Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 40

Have We Taught Teen Girls to Ignore Red Flags When Dating?

What happens when we tell girls that “boys will want to push your sexual boundaries”?

We’re in the middle of our debunking series, where we look at things that are commonly taught in evangelical circles, and encourage the church to get it right!

It’s all leading up to the release of our book The Great Sex Rescue on March 2! In that book, we share our survey results where we looked at how these common teachings affected women’s marital and sexual satisfaction, and how we can rescue and reframe these things so it’s in line with Jesus.

Plus you’ll feel validated. And heard. And it’s really fun to read!

And you get all kinds of pre-order bonuses (including our healthy sexuality rubric and our scorecard of how different resources fared) when you pre-order now!

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)

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Each week leading up to the release of the book we look at a new teaching we’ll deconstruct and debunk, and this week’s is “all boys will want to push your sexual boundaries.”

We count the week as beginning on Thursday with the podcast (which introduces the topic for the next week), so that’s a little odd. But it means we’ve been talking about this for a few posts now, including:

Our podcast on Gatekeeping, rape culture, and the #MeToo ReckoningFixed It for You! We fix a survey question in another book that excused date rape

So let’s continue this! What does it do when we tell girls that boys will push their sexual boundaries?

Well, our survey showed that it had impacted women’s marital and sexual satisfaction.

How Believing Boys Will Push Girls’ Sexual Boundaries Affects Marriage

When girls believe this in high school, then, once married, they are:

59% more likely to engage in sex only because they feel they must24% less likely to orgasm frequently58% more likely to be uncomfortable with how their husband looks at other women when they are in public47% more likely to report not feeling “heard” when in conflict with their husbands

That’s just a partial list of what we found–there are plenty more findings for how this particular belief affected women’s marriages in The Great Sex Rescue.

But here’s a hypothesis I have:

One of the reasons that this may affect marriages negatively is that it teaches girls to disregard red flags when dating–and thus they may be more likely to marry men of poor character.

I don’t think that’s the only reason it hurts marriages. I explained more about how the gatekeeping message teaches women to always be in control, and then they’re not able to relax during sex, in a series last spring (and we dedicated a whole chapter to it in The Great Sex Rescue).

But the red flag issue is an important one, as one woman described on Facebook last week:

So, my experience growing up in purity culture, this message makes it nearly impossible for women to identify unsafe men.

When a man pushes sexual boundaries and disrespects a woman, when she has clearly stated her no, he isn’t safe. That should be a major red flag. That should be a man that women walk away from. And if women KNEW this in the church, then these men would have to step up or stay single.

But instead all these books and sermons have told girls that this is just how boys are. So women are dating and marrying VERY unsafe men.

Instead we need to be teaching women to accept nothing less than respect in a relationship.

Facebook Commenter

Exactly! Girls aren’t taught that boys pushing your boundaries is a red flag, something that you should be wary of. Instead, we’re taught that it’s part of being male.

And that leads to women being date raped and thinking it’s their fault.

Now, some moms have said to me: But girls DO need to be taught that boys might want to push their boundaries!

Yes, they do. But that “might” is an important word there. I would phrase it to my daughters like this (and this is how we did talk about it):

Some boys are primarily interested in sex with you. Those types of boys won’t respect your boundaries, and will push against your “no”. That’s a sign that they don’t respect you as a person, and they’re not a good person with good character that you want to be with. A good person respects your “no”. If you’re ever with someone who doesn’t respect your “no”, that is not a safe situation. Know that you are never to blame! But also know that this is a sign that that is not a healthy relationship, and it should end.

But many guys, most guys even, will respect your boundaries. If a boy does know Jesus, he may want really, really badly to have sex (because that’s natural; you’ll likely want it, too), but he will respect your boundaries and he will have some of his own. In a makeout situation, you’re both likely to want to go further, especially if you’re really in love. That’s why it’s important to have boundaries. But know your boundaries; make sure he respects yours, and make sure you respect his.

(of course, we also had ongoing conversations about sexual assault, so they would have known they weren’t to blame, too).

That’s a healthier message! That teaches them to identify red flags; it teaches them that not all boys are gross, but most are honorable; and it teaches them that temptation and sexual desire isn’t sinful.

Can you see the difference?

But if, as a girl, you only ever hear that all boys will push your sexual boundaries, will you even know to try to find a better guy?

Then, of course, there’s the effect that this message has on boys, as another Facebook commenter noted:

Not to mention I think it 100% sets boys up to become men who are slaves to their baser selves. They are not taught that they are in control of themselves. They are not taught that they CAN have self discipline. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that leads to things like porn addiction. When the bar is set low, you stay low.

When you teach someone that they are not better than this, they will continue to believe this is their “curse.” Or worse that it’s normal.

I’ve seen so many men grow up in the church, shackled by porn addiction, in despondent resignation, in failing marriages that this is just the way they are and there no hope so they might as well push that boundary.

Facebook Commenter

Do boys suffer because the bar is set so low?

I think they do. Why are we raising boys to think that sinning is natural? That part of being male is trying to see how far he can push a girl?

I think many (most?) youth groups are trying to teach boys to be honorable, which is great. But you can’t do that while also teaching that natural male behavior is to push boundaries. It’s not, and sets boys up to fail.

Church, we can do better. 

Like I talked about last week, our youth groups can do better. We’re on a quest to help people identify harmful messages, and to replace them with ones that honor each other and honor God. 

We do that in The Great Sex Rescue, and I’m so excited about the launch! But for today, let me ask: Has this message about boys pushing boundaries affected you? Did you grow up feeling like all boys are pigs? Did you grow up feeling like there was no point in expecting boys to do better? 

Or if you were a guy, I’d love to hear what messages you were taught in church! 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 When Church Goes Backwards: Why We Should Apologize to Millennials

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Fixed It For You! We Fix a Survey Question So It Doesn’t Enable Date Rape

When research is poorly done, and then that research is used to “prove” something in Christian circles, everything can go awry.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be telling you some of the things we learned in our survey of 20,000 women last year, leading up to the release of our new book The Great Sex Rescue. (when you pre-order, you get some pretty amazing bonuses!)

One of the reasons that we did the survey in the first place is that we were dismayed at the quality of what often passed for research in evangelical resources–and even more dismayed by what was then done with that research.

