Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 37
March 5, 2021
Something Precious from a Reader: Hope for the Future
Then The Great Sex Rescue launched–and it’s doing so well! The reviews are coming in, and the sales are so strong. Thank you.
PLEASE KEEP THE REVIEWS COMING. It helps us so much!
But we’ve also been really discouraged at the reaction from other stakeholders, and we shared that on the podcast yesterday. In return, a reader sent me a beautiful email, pointing to the future. She did it with plenty of pictures of her daughter, to make a lovely point. I want to share that email with you, but not her pictures, because that’s not appropriate. So I’ll substitute pictures of my own kids at that age. I hope, though, that the point still remains, because this touched us deeply yesterday.
And thank you to everyone who encouraged us!
Hi Sheila, Becca, and Joanna,
Sisters…it’s a lot.
Like you, I don’t know where to start.
I don’t want to make any attempt to “fix” your grief.
But here is my favorite translation of my favorite Scripture, and my prayer for you this year:
“I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD In the land of the living. Wait for the LORD; Be strong and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the LORD.”
Psalms 27:13-14 NASB1995
Also I say to you from the depths of my mommy heart – PLEASE.REST. Even Jesus observed the Sabbath and took naps. TGSR is out, the Good Guys’ Guide is in, GO LAY DOWN.
Finally, I know you have to count the losses, but if I can add into your equation…
This is Shylah Eve. She is a real little girl. “
Shylah” means “wise and strong in the Lord”, and “Eve” means “enlivening”. She is two and a half years old. Her favorite foods are pancakes and strawberries. With bright blue eyes and an infectious giggle, she is very precious to her family. She loves to color and be fancy. She has a lot of nicknames: Shy-Berry, Berry-Boo, Boosky, Gremlina, Her Very Berryness, Trouble-makin’-girl, Shiny Girl…..
Shylah will be working through The Whole Story when it’s time for a comprehensive look at her body and sexuality. She will get the Good Girls Guide as a young woman. Her mom has read The Great Sex Rescue and will be confronting these ideas head on, directly, over and over, with Shylah and her brothers, in the hopes that they won’t need to read it themselves except as part of church history.
Shylah will not be attending any church or youth group that supports marital hierarchy or promotes purity culture. She is going to learn about the fruits of the Spirit, and the fruits of the flesh, and how to watch for them in every situation, from every person, regardless of their station.
When she has questions about her role in God’s kingdom, I will be able to point her to healthy and safe resources, many of them yours.
I am going to use your words as one of the tools to protect her silly, carefree, shamefree self, lovingly made to be perfect and whole.
She is among my most precious treasures. I share her with you so to those harmed, you might add not only those rescued, but those who will be SPARED.
All my love,
S.
We were just so touched, and we needed that right now! I’m going to go read the reviews again (which are wonderful) and take a bit of time off today before another rash of interviews starts this afternoon. And then I’ll rest this weekend (and so will Rebecca!).
Thank you again for your support. I do think we’re changing the conversation–thanks to you guys, too!
The Great Sex RescueNow Available!
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!
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 One Day More: Les Miserables and Our Dream for The Great Sex RescueMar 1, 2021 | 7 Comments
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March 4, 2021
The Great Sex Rescue Launches Podcast…And Then We Fall Apart
We’re thrilled with the reception, and the sales figures are strong, and we’re already heading into our third printing! Yay! It’s even sold out now at Christianbooks.com, but you can still get it at Amazon (and check here for other options!)
I planned to do a happy podcast, where we did a bit of a victory lap, and it did start out that way. But it’s been a very emotional week, and by the end Rebecca couldn’t pretend anymore. So we’re just really raw with you about how demoralizing it is to see people just love our book and say what an amazing impact it’s had on them–and then have the powers-that-be still not care about hurting women. It’s just difficult. So if you listen to nothing else in the podcast, please listen to the first little bit, and then from 45 minutes on.
Also–many are asking how they can practically help us. Two things:
** REVIEW THE BOOK ** on Amazon, on Goodreads, everywhere! This helps TREMENDOUSLY. Seriously. And it’s such an encouragement! (Once you’ve read it, of course!)Keep writing to Focus on the Family, and ask them to reconsider their support for harmful books, as we outlined in our Open Letter.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
0:10 Our celebration chat!
6:40 This is not a Matthew 18 situation
14:10 A deep dive conversation into our research
28:35 Dr. Camden joins us for a question on kissing before marriage!
43:25 A statement on last a clip from last week
45:45 Working through tough emotions and a call for your prayers
After two long years, The Great Sex Rescue is here! We’ve been seeing pictures on Instagram and Twitter all week of people receiving it in the mail, and the reviews have been amazing and humbling. We read a long one on air; I’ll leave a short snippet of another here:
FINALLY, a Christian book on sex that praises mutual, loving, and rocking-awesome sex for both the husband and the wife. Finally, a book that encourages both men and women to be all they can be. One that refuses to imply that all men are just animals who cannot help but have sex all the time (so wives, you better be ready for it). Where the women are considered important and also created for sex to feel amazing.
TJ The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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! A Quick primer: What do you say if people think our research is bunk?Rebecca and I walk you through some of the common criticisms we’re going to get of our research–and what to say back! We mention four points, but here’s the most important:
People often say, ‘oh, they just found 20,000 people who agreed with them.” But what we were doing was comparing people who believed a teaching with people who did not. We could not have done the work we did if we had 20,000 people who believed all the same way. The whole point was comparing different beliefs. We had a very wide cross-spectrum of beliefs/denominations, etc., and the results were astounding.
Reader Question: I Want to Kiss My Fiance Before the Wedding!I brought the awesome Dr. Camden Morgante onto the podcast to talk about The Great Sex Rescue–and to answer a reader question for us! Dr. Camden wrote an amazing review of The Great Sex Rescue (in which she reveals the mystery of my dedication in the book!).
The Great Sex Rescue is a long overdue correction to Christian books on marriage and sex. With both biblical truth and evidenced-based research on sexuality, Sheila and her co-authors tackle the myths that keep many Christian couples from enjoying true passion and intimacy.
Dr. Camden MorganteLicensed Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Camden
Then after the mutual praise-fest, she helped me answer this reader question (and gave exactly the answer I would!):
I’m getting engaged soon. Boyfriend and I have fairly restrictive boundaries with have been painstakingly upheld, but upheld nonetheless throughout our dating. I always thought we would kiss when we got engaged. He fears kissing (he’s never kissed) will open up a can of worms of sin and sexual temptation and that he’ll sin against me and God. He wants to flee sexual immorality and feels a strong conviction about this.
I have kissed before and have a couple of reasons I would want to be able to give a kiss of excitement on our engagement day.
1. I LOVE HIM, and WHEN I GET ENGAGED I WANT TO EXPRESS THAT AS FULLY AS IS APPROPRIATE WITHIN DATING!
2. I don’t want to walk down the aisle having only kissed one guy,
not the guy I’m marrying.
3. I don’t want to share our first kiss with 200 other guests.
4. I feel like going from side hugs only to having sex all in one day will be too much. The thought of it gives me anxiety. I want to ENJOY my wedding night. Not have to think about how I’m having sex with someone I’ve kissed twice before.
5. It feels like a rejection to not kiss at engagement.
6. Kissing at engagement has always been my expectation, so now I’m battling my own expectations.
7. Imagine getting engaged and then… !!! Side hug. That’s it.
Commit to someone for life and display that with a….. !!!!! Side. Freaking. Hug. That sounds awful.
He is trying so hard to be understanding, but not knowing how to compromise given his convictions.
Please Sheila. Help. This is weighing so heavily on me. I know it’s just kissing. It’s not a huge deal. But it FEELS so huge.
Clearing up a misunderstanding from last week’s podcastLast week we talked about two things Shaunti Feldhahn had written where it was inferred that pre-pubertal boys were experiencing sexual behavior that we do not believe is normal for children.
One of those things was from her blog:
1. It starts young. Yes, I knew men and boys were visual – but I didn’t really grasp just how visual until my son was thunderstruck by the pictures in the Victoria’s Secret shop window at age of 4. “I like those ladies,” he said, in an awed tone of voice, suddenly and completely oblivious to everything else around him. “Their bare tummies make my tummy feel good.” The male brain is the male brain from the earliest age, and as I share in Through A Man’s Eyes, that means we moms need to know how to help those little eyes be careful what they see from the earliest ages.
Shaunti FeldhahnYou Need to Know These Four Pitfalls for Teenage Boys
It’s been reported that we were claiming that this 4-year-old boy has likely been sexually abused. At no point did we state or imply that anyone had abused anyone else specifically, and we certainly are not accusing anyone of anything. If you want to go back and listen to that section of our podcast again, it’s right here–and the discussion on that started at 29 minutes.
We’re sorry if this caused offense, and again, we were not implying that anyone had abused anyone else specifically.
We were simply trying to bring attention to two important issues:
1. Parents sometimes interpret what pre-pubertal children say or do in a sexual way when they are not. Prepubertal children are not sexual in the way that adults are sexual. Yes, they are curious about things, including those parts of their bodies, but this is a completely innocent, normal developmental stage, and we need to be careful not to read things into it that are not there. Our concern is that the example she used seemed in our eyes to equate childhood curiosity with sexual desire and arousal.
