Tests to See if a Marriage Book is Harmful appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.

It’s Time to Hold Teachers Accountable for How They Treat the Sheep

In the evangelical church, too many of our books, resources and pastors spread messages that we now know are harmful–and we don’t have a way to stop it.

Last year, we conducted  a survey of 20,000 predominantly Christian women to see if any of the messages that are commonly taught in the evangelical church actually WORSEN women’s marital and sexual satisfaction, or cause sexual pain to increase.

We identified four main teachings that do great harm–teachings which are not biblical, but are often spread in the evangelical church nevertheless. We also created a 12-point rubric of healthy sexuality to apply to our resources to see if they are helpful or harmful. Of the 13 bestselling sex and marriage books we looked at:

4 were helpful2 were neutral7 were harmful

Why is it acceptable that best-selling evangelical marriage books cause harm?

Now, it’s normal that there will be disagreements about biblical interpretation.

What I am talking about today is not merely disagreement, but rather messages that we know cause measurable harm. When we follow God’s design for relationships, emotional health should follow–not emotional and relational harm. If following a piece of advice brings harm rather than health, that should be a sign that what is being taught is not of Jesus. 

In fact, Jesus Himself said this:

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

Matthew 7:17-20

Jesus is telling us that outcome matters. 

Right now, in the evangelical world, we do not even consider outcome when it comes to teaching. Instead, the criteria we use for judging whether or not to recommend a book, or whether or not to invite a speaker to a conference, tends to revolve around these three things:

Do I agree with the person’s theology?Are they friends with the right people and featured on the right media?Are they famous/have they written best-sellers?

None of these things relates to whether or not their advice actually works.  But marriage, sex, mental health, parenting–these are not just doctrinal issues; they are relationships, and they are complicated. We need to handle with care.

We are facing a crisis of harmful teaching in the evangelical church.

Because we have relied on connections rather than asking people to prove that their advice works, we have elevated people and teachings that should never have been elevated.

Emerson Eggerichs, for instance, was a good friend of James Dobson’s, and Focus on the Family published and promoted his book Love & Respect. But as we’ve talked about before, when we put that book through our rubric it scored 0/48 (while The Gift of Sex by the Penners scored 47/48).

It could not have scored worse. (And if you’re interested in seeing why it scored so poorly, see this post.) Yet, Love & Respect remains the most widely-used marriage book study in North American churches today.

Over the last two weeks, the American Association of Christian Counselors held their annual convention in Florida. Some authors that we found to be the most harmful delivered keynote addresses (even though they are not trained in counseling). We have to ask: by what criteria were they considered to be the best choices for speaking from the stage? (And please note: this is not about me wanting to be there instead. I couldn’t have traveled from Canada due to COVID restrictions anyway!).

Right now, the evangelical world is doing real harm to real couples, and especially to real women. This must stop. But it won’t stop until we adopt higher standards for our resources, and start enforcing them.

We would like to suggest a simple 2-pronged approach to evaluating relationship teaching.

We believe that we could avoid much of that harm by expecting authors, speakers, and teachers to pass two tests:

Evidence-based adviceAccountability for their teaching Our call is that, before a church or conference invites a speaker, or before a small group leader suggests a book to study, or before a publication features an author or speaker, they be vetted using these two criteria. We don’t expect everyone to vet everyone; but before someone gives an author a platform, they have a responsibility to vet that author and his/her work first.

Let’s look at these two criteria in turn:

A. Is the book “Evidence-Based”?

Instead of asking what is this person saying, we tend to focus on who is saying it.

But please remember that a seminary degree does not confer relevant experience or knowledge about abuse dynamics, human sexuality, mental health, or anything of the sort. In fact, one of the most horrifying things we have seen as we have researched evangelical marriage and sex teaching is how many seminaries use the harmful books that we identified in The Great Sex Rescue as their actual textbooks. Seminary teaches people to be a pastor; it does not qualify someone to teach the intricacies of marriage or sex.

What matters is whether the advice is evidence-based–whether it’s been shown to bear good fruit. Let’s look at what that entails:

1. All claims must be backed by peer-reviewed research

When an author makes a claim, the author should be citing his or her sources.

We can’t just say things like:

as we all know, the divorce rate is increasingsince people stopped spanking, disobedience and rebellion has increasedthe root of depression is a spiritual failingthe reason people divorce is that men aren’t acting as headteenage pregnancy is increasing because of awful sex ed in schools

and many more, without citing our sources.

If an author makes a claim like this without citing data, that is a sign that the book is based on ideology rather than evidence.

Not only should books use peer-reviewed journal articles, though; they should use the most up-to-date research. Many of our books are relying on research that has been disproven, or are still spouting things that we know are not true.