This week we’re talking about the “gatekeeping” message, that boys will want to push girls’ sexual boundaries. On our podcast last week, Rebecca and I took a look at a section in the book For Young Women Only which told girls that boys had little ability/little responsibility to stop a sexual progression, and so the boys needed their help. Please listen to the podcast–it was an important one. And subscribe to the Bare Marriage podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don’t miss one!

It was such an important point that I wanted to put it in blog form, too, to make it more easily shareable.

So let’s start with the question:

Feldhahn & Rice combine the answers like this: 82% say they have little ability/responsibility to stop.

They conclude: “With a guy, if you want to be able to stop it, it’s best to not even start.”

They use words like, “a sizeable minority feel no responsibility to stop.” “Be careful.” “Be cautious.” “Watch out.”

They say, “boys needed the girls’ help” to stop.

What is this telling girls? You are responsible for stopping in a make out situation, because he can’t/won’t. If you go too far, then, it’s your fault, because you know he can’t stop.

The real issue here is that they asked boys about a consensual situation, and then applied the data to non-consensual ones. That is not a valid use of the data.

We’d like to do an exercise today where we look at that survey question and fix the problems with it.

How to Ask Proper Survey Questions that Actually Answer the Relevant Questions1. Define the question better

They surveyed 400 predominantly non-Christian boys, and said: (a) in a consensual situation where she wants to keep going; (b) what ability do you have to stop?

The problem is that (a) and (b) do not logically go together. What does his ability to stop have to do with her wanting to keep going?

Additionally, even though her question assumes that boys will want to stop, she never actually asked them. Giving boys a leading question (implying they should be wanting to stop) without ascertaining their sexual boundaries just isn’t good practice if you want to get meaningful data about boy’s desire to keep up their own sexual boundaries.

Ironically, the first answer they allow boys to have gets at this issue. They allow boys to answer: “why would I want to stop?”

A proper survey question is clear on what it is asking. In this case, that means splitting this question up into two: first, ascertaining what the boys’ sexual boundaries are, and then asking how they would feel about maintaining those in a consensual sexual encounter:

Regardless of any past sexual experiences, which of the following statements best describes you currently: 

I am saving sex for marriage I do not feel I will be ready to have sex until I’m older I am not sure if I am ready to have sex now or not I feel ready to have sex nowI am actively having sex/I am actively pursuing a sexual partner

If you were in a make-out situation with a willing partner who does not signal a desire to stop, how likely are you to want to stop that sexual progression before it leads to sex?

Very likely – we would not have sexLikely Somewhat likely Somewhat unlikely Unlikely Very unlikely – we would have sex

These questions tell us whether boys have set sexual boundaries for themselves that they don’t want crossed and also how strong boys perceive their self-control in this area to be. This allows us to make conclusions about what responsibility boys feel to stop, as Feldhahn and Rice did without actually asking boys about if they felt a responsibility to abstain from sex.

2. Ask a separate question to address the non-consensual situation

They extrapolated the results from a consensual situation to imply that boys would not be able to stop if she asked them to (“it’s safer to not even start.”) However, we have absolutely no way of knowing this, because they never actually asked! So let’s add a second question to the survey that actually addresses this:

If you were in a make-out situation and your partner signalled she would like to stop, how likely are you to stop that sexual progression?

Very likely Somewhat likely Somewhat unlikely Very unlikely 

This will get at whether or not boys are likely to stop in non-consensual situations, and then we’d be able to make conclusions about boys’ responsibility to stop in those situations, too.

You may ask, “but who would admit it if they wouldn’t stop?” But actually it’s been shown that people tend to be fairly honest about their shortcomings, even major ones, on anonymous surveys, so this isn’t a huge worry–as long as the survey is truly anonymous.

Also, please note: this is the minimum that should be asked to allow the conclusions that Feldhahn and Rice made in their book. Personally, I don’t think they’re sufficient to truly measure what they’re trying to measure. I’d add at least one more question: If your partner signalled she wanted to stop, how likely are you to pressure her to keep going? And I would ask about what types of pressure they may use. But let’s keep going with the minimum that is necessary to make the conclusions they’re trying to make.

Note from Rebecca: You may have read “For Young Women Only” and not gotten the impression that Feldhahn and Rice were talking about non-consensual situations. We don’t think that they meant to talk to girls in date rape situations, but the problem is that they fail to emphasize that these are consensual situations. They fail to mention that these are situations where she wants it as much as he does. Instead, they tell girls to “watch out” and to be afraid of boys who have little ability and feel little responsibility to stop. If a girl were to be date raped, her boyfriend could easily use Shaunti’s own words to prove to her that it was, in fact, her fault without having to look too hard at all. The caveat in the book about rape means nothing when Feldhahn has written an entire chapter grooming girls for rapists and abusers to take advantage of them in the name of “it’s just too tough to stop the fun.”

3. Remove any language that justifies/enables abusive behaviour

Note that in the original question, Feldhahn asked about the boy’s ability to stop. What does that word imply in context? To imply that a boy may not have an ability to stop the sexual progression implies that some boys can’t help but rape (even in a consensual situation, one should still have an “ability” to stop). But she asked this in the same question she’s measuring boys’ desire to stop. In doing so, she conflates desire and ability to stop sex but then talks about them throughout the chapter as if they are one and the same.

We need to be careful in how we craft questions.

Rebecca here for a minute: frankly, it’s bizarre to ask boys who want to have sex (as many non-Christian boys do) if they would have an “ability” to stop consensual sex! Can you imagine if this question were asked of married, Christian men? I’m pretty sure that more than 90% would answer, “Why would I want to stop?” Does that mean that over 90% of Christian married men are marital rapists? Of course not. They’d most likely be answering based on the “want” in the question, not the “able.” Of course we feel out of control during really good sex, but we know that we’re able to stop (I mean, if you were having sex and a raccoon jumped through your window onto the bed, you could stop is all I’m saying.)

However, Shaunti’s use of the word “ability” implies to her female readers that it’s okay for a boy to think that he has no ability to stop once making out has started. But by conflating “wanting” to stop and “being able to” stop and then not emphasizing the consensual nature of the encounter, Feldhahn and her team handed a whole generation of young men a get-out-of-jail-free-date-rape card.

Again, it’s OK to feel out of control in consensual, safe settings where you actually are in control and do have an ability to stop. But it’s not OK to raise young girls to think that if she kisses him for too long it’s only a matter of time until he loses his ability to not push her further. Shaunti could have emphasized that boys do, in fact, have the ability to stop, regardless of what they say they feel. She could have emphasized personal responsibility, and respect. But she didn’t. Because of this, when Shaunti used the word ability, she taught the girls reading her book, “he can’t stop this like you can,” especially when you consider that later she goes on to say that boys NEED girls to help them stop. (OK, Rebecca out.)