2. Child sexual abuse is unfortunately a very common problem in our society, and it is important for all of us to recognize that overtly sexual behavior in children can be a red flag for child sexual abuse having occurred.
Where We’re AtAnd then, at the end, Rebecca kind of fell apart, and I did, too. It’s been a long haul getting this book out, and it’s difficult when the powers-that-be refuse to admit the harm that’s been done. It’s just a huge weight that we feel like we’ve been carrying. We know we’re not alone; we’re ever so grateful to you. And I think in the near future we’ll see how much you all mean to us, and how much you do have our backs. But as Rebecca shared, this is lonely and this is difficult and this is demoralizing–not because we’re being attacked behind the scenes, but that instead people don’t care and they’re trying to preserve reputation instead. That’s hard.
So we got more raw (rawer?) than we’ve ever been before. I considered nixing this, but I thought it would be good for you to hear.
Things Mentioned in This Podcast:Our correspondence with Focus on the Family around Love & Respect and abuseDr. Camden Morgante: And check out her “which purity culture myth affected you” quiz!The Great Sex Rescue (with links to all the different places you can purchase it!)Our Honeymoon Prep Course (where we help people prepare for sex on the honeymoon–and how not to rush intercourse!)Our spiritually homeless podcastOur survey methodology
Thank you for all your support. We mean it. And remember to review the book!
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 Why 20,000 Women MatterFeb 26, 2021 | 44 Comments
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March 3, 2021
Why I’m Not Safe in Polite Company Right Now
I talk about this stuff all the time, so I forget that other people don’t.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of launch week for The Great Sex Rescue, and it’s going great! Thank you so much to everyone who has bought it, and especially for all the encouragement you’ve given us and all the great reviews pouring in! We really are blown away. And we’re doing so well on Amazon! Woke up this morning to being #151 in Canada, which is amazing. So thank you.
Because of all that’s been going on, I hadn’t actually planned a post for today.
But then something happened on Twitter that I thought you may all find a little funny, and that may show you where my head is at!First, Julie Roys reported on a pastor making very sexist and degrading comments in a sermon recently. He talked about how women shouldn’t gain weight once they’re married, and how they need to stay attractive, like Melania Trump. And he talked about how a friend of his has a “divorce weight”, where over a certain weight he divorces his wife.
I won’t belabor it; I think it could be triggering. But needless to say, it was bad.
(And for all of you who are reading this via email, i’m not sure the embedded tweets will come through. So you can click on over to this Twitter Thread to see what I’m talking about! )
This Baptist pastor preached that “weight control” by wives is the solution for marital problems. Now, he's being investigated by his denomination & has resigned as moderator from upcoming denominational meeting. https://t.co/ipnCCnBcGG
— Julie Roys (@reachjulieroys) March 2, 2021
After Julie posted this, someone tagged me.
I had heard about the incident, and knew that it related to something we talked about in The Great Sex Rescue. One thing that we found in many of the evangelical books that we looked at is that women’s attractiveness is emphasized, but men’s weight is never mentioned.
However, attractiveness is merely a preference issue. Obesity, on the other hand, can actually affect the mechanics of sex, since “useable length” changes (as I’ve talked about before in my posts on sex with a husband who has a big belly). We looked in our book at how there’s a very lopsided treatment of this, since, by any measure, a man’s obesity affects the sex life more than her attractiveness. And yet, most of our evangelical books fail to talk about men’s weight while they do talk about a woman’s responsibility to keep up her appearance.
So I tweeted it out:
Yep. It’s really similar to an anecdote in His Needs Her Needs that we included in The Great Sex Rescue.
— Sheila Gregoire--The Great Sex Rescue comes 03/02! (@sheilagregoire) March 2, 2021
What’s amazing is how many talk about women needing to stay attractive, but how few books/leaders talk about how if a man is obese, “usable length” decreases. Sex suffers.
I think I forget how weird this stuff is. I was just trying to make a point in 280 characters.
And then the replies starting coming in.
"Useable legnth". Bahahahaha! pic.twitter.com/cQBgPV5UY4
— Kody Jones (@KodyJones5) March 3, 2021
— Emily (@emdobkins) March 3, 2021
— Mrs.(@LadyBexa) March 3, 2021
Anyway, I think I just sometimes forget where people are at when it comes to this stuff, and how I’m really not normal!
So I thought you all may get a kick out of that.
And now, can I share two reviews for The Great Sex Rescue that came in?They’re all so wonderful, and I’m truly blown away. I don’t know which ones to share, but here are the first two I saw this morning:
I just finished TGSR and all I can say is “WOW!” Sheila, Rebecca and Joanna have written a beautiful book that brings humanity back into marriage and more specifically, the marriage bed.
If you have grown up in the evangelical church over the past few decades, you have internalized messages from pastors/authors that have shaped how you view marriage, sex, and intimacy. While their intentions have most likely been for good, these messages (that really don’t take perspective or input from ACTUAL women) and their interpretations have cost marriages in the evangelical church dearly. This book brings the voices and experiences of Christian women (and their spouses) to the forefront while maintaining Biblical integrity and truth. They aren’t afraid ask the hard questions and ask for better from those with the most influence. Has the advice we have been given ACTUALLY WORKED? Does research-based evidence exist that can prove the advice from the top selling Christian books is effective or not? They have created a rubric to help Christians discern the books they read in order to spur them to live out marriage in a way that honors and brings glory to God.
The overall message of this book, taken from Chapter 6, is that a Kingdom view of sex is a mutual, passionate knowing and sacrificial serving. It’s what Jesus did for us, and it’s how we can extend that to our spouses. I would recommend this book for any married couple… whether you’ve been married for 1 year or 40. I would also recommend this to any engaged couple or even late teen in a serious relationship that is possibly heading toward marriage. Just skip the “Try This” sections. I think it is important for those engaged and in serious relationships because it sets a standard for how a truly godly man (or woman) should behave in a committed relationship. This book does not gloss over red flags but makes them known. If there are red flags, please don’t ignore them! And you know what? Even if you’re single and a godly marriage and perspective of sex/intimacy is important to you… please read this book! It will truly minister to you in ways that you might not even knew needed ministering to.
BrianaFinally. A Christian book not based on myths and old wives fables!! This is packed with science and data driven studies- while given in an easy to read and fun format. The message evangelicals have given for decades is so one sided and has taken consent off the table. The Great Sex Rescue makes consent a priority and teaches how this is not one-sided. Both people should be enjoying this and being fulfilled! One sided intercourse should not be accepted any longer in Christian circles! The Bible has ALWAYS portrayed it with two sides. For the man AND the woman. Sex is not “God’s gift to man” with woman commanded to fulfill her duty. And a wife is not held accountable for her husband’s sexual sins. TGSR deals with Scripture, medical issues, childhood trauma, date rape, consent, and how healthy couples can grow closer than ever and continue to have a fun sexual relationship throughout the years!
HeidiThank you all so much. I’m humbled.
The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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!Again, thank you. And I’ll try not to be so weird in public all the time!
Do you ever forget that most people don’t see the world the way you do? Let’s talk!
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 Can We Just Not Make Sex Weird? The Podcast!Feb 25, 2021 | 28 Comments
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March 2, 2021
The Great Sex Rescue: Our Not-So-Normal (And Quite Amazing!) Book
I have had many books launch before, and I will have many books launch again. But this one is different. This one is special.
Can I take a minute and tell you why?
For years the majority of our best-selling marriage and sex books were written by pastors or authors who had little understanding or training specifically in sexuality. They were written primarily from that pastor or author’s point of view.
Now, that didn’t necessarily turn out badly (several of our best-sellers are actually quite healthy!). But in all too many cases it did.
And in all too many cases, messages were shared that are actually harmful.
Things like,
“Have sex so he won’t watch porn”“A wife is obligated to have sex when her husband wants it”“All men struggle with lust; it’s every man’s battle”“A husband needs sex while a wife really doesn’t”“If you don’t give him regular sexual release, he’s likely to have an affair”and so much more! These things were presented as if they were gospel truth; absolutely apparent; the state of the world; common sense.
But what if they were wrong? What if these things actually aren’t true–or are actually bad advice because following these things would result in worse marriages?
You see, for years I’ve been writing about healthy sex and healthy marriages. But with this book, we’re not just telling you what’s healthy (though we are doing lots of that!).
We’re also tearing down what’s unhealthy.
It’s like The Emperor Has No Clothes, on a giant evangelical scale.
We’re saying: “Hey, too much of what we’ve been teaching doesn’t work and actually hurts.”
And many are listening, because there’s a hunger. People know that something isn’t right.
Then:
We did something radical. We actually asked women.20,000 women in fact. We decided that if all of this advice was going to be given to women (since women are the main purchasers and readers of these books), then it was about time somebody asked women to see whether what was being said was true, and whether what was being said actually helped or harmed.
We’re setting the bar higher for what passes as research in the evangelical world–and for what claims authors can make without research.I hope people truly understand what a big deal our survey was.
For most studies, an n=1000 is sufficient (meaning that most surveys and polls have about 1000 people). Very few surveys, even in peer review journals, have as many respondents as ours.
And we didn’t just get a lot of respondents. We got a lot who then went on to answer at least 130 questions (more if they had been married before, etc.).