Other times the book may have used up-to-date knowledge at the time it was written, but these claims are now wrong. The book The Act of Marriage, for instance, first published in the 1970s, says vaginismus does not exist (even though Christian women suffer from it at twice the rate of the general population). If a book has passed its “best before” date, it is best to let it die.

TIP: Check the back of the book for footnotes. A safe book will quote at least a handful of peer-reviewed journal articles to back up their claims. Make sure those articles are within the last 10 years.

The book Every Man’s Battle, for instance, focused on an area which has been widely studied in academic literature: sex addictions, pornography addictions, and lust. And yet there is not a single footnote in that book. 

2. Does the author understand data and statistics?

To be qualified to write on relationships, a person must show that they can understand how research works and what to do with data.

In a recent (now deleted) article by Gary Thomas about how a wife can’t cure her husband from porn, but he can help her, he shared that Christina, the wife, wasn’t having sex very frequently, even though she was orgasming. Thomas asserted:

“This blows apart the myth that sexual infrequency is always caused by a husband’s selfishness or lack of hygiene.”

He does not cite where this myth is from. Also, by using the word “always” in his sentence, he appears to be setting up a straw man so that he can knock it down. However, there is indeed a wide body of evidence that shows that women who don’t orgasm frequently do indeed want sex less–although that same evidence also shows that relationship quality, porn use, and sexual dysfunction contribute to frequency as well.

But most importantly, one anecdote does not blow apart data.

In fact, multiple anecdotes do not blow apart data either! Think about it like this: we know that lung cancer is largely caused by smoking. If you meet someone who has smoked two packs a day for fifty years and they don’t have lung cancer, that does not mean that the research into smoking causing lung cancer is disproved. It just means that you met an outlier.

When we were looking at our survey results, I was very surprised when Joanna, our wonderful stats person, told me that 48% of women orgasm always or almost always during a sexual encounter. I assumed it would be way lower–because I work in this field, and the people who write in to me or comment on the blog tend to be people who are having more problems than others. And so I had a distorted view of what was actually happening–even though I know a lot about sex in Christian marriages.

Just because someone counsels hundreds of couples a year does not mean that they know more than a research study. Your own experience does not trump data. Experience is important, and anecdotes and case studies are wonderful and make books richer, but they cannot stand alone, nor can they disprove what academic literature says.

TIP: If the author/speaker makes a claim that says that current research consensus is wrong, be suspicious. The only valid way to claim “the research is wrong” is to show either how the research was done incorrectly or to conduct your own study and publish it in peer reviewed journals. And one has to be qualified in the field to properly critique other people’s research.  3. Does the author’s anecdotes line up with their teaching?

Often authors will know what they “have” to say to avoid criticism, but in their anecdotes they’ll give the opposite advice. So, for instance, the author may teach that women aren’t responsible for men’s porn use, and that women are never to blame, but the anecdotes they use may all be about how having sex with her husband helped him not watch porn.

The classic one is the standard abuse caveat. Authors will say that “this advice doesn’t apply if you’re in an abusive situation; and abuse is wrong, and you should call the police,” but then they give anecdotes of situations which are obviously abusive where the wife is told to submit more or consider what she can do differently to not provoke him.

Here’s how I explained this problem previously:

From Is It Okay if Christian Books Are Just a Little Bit Harmful? Here’s an analogy: Think about how drug companies handle warnings

Drug companies are required to warn you: “This drug is not meant for people with these conditions.”

What would we think, though, if a drug company said, “This drug is not meant for people with asthma”, but then went on to tell a story about a woman who was having real shortness of breath, and who felt her chest tightening, and who often had trouble catching her breath when it was cold or after exercising, but she used the drug and it was amazing!

Well, you might assume that if you have shortness of breath, and if you have chest tightening, and if you cough a lot after exercise or when it’s cold, then you must not have asthma. You must have something else. And maybe this drug would work!

That’s what going on with too many Christian marriage books.

They’re saying they’re not meant to be used in abusive situations, but then they’re describing abusive situations without naming them as such.

TIP: Leaf through the book and find 5 times when the author uses names–that’s usually an example. Read the story and see if it lines up with the caveats or advice that the author explicitly gives in the book, or if the anecdotes tell a different story. 4. Use a standardized method to judge the outcome of marriage and sex teachings: Does the advice work?

In the academic world, researchers are expected to have their work peer-reviewed in journals. That means that they have to first pass an ethics review (if the research uses people), and then several peers (academics in the same field) will evaluate that research, look for holes in the arguments, see if it passes current standards, see if the research was done well, and see if the conclusions are correct. Only then is it published (that’s how we get the term “peer review”).

In the Christian world we don’t do any of this.

We would like to suggest that evaluating outcomes is the most crucial component of accepting any marriage or sex teacher.