Rape is not a matter of inability; rape is a conscious choice. To imply that boys’ crossing girls’ boundaries is a matter of “inability” as Feldhahn and Rice did rather than as a matter of sin and abuse is highly problematic, to put it lightly.

4. Take out emotional language in the response section

It seems as if the researchers were trying to be “cute”, but it’s very bad form to have emotional language in the response options. Note how Feldhahn says, in option 2, “it’s just too tough to stop the fun!”. That makes this response sound “cool” compared to the option in question 4–“I find it easy to stop the sexual progression.” Note the use of the word “fun” in option 2, and the words “sexual progression” in option 4, all refer to the same thing.

5. Make each response straightforward, and do not combine elements in the response section

Let’s take a look at option 3 in this survey. It says:

Some ability, but it would require a massive effort, and I might go further than intended.

Here we have three different elements to this response:

I have some abilityIt would require a massive effortI might go further than intended

If someone picked this, which element are they reacting to? All of them? One of them? We have no way of knowing.

(Rebecca here again. Whenever possible, it’s best to have only one phrase or clause per question or response option. Often this rule needs to be broken, and that does not immediately invalidate the question or the response–not at all! But this response option is particularly problematic because (a) it’s a triple-barreled response option to an already convoluted question, (b) all the response options are incredibly different from one another so this has a higher risk of being a “catch all” for the “not sure” crowd, and (c) the three elements are all measuring completely different constructs. First, ability; second, effort; third, sexual actions.)

6. Include all options in the response section

Note how the responses jump from #3–I have some ability but it requires massive effort–and #4–it’s easy.

What if it’s not easy, but it doesn’t require massive effort? Isn’t there something in between?

And you know what? There’s an easy way around the the problems in #4-6, and it’s standard in surveys: Simply offer what is called a Likert Scale set of responses, like this:

Very LikelyLikelySomewhat LikelySomewhat UnlikelyUnlikelyVery Unlikely

You take out all the emotional language; you include all meaningful possiblities; and it’s very straightforward. There’s a reason this is standard practice.

7. Dichotomize the Answers Appropriately

Now let’s get into how we use the results. Feldhahn looked at those results and concluded that 82% of boys had little ability/little responsibility to stop. So she separated the results between options 3 and 4.

However, is this an appropriate way to dichotomize the data?

The question she asked was about the boy’s perceived ability to stop. Then, throughout her book, she talks about boys going too far or crossing girls’ sexual boundaries. It makes more sense, then, to dichotomize the data based on whether boys reported an ability to stop, and whether they didn’t.

In that case, the appropriate way to split the data is between options 2 and 3. Option 3 does say they have the ability to stop. This gives us, instead of an 82/18 difference, a 48/52 difference.

Using a likert scale makes dichotomizing even easier–you simply split it among whether they are at all likely or at all unlikely.

(Rebecca says: Of course, there are lots of reasons you may want to split up the data in different ways than just “yes” or “no.” In our survey, for example, we asked about orgasm frequency. It may make sense in some contexts to talk about all women who have ever orgasmed, regardless of frequency, and others where it makes sense to only talk about women who always orgasm. But it would be wholly inappropriate for us to combine the 88% of women who have ever had an orgasm, regardless of frequency, into one group and use that data to talk about highly orgasmic women when that includes women who orgasm less than half of the time they have sex. Similarly, using data about boys who were able to stop the sexual progression to bolster the claim that boys have little ability to stop sex was a gross misrepresentation of the data.)

8. Ask Girls the Same Questions

Feldhahn and Rice state in their book:

For a guy even more than a girl, making out often starts a physical drive towards sex that requires a major effort to override.

Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa A. Rice

For Young Women Only, p. 148

They are drawing a conclusion from their question that boys find this harder than girls.

But just as we spoke about in our podcast in December about unconditional respect and the problem with Shaunti Feldhahn’s survey data on “men want respect and women want love”, you can’t make a gender comparison without actually asking both genders. And it’s not enough to ask similar questions. You have to ask the same question to both genders. In the love & respect case, they never asked women. When other researchers asked the same question of women, women answered the same as men. No gender difference. And yet a whole doctrine was born because of a faulty survey question.

If you haven’t listened to the Unconditional Respect Isn’t a Thing podcast, you really must!

They are assuming that girls can easily stop the sexual progression, but we have no data that this is true at all. This is what we call a presumption fallacy in the study of logic, and it’s the same fallacy that Shaunti used in her love & respect conclusions.

When we look at what she asked girls, this is the closest question we could find:

Many people joke that boys “only think about one thing.” This question is designed to determine whether girls think about and want that one thing as much as boys do. In your experience, if a girl and her boyfriend make out from time to time, but have not made the move to a sexual relationship, do you think the girl thinks about and physically wants sex with him as much as he probably does with her? {Choose One Answer}

[46%] Yes, I think in that situation she’s wanting to go to bed with him as much as he wants it (whether or not she actually does go to bed with him).[42%] No, I think it’s probably the guy that most wants the relationship to progress to actual sex. Most girls would be fine with continuing to make out, without crossing that line.[12%] No, I think it’s probably only the guy that wants the relationship to progress to actual sex, and she actively doesn’t want to cross that line (even if she enjoys making out).

(Note from Rebecca: I have… a lot of thoughts about this question.)

This is not a perfect comparison, but it’s the closest we’ve got. And in this question, 46% of girls say that sex would likely occur. So 46% of girls think that sex would happen, and 48% of boys think that sex would happen.

That’s not a gender difference. 

In an ideal world she would have asked the same question of girls at the same time she did her survey of guys. But she surveyed boys a year before she surveyed girls, wrote a book saying there was a gender difference she herself did not find, did not cite any other research supporting her claim, and then when she did ask girls a similar question it pointed to no gender difference. She had no basis for saying what she did.

To sum up: Here’s how to ask survey questions that would allow Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa Rice to talk about the concepts that they did in their book:

Regardless of any past sexual experiences, which of the following statements best describes you currently:

I am saving sex for marriageI do not feel I will be ready to have sex until I’m olderI am not sure if I am ready to have sex now or notI feel ready to have sex nowI am actively having sex/I am actively pursuing a sexual partner

If you were in a make-out situation with a willing partner who does not signal a desire to stop, how likely are you to want to stop that sexual progression before it leads to sex?