And our survey was done to the highest academic standards. We just passed ethics review so we can apply to peer-reviewed journals, and we’re hoping to have some articles out soon.
We want it to be NORMAL that, when authors are writing about marriage and sex, that they use research to back it up–either their own or others. It can no longer be enough for one person to write about their own opinions. They need to look at what peer-reviewed data actually says. So many of the most harmful books we found were written by one person with no research, and little appeal to any outside studies.
You can find more information about our methodology here.
We did it all while we were super hormonal.Joanna almost died from a life-threatening miscarriage while we were doing our original lit review to inform our survey questions. Rebecca signed off on the last of the survey questions while she was two days postpartum. Joanna signed off on the last of the stats two days BEFORE she delivered Talitha. And me? I hit menopause and was hot flashing through the whole thing.
Yep. Three hormonal, breastfeeding, pregnant, or menopausal women took on the whole evangelical establishment!
And I did it from my yellow chair.We didn’t have a huge budget. I don’t have a huge staff. I don’t have donations. I just sit in this chair and type all day–or sometimes I sit at my kitchen island. And from this little corner of small town Ontario, Canada, and from the arctic where Joanna lives (literally; she’s up in Iqaluit), we’re taking on the world.
Sometimes we think we’re too small to make a difference. But when God gives you a dream and a message, you spread it, and you’re faithful, and I believe that’s what we’ve done.
I’ve been talking to you a lot lately about what The Great Sex Rescue is.I’ve been telling you how we share our survey findings about which evangelical teachings hurt sex for women, and how we can reframe these teachings to fit a healthy, biblical sexual ethic.
I’ve been telling you how we point to real freedom.
How we show that women have needs, too.
How we show what real intimacy looks like.
But for the rest of this post I’d like to turn it over to our endorsers and our launch team, where over 500 people have been reading the book for the last few weeks. You can see all their reviews on Goodreads (Amazon will be slowly populating with reviews over the next few days), but here are a few:
This book is a groundbreaking look into what true, sacred Biblical sexuality is intended to be, and the root causes and ideas that damage a couple’s intimacy in marriage. Going straight to Scripture, the authors dig deep into ideologies that draw couples away from God-designed intimacy, and seek to construct a framework for sexuality that truly rooted in Scripture and God’s beautiful design, elevating sexuality and marriage to the glory and sacredness it was intended to have. This is a must-read.
Rachael DenhollanderLawyer, Victim Advocate, and author,, What Is a Girl Worth?
If you’ve ever read a Christian book on sex and marriage, you owe it to yourself to read this one. Armed with extensive survey data and equipped with compassion and common sense, the authors dismantle the devastating myths long promoted by Christian leaders that have caused untold damage to generations of Christian women. Equal parts distressing and liberating, this book is desperately needed in this moment.
Kristin Kobes du MezAuthor, Jesus and John Wayne
Just thinking about the impact this book is going to have on the lives of desperately hurting women makes me emotional. This is the information we have always known in our hearts but denied in our heads. To those women who have suffered in silence for so long I say do not delay, pick up a copy, grab some tissues, and let the hot tears of validation and healing flow. The Great Sex Rescue will change the way you view sex forever, and, more importantly, enable you to start to trust your instincts again.
Rosie MakinneyAuthor, Fight for Love
And here’s a longer review from a long-time reader of the blog:
I devoured this entire book in one day and WOW, it’s the best book I’ve ever read describing what a healthy, Biblical, marital sex life actually looks like. My husband has read several chapters as well and was very impressed, too.
This is not just another author’s opinion on the subject, but rather, Shelia, Rebecca, and Joanna surveyed 20,000 married women and took that massive amount of data collected and compiled in into a beautiful resource for everyone to benefit from — whether single or married, male or female, completely satisfied in the bedroom or in desperate need of rescuing.
This book debunks the most commonly held beliefs in the Church regarding mutual pleasure, obligation sex, lust, porn addition, male/female sex drive, intimacy vs sex, and so much more.
I loved the many personal stories shared, as well. Some heartbreaking, but many heart-warming. The last few chapters in particular are very encouraging, give hope to the spouses yearning for a safer, more fulfilling sex life, and a call to action to leaders in the faith community to take a stand against dangerous teaching.
My favorite part of this book is how every few pages they include a few thought-provoking questions to ask yourself or your spouse. And then at the end of each chapter they give practical tips and recommendations to help strengthen your sexual relationship. I really enjoyed reading this book out loud with my husband because we got the chance to dive deep into personal discussion through the prompts and it made the book far more “personal” to us rather than just reading it through straight.
I’ve followed Shelia’s blog for two years now and I believe this is her best work yet. I can’t recommend it enough!!
Emily J.Plus a few more (and I’m not meaning offence if I’m not including yours! There were just so many great ones!):
This book does what I wish all the other good sources would. It tackles toxic and inaccurate teachings head on, shows with real research how they damage intimacy and sexuality, and how they are not, in fact, biblically based. It approaches these difficult subjects with empathy and humor, and a genuine heart to heal.
MariaThis is the book I needed 15 years ago! I hope this becomes the new Christian best selling marriage books. I have read the majority of the marriage books the authors discuss in this book. And I can confirm from personal experience that their messages are harmful. What I love is how In The Great Sex Rescue they don’t just point out what other authors do wrong but also point to a new message that is good. They show the problem and provide the solution. I really liked the “check in” parts of the book that give you questions to pass and reflect on. And the better phrasing’s are the end of each chapter. In reading the book I can tell they truly care about men AND women, believe that God is good and loving, and believe that sex can be good and intimate for both genders. This will be my new favorite wedding gift to give to other!
Erin H.After reading this book and excitedly discussing my many breakthroughs with my counselor, he summed it up well when he commented that I *seemed like I had been set free*
CelenaThis is a life-changing book, and trust me when I say I am not overstating this. Get it, read it, give to a friend. This message needs to be shared as far and wide as possible!
Michelle S.The only thing that could make this book better is if I would have had it in my hands years ago.
Katrina B. The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
Time to Pre-OrderDay(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Order Now!I’ll end with these two that show both sides of what we’re aiming for: one from Andrew Bauman, a frequent guest on our podcast, and one from a reader:
I cannot think of a more important book (okay, outside of the Bible) that you must read. This book is the authentic gut punch that the Evangelical community needs. This exposes our historic dismal handling of sexuality and gives us a clear path forward to sexual maturity, wholeness and health. I already want to read it again and will surely be telling my network to purchase this vital guide. Thank you for such a seminal work!
Andrew BaumanDirector, Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma
As I read the book I found myself wanting to scream in anger, cry in frustration, and laugh with joy shouting “AMEN, SISTER!!!” “The Great Sex Rescue” will always be part of my freedom song.
Katie LongThe “authentic gut punch” the evangelical church needs. The “freedom song” for Katie.
We hope that’s what this book is: the gut punch for the church, and the freedom song for you.
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 So. Many. Interviews! 7 Places to Hear Sheila’s StoryFeb 24, 2021 | 1 Comment
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What if the Evangelical View of Sex is Priming Us for Sex Scandals & Abuse?Feb 19, 2021 | 17 Comments
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What if You’re Sabotaging Yourself with the “Duty Sex” Message?Feb 17, 2021 | 26 Comments
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One Day More: Les Miserables and Our Dream for The Great Sex RescueMar 1, 2021 | 6 Comments
We have written the story of the Great Sex Rescue many ways. It is, of course, the book which...
Why 20,000 Women MatterFeb 26, 2021 | 43 Comments
When we follow Jesus, Jesus' teachings don't harm us. That is a foundational principle of the...
March 1, 2021
One Day More: Les Miserables and Our Dream for The Great Sex Rescue
We have written the story of the Great Sex Rescue many ways. It is, of course, the book which releases tomorrow. Our survey of 20,000 women, on which that book was based, will also be the basis for our submission to academic journals.
And it is, of course, the basis for this blog and the accompanying Bare Marriage podcast.
This strange job that we have, though, is not just about teaching. It’s about caring. It honestly sears at our souls when we look at so many evangelical best-sellers and the great potential for harm for many couples reading them. We know that many people can read these books and escape unscathed. But all too many are in marriages that aren’t healthy, and the messages in these books make it worse. Or, the books can give such toxic views that even healthy couples are no longer able to trust each other or express true intimacy.
When we read these books and see harmful teachings, we don’t just get angry. It physically hurts us, because we can see so many faces of those who are harmed. And while they may not be the vast majority of readers, they matter.
We want The Great Sex Rescue to set them free–and to ensure that no one else is ever hurt by these teachings again.
We cannot express adequately how emotional this journey has been for us. We feel as if we have been in such darkness, reading some of the terrible things that have been said in evangelical books, and hearing literally hundreds of stories of women harmed by them (and reading literally thousands).
But we also feel such hope. We believe this book will set so many free.
We’re looking forward to when tomorrow comes!
And so today, on this eve of the book’s release, Joanna wanted to write this exhortation and reflection on what The Great Sex Rescue means to us–and our dreams for freedom.
Moses was at once a great success and a great failure.At his best, he was such a true image bearer of God that it became difficult to see where the edges between them were. It was a blur of glory. But, of course, other times, Moses “bit it.” And when he slipped up, it was usually because he decided to take the reins and define good and evil his way, instead of submitting to God’s way.