Currently, there is a huge body of knowledge in the academic literature of what beliefs and practices lead to:

lower marital satisfactionhigher rates of abusehigher rates of porn use (or difficulty quitting porn use)lower orgasm rateslower libidohigher rates of male sexual dysfunctionhigher rates of sexual pain disorders in women

Our own research identified beliefs that directly lead to lower marital satisfaction, lower orgasm rates, and higher rates of sexual pain. We should be able to screen people’s teachings to see if they match up to best practices.

My co-authors and I have created a rubric for healthy sexuality teaching that we encourage others to use to judge materials before they host a marriage conference or a book study.

A book or resource should be required to achieve a “green”, or “healthy” rating, in order to be used.

Download our Rubric

If others would like to develop their own rubrics about healthy marriage, parenting, or mental health teaching, we welcome that and would welcome a robust discussion on what such rubrics should include.

We are endeavouring to have our sex rubric in peer review publication, and we encourage others to do the same thing. It should be normalized that we go to peer review with our research.

B. Asking for Accountability: Have they proven themselves trustworthy?1. Have they corrected their own work?

No one can be perfect all of the time. In academia, the aim is to disprove the current theories and move research forward. That should be the norm in the evangelical world, too. Or, to put it more simply, in the words of Maya Angelou:

When you know better, do better. 

It must become the norm that people can admit that they didn’t have the full picture, and then correct course.

When people have been shown to do harm, they should be expected to issue revisions to their books, or at least state on their websites and explain what teaching they no longer agree with.

2. Are they platforming people who have done harm and will not course correct?

Here’s where the rubber hits the road: the only way to eradicate harmful teaching from evangelicalism is if there is a price to pay for promoting harmful teaching. That means that when someone is known to have spread demonstrably harmful teachings, we must no longer platform them or endorse them.

And, if someone continues to platform a harmful teacher, without any kind of disclaimer or announcement, that is a sign that they are not safe, either.

We should not use people’s books, invite people to speak at our conferences, or recommend people who:

Have not corrected previous books that contain messages we know cause measurable harmWork with and frequently speak with those who have covered up abuse or caused measurable harm (for example, those who work with Mark Driscoll in marriage ministry)Have endorsed highly problematic books or people in the past, and have not rescinded those endorsements, though they’ve been asked to (for instance, those who endorsed Mark Driscoll’s book Real Marriage; endorsed James MacDonald; endorsed Every Man’s Battle; endorsed Ravi Zacharias, etc.)

Measurable harm will keep being spread until we all say, “enough is enough,” and expect more from our teachers.

It is not unreasonable to ask teachers to correct their teaching when they learn more, or to withdraw endorsements when appropriate.

Look, I’ve endorsed stuff in the past that I regret, too! As I’ve said repeatedly, I held up copies of Love & Respect at marriage conferences and told people it was a great book. When I realized it wasn’t, I apologized and have been very vocal about how I was wrong.

I asked Zondervan, one of my publishers, if I could rewrite The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex for its 10th anniversary this spring, and I completely gutted the book and pretty much started over. It was my best-selling book, and people have loved it. But after surveying 20,000 women, and listening to all of your stories, I felt it needed a different emphasis. It’s not that I thought the original was harmful; it’s just that it wasn’t done to my current standards. 

Growth is allowed, and should be encouraged. That means that we don’t ostracize those who apologize and retract; we embrace them. There should be benefits to admitting you were wrong. We must become a Christian community that rewards people for growing, but that also stops platforming those who refuse to acknowledge harm and change course.

It’s not about cancelling people–it’s simply holding people accountable.

It must become the norm that we hold teachers to a higher standard, as the New Testament does.

Let’s remember that the sheep’s welfare always matters more than the shepherds’ reputations.

Please, church, let’s get away from celebrity culture and start asking for more.

Jesus does not want people hurt.

What the church is doing right now by allowing those with no or few credentials to speak; by not judging outcomes; and by not holding people to account is hurting the sheep.

When we don’t care for the sheep, but instead worry about protecting the platforms of those in power, we show we’re not following Jesus.

As the wider church, let’s repent of the harm we have done. Let’s figure out a new way, together, to raise the bar on what we expect of teachers in the marriage, sex, and even parenting realm.

Will you join me in praying for these changes, and then will you start demanding that your counselor, your pastor, your denomination starts vetting people and books, too? Thank you.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now!

What do you think about my criteria? Is there anything you would add? How can we make this easier/more practical? Let me know in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Does it Matter Who is the Primary Breadwinner?

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Top 10 Marriage and Sex Red Flags You Must Never Ignore

Marriage red flags–all of us have marriage issues, but how do you know if an issue crosses the line into dangerously weird territory?

I receive many emails from women in crisis, and since we’re talking about doing marriage on hard mode all month, I thought I’d share 10 marriage and sex red flags that really shouldn’t be ignored.