Very likely – we would not have sexLikelySomewhat likelySomewhat unlikelyUnlikelyVery unlikely – we would have sex

If you were in a make-out situation and your partner signaled she would like to stop, how likely are you to stop that sexual progression?

Very likelySomewhat likelySomewhat unlikelyVery unlikely

And then ask the exact same questions to girls. 

Again, in an ideal world I would ask additional questions about sexually coercive behaviour to flesh this out, but these are the minimum questions necessary to draw conclusions about boys and boundaries. 

(Rebecca note: also, all questions would have to be coded by operational definitions of the research constructs which would be developed during a thorough literature review, the survey would include multiple questions for each construct, we would use previously validated questions whenever possible, the whole thing would be pilot tested, and we would only ask the intended research group, or else make it very clear that our findings could be entirely inaccurate to the people reading the book).

We hope you see now how writing bad questions, writing bad response options, and then interpreting survey questions inappropriately is all too easy to do.

All of us who worked on The Great Sex Rescue did university training in survey development and analysis (Joanna and Rebecca far more than me, but even I remember my courses from 1990 where we learned everything in this post. It was actually quite basic).

But what wounds us and worries us the most is that Feldhahn and Rice used a bad question to tell girls that boys had little ability to stop the sexual progression, and that boys “needed” their help to stop.

If a girl who had been date raped read this book, would she know that she had been assaulted? Or would she blame herself? After all, if you want to stop, it’s better not to start! Guys feel little responsibility or ability to stop. You should watch out. Be cautious. Guys need you to do the right thing.

This is rape culture. It formed the basis for a whole chapter in her book. And it was based on extremely faulty research methods.

Church, we simply must do better. Please. What are we doing to our teenage girls? And who are we expecting our boys to turn into?

We’d like to set the record straight.

We want to set a much higher standard for what passes as research in the Christian world, and we think we’ve done that with The Great Sex Rescue. In that book, we identify what teachings harm women’s sexual satisfaction. If you’ve never been able to reach orgasm; if you have no libido; if your marriage is stale–it might not be your fault! It may simply be that you were taught stuff that has seriously messed you up. And seeing what that “stuff” is can be freeing, validating, liberating! It can help you have the marriage and sex life you’ve always wanted.

And when you pre-order The Great Sex Rescue, email us your receipt and we’ll give you our healthy sexuality rubric, our scorecard of how Christian books fared on our rubric, and a sneak peek at our data!

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-Order

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If you’d rather watch than read, or if you want to see our passion for this, here’s the part of the podcast where Rebecca and I looked at this survey:

We really can do better.

What do you think? Did anything else stand out to you about that survey question? Have any thoughts about all of this? 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 To the Wife Who Feels Like God is Punishing Her for Having Sex Before Marriage

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The DEBUNKING SERIES: A 12-Point Rubric to Tell if Resources are Healthy

How can you tell if a book, website, or even a church is healthy when it comes to sex teaching, or harmful?

My inbox fills up with people asking me what I think of this book, or what I think of that book. And chances are I haven’t read it! I don’t have time to read everything.

But I understand why people are asking. As we’ve been talking so much over the last few years about how many evangelical books actually spread messages about sex that are harmful, people want to make sure they avoid them.

Today I want to give you a tool that will help you uncover whether a resource is healthy or unhealthy when it comes to sex.

Our new book The Great Sex Rescue, which releases March 2, was based on four different types of research:

Our survey of 20,000 womenFollow-up intensive interviews and focus groupsA look at peer-reviewed research in the fieldA review of our top evangelical best-selling books on marriage & sex and seeing what messages they give

The hypothesis that we were testing with our survey was, “Are there teachings that are common in evangelical circles that hurt women’s sexual and marital satisfaction?” So we asked  ton of questions about women’s marriages and sex lives, and then asked if they had been taught, or if they believed or had believed, a wide variety of messages.

From that, we were able to identify which messages were really toxic!

Then we combined that with data from other studies, and we now had a picture of what healthy teaching about sex looked like.

So we created a 12-question rubric–a scorecard, so to speak–of healthy teaching when it comes to sex.

Here are the questions that we used:

12-Point Rubric on Healthy SexualityInfidelity and Lust:

1. Does the book acknowledge that the blame for a husband’s affair or porn use lies at the feet of the husband, or does it, at least in part, blame the wife?
2. Does the book acknowledge that porn use must be dealt with before a healthy sexual relationship can be built while acknowledging that very few porn habits begun in the internet age are caused by a wife’s refusal to have sex, or does it suggest that the remedy to a porn habit is more frequent sexual activity?
3. Does the book acknowledge the effect of pornography on men’s self-perception, sex drives, and sexual function, or does it ignore porn’s harm to marriages?
4. Does the book frame lust as something both spouses may struggle with, even if men tend to struggle more, or does it state that since all men struggle with lust, it can’t be defeated, and the only way to combat lust is for wives to have sex more and women to dress modestly?

Pleasure and Libido:

5. Does the book acknowledge women’s orgasm and women’s enjoyment of the physical aspects of sex, or does it imply that most or all women do not enjoy sex?
6. Does the book frame sex as something a woman will anticipate and look forward to, or does it frame sex as something she will tend to dread?
7. Does the book describe men’s sexual appetite as healthy but also containable and controllable, or are men’s sexual needs portrayed as ravenous, insatiable, and constant?
8. Does the book acknowledge that in a large minority of marriages, the wife has a higher libido than her husband, or does it oversimplify, implying that virtually all husbands have higher libidos than their wives?

Mutuality:

9. Does the book explain that sex has many purposes, including intimacy, closeness, fun, and physical pleasure for both, or does it portray sex as being primarily about fulfilling his physical need?
10. Does the book stress personal appearance and hygiene equally for both parties, or is far more expected from wives than from husbands, and is it implied that if she does not maintain a level of attractiveness, he may have an affair?
11. Does the book discuss the importance of foreplay and a husband’s role in his wife’s pleasure, or does the book ignore a husband’s responsibility to help his wife feel pleasure?
12. Does the book include reasons why a woman may legitimately say, “Not tonight, honey,” and discuss the concept of marital rape, or does the book say that a woman refusing sex is a sin or fail to recognize rape within its anecdotes?

That’s our starting point. But then what do you do with those questions?

Well, we also created a scoring sheet that helps you score each of the 12 measures on a scale of 0-4.