Let me set the stage for Moses’ last sermon.
Because of his successes, Moses has brought the Israelites out of Egypt. They’ve wandered in the desert and are now standing across the Jordan from the promised land. Moses stands, old and withered, to tell the children of those with whom he crossed the Red Sea how to live in the land of the promise.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil, in that I command you this day to love YHWH your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that YHWH your God may bless you in the land into which you are going to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but shall be drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I denounce to you this day, that you shall surely perish. … Life and death have I set before you, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live…
Deuteronomy 30:15-19But of course, the Israelites didn’t choose to follow YHWH. Instead, they chose to worship other gods. We all know those Bible stories: Elijah on Mount Carmel, Josiah smashing the Asherah poles, and on and on. But we don’t think about what that worship actually entailed.
Scholars agree that the Israelites frequently sacrificed their children to the Canaanite gods of the area, especially Molech.
However, many scholars believe that at least some Israelites sacrificed their children to Yahweh, too.
Today we readily assert that while these Israelites did what was “right in their own eyes,” they were not, in fact, doing what was right in God’s eyes.
It’s easy enough to apply the idea of Israelites worshipping other gods by sacrificing children and to think of many ways in which abortion or the residential schools or covering up for sexual abuse in churches have done the same.
But, my dear friends, we must also consider whether we have been in the habit of sacrificing the vulnerable among us, and claiming that violence as worship of the One God.God has set before us life and death. Have we chosen death?
Beloved, we should quake in our boots.
And let us not forget that here, as in much else, complacency makes us complicit.
When we sacrifice the vulnerable in order to prop up our view of who God is, we prove that we do not know Jesus.
It’s easy to see how marital rape and abuse victims are being “sacrificed” on the altar of evangelical marriage teachings.
But it is not only the most vulnerable who are being affected.
While the vulnerable pay the highest price, the rest of us do not go by unscathed. There is a cost to everyone to live in a culture where some people are disposable and others are propped up.
A culture where some people’s needs are less important than other people’s needs creates a culture of entitlement that influences our marriages, churches, even our children.We create a culture where some people are valued, and others are overlooked. We create a culture of death–of curses.
It is time that we as a church, who have created a culture of death, begin to ask ourselves some hard questions.
Does true worship of the One God tell men that the Spirit is powerless against the forces of testosterone and damns all men to an unending struggle with lust?
Does true worship of the One God make women into sexual receptacles, calling her the methadone she needs to keep him from watching porn?
Does true worship of the One God lead to women being told that we, who have been bought with a price, must never meaningfully correct our husbands?
No.
The gospel is good news. Euengelion. It isn’t good news only to women who are married to good-hearted men who selflessly seek their good. It is good news to all.
It is good news to the battered woman. It is good news to the marital rape victim.
And the promise of the gospel isn’t good news to the most vulnerable among us because they can sit tight and wait for their heavenly reward.
No! The audacious claim of Christ is that even now the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst.
If Jesus had only been coming to offer us assistance in the hereafter, then the work of Christian heroes of the faith from William Wilberforce to Ruby Bridges to Rosa Parks to Florence Nightingale have been in vain.
But more than that, we have Christ as our example. We know that Jesus came not just to fix our need for eternal union with God; instead, he came to bring healing to us here and now. He provided for his mother’s care after his death. He healed the sick–he didn’t just tell them that heaven would be nice.
My friends, we must offer something better to the vulnerable, to the “least of these,” than to tell them that by persisting in their suffering they will reap heavenly reward. Christ offers us abundant life. He offers meaning and goodness and wholeness. He offers us the chance to be alive, really alive.
I believe that the story of the Bible is the best story to live in.Christ is so compelling, his love so profound. The mysteries and paradoxes are deep and we can never get to the end of them. The life of faith is a life of constant wonderment. The world is, in fact, more fabulous than we could ever have wished.
I hope that the audacity of the hope of Easter morning, the healing look in the eyes of the Nazarene, draws you nearer to the heart of the savior.
But my dearest hope is that the peace of Christ, the joy to be found in following him, and the freeing power of his love seep deep into my girls’ bones.
My daughters are resplendent. They are light and laughter and, as is their due, they can drive me up a wall. Each is utterly herself. I want Mariana and Talitha each to continue to become the person God has made her to be – his unique image bearer, a daughter of Eve, full of life and love and the light of Christ.
My daughters are named for women whose lives were utterly changed by encounters with Jesus. They are named for women who knew the tenderness in the eyes of the Nazarene. I am desperate that they know how much they are loved, simply for being. And I want each one to lean into her identity – as an heir of God who will reign with Christ when all our wildest hopes come to pass.
I am desperate for them to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd who offers them life and life abundant. I will do everything in my power, God helping me, to help them to identify his voice and to drown out the voice of the thief who comes to kill and destroy.
I want my girls to understand that “love is as strong as death” (Song of Songs 8:6) not just intellectually. I want them to be fully and completely alive.
Brennan Manning was a man who knew the love of God. He believed that the words of Christ to us, and the words of the Father to his Son dying on the cross, come from the Song of Songs. I cannot vouch for whether these are, in fact, the words God the Father spoke over the word made flesh as the final sacrifice once for all was made.
But my friends, don’t you see how, if these words weren’t spoken then, they speak to us now?
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds has come,
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree ripens her green figs,
And the vines are in blossom;
And they give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
This is why we must rescue sex from all who would make women into methadone (and their ilk).
Erotic love gives us the best glimpse into the wild passion of the God who holds us in his hands.The paradoxical God of the trinity, who exists ever in the circle dance of divine communion in relationship with himself. May we, in our relationships with one another, follow the steps of that divine dance and reflect its light, as the light of the moon reflects the light of the sun.
I’ll end this exhortation with the final words of Les Miserables. It’s a story about grace and the audacity of hope. Our prayer is that you will join in our crusade, and that you will be strong and stand with us…
When tomorrow comes.
Take my hand
I’ll lead you to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.
Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.
For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord.
We will walk behind the ploughshare;
We will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward.
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
Time to Pre-OrderDay(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Pre-Order Now Claim Your Pre-Order Bonus
We’re looking forward to when tomorrow comes!
Joanna Sawatsky Blog Contributor & Co-Author on the upcoming The Great Sex Rescue!
Joanna Daigle Sawatsky holds a Master of Public Health degree and is a trained microbiologist, epidemiologist, and statistician. After a year and a half of infertility, she and her husband, Josiah, welcomed Mariana Grace into their lives just 72 hours after she defended her thesis. A Pittsburgh native who somehow ended up in the Arctic with her husband and two little girls. ENFJ, 1 Twitter Related Posts 79 Hobbies to Do with Your SpouseFeb 23, 2021 | 10 Comments
Married couples need to have some fun together! And one of the best ways to do that is to find...
Is Women’s Orgasm an Afterthought? A Look at What Men & Women ThinkFeb 22, 2021 | 15 Comments
How do men and women feel about the amount of foreplay in their marriage? Yesterday was a super...
What if the Evangelical View of Sex is Priming Us for Sex Scandals & Abuse?Feb 19, 2021 | 17 Comments
We read through the best-selling evangelical sex and marriage books when we were writing The Great...
Why 20,000 Women MatterFeb 26, 2021 | 42 Comments
When we follow Jesus, Jesus' teachings don't harm us. That is a foundational principle of the...
Can We Just Not Make Sex Weird? The Podcast!Feb 25, 2021 | 27 Comments
Sometimes the way we talk about sex is just plain, well, icky and weird. We are so excited here at...
February 28, 2021
One Day More: Les Miserables and Our Dream for The Great Sex Rescue
We have written the story of the Great Sex Rescue many ways. It is, of course, the book which releases tomorrow. Our survey of 20,000 women, on which that book was based, will also be the basis for our submission to academic journals.
And it is, of course, the basis for this blog and the accompanying Bare Marriage podcast.
This strange job that we have, though, is not just about teaching. It’s about caring. It honestly sears at our souls when we look at so many evangelical best-sellers and the great potential for harm for many couples reading them. We know that many people can read these books and escape unscathed. But all too many are in marriages that aren’t healthy, and the messages in these books make it worse. Or, the books can give such toxic views that even healthy couples are no longer able to trust each other or express true intimacy.
When we read these books and see harmful teachings, we don’t just get angry. It physically hurts us, because we can see so many faces of those who are harmed. And while they may not be the vast majority of readers, they matter.
We want The Great Sex Rescue to set them free–and to ensure that no one else is ever hurt by these teachings again.
We cannot express adequately how emotional this journey has been for us. We feel as if we have been in such darkness, reading some of the terrible things that have been said in evangelical books, and hearing literally hundreds of stories of women harmed by them (and reading literally thousands).
But we also feel such hope. We believe this book will set so many free.
We’re looking forward to when tomorrow comes!
And so today, on this eve of the book’s release, Joanna wanted to write this exhortation and reflection on what The Great Sex Rescue means to us–and our dreams for freedom.
Moses was at once a great success and a great failure.At his best, he was such a true image bearer of God that it became difficult to see where the edges between them were. It was a blur of glory. But, of course, other times, Moses “bit it.” And when he slipped up, it was usually because he decided to take the reins and define good and evil his way, instead of submitting to God’s way.