Often we don’t realize when something is off, because we’re new at this whole marriage thing, and most of us don’t share personal and intimate details with our friends. So how can you know if something that worries you is actually a red flag for something quite serious?

I first ran this post a few years ago, but I’ve updated it because it’s such an important one. 

What is a Sex or Marriage Red Flag?

 

A sex or marriage red flag relates to a situation which will not get better by you being nicer, by you being more understanding, by you trying to talk it through with him, or by you being more patient.

This is something which is a serious issue that will likely require a third party, like a licensed counselor, to help you through.

If you ignore it, your marriage will only get worse, and your husband will only fall deeper and deeper into sin or more and more away from God and your family (depending on what the issue is).

In this post, I’m not talking about abuse–though this, too, will not get better on its own, and is a huge red flag. If abuse is your issue, please see:

You can’t provoke someone to abuseHow do I admit to myself that I’m being abused?Why marriage wasn’t meant to be a power struggleToday, then, I want to talk more about sexual red flags in marriage.

These problems represent an issue that your husband has–not something that you have caused, and so you cannot make it better. You can, however, make it more likely that he will get the help he needs by taking it seriously. And that is the most loving thing you can do.

Are you PeaceKEEPING or PeaceMAKING? There’s a huge difference between the two. And if you don’t get it right–you’ll never be able to feel truly intimate in your marriage.

There’s a better way!

Take me to it!

My heart aches for women in these situations, because they often are so taken back with surprise that their husbands are acting this way, and they truly don’t know what to do. I’m sorry that some of these seem so extreme, but I’ve had multiple emails about each of these types of situations, and I know that there are women dealing with these things. So let’s get it all out in the open today!

Here are 10 Sex and Marriage Red Flags that shouldn’t be ignored:1. If your husband says he enjoys sex, but he never or rarely wants to make love–Red Flag!

Men, in general, have a higher sex drive than women do. That doesn’t mean that if you have a higher sex drive than your husband that there is necessarily something wrong with him.

But if your husband never wants to make love (say, less than once a month), even if he says he enjoys it, then that is a red flag. Even if his sex drive is lower than yours, he should want to make love at least sometimes. Here’s a more in-depth series on what to do if your husband doesn’t want sex–and when this really is a red flag.

This could be a sign of psychological issues, pornography issues, ultra low testosterone, or, in some cases, even a different sexual orientation.

2. If your husband considers lack of sex to be a spiritual virtue–Red Flag!

One wife of a busy, hardworking pastor sent this in:

About two months ago I was really feeling the abandonment and disconnect from my husband due to the demands of ministry. I was reading your blog and saw a comment where a woman stated that she never lets her and husband go more than two nights in a row without making love. I thought: how genius! Maybe this will help us stay connected even with his crazy schedule. This went on for a few weeks, then all of a sudden he started refusing. He would leave me laying in bed naked and alone. Again, confused and rejected, I voiced my concerns. He said, we’ve had sex more this month than we’ve had our whole marriage. He proceeded to tell me that our marriage is not based on sex but God. And he felt like I was trying to fill a void of rejection by having sex all the time instead of letting God heal me.

This marriage was already distant because this husband (and father!) was spending most of his time and energy away from the family. When the wife tried to bridge the gap with sex, he told her that she should rely on God instead (presumably like he does).

We do need to rely on God, but we also were created for intimacy with our spouses. When someone consistently rejects sex, while also rejecting an emotional relationship with their spouse, they are likely running from intimacy in general. In this man’s case, he may be lacking intimacy with God, too, thinking that activity for God is the equivalent of intimacy with God. It’s not.

He likely needs a counselor to sit down with him and talk through his priorities–and also a counselor who can walk him through why he’s running from intimacy and believes that self-sufficiency is the highest good. This attitude will make him an ineffective father and husband, but it will also ultimately make him an ineffective pastor.

3. If your husband has never been able to “complete the deed”, especially if he’s young–Red Flag!

I remember one woman who wrote me who married when she and her husband were quite naive and ignorant about how sex worked. She told me that she didn’t think she had ever had sex, and didn’t understand how it even happened.

After more questions, it turned out that her husband had never had an erection.

Young men should have no problem maintaining an erection. If he is unable to with you, then he has either major sexual issues, major psychological issues, or major physical issues (very unlikely in a younger person). Or, alternatively, he may have trained himself through masturbation to only respond to direct stimulation, as in this case:

My son-in-law has been unable to fully complete sexually. After a year and a half of marriage, during which they’ve never managed to “finish”, my daughter came to find out that he does masturbate quite a bit, and had looked at porn a lot. So my daughter has blocked the internet sites that she can and he is very limited to the time he is on the computer. He has been attending an accountability class at a Church that they are attending. He tried going without masturbating for 30 days and he thought things might have seemed better, but didn’t last long.  Oh, I know he was abused as a little boy by his older brother. Inappropriate touching and sodomy that she knows of. He doesn’t want to talk about that.