We’ve got that scoring sheet, plus the scorecard of how all the books rated, available as a free download when you pre-order our book The Great Sex Rescue!

 

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.

You'll feel: Validated. Seen. Heard.

You'll have a roadmap to escape the lies.

Plus it's a super fun read!

Because you deserve real freedom and intimacy. Pre-Order it Now! (and help us out a ton!) Our pre-order bonuses include:Our complete rubric, including our scoresheet to help you apply it to other resourcesOur scorecard, where we scored 13 evangelical resources and one secular control book (John Gottman’s 7 Principles for Making Marriage Work)Four examples of harmful teachings about sex, with several data points for how these teachings affect orgasm rates, intimacy, and moreWays to rescue and reframe common things we say, so that we don’t spread harmful messages. Instead of saying, “men are visually stimulated”, “guys watch porn when they don’t get sex at home,” or “boys will want to push your sexual boundaries,” for instance, we show how you can reframe these messages in a healthy, biblical way.

Want to know how Love & Respect scored? His Needs, Her Needs? The Act of Marriage? Sheet Music? Find out which resources scored the worst, and which ones scored the best (and there were some really good ones!).

And as you’re looking at the rubric and the scorecard, just a reminder that, even after being warned, Focus on the Family called Love & Respect a “biblically sound and empowering message for wives.” Check out my statement in response to theirs–their statement is linked in it. 

The scorecard and complete scoring sheet aren’t even in the book–so these are genuine extras you won’t get there, but we want to make available. And they’re just fascinating to look through.

Our goal is that people will be empowered to look at resources with a discerning eye.

By showing you what healthy and unhealthy look like, hopefully people will be able to judge marriage books and sex books for themselves. And if a book doesn’t get a “healthy” rating, then you shouldn’t be using it or recommending it or studying it in a group study. (And, again, several did get healthy ratings!).

Who should use this rubric?

Anyone who wants to make sure the stuff they’re reading and recommending is healthy! But here’s how we’re hoping it will be used:

Church librarians will laminate and post the rubric so people can be made aware of what healthy teaching looks likeWomen’s Bible study leaders won’t suggest a book to study before looking at whether it’s healthy or notPastors will use the rubric to vet the materials they recommendCounselors will use the rubric not only to vet materials, but also to teach those they counsel how to identify harmful/helpful messagesYouth group leaders will make sure the messages they spread are healthy, like we talked about Monday on our post on how to ensure youth groups talk about sex in a healthy wayMarriage teachers/speakers will make sure their messages line up with what’s healthyRegular people will use the rubric to be discerning about the books they study and recommend, and to help identify where they’ve been believing harmful messages, too.

Let’s all get in the habit of being discerning, and asking: “does this book actually treat women’s sexuality in a healthy way?”

So how do you get the pre-order bonuses?

It’s simple! Just email or forward me your receipt, a screenshot of your order, anything really–and we’ll send you the link to download this!

Baker Books (our publisher) did a great job formatting all of this, and I’m excited for you all to see it.

Send in your receipt to get your rubric, scorecard, rescuing & reframing chart, and more!

Just forward  me your original receipt, or attach a screen shot in your email. And we’ll get you that download right away!

Email me! Church, it’s okay to demand better. 

It’s okay to ask publishers and authors to teach about sex well, in a way that doesn’t harm.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to look at individual teachings that have harmed people’s sex lives and have hurt women’s sexuality. It’ll be kind of like having a big pre-launch party for The Great Sex Rescue! And then we’ll have some Facebook Lives and more as we get ready for the date.

But this isn’t really about just selling books.

This is about a deeper invitation to do this better. This is a call for health. Jesus came so that we may have life to the full. He wants abundance for us. So there is absolutely no reason, and  no excuse, for resources that claim his name to end up stealing great sex from couples. It’s time to demand more. 

It’s time to change the conversation.

I hope this rubric can be one tiny step towards that goal!

The Healthy Sexuality Series

Leading up to the release of The Great Sex Rescue on March 2, we'll be looking at one harmful teaching a week, and point to how we can talk about this better.

And we'll launch each new teaching in our podcasts! So these are the topics coming up:

The Gatekeeping Message: Boys will want to push your sexual boundaries, so girls are responsible for stopping boys from going too farThe All Men Struggle with Lust message: Why Every Man's Battle Backfires (January 28)Have Sex So He Won't Lust/Watch Porn: Why Women Aren't Methadone (February 4)The Obligation Sex Message: Turning Sex from a Knowing to an Owing Makes it Ugly (February 11)"He Has a Need You Don't Have": Why Talking about sex like it's only a man's need becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy (February 18)The Entitlement Message around Sex: Can't we just be nice? (February 25)

And don't forget to pre-order The Great Sex Rescue! Send us your receipt and we'll send you pre-order bonuses!

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 How Can We Help Youth Groups Not Teach Harmful Messages about Sex?

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The “Watch Out for Boys Who Want to Push Your Sexual Boundaries” Podcast

I believe that we can eradicate rape culture from the evangelical church.

In fact, I’m committed to it! And in this week’s podcast we’re looking at how to do that.

But first, some background. Today marks the beginning of our debunking series, where we take one unhealthy teaching each week and look at why it’s dangerous and what we can replace it with instead.

It’s all leading up to the release of The Great Sex Rescue on March 2! Our book asked 20,000 women about their marital & sexual satisfaction, and measured that against common evangelical teachings. And we identified some key teachings that did terrible things to women’s sex lives.

One of those teachings, the one we’re tackling first, is what we call the “gatekeeping” message: that girls and women are responsible for making sure men don’t cross their sexual boundaries.

To talk about this, Rebecca’s going to do her nifty let’s-take-a-closer-look at this survey question from a popular book, and show how it doesn’t say what it claimed to say. But first, I interviewed Ruth Everhart, author of The #MeToo Reckoning. 

Listen in!

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

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

Or, as always, you can watch on YouTube!

 

Timeline of the Podcast

0:39 What’s on the schedule today!
4:00 Ruth Everhart joins us to have a conversation on safety, boundaries, and what we perceive as valuable in church culture (*warning * there are tellings of traumatic events such as rape in this interview)
26:10 What does the research say? Stats on those whose first sexual encounter is not consensual
31:41 Rebecca breaks down another bad survey question
39:48 Why these stats seem so agenda driven with bad interpretation
43:05 How this message REALLY plays out negatively when internalized

Main Segment: The #MeToo Reckoning

Ruth wrote a great post for me on The #MeToo Reckoning earlier this month, but today I had a chance to talk to her about some of the stories in her book, and ask her a question that’s plagued me since I had a rather disturbing encounter myself on a missions trip: Why is it that we think the price of spreading the gospel sometimes must be women’s safety? So the reader question this week was actually one from me!