Let me set the stage for Moses’ last sermon.
Because of his successes, Moses has brought the Israelites out of Egypt. They’ve wandered in the desert and are now standing across the Jordan from the promised land. Moses stands, old and withered, to tell the children of those with whom he crossed the Red Sea how to live in the land of the promise.
See, I have set before you this day life and good, and death and evil, in that I command you this day to love YHWH your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that YHWH your God may bless you in the land into which you are going to possess it. But if your heart turns away and you will not hear, but shall be drawn away and worship other gods and serve them, I denounce to you this day, that you shall surely perish. … Life and death have I set before you, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live…
Deuteronomy 30:15-19But of course, the Israelites didn’t choose to follow YHWH. Instead, they chose to worship other gods. We all know those Bible stories: Elijah on Mount Carmel, Josiah smashing the Asherah poles, and on and on. But we don’t think about what that worship actually entailed.
Scholars agree that the Israelites frequently sacrificed their children to the Canaanite gods of the area, especially Molech.
However, many scholars believe that at least some Israelites sacrificed their children to Yahweh, too.
Today we readily assert that while these Israelites did what was “right in their own eyes,” they were not, in fact, doing what was right in God’s eyes.
It’s easy enough to apply the idea of Israelites worshipping other gods by sacrificing children and to think of many ways in which abortion or the residential schools or covering up for sexual abuse in churches have done the same.
But, my dear friends, we must also consider whether we have been in the habit of sacrificing the vulnerable among us, and claiming that violence as worship of the One God.God has set before us life and death. Have we chosen death?
Beloved, we should quake in our boots.
And let us not forget that here, as in much else, complacency makes us complicit.
When we sacrifice the vulnerable in order to prop up our view of who God is, we prove that we do not know Jesus.
It’s easy to see how marital rape and abuse victims are being “sacrificed” on the altar of evangelical marriage teachings.
But it is not only the most vulnerable who are being affected.
While the vulnerable pay the highest price, the rest of us do not go by unscathed. There is a cost to everyone to live in a culture where some people are disposable and others are propped up.
A culture where some people’s needs are less important than other people’s needs creates a culture of entitlement that influences our marriages, churches, even our children.We create a culture where some people are valued, and others are overlooked. We create a culture of death–of curses.
It is time that we as a church, who have created a culture of death, begin to ask ourselves some hard questions.
Does true worship of the One God tell men that the Spirit is powerless against the forces of testosterone and damns all men to an unending struggle with lust?
Does true worship of the One God make women into sexual receptacles, calling her the methadone she needs to keep him from watching porn?
Does true worship of the One God lead to women being told that we, who have been bought with a price, must never meaningfully correct our husbands?
No.
The gospel is good news. Euengelion. It isn’t good news only to women who are married to good-hearted men who selflessly seek their good. It is good news to all.
It is good news to the battered woman. It is good news to the marital rape victim.
And the promise of the gospel isn’t good news to the most vulnerable among us because they can sit tight and wait for their heavenly reward.
No! The audacious claim of Christ is that even now the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst.
If Jesus had only been coming to offer us assistance in the hereafter, then the work of Christian heroes of the faith from William Wilberforce to Ruby Bridges to Rosa Parks to Florence Nightingale have been in vain.
But more than that, we have Christ as our example. We know that Jesus came not just to fix our need for eternal union with God; instead, he came to bring healing to us here and now. He provided for his mother’s care after his death. He healed the sick–he didn’t just tell them that heaven would be nice.
My friends, we must offer something better to the vulnerable, to the “least of these,” than to tell them that by persisting in their suffering they will reap heavenly reward. Christ offers us abundant life. He offers meaning and goodness and wholeness. He offers us the chance to be alive, really alive.
I believe that the story of the Bible is the best story to live in.Christ is so compelling, his love so profound. The mysteries and paradoxes are deep and we can never get to the end of them. The life of faith is a life of constant wonderment. The world is, in fact, more fabulous than we could ever have wished.
I hope that the audacity of the hope of Easter morning, the healing look in the eyes of the Nazarene, draws you nearer to the heart of the savior.
But my dearest hope is that the peace of Christ, the joy to be found in following him, and the freeing power of his love seep deep into my girls’ bones.
My daughters are resplendent. They are light and laughter and, as is their due, they can drive me up a wall. Each is utterly herself. I want Mariana and Talitha each to continue to become the person God has made her to be – his unique image bearer, a daughter of Eve, full of life and love and the light of Christ.
My daughters are named for women whose lives were utterly changed by encounters with Jesus. They are named for women who knew the tenderness in the eyes of the Nazarene. I am desperate that they know how much they are loved, simply for being. And I want each one to lean into her identity – as an heir of God who will reign with Christ when all our wildest hopes come to pass.
I am desperate for them to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd who offers them life and life abundant. I will do everything in my power, God helping me, to help them to identify his voice and to drown out the voice of the thief who comes to kill and destroy.
I want my girls to understand that “love is as strong as death” (Song of Songs 8:6) not just intellectually. I want them to be fully and completely alive.
Brennan Manning was a man who knew the love of God. He believed that the words of Christ to us, and the words of the Father to his Son dying on the cross, come from the Song of Songs. I cannot vouch for whether these are, in fact, the words God the Father spoke over the word made flesh as the final sacrifice once for all was made.
But my friends, don’t you see how, if these words weren’t spoken then, they speak to us now?
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, winter is past,
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
The time of the singing of birds has come,
And the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree ripens her green figs,
And the vines are in blossom;
And they give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
This is why we must rescue sex from all who would make women into methadone (and their ilk).
Erotic love gives us the best glimpse into the wild passion of the God who holds us in his hands.The paradoxical God of the trinity, who exists ever in the circle dance of divine communion in relationship with himself. May we, in our relationships with one another, follow the steps of that divine dance and reflect its light, as the light of the moon reflects the light of the sun.
I’ll end this exhortation with the final words of Les Miserables. It’s a story about grace and the audacity of hope. Our prayer is that you will join in our crusade, and that you will be strong and stand with us…
When tomorrow comes.
Take my hand
I’ll lead you to salvation
Take my love
For love is everlasting
And remember
The truth that once was spoken
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.
Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.
For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord.
We will walk behind the ploughshare;
We will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward.
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
Time to Pre-OrderDay(s)
:
Hour(s)
:
Minute(s)
:
Second(s)
Pre-Order Now Claim Your Pre-Order Bonus We’re looking forward to when tomorrow comes!
Joanna Sawatsky Blog Contributor & Co-Author on the upcoming The Great Sex Rescue!
Joanna Daigle Sawatsky holds a Master of Public Health degree and is a trained microbiologist, epidemiologist, and statistician. After a year and a half of infertility, she and her husband, Josiah, welcomed Mariana Grace into their lives just 72 hours after she defended her thesis. A Pittsburgh native who somehow ended up in the Arctic with her husband and two little girls. ENFJ, 1 Twitter Related Posts 79 Hobbies to Do with Your SpouseFeb 23, 2021 | 10 Comments
Married couples need to have some fun together! And one of the best ways to do that is to find...
Is Women’s Orgasm an Afterthought? A Look at What Men & Women ThinkFeb 22, 2021 | 15 Comments
How do men and women feel about the amount of foreplay in their marriage? Yesterday was a super...
What if the Evangelical View of Sex is Priming Us for Sex Scandals & Abuse?Feb 19, 2021 | 17 Comments
We read through the best-selling evangelical sex and marriage books when we were writing The Great...
Why 20,000 Women MatterFeb 26, 2021 | 39 Comments
When we follow Jesus, Jesus' teachings don't harm us. That is a foundational principle of the...
Can We Just Not Make Sex Weird? The Podcast!Feb 25, 2021 | 27 Comments
Sometimes the way we talk about sex is just plain, well, icky and weird. We are so excited here at...
February 26, 2021
Why 20,000 Women Matter
That is a foundational principle of the Christian life–Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He hears our cry. He protects us. He loves us. He leads us to still waters.
When we follow Jesus, then, we should grow in health and wholeness. We should be transformed.
We should become more and more who we were meant to be.
But what if, in reading our evangelical sex & marriage books, our marriages are actually made worse?That’s what our huge research project, that turned into The Great Sex Rescue, which launches on Tuesday, was meant for. And today I thought I’d share an excerpt from the last chapter, where we explain why we did this, and how this whole thing got started in the first place.
This chapter is at the very end of the book, after we’ve already made our case. We’ve shown which evangelical teachings have decreased women’s sexual satisfaction and marital satisfaction and increased sexual pain (teachings that we’ve been sharing on all our latest podcasts!). We’ve made reasoned arguments about what is a more biblical way to look at sex.
And now we explain why we got started in the first place.
In reading all of these bestselling Christian sex and marriage books, we found ourselves dumbfounded by how little is being asked of men. Of the thirteen Christian bestsellers we analyzed on our rubric, only three books asked all the following of husbands:
stay faithful (without offering caveats)make sex pleasurable for herdo not insist or expect sex of any kind when your wife is physically or emotionally unwellseek consent from your wifeSome books asked for one or two, some gave caveats, but only three of the thirteen best-selling Christian marriage and sex books charged men to stay faithful, give their wives good sex, and not rape them. (The average book asked 1.85 of these requirements.)