He asked and asked about seeing a urologist. Basically, my daughter came away thinking because there doesn’t seem to be a problem. He can ejaculate, therefore the urologists says everything is working fine. Could he have masturbated so long that he doesn’t get the same feeling inside her?

Masturbation could definitely be contributing to the problem–but so, likely, is the abuse that he won’t talk about it. Insisting that he go for counseling and getting trauma therapy likely is even more important than a recovery group (though that can help too).  And you can retrain yourself to be aroused by a person, but it takes a while.

That brings us to this one:

4. If your husband chooses masturbation over intercourse–Red Flag!

I’ve had several women saying that they have been going for months without sex–but then one woman walked in on her husband masturbating in the shower. He says he does it every day, and suggests she does it, too, she they don’t have to be bothered with sex.

Solo masturbation is selfish and steals intimacy. If someone chooses masturbation over sex consistently, they likely have withdrawn in other ways and have stunted their emotional development, because they’re becoming self focused rather than relationship focused.

I speak more about masturbation in marriage here.

The next three sex red flags are quite common today, and often result from an addiction to pornography:

5. If your husband refuses to share passwords, let you see his phone, or let you on his computer–Red Flag!

A marriage should have complete trust and openness. If he is adamant that his phone and computer are private, that is practically a guarantee that he is doing something he should not do. If you ask him, he may end up attacking you: “don’t you trust me? Are you that insecure?”

I have never known a marriage where a husband or wife refuses access to their phones who isn’t also either texting inappropriately or watching porn. Never.

If he refuses to let you see things, that’s a definite sign there’s something wrong. One more tip: If you do find something on his phone or computer, take a screen shot or a picture with your phone, so that it can’t be denied later. Then insist on talking with a counselor about it.

Find freedom from porn!

Your marriage, and your thought life, do not need to be held captive to pornography.

There is freedom. 

Beat porn–together!

I want to find freedom! 6. If your husband is not interested in pleasing you, and seems almost disconnected during sex–Red Flag!

If your husband becomes almost a robot in bed, closing his eyes and refusing to talk to you, then he’s disconnecting, perhaps because he can’t become aroused without picturing something else–or someone else–in his head. If he were to talk to you, it would break the fantasy. If sex is impersonal, there’s something wrong.

Note: this may not be a huge sin issue. If a guy grew up masturbating to porn, but doesn’t watch porn anymore, he could simply be having a hard time getting aroused now because he’s trained his sexual response wrong (that’s one of the side effects of porn!). It doesn’t mean he’s watching porn now (though he could be). Talk to him about it and try to work through it together, though an accountability group or counselor may be necessary.

7. If your husband seems to only enjoy sex if you are in discomfort, pain, or inconvenienced–Red Flag!

So much of pornography is focused on dominating or using someone. As I’ve said repeatedly in our Bare Marriage podcast, sex and pornography are not substitutes for one another: they are polar opposites. Sex is an intimate knowing and sharing between two people; porn is a one-sided using of another for your own gratification. And sometimes that involves needing to emotionally distance yourself in order to become aroused.

We shared an anecdote like this that raised major red flags to us in The Great Sex Rescue:

From The Great Sex Rescue

If you only become aroused when someone else is in distress or discomfort, that is a problem. One woman wrote to us with concerning sexual dynamics in her marriage:

There will be times when I initiate and my husband says no, which I am okay with. But then he will want to a few minutes later. Today I had to go to work and knew I would be leaving in a half an hour. I offered for us to have a quickie before I had to go. He said he was okay. Then right before I had to leave, he asked if we could go into the bedroom. I got frustrated but didn’t want to deny him, which of course killed the mood for him and he got frustrated. At night, when I initiate, he often says no. Then as soon as I fall asleep, he wakes me up and says he is horny, or I wake up and find him having sex with me on top of me.

As we explained in chapter 10, waking someone up for sex without their consent is sexual assault. But looking at the other things she described, we see even more red flags. She initiates when it is a good time for her, but if it’s a good time for her, he’s turned off. He only wants intercourse when it’s inconvenient for her. It sounds like, for this man, power has become an aphrodisiac. When you operate under a kingdom of power, rather than under the kingdom of God (as Jesus contrasts in Matt. 20:25–28), then power over the other becomes the gateway to arousal and sexual response. When you operate instead under a kingdom where love and sacrifice reign, then love becomes the gateway into sex.

If your husband is operating with a power sexual response cycle rather than a love one, that’s a problem.