And do check out her book!

New Research: 1/16 women report their first encounter with sex is rape

We looked at a study from the Journal of Internal Medicine, and asked what the church can do given this reality in their pews.

Some highlights from the study:

If sex was forced, average age was 15.6 years compared with 17.4 yearsAverage age of the partner/assailant at first sexual encounter was 6 years older for women with forced vs voluntary sexual initiationWomen with forced sexual initiation were more likely to experience an unwanted first pregnancy; endometriosis;  pelvic inflammatory disease; problems with ovulation or menstruationSurvivors of forced sexual initiation more frequently reported illicit drug use; fair or poor health; and difficulty completing tasks owing to a physical or mental health condition. Association Between Forced Sexual Initiation and Health Outcomes Among US Women

JAMA Internal Medicine

Are We Promoting Rape Culture?

Next, Rebecca joined us and we analyzed a survey question in Shaunti Feldhahn and Lisa Rice’s book For Young Women Only. The way the authors present these conclusions is highly problematic, and the survey results do not warrant the conclusions drawn from it. 

Here’s the question and the response:

In the book, this was framed as “82% percent of guys reporting serious difficulties in bringing things to a halt in a make-out situation–or no desire to halt things at all!” 

The headings used were that guys had “little ability” and “little responsibility” to stop. And the lesson girls needed to learn from this? “With a guy, if you want to be able to stop it, it’s safest to not even start.”

Do you see any red flags here or problematic elements? Let me know in the comments! And then listen in to what Rebecca says as she analyzes this question from a psychometrics point of view.

Just as we looked at the survey question that made love & respect a thing, and showed how it doesn’t mean what they said it means, so this one is highly problematic as well.

Going shopping?

Use my link to support this blog!

Things Mentioned in This PodcastLast spring we had a number of posts and podcasts on the problem with the gatekeeping message–namely that it can hinder arousal. Some of them are: Arousal: The missing piece podcast; And the let’s bring back making out post.Why Unconditional Respect isn’t a thing: Our podcast where we looked at the survey question that was used to justify the claim that men choose respect while women choose love.9 Signs of Grooming Behaviour you need to understandRuth Everhart’s post on The #MeToo Reckoning and Ruth Everhart’s book The #MeToo ReckoningThe Great Sex Rescue–our new book that’s launching soon! We’ll have some pre-order bonuses available tomorrowI truly believe that we can talk about sexual assault better.

And things are changing! When we stop making girls responsible for boys’ behaviour; when we start acknowledging that sexual assault leaves lasting wounds and is important; when we start valuing women’s safety and not just the “ministry”, I think we’ll grow to look more like a community that follows Christ. I have hope, and I hope you will, too, after listening in, even if this is heavy.

Things are changing. They are getting better. We are making a difference!

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.

You'll feel: Validated. Seen. Heard.

You'll have a roadmap to escape the lies.

Plus it's a super fun read!

Because you deserve real freedom and intimacy. Pre-Order it Now! (and help us out a ton!)

What do you think? Have any thoughts on why that survey question was problematic? What about the results of the study on the repercussions of rape being your first sexual experience? Or anything else stand out to you? 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 Why Believing All Men Are Sex Machines Leads to So Much Rejection among Women

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When Church Goes Backwards: Why We Should Apologize to Millennials

Yesterday was my daughter Rebecca’s 26th birthday, and it occurred to me how much her life and my life have differed when it comes to church. 

Here’s my favourite picture of her, taken this fall with her son:

I was supposed to write something else today; I had the pre-order bonuses all ready to go for The Great Sex Rescue, but they’re quite explosive, and we need a few more days to edit. So they’re coming out on Friday instead!

I didn’t have time to write another post yesterday because it was Rebecca’s birthday, and I spent some time with her and made a big family dinner.

But as I was lying in bed last night, I figured out what I wanted to say.

I wanted to say I’m sorry to millennials.

And to explain why, I’d like to tell you about my teenage years and university years with the church.

I started attending a Presbyterian church in downtown Toronto in my teens. It was evangelical; they taught Jesus; they loved the Bible.

Our youth group was small; maybe 12 people came out every week. But we were great friends. At first one of the parents ran it; eventually they hired a youth pastor.

We had the usual dramas of who is dating whom (I caused many of those dramas); we had hurt feelings and heartaches. But most of all we were just very, very good friends.

Before COVID I contacted many of them again, seeing if we could do a thirtieth reunion, and I was amazed. Of the core group of people I remember, all but maybe 1 or 2 are still following God, even some who weren’t following God then. Most are in ministry of some sort. We all have great families. It was just lovely to see.

It wasn’t a large youth group, but we stayed focused on Jesus, and it made all the difference. I still want to do that reunion; hopefully COVID will end (we’re on major lockdown here in Ontario) and we’ll be able to.

In that youth group, I never heard of purity culture.

It honestly just wasn’t there. We studied books of the Bible (I remember going through Thessalonians once, I believe). I just don’t remember talking about sex in youth group. I remember praying, and talking about how to read your Bible, but nothing about boys lusting and girls being modest and your purity being your virginity. Certainly we talked about a biblical sexual ethic, but it wasn’t in your face, all the time.

The first time I heard that kind of talk was when I stepped outside my Canadian bubble and went on a Teen Missions International trip. I’ve written about those trips; I do believe that Teen Missions is an inherently spiritually abusive organization, and I was subject to that. I get emails from so many people telling about their own experiences, and I hope that one day somebody collects the stories that have been sent to me and does something with them.

Doing construction work in the Philippines with Teen Missions International in 1986.

But it was on that trip that I first heard the modesty message, and it was pushed big time. I also read a book from Elisabeth Elliott that talked about how a girl could never be the first one to talk to a boy, and how you must always submit to the man. It said you couldn’t kiss until you were engaged. I thought it was crazy. It was like looking in on a different culture, it was so far from my own.

When I went to university, there was a deep sense that change was coming.

I met Keith at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Our InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Group was large, and filled with people truly loving Jesus. We studied parables together, and books of the Bible together. And pretty much everyone had this sense that the church was becoming more interested in justice and equality and doing what was right. There was a sense that all of this silliness over keeping women out and keeping women down would be done in a few years. We all felt the same way; there was no debate that I remember on campus. It was just accepted that women were gifted in the same way men were.