However, these same books that couldn’t ask the bare minimum of men asked, on average, over five of the following of women (and five books asked all of them):
Have intercourse as frequently as the husband would like.Have intercourse even if he is watching porn or has a lust problem.Understand that without intercourse, her husband is more likely to have an affair, and if he does, it will be partly her fault.Help him reach climax in some way even when she is on her period, recovering from postpartum and not sleeping, or during any other problem she may face, since her problems are not reasons to refuse sex.Prevent weight gain to stay attractive.Let her husband feel that he is a good lover (without necessarily any caveat that he should actually be a good lover).Initiate intercourse and be enthusiastic.We are not saying that all of these requirements are bad (although some clearly are). What is so stark is the contrast between how much is expected of women and how little is expected of men.
I (Sheila) have been writing and speaking about Christian marriage, and specifically sex, for over seventeen years. But until recently, I never read other Christian marriage or sex books because I was afraid I’d inadvertently plagiarize someone. I assumed, though, that because these authors knew Jesus, they must be speaking truth.
So I recommended. I trusted. I endorsed.
Then, after being prompted by a Twitter conversation, I read Love & Respect in the winter of 2019. My whole world fell apart. I was horrified that the sex chapter in Love & Respect is aimed only at women (since, in Eggerichs’s conception, sex is only a man’s need). Here’s my summary of what he says to women about sex:
Men need intercourse, while women don’t, and wives must have intercourse or their husbands will feel disrespected and then may cheat.Wives must sympathize with men’s lust problems.A wife must be sympathetic if a husband wants her to lose weight, even if he’s been watching porn.It is a sin to say no to intercourse, regardless of what she is feeling, or even if he is abusive (since you must give him unconditional respect, which includes sex, even if he is scaring you with his “withering rage” to the point that you want to “get away and hide”).Yet what are men asked to do in the bedroom? Absolutely nothing. There was not even passing reference to making sex good for her too.
As disheartening as reading Love & Respect was, it also changed the course of our work and ministry. Until then, we were working with blinders on as we created helpful resources to improve people’s marriages and sex lives. Once we read it, we realized that we needed to do far more. People could take our courses, read our blog and books, and listen to our podcast to their heart’s content, but if they were still getting this poisonous marriage doctrine, good content alone wouldn’t fully fix the problem. We needed to give people explicit permission to reject the aspects of the evangelical zeitgeist that were holding them back.
We started on a small scale. We compiled a report summarizing hundreds of women’s comments from our blog, including many who found that Love & Respect enabled abuse, and sent it to Focus on the Family, which published the book and still heavily promotes it. I’ve been featured on the Focus on the Family broadcast three times and have been well received. I honestly thought they would listen. But after being presented with hundreds of stories of marriages made worse by this teaching, Jim Daly, the president of Focus on the Family, issued a statement declaring the book helpful: “Focus on the Family maintains that Love & Respect has a biblically sound, empowering message for husbands and wives.”
We thought that if we presented them with stories of hurt from hundreds of women, there was no way they wouldn’t listen. But they didn’t.
So we decided to go bigger, and that’s where this book got started. We decided to conduct the largest, most scientifically sound research project into Christian women’s experience of sex and marriage that has been done to date, and we recruited twenty thousand women to help us. Several hundred women, apparently, can be ignored. We hope the voices of twenty thousand will make people listen.
The problems we have discussed in this book can be summarized in this woman’s comment:
In our first months of marriage I would beg my husband to slow down, and he never would because he was afraid sex would stop and he would be left hanging. Several years ago, in tearful post-sex frustration, I explained to him that he left me feeling that way every time we have sex. I saw a light- bulb go off, but he quickly put it out, saying, “We’ll just have to work on catching you up,” rolled over, and went to sleep. Nothing ever changed. My husband had multiple partners before marriage and I was a virgin. So he really thinks he’s a great lover and I just don’t appreciate him. I tried to explain his attitude is killing our sex life, but he thinks my lack of interest is killing it. I love my husband and sometimes I do want sex, but when I think about how he’s going to jump straight to intercourse and I’m going to be left disappointed, why put myself through it? How different would my marriage be if the marriage classes we took taught him he’s responsible for making sex feel good for me? Instead he has learned that I owe him sex, our sex life is bad because we don’t have sex every three days, and if he chooses to have an affair, it’s my fault for not giving him enough sex. Oh, and it’s my job to make him believe I enjoy sex even if I don’t. How can a wife even begin to combat all this bad teaching and be heard?
Our call to the evangelical church is that our resources should lead women like this commenter to feel protected, not dismissed, and should lead men like her husband to feel convicted, not validated.
Up until now, the vast majority of evangelical books that taught us about sex mostly wrote from the perspective of the author or pastor.They didn’t use real research–or, if they did, it was poorly done.
Nobody stopped to ask, “does this advice actually work?” Does this advice make couples happier and healthier?
We want to set the bar higher.We wanted to conduct the best and biggest survey, and then we peppered research and statistics from literally dozens of other peer reviewed studies throughout our book, so that hopefully the norm in Christian circles will now be: Has this advice been shown to be healthy and true?
And the only way to do that was to actually ask women.
We don’t want books to just be one person’s–and primarily one man’s–opinion.
We want something that should have been happening all along. We want advice that has been shown to be:
Healthy. Evidence-Based. Biblical.That, we believe, is what we have achieved.
It’s got a ton of fun charts! The Great Sex Rescue has facts and figures. It shows where other books have gone horribly wrong. It shows how we can rescue and reframe things we say all the time in the evangelical world so they reflect healthy teaching instead. It gives a picture of what a healthy, Jesus-centered marriage and sex life look like.
And it’s funny, too.
This book does what I wish all the other good sources would. It tackles toxic and inaccurate teachings head on, shows with real research how they damage intimacy and sexuality, and how they are not, in fact, biblically based. It approaches these difficult subjects with empathy and humor, and a genuine heart to heal.
MariaGoodreads Reviewer
After reading this book and excitedly discussing my many breakthroughs with my counselor, he summed it up well when he commented that I *seemed like I had been set free*
CelenaGoodreads Reviewer
If you grew up in the evangelical church, or if you read evangelical books, you’ll find so much of yourself in The Great Sex Rescue!And we hope you feel validated, seen, inspired, heard, and convicted, all at the same time.
You all matter, my dear readers. And we hope that with this book, you’ll experience real freedom. Real passion. Real intimacy.
Thank you to the almost 600 people who have been part of our launch team and who have been encouraging us all month! Just 4 more days until launch! We’re so excited to see what God does with this book, and we’re humbled by your support.
As I read the book I found myself wanting to scream in anger, cry in frustration, and laugh with joy shouting “AMEN, SISTER!!!” “The Great Sex Rescue” will always be part of my freedom song.
Katie LongGoodreads Reviewer
The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
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Any questions about the book? Encouragement for us? Thoughts if you’ve read it already? 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 Is Women’s Orgasm an Afterthought? A Look at What Men & Women ThinkFeb 22, 2021 | 14 Comments
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February 25, 2021
Can We Just Not Make Sex Weird? The Podcast!
We are so excited here at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, because in just 5 days our book The Great Sex Rescue officially launches! We’ve spent the last few weeks debunking some harmful teachings that we tackle in The Great Sex Rescue–like all men struggle with lust; you are his methadone for his porn addiction; you have to have sex when he wants it; you have to be the gatekeeper.
And today, to cap it all off, we thought we’d just go back to basics and ask for a healthy way to talk about sex that isn’t weird!
Browse all the Different Podcasts
See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast
Or, of course, you can always watch it on YouTube!
Timeline of the Podcast:0:25 The Great Sex Rescue arrives THIS WEEK!
1:15 Research on women believing their opinion is equal to their husbands’
4:15 The way the church talks about sex is WEIRD
9:20 Let’s discuss that ’72 Hour Rule’
17:45 Andrew Bauman joins for a discussion about “a pornographic view of sex”
29:00 Rebecca and Keith explain why it’s super WEIRD to talk about kids being sexual
40:50 Some encouragement from our community!
On the podcast today, we shared a NON-WEIRD finding–basically, when women feel as if their opinions are heard in marriage (meaning they feel valued by their husbands), sex is pretty awesome!
We looked at this chart from chapter 2 of our book, which is titled “Don’t Sleep with Someone You Don’t Know”, about how when you feel close to each other, sex improves:
Incidentally, we have charts like this throughout the book, with lots of data points on how all kinds of different beliefs and marital satisfaction or sexual satisfaction outcomes affect other aspects of your marriage. It’s super fun to look through!
So this is definitely NOT WEIRD. This makes sense. When you feel close, sex is better!
Main Segment: So Can We Stop Being Weird about Other Things?The way the church talks about sex is often weird.
And also–where did that “72 hour” rule come from? Have you ever heard that? “You have to have sex with him every 72 hours or he’ll be very uncomfortable and he’ll watch porn or lust”? It’s throughout our Christian books. But Rebecca and I talk about the dive into the research we took to try to find the source of this rule (it will surprise you!). And it may also surprise you to know that the 72 hour rule is nowhere in medical literature. There is nothing magical about hour 72, even though that’s what we’ve always been taught.