8. If your husband is not interested in intercourse, but only wants other sexual acts–Red Flag!

Porn depicts sexual acts that are more degrading, and thus often more “photograph worthy”, than simply making love. Add that to a porn habit which is self-focused with masturbation, and many men are not interested in actual sex because it requires mutuality. If your husband prefers other sexual acts (or consistently “degrading” things) to intercourse, he likely has a problem with porn.

Note: if your husband simply wants some variation in bed, there’s nothing wrong with that! But if a man only wants oral sex–red flag!

Finally, the last two red flags represent a man with a seriously disturbed sexuality, which really does need a counselor (and unfortunately I’ve had several of these types, too):

9. If your husband has to role play himself or get you to role play to become aroused–Red Flag!

If he has to pretend to be very young, or that you are very young–or any variation on this sort of thing–that’s a danger sign. If he has to pretend to be a different gender, that’s a warning sign. Many couples like to role play; but if the role play is necessary to his arousal, then there is something at work that really does need to be dealt with, as Shannon Ethridge talks about in The Fantasy Fallacy.

10. If your husband wears strange clothing in private–Red Flag!

One reader wrote in with this story:

I have a friend who basically walks on eggshells whenever her husband is around, so as not to disrupt his delicate moods. Yet then he expects her to want to have sex more! She does not keep sex from him, she tries her best even though her emotional needs aren’t being met, yet SHE is the one who has to initiate if they do have sex. Any time she tries to talk to him about their marriage, he ends up crying, and so she never really says exactly what she feels because she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings. Lately he’s done some weird things, such as he got a thong and began wearing it to bed. No explanation, no asking her what she thought about it. She asked him why and he said “I thought you might like it.” She told him it was a big turn-off for her, yet a month later he ordered 3 more on-line.

I can imagine how bewildered this wife is. She’s trying to have a good marriage, to be good to him, to be sexually available–but he’s crying, moody, rejecting her, and now wearing lingerie!

If a man starts wearing odd clothing, especially in bed, this is a sign of a serious psychological issue that needs to be dealt with.

Note: I am not saying thongs are weird or wrong. But in this scenario, there definitely seems to be something else going on, and it’s associated with clothing.

BONUS Tip: If he won’t accept your no–Red Flag!

I guess this one’s really #11, but it needs a spot all on its own, because it’s so important.

When we did our focus groups for The Great Sex Rescue, we were amazed by how many women told us stories of sexual assault in marriage which they didn’t understand was sexual assault. If she wasn’t kicking and screaming, then it wasn’t rape, right? Or maybe she was kicking and screaming, but they were married, so rape wasn’t possible, right?

Chapter 10 in The Great Sex Rescue shows how too often our evangelical advice about sex has ignored issues of sexual abuse, and even enabled coercion. Remember this one simple test:

If you do not feel as if you can safely say no, then you can’t freely say yes, either. 

For more help:Let’s talk marital rape and what coercion looks likeMarital rape and obligation sex podcastI’m sorry to be so graphic or to talk about such distasteful things today.

I know that this is not what the vast majority of you deal with. But what scares me when I see some of these emails is that the wives don’t seem to realize how serious many of these things are, because it’s their “normal”. So I want to say, loudly and clearly, these things are NOT normal. They ARE red flags. And you really, really do need to get help, for the sake of his own spiritual and emotional health, and that of your relationship.

If you want to see what normal sex is, and what God created sex to be, our book The Great Sex Rescue explains it all, and it may help you put words to what you instinctively feel is wrong.

The Great Sex RescueChanging the conversation about sex & marriage in the evangelical church. What if you're NOT the problem with your sex life?

What if the things that you've been taught have messed things up--and what if there's a way to escape these messages?

Welcome to the Great Sex Rescue. Order Now! My sympathy for any of you who are walking through this.

Please know that God is big enough to get you through–and your husband is never so messed up that God cannot redeem him and redeem your marriage. He may not choose to do so–we all have free will to reject God’s help. But God can do amazing things when we let Him, and I pray that this will be evident in your marriages!

Is there a red flag that I missed? What would be #11? Or do you think one of these is not that big a deal? Let’s talk in the comments!

Sheila Wray Gregoire

Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum

Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8 FacebookTwitter Related Posts Does it Matter Who is the Primary Breadwinner?

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(from Keith): I’m Disgusted by How Some “Christians” Talk about Women

My husband Keith’s on the blog today!

He got quite fired up recently in some Facebook comments, absolutely dismayed at how some Christians talk about women.

This post is perhaps more fiery than I would normally write, but he really wanted to say this, so I said, “Go for it!”

Sheila Wray Gregoire

I am sick and tired of other people trying to tell me how to be a man.

I am particularly sick and tired of other men telling me that to be a real man I need to be some form of misogynist.