Interestingly, one of my roommates from university, Amanda Benckhuysen, has just written a book on women in the Bible too–The Gospel According to Eve. I lost touch with Amanda for several decades and found her again when her book came out. I was so excited to see how similar our paths have been!

Two of my housemates and me in university. Amanda’s the one on the right.

At university we all went to different denominations, but we pretty much all believed the same way. It was easy to fellowship. Our main focus in our discussions was how to change the world. How do we do missions in a fair way? How do we feed the poor? How can we make a difference with our lives? What does it look like to be sold out for Jesus?

That’s what I associate teenagehood and young adulthood with: the search for your identity that naturally happens at that age was more of a search for God’s calling on your life. In fact, likely half of the talks that I heard at conferences were just that: how to discover God’s will and how to hear God’s voice. That’s what we were focused on. That’s what mattered to us.

If you had told me back in 1991 that in thirty years we’d still be fighting about women’s roles, I honestly wouldn’t have believed you. To us at the time, the question was settled. Sure, a lot of the older people in church didn’t agree with us, but we had time and numbers on our side. Our generation was good. This would all be fine really soon.

My girls had a completely different experience of church than I did.

By the time Rebecca hit 13 and 14, youth group had changed. Instead of being focused on learning the Bible and changing the world, it was focused on numbers–making sure the youth group was fun enough that kids came out (we never cared about numbers in our youth group).

The Bible studies were more topical focused. Instead of studying a book of the Bible, which was the norm for me in high school and university, they would study snippets or look at different themes.

And chances are those themes had to do with dating rules or withstanding peer pressure.

Brio magazine from Focus on the Family was big when Rebecca was an early teen, and she devoured them. They were filled with rules for your clothing–how you had to be able to “pinch an inch” of fabric of your jeans would be too tight.

They were filled with articles about girls who had their purity ruined because they had kissed too much.

Instead of Rebecca’s teaching being focused on how to find your spiritual gifts and your unique calling for your life to change the world for Jesus, she was taught that life was a constant struggle not to fall into a deep sin that will ruin your life.

When Katie joined her in youth group, everything just accelerated. The youth rallies they went on were not about missions and making a difference; they were about not drinking and not having sex.

My girls as teens in the Grand Canyon

And a big part of their story is hearing time and again that they can’t do things in church because they’re women.

In fact, it’s worse now. Far worse. The churches that we have been to are far more against women teaching or having any roles that use gifts other than cooking or nursery than the ones I went to as a teen.

It’s like we went backwards.

Even something like Young Earth Creationism–I don’t ever remember hearing about this as a teenager. It just was a non-issue. Certainly I believed in dinosaurs; everyone did. But I never, ever thought about it.

Rebecca and Katie were taught young earth creationism as children in Sunday School; as teens in youth group; in their media. You had to believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed; that the earth is only 6000 years old; or you don’t really believe the Bible.

I have no problem with people believing anything they want about creation, as long as we realize God did it. I don’t think it matters HOW or WHEN it happened; as long as we get the WHO DID IT right. And belief in a young earth is very modern; C.S. Lewis believed in an old earth; so did Augustine and most Christians over the centuries. But my girls were fed this constantly, and told that if they didn’t believe it they weren’t Christians. Our Christian radio station carried Creation programs (Keith used to make the girls listen to them in our homeschooling to help identify logical fallacies).

And this belief was used as a litmus test of whether you were a real Christian or not.

I believe Generation X had a better upbringing in church than Millennials.

I could be wrong. Sarah Bessey was posting on Twitter this week wondering if a lot of the problems we’re having in the church in Canada today is that at some point in the 1990s American Evangelicalism crept in in a way that it hadn’t been before. Maybe she’s right; my own experience with purity culture was on an American missions organization.

But I think it goes farther than that. I think in the 1990s evangelical publishing doubled down on very conservative themes. That’s when purity culture came out (you can actually see the change in Brio magazine over the early 2000s; it’s really interesting). That’s when big denominations started fighting “the women’s issue”, and many settled it by keeping women out of leadership roles. That’s when we all took a collective step inward, trying to preserve what we have.

I remember my faith in the 1980s and 1990s being focused outward; Rebecca Pippert’s book Out of the SaltShaker and Into the World about how to evangelize in a normal, non-creepy way was something we were all talking about and discussing. Our faith was something worth sharing.

And yet somehow along the line faith became about preserving and about being different from the world rather than trying to change the world in the same way. The emphasis has definitely shifted, and I think not for the better.

Our prayer is that the conversation is shifting–and I do believe that it is.

I hope when my grandson grows up, he goes to a youth group that isn’t paranoid about whether or not he’s going too far with his girlfriend, but is instead teaching him to read Jesus’ parables with open eyes, and to see Jesus’ heart for the world. I hope and pray he grows up learning his prayers should be focused on how he can be the hands and feet of Jesus far more than they are on stopping him from being impure.

I think we’ll get there. I think millennials were given a rough ride, and it wasn’t fair. But because of that, so many millennials are energized to do it better. Seriously–if they know Jesus after all they went through, they are real changemakers!

And I think they will change things. I think if we step back, and listen to millennials, we’ll see a better church grow.

And maybe I’ll get to have that reunion one day with all my old friends, and we can talk about these trends together!

 

Here’s How You Can Help Me!

Can I ask a favour? If I can get to 10,000 Instagram followers, it will be so much easier to share blog posts and podcasts and talk about The Great Sex Rescue (our book that’s about to be released!). I’m at around 7,200 now. 

Help me get to 10,000, and follow me on Instagram!

Thank you!

What do you think? Has the church changed for your generation? Which direction is it heading? 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 The Podcast That’s Talking Back to Purity Culture!

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To the Wife Who Feels Like God is Punishing Her for Having Sex Before Marriage

Have you ever felt like God is punishing you, and your sex life in marriage, because of sexual sin before marriage?

(I was going to run a post today where people could get our pre-order bonuses for The Great Sex Rescue. It’s coming tomorrow! Just some last minute changes that had to be made. So I thought I’d say this instead!)

When I first did my surveys for The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex back in 2011, I found that roughly a third of women had never willingly had sex with anyone before their wedding. The rest had, either with their now-husbands or with others, or both.

Despite us talking so much about purity, then, most women, when they get married, have already had consensual sex.