Does that mean frequent sex doesn’t matter? No, of course not. But there is a big difference between saying:
You have to have sex with him every 72 hours or he will feel uncomfortable; he’ll become grumpy; and he’ll be very tempted to lust or watch porn.
And saying:
Sex is something awesome that God created for you! It helps you feel close; helps you relax; helps you sleep. And it feels wonderful. Why not prioritize it in your marriage and have it frequently? And if it’s not happening frequently, and you want it to, then it’s likely time to stop and ask, “What’s getting in the way of us enjoying each other?”
See the difference? One is weird. The other isn’t.
Andrew Bauman: Let’s talk about how to really heal a porn addiction.Andrew Bauman, the author of The Sexually Healthy Man and a licensed counselor, joins us to talk about why simply trying harder doesn’t cure a porn addiction. He talks about how it’s important to understand that porn use often is an attempt to cover up woundedness. You need to allow that to be exposed in order to really achieve transformation and healing.
Let’s Not Sexualize Young ChildrenOne of the weirdest, and most disturbing, things we saw recently was the way that young children were sexualized in some articles and books by Shaunti Feldhahn, and we just had to comment on it. In her book Through a Man’s Eyes, she’s talking about “the male brain”–the idea that God made men visual in a way that he didn’t make women visual. And what does the “male brain” mean?
I know it is difficult to grasp (and you might want to take a deep breath here), but this is one thing that your son, husband, and father all have in common: Most guys like looking at women. And they like looking at or imagining naked women.
…This is true whether the male in question is age nine or ninety.
Shaunti FeldhahnThrough a Man's Eyes, p. 28
In an article on her website, talking about the same thing and referencing the book, she says:
Yes, I knew men and boys were visual – but I didn’t really grasp just how visual until my son was thunderstruck by the pictures in the Victoria’s Secret shop window at age of 4. “I like those ladies,” he said, in an awed tone of voice, suddenly and completely oblivious to everything else around him. “Their bare tummies make my tummy feel good.” The male brain is the male brain from the earliest age, and as I share in Through A Man’s Eyes, that means we moms need to know how to help those little eyes be careful what they see from the earliest ages.
Shaunti FeldhahnYou Need to Know These Four Pitfalls for Teenage Boys
Keith and Rebecca took this part of the podcast to talk about how disturbing it is to assign sexual motives like this to a 9-year-old or a 4-year-old. Keith is a pediatrician; Rebecca is the mother of a toddler son.
Listen in to what they said, but I will say that after recording this, we found some even more disturbing things she has said about even younger boys, and I do think it’s important to not make arguments like this that could be used by pedophiles to justify what they do (pedophiles often advocate for changes in the law by claiming that children are sexual beings). In fact, we don’t become sexual like this until just before puberty, and if children are abnormally sexual, that’s often a red flag that something else is going on.
Some happy comments!We ended the podcast with some happy comments about how the blog and podcasts have helped some people, and with one awesome review of The Great Sex Rescue!
I have followed Sheila’s blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum for several years. Coming from a background of legalism and purity culture, and being reluctant (loads of shame, feeling I was betraying my family and possibly the church, false guilt) to fully embrace the way she wrote about marriage, sex, and what it means to be a woman, I just periodically checked in. Over the past year or so, though, my sweet Savior has been gently leading me into a freedom and secure identity in Him alone that I never thought possible. When I heard Sheila was writing a book about sex, and that she had surveyed thousands of women in research for said book, my interest was piqued. I started devouring everything on her blog, reveling in the truths she and her team were shouting about marriage, sex, respect and equality. I was appalled to really dive into what the books that were lauded to me as the end-all, be-all of Christian marriage advice had actually done to my self-image, my confidence as a woman of God, and my trust in my good husband’s heart. Blog, podcast, the book was the next logical step. I pre-ordered and signed up for the launch team.
I’ve been married for nearly 14 years, have a good man for a husband, and though we’ve had our minor conflicts surrounding sex over the years it has always been GREAT. I really didn’t think the messages we both received about lust, women as stumbling blocks, porn, etc had affected our relationship until I read the book. I realized, even though I don’t believe those messages anymore, even though I trust my husband and feel secure in his love, I still have habits in ways I relate to him that are based in those views: That I could cause him to turn to porn by saying no to sex, that sex is something I owe him (even though it’s something we BOTH enjoy and he has always made my pleasure and orgasm a priority). As I read the book I found myself wanting to scream in anger, cry in frustration, and laugh with joy shouting “AMEN, SISTER!!!” “The Great Sex Rescue” will always be part of my freedom song.
There is no other book like this one speaking to the evangelical world. I will be recommending it to friends as often as I can: married, engaged, single. It’s message is life-giving and swelling with freedom for women who’ve been under the burden of these teachings for too long.
“Several hundred women, apparently, can be ignored. We hope the voices of twenty thousand will make people listen.”
Review of The Great Sex Rescue on Goodreads
The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
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Pre-Order Now Claim Your Pre-Order Bonus Things Mentioned in This Podcast:The Great Sex Rescue! You can still pre-order and get the bonuses!Andrew Bauman and his book The Sexually Healthy Man
Anything stand out to you in the podcast today? The 72 hour rule? What makes sex great? Sexualizing your kids? 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 What if the Evangelical View of Sex is Priming Us for Sex Scandals & Abuse?Feb 19, 2021 | 13 Comments
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February 24, 2021
So. Many. Interviews! 7 Places to Hear Sheila’s Story
It’s been hard to keep up with everything because I’ve been doing roughly two interviews a day.
And I wanted to share some of them with you, so that you can listen, too!
(If there are some I missed, it wasn’t intentional. I just can’t share them all! But I’ll try to share them on Facebook or Instagram instead!).
Roys Report: Talking about Love & Respect and Focus on the FamilyI was nervous about this one! I went on Julie Roys’ podcast to talk about my history with the book Love & Respect, including that big Open Letter I sent to Focus on the Family. As I said at the end, in retrospect I’m glad in some ways that they ignored me, because had they listened, we would never have done our survey, and we would never have written The Great Sex Rescue.
Our rallying call for writing the book was, “hundreds of women, apparently, can be ignored. We hope 20,000 can’t be.”
Our book is going to bring freedom, I know. But if you want to see how it all got started, and why we decided it needed to be written in the first place, here’s the story!
Listen in! Restoring the Soul with Michael John CusickI’ve had Michael on our podcast, and here he invited me on his, where we focused heavily on the lust/porn findings in our survey and in the book. I appreciate Michael’s work so much, too. Just finished his book Surfing for God–it’s awesome!
Listen in! Preacher Boys Podcast–looking at fundamentalismPreacher Boys is a podcast and upcoming documentary film shedding light on decades of abuse within the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. Hosted by Eric Skwarczynski, he tries to get to the heart of some of the reasons for abuse in fundamentalist churches. So we looked into it, with our survey data! (and we had a lot of IFB women take our survey as well).
Just a note if you’re in the IFB: We love you, and we just hope you listen. I only want you safe. If you’re in a safe marriage and you’re happy, this is not a condemnation of you. I just hope that if you’re not in a safe marriage, I can help you identify that, because often we don’t realize it.
Gretchen Baskerville: Let’s Talk Obligation Sex, Sexual Pain, and More!
Gretchen is the author of The Life Saving Divorce, and she helped me so much with recruiting women to our survey! We wanted to have, ideally, 20% of our survey respondents being divorced and/or remarried, so that we had a cross-section of women. About 29% of Christian women have been divorced, and obviously teachings that harm would have negatively affected them even more than most women, so we didn’t want to leave them out.
We only got to 16% (it’s harder to recruit divorced women, since they don’t tend to hang out in marriage spaces where I am), so whatever our findings are, remember that the situation is likely worse, if we had managed to recruit more divorced women. And thank you to all of our divorced/remarried survey takers; we know the survey was extra long for you!
Anyway, we had a great conversation:
And you can listen to Part 2 as well!
Hope TV: A great overall introduction to the book!Last Friday I was live on Hope TV in Pittsburgh, and in this interview we touched on things I haven’t talked about in many of my others: what our surveys said about gender roles. So for a different take, listen in!
The Great Sex RescueLaunches March 2! 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. Pre-Order Now! (Helps us out a ton)And if you email your receipt, we'll send you a special pre-order BONUS
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:
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:
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Pre-Order Now Claim Your Pre-Order Bonus A World of Difference PodcastJoining Lori-Adams Brown, we talk about the culture in the church about sex, and how it affects women and how it affects couples. I really enjoyed this podcast!
Listen in! Fight for Love–all about porn recoveryI joined Rosie Makinney on her podcast where she focuses on sexual addiction. So many women pre-ordered the book after meeting me on this podcast, so I think it was an important one!
Listen in!So I thought that would keep you busy today! Again, if I was on your podcast, and I didn’t put it here, I’ll try to catch up in a little while with others.
So excited! Just a week until launch for The Great Sex Rescue. And we’re so encouraged by all the reviews that are coming in on Goodreads! Here’s just one:
Have your church or Christian marriage books ever told you: all men lust, yet women are the ones responsible for men’s sexual integrity? Or women don’t want sex, yet women have a duty to give their husbands sex when they want it? Or a husband has authority over his wife’s body, yet marriage is meant for intimacy and oneness? Has it ever left you scratching your head in confusion and with a sense of cognitive dissonance that you can’t quite name?