You all know that I hold the view that instead of focusing on being godly men and godly women, we should just focus on being godly.  You also know that I have been upset in the past by the way the church has treated women. But over the last couple of months I have gotten really riled up about people in the church clinging to misogynist views despite the avalanche of evidence about how harmful those views have been and continue to be.

Before I go in to more detail, though, I need to give a trigger warning.

I am going to talk about some misogynist themes & tropes in this post. My intention is to debunk them, but some of the things that have been said are so hideous that I think I need to warn you to brace yourselves before reading further. And to me, the thought that people are saying these things in the name of Christ is more than heartbreaking – – it is absolutely appalling.

A few months ago, I got into a debate with a young man on Matthew Shallenberger’s Facebook page about women teaching in church. I have had these debates for thirty years now, so 99% of what he said didn’t surprise me.

I was not shocked when he “demolished” (sarcasm alert) my argument by explaining that the word “diakonos” (deacon) means a position of authority when applied to a man, but the exact same word means simply “a servant” when applied to a woman like Phoebe (Romans 16:1-2). I was also not shocked to watch the arrogance with which he addressed me when he clearly knew no Biblical Greek or even the context of the verse (SHEILA INTERJECTING HERE–I’m so proud my husband can read the New Testament in Greek!), namely that Paul instructed people to help Phoebe, not the other way around! (By the way if you are seeking good reading about Phoebe the deacon and other women in ministry in the early church, here is a series from Marg Mowczko’s website).

What really struck me was something he said near the end of our conversation. He said that by “simping about women leaders” I was “spitting in the face of Jesus”.

You may have thought he meant simpering. He did not.

“Simp” is a new word that people who believe and practice toxic masculinity use as a pejorative for men like me who (in their eyes) are overly deferential to women. It is an acronym that stands for “Suckers Idolizing Mediocre P**sy”.

Think about that for a second. In one breath he refers to women like that, then in the next breath tells me he speaks for Jesus.

That a person could ever use a term like that and then have the gall to say that I was the one spitting in the face of Jesus is completely incomprehensible to me.

I realize there is debate in the church on the issue of women in leadership, but this is not an argument about Biblical interpretation, this is a clear call for the debasement of women and of any men who would be so pathetic as to actually stand up for them. It is simple misogyny, through and through and it has no place in the body of Christ.

Unfortunately, misogyny is not limited to a few individual trolls on the internet.

Sadly, it has worked itself right through the entire structure up to some of the most popular authors and speakers. Sheila recently wrote a post about the problems with Pastor Mark Gungor’s marriage teaching. He has a whole routine that emphasizes the typical “men are only interested in sex” idea.

And if it were just a comedy sketch, I could let it go. When we are joking around, we use extreme language to get laughs. Unfortunately, he is not just making jokes, he uses those jokes as education. In essence, he is saying “I’m joking, but I’m not joking”. He is saying men are only interested in sex and the implication is clear –that is the way God made them and you wives need to adjust to that.  He even goes so far as to say “if it weren’t for sex, we wouldn’t have anything to do with y’all!”

Now I get the fact that in most marriages, the man has a stronger felt need for sex.

Sheila and I have shared extensively about how I am the higher drive spouse in our relationship (sorry if that’s TMI for some of you). We have even talked about how my felt need for sex made Sheila feel pressured to perform despite suffering from vaginismus at the beginning of our marriage. I have confessed that my strong felt need for sex even caused me to be selfish and uncaring toward Sheila in the first few years of our marriage. I say all that to show I understand how strongly a husband’s felt need for sex with his wife can be.

But I have to tell you, that even at my most selfish, I could not imagine myself ever saying to Sheila, “if it weren’t for sex I wouldn’t have anything to do with you!”

I don’t say this to praise my virtue because I don’t think this mindset should be considered virtuous. It should fall under basic human decency.

Perhaps worse, in the same talk, Pastor Gungor mocks women who would disagree with his idea by making a squeaky irritating voice of a woman saying “sex should be about companionship, fellowship and sharing”, then goes back to his own voice to break it to them: “Girls, if your husband wanted companionship…he would get a golden retriever”.

A pastor should know that God’s design for sex does include companionship, fellowship and sharing as well as physical pleasure. He might believe and even teach that a man or a woman may value each of those aspects differently, but he should not outright ridicule the idea that sex is supposed to be something intimate, personal and sacred. I should not have to pull out the creation account in Genesis 2 to remind a pastor that God did not ordain animals to be man’s companion and women to only be their sex receptacle.

Again, Pastor Gungor is not just doing a stand-up routine, he is teaching this as proper principles for marriage. And it’s appalling.

But historically this kind of teaching has gone completely unchallenged.

And worse still, Sheila gets attacked constantly for being “mean” in calling people out about their sexist and misogynist remarks. She is labelled as being part of “cancel culture”.  This just shows the height from which we have fallen.