This book identifies the toxic messages that we’ve been given that destroy the intimacy that God really intended to give us in marriage – emotional, spiritual and physical. This book is a much needed gift to Christian marriages and the church as a whole. It’s like a giant therapy session to undo the damage of so much of what we’ve been taught by the evangelical church. I cried, I raged, I laughed, and I healed in reading this book. I’m going to read it again, this time with my husband, and maybe a third time to be sure I missed nothing.
If you’ve ever read marriage books, or if you ever recommend marriage books to anyone, you need this book. So many Christian marriage books are read by women in struggling, difficult or even abusive marriages trying to figure out how to fix it. Many of the best selling Christian marriage books have contributed to the problem. This book is a huge course correction that is much needed to put people on a path of healing.
Chapter 13 says, “Part of being a ministry leader is shepherding the sheep, and that includes protecting the sheep from things that harm.” This book does exactly that.
Women are People TooGoodreads
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: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and SexFeb 18, 2021 | 6 Comments
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February 23, 2021
79 Hobbies to Do with Your Spouse
We’ve had some heavy weeks at To Love, Honor and Vacuum lately, and so I thought it was time to revisit one of my favourite posts ever and run it again, with some fun changes, so it could be higher up in the queue!
Let’s emotionally connect and have fun together again! No matter where you are in your marriage, you need some hobbies! A hobby is simply an activity or pursuit that you do together. And during COVID, we all could use some new ideas, too.
And thanks to Responsival for sponsoring this post!
And hobbies can bring couples close because of two communication principles: It is often easier to communicate side by side, when you’re doing something, than it is to try to communicate face to face.When we spend more time together with shared activities (like hobbies!), then we build up goodwill, which makes it easier to tackle some of the bigger problems in marriage.We all need shared activities, because that builds shared memories. You feel more like a team. You start chatting again (and the more you talk about little things, the easier it is to talk about big things!). And you laugh. Whenever you laugh together, walls come down. Tension dissipates. And you feel close. Often those petty things that bug you about each other seem to disappear!
Besides, it’s just plain fun to share hobbies as couples.It’s fun to spend time away from a screen. It’s fun to build a memory or be productive or experience something new. And it’s fun to learn together! Here’s the neat thing about pursuing hobbies as a married couple, too: you don’t each have to love it to the same extent. The goal is not the hobby itself. The goal is spending time together and having those opportunities to laugh and chat. My husband and I go birdwatching. I enjoy it. It gets me outdoors; we get some exercise hiking; I learn more about photography.
But Keith will trek 2 miles through brush to sit still at dawn in the hopes that it might be a king rail. He will stand still at the base of a tree for 10 minutes to verify whether that was a white throated sparrow or a white crowned sparrow. He is WAY more into it than I am. But we still go birdwatching together, because I’m in it for the memories, not just for the birds. And when he wants to do something intense with counting birds, he goes without me.
I’m going to share a whole bunch of ideas for hobbies you can pursue together. Take this post as more of a brainstorming session. Maybe something I’ll mention will twig something in your brain and you’ll find an entirely different hobby to share with your husband! But what I’d recommend is this:
Finding a Hobby to Do as a Couple Look through this list and identify 3 hobbies you’d like to start with your husband.Have your husband look through the list and identify 3 hobbies he’d like to start.Exchange lists and choose one on the other person’s list that you’d enjoy, too.Choose one to start first! A Comprehensive List of Hobbies for CouplesDownload this list to your phone or computer right now! Then you can talk it over with your spouse together.Outdoorsy Hobbies for Couples HikingBirdwatchingFishingHuntingSnowmobilingKayakingCanoeingSailingWindsurfingGolfing TennisBikingJogging/Training for MarathonJoining a co-ed sports league: basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.SkiingTarget practiceRock climbing (on real rocks)PhotographyMetal detectingForaging (for wild mushrooms or other edibles)
My son-in-law David is really into foraging, especially mushrooms, and i want to join him in that this spring because I just love the idea of eating off the land as much as possible. Plus apparently some of the mushrooms taste really good! (and, yes, he knows how to tell the difference with the poisonous ones). We bought him a dehydrator for Christmas, too, so he can preserve some of them.
Domestic Hobbies for Couples to do Together GardeningCooking (cook something gourmet once or twice a week together)Homesteading (where you try to become self-sufficient in some food products)Home improvement/painting I’m already planning out my garden for the spring! I love growing herbs, and I dried and preserved so many last year, and made a ton of pesto.Even if you’re in an apartment, you can make a balcony garden! But I love this garden tower for a house, too, because creating raised beds can be a hassle, and this I can put right on my deck and see it as I have my tea in the morning and it just makes me happy. Creating pestos and teas and salsas and hot sauces out of your produce can be another hobby you can do together.
And, seriously, it’s amazing how much you can grow in one of these garden towers!
And planning the garden can be so much fun as well. The yield on these towers can be incredible. Do you want to do herbs? Salad greens so you have fresh greens every night? Tomatoes or peppers? I’m planning on a variety of hot peppers myself!
Sporty Indoor Hobbies for CouplesWorking out/weightliftingYoga for couplesAquafitRacquetball/SquashSwimmingBowlingRock climbing (at an indoor club)Ballroom dancingIrish dancingSquare Dancing/Line DancingZumba classes
Keith and I take ballroom dancing classes online, even during COVID! Before the last cruise we took, we learned the chacha really well, along with reviewing the foxtrot and the swing. And it’s just fun to do for 15 minutes a night. Each video is only 3-5 minutes long, and they teach you one thing at a time. We really enjoy it!
And Connor just went rock climbing again this weekend for the first time in, well, forever! The COVID lockdown is over here, and a new rock climbing gym opened in our hometown right before COVID hit. He’s determined to use it enough to keep it open! When Rebecca and he were first married, they loved rock climbing together (and they will again!).
Rebecca and Connor at the rock climbing gym!
Events to Attend Together NASCAR racesSporting events, especially more minor league local onesPlays, dance performances, or comediansMusic performances: symphonies, bands, worship groupsSpecial museum or art gallery exhibitsFilm festivals or film clubsThese may be all closed for the foreseeable future, but when they reopen, consider season’s tickets for something. It gets you deliberate date outings, and it supports something in your community.
Games Hobbies for CouplesChess leaguePuzzlesBoard game club (even start your own)!Euchre club (host your own euchre parties)Bridge clubStrategy video game (my husband play just one game of Crusader Kings and it lasts for several months!)
We’ve also got a board game cafe in our hometown, which are getting increasingly popular. Go out to play a board game, and you can try new ones and figure out which ones you like!
Educational Hobbies for CouplesTouring art galleries and nearby historical sitesLearning local history and becoming tour guidesTracing your family treePlanning an educational trip, like a rainforest trip to learn about nature or a European trip to trace some World War II battles. Do research together beforehand.Touring wineries Income Producing Hobbies as a Couple Refinishing furniturePainting furnitureBuilding furnitureYard sale/flea marketing and find items to refinish or repurposeStarting an etsy or ebay businessStarting a blog on a topic you both enjoyPhotography/VideographyCatering Does your marriage need some spicing up–and some fun?
Try these 24 dares–plus one bonus–to take your marriage to the next level!
Let's add some heat! Things to Start Collecting as a Couple Art by a certain artistLocal artStamps or coinsSea glass/seashells/driftwoodOld books, magazines, or comic booksMemorabilia from a certain period/cultural trend/historical eventThen attend auctions, visit flea markets, spend time searching online together!
Looking for a way to spend time together? Here’s 79 different hobbies you can do as a couple!
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Classes to Take Together Cooking, including specific cuisinesComputer SoftwareInvestingFinancial Planning Natural Health/HerbsTheology Places to Volunteer Together At church: in worship, youth, building upkeep, finances, anythingAt a local arts organization–a local theatre, a local dance troupe, a local symphony, a museum, an art galleryAt a youth organization–Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, Big Brothers or Big Sisters, a local schoolAt a nursing home/old age homeAt a hospital doing visitationAt a food bank or other outreach centreAt a refugee welcome centreSo there’s my list–what would you add to it?
Remember–Download this list RIGHT NOW to your computer or phone so you have it handy to talk to your spouse about!Of course, some things feel like they should be on the list, but they’re not technically hobbies. Going out to the local gelato shop, for instance, is awfully fun! So is hanging around a fun local bookstore and having a coffee.
Whatever you choose, though, just find something that you can do at least on a weekly basis. When the kids are little, it’s likely easier to try something you can do at home, like taking some online classes together or learning something new or something domestic. Or try something outdoorsy where the kids can come along, like hiking or searching for sea glass. And as they get older, it will be easier for you to find new hobbies to do with your husband, too! It’s a great way to invest in each other, and in a strong marriage!
So let me know–any hobbies you’d add? I’ll keep the list updated!
Like this post so far? You should also check out:
One Thing Most Couples Get Wrong about Date Night
50 Conversation Starters for Couples
10 Ways to Signal Yes to Your Husband
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 What if You’re Sabotaging Yourself with the “Duty Sex” Message?Feb 17, 2021 | 26 Comments
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