A famous man says something hurtful and demeaning to women which goes against Christian virtue and basic human decency and nobody blinks. But then a woman stands up and says “Don’t talk like that!”, suddenly everybody has an opinion about why she should sit down and shut up.

Asking a person to stop saying hurtful things is not cancel culture; it is seeking justice.

Asking a person to take stock of the damage they have done to others is not cancel culture; it is a call to repentance.

The last time I checked, justice and repentance were both Christian virtues. And it should make no difference whether it is a man or a woman who is asking for it.

To outright say that women exist only for sex is misogynist. Full stop.

To tell women that the only need your husband really has from you is sex and to imply every other need can be better met somewhere else is not only misogynist, it is degrading to both women and men. An educated person such as a pastor should know that. They should not say such things and if they do, they should stop. In my mind, they should be grateful when a sister in the Lord cares enough to try to get them back on track.

So what does this have to do with this month’s theme of “Marriage on Hard Mode”?

Well, “Pharisee mode” is always “hard mode”.

And all this gender stereotyped garbage (aka Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) coming out of some segments of the church these days can only be described as Pharisaical.

These teachers do not free people to be the men and women God created them to be, but rather they “tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders” and just as Jesus said, “they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them” (Matt 23:4). They focus so much on what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman that they lose the point of what it means to be a Christian. That is the only way that I can explain how a person could claim to follow our Lord and then use a word like “simp” or tell women they only exist for sex.

In my mind, it is precisely like the story in Mark 9:7-13. Jesus chides the Pharisees for setting up rules which make them miss the entire point of what God was commanding. In their devotion to God (the tradition of Corban), they ended up ignoring the commandment of God (Honor you father and your mother).

To me, the way these teachers treat women is exactly analagous. Jesus said “Love your neighbor” and “Do to others what you would have them do to you”. Yet these people use teachings which they claim are from God to justify treating women in terrible ways – certainly “un-neighborly” ways and definitely ways they would never want to be treated. And all the while – just like the Pharisees – they feel like they are serving God while they actually “nullify the word of God by [their] tradition”.

How much easier simply to follow Jesus and try to be like Him rather than following all these man-made rules.

I myself don’t worry about how to be a Christian man. I am a man and I follow Christ, so I trust it will work out.

And this is what the Jesus I follow thought about womenThe first person to learn He was the messiah was a woman (John 4:26).He had many female followers (Matt 27:55)He had women financially supporting his ministry (Luke 8:3).He praised women for learning spiritual things (Luke 10:42).He lauded women as an example of faith (Mark 12:41-44)He affirmed women in their faith when religious law told them they were unclean before God (Mark 5:34).When he was in agony on the cross, he had concern for the woman who bore him (John 19:26-27).Most telling of all, in a time when women were considered unreliable witnesses in court, He chose to make his first post-resurrection appearances to women alone with no men there to back up their testimony.

Church, can we not just try to be like Jesus?

Instead of a world where we are focused on keeping everyone in their gender-based stereotypic little boxes (with all the accompanying rules & regulations that go along with that), imagine a world where we just focused on the basics – justice, mercy & humility (Micah 6:8), loving God and loving others (Mark 12:30-31) and simply “doing unto others as we would have them do unto us” (Matt 7:12). If we did that, perhaps we would see all these Pharisaical teachings about being a “biblical” man/woman for the nonsense they are when they take us away from these most basic elements of the Christian faith!

I sincerely hope the evangelical church is not doomed to forever keep straining out the gnat of not being “biblical” in our masculinity/femininity while continuing to swallow the camel of misogyny.  

Because regardless of our religious traditions, we should all agree that women are our sisters in Christ, that they are created in the image of God and that reducing them to a body part that is meant for men’s pleasure is not a Christian view. In fact, it’s not even a worldly view. That sort of thinking can only come from the kingdom of darkness. And anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear should know that.

 

 

What do you think? Have you seen what Keith has? How can we change the conversation so this stops happening? Let’s talk in the comments!

Keith Gregoire

Blog and Podcast Contributor, Co-Author with Sheila of two upcoming marriage books

Keith is the rock that supports Sheila, who runs this blog! Sheila and Keith married when Keith was attending Queen's University medical school in Kingston, Ontario. He later completed his residency in pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children, and has since directed the pediatric undergraduate program at Queen's University, and been Chief of Pediatrics at a community hospital in Belleville, Ontario. He and Sheila speak at marriage conferences around the world, and together they've also done medical missions in Kenya. Next up: They're authoring The Guy's Guide to Great Sex together! Plus, of course, he's an avid birdwatcher. Related Posts How Do You Feel about Giving “Sexual Favors” While Postpartum/on Your Period?

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The post (from Keith): I’m Disgusted by How Some “Christians” Talk about Women appeared first on To Love, Honor and Vacuum.