I had a few open ended questions on that survey, and in one of them I asked women if they had anything they’d do differently about their wedding night. The most common response? I wished I had waited. 

As I looked deeper into those open-ended questions, and as I’ve read comments on the blog in the ten years since, I do see a common theme: Many women are worried that God is punishing them because they did sex wrong.

The fear is: I did it wrong, and so I’ve tainted everything. I can never have the bliss that God wanted for me.

Last week, on our podcast, Rebecca and I were talking with Rachel Joy Welcher about purity culture. This idea that our worth is in our virginity (our purity, which is usually defined in sexual terms) is pervasive in evangelicalism. And it can do great harm.

It’s difficult to talk about this well, because I do believe that God intended sex to be in marriage.

However, it’s also a big leap to say that because we messed up, God will punish. 

Yet that’s what so many women are feeling. They have a hard time letting go in the bedroom or enjoying themselves, because they feel like they did it wrong. If sex is difficult, then it must be God punishing them. If it stops feeling good, then God must be punishing them. Or if it felt better before marriage than afterwards, it must be God punishing them.

I think this is a very sad and distorted way of seeing your sex life and of seeing God, and I’d like to go through the thinking behind this a little bit today.

Part of the problem is that we see God’s plan for sex in arbitrary sin terms rather than seeing God’s heart.

Why do you tell your child that they have to eat good food before they get dessert? Is it because you’ll be terribly angry at them if they eat dessert first? Or is it because you want them to eat good food?

Why do you tell your kids they have to stop fighting with each other and figure out how to work things out and how to share? Is it because you’ll be terribly angry at them if they won’t share? Or is it because you know that the best thing for them is to learn how to get along with each other, and that this will put them in good standing for the rest of their lives?

Why is it that you tell kids that it’s wrong to lie to you? Is it because you’ll be terribly, terribly angry at them if they lie? Or is it because you know that a life lived with honesty is better for everyone, and that the habit of lying takes you places that you don’t want your child to go?

I know this is an oversimplification, and God does want our holiness. But sometimes I think we picture God more like an arbitrary pagan God who needs to be appeased with sacrifice than we do a loving, personal God who wants the best for us. If you look at the Commandments, and if you look at how Jesus tells us how to act, one commonality that you’ll often see is God’s protective heart. He wants what is best for us. He wants us to thrive.

When He sets up rules, or boundaries, to live by, those are not arbitrary, in order to stay on God’s good side. Those are so that we will thrive, and we will be protected.

Why does God want sex to be within marriage?

I honestly think it’s mostly a protective thing. Think about ancient cultures, where women were often very disadvantaged. By making sex only within marriage, it ensured that women would be in lifelong relationships where they would have to be cared for. It ensured that children born would be born in stable families. It ensured that disease wouldn’t spread.

And it provided a relationship where intimacy could blossom. With sex being reserved between married couples with lifelong commitment, then sex could be about a sharing of each other and a deep intimacy, a “knowing” as Genesis 4 talks about, rather than just a physical experience that’s shallow.

We read about God’s protective heart towards women in many places in Scripture. In Malachi 2, the prophet writes:

You ask, “Why?” It is because the Lord is the witness between you and the wife of your youth. You have been unfaithful to her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant.

Has not the one God made you? You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring. So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful to the wife of your youth.

“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.

So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

Malachi 2:14-16

God is upset when men leave the wife of their youth. Similarly, in Proverbs we read, “let her breasts satisfy you at all times,” and “may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.” (Proverbs 5:18). Jesus, when the Pharisees came to Him asking if a man could divorce his wife for any reason, said no, because the practice of the time made it easy to ditch women.

And what happened when women were divorced? They had no means of support.

God wanted lifelong commitments, and I do think that’s one reason that He made sex and marriage inseparable. Want sex? Then you need to be stay with your wife and be faithful.

I think in modern times we forget how big a deal this is. You only have to watch Les Miserables and see the horror of being destitute as a woman and having to care for a child you love. I do believe that much of God’s heart towards our sexual ethic revolved around protection–making sure that didn’t happen; making sure families were the basis of society, because families are stable and allow children to grow up with consistent caregivers and love. And families tend to bring more peace.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that God created sex to be an intimate, passionate experience.

He wanted that for humankind. He didn’t want sex to only be about chasing orgasm, but also to be about uniting us in a significant, unique, and beautiful way. He wanted love to grow and commitment to grow and passion to grow, and that can only happen where there is a true relationship with commitment.

He didn’t want broken hearts and broken relationships when we became emotionally and sexually entangled with someone, with all the power that brings, and then the relationship ends.

There are other reasons, of course, but what I want us to see is that God’s heart is not to set an arbitrary rule so that He can be angry if we cross a line. God set up a rule for our protection and for our benefit. 

God cares about us. And that means that God is not a God waiting and wanting to punish.

What happens when we think of God as a punishing God?

We tend to forget about all these protective instincts that God has, and instead focus on how God is just waiting for us to mess up so that He can punish us. That simply isn’t the God of the Bible.

We quote John 3:16 so much, but I wish we’d add John 3:17 to the mix more, because that verse is just as important:

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not die, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

John 3:16-17

God is not waiting and eager to condemn us; God wants to save us!

How does that impact how we see our own sexual history?

God is not punishing you if you didn’t abide by His sexual ethic. 

If you’re having trouble in your sex life today, it is not because God is preventing you from orgasming, or is killing your libido, or is causing your husband to watch porn. God is not waiting to zap you or to hurt you.

Lots of people have issues with sex who did everything right. 

I was a virgin on my wedding night. My husband was a virgin. We did everything right. And yet I had a horrible case of vaginismus that took years to resolve. We did not have it easy, and we did everything right. Many women do everything right and they still have trouble with orgasm, or they still feel hang ups, or they still have issues.

Like we talked about in the podcast last week, doing everything right is not a guarantee of great sex. God does not reward those who did things right with great sex; rather, those who do things right often avoid some of the problems that come from having sex with multiple partners. But that is still no guarantee that sex will be great or easy. 

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You may be experiencing some effects of having sex early. 

All that being said, you may indeed be experiencing some of the effects of having sex before you were married. Not everyone does–but if you’re feeling like God is punishing you, some of this could be the natural effects of your actions. Some couples have sex early in their relationship before they’ve become really emotionally vulnerable, and then the physical pull replaces the emotional connection. You feel closer than you really are, and you think you’re in love when you may not be as close as you want to be. 

Later, when you’re married, you can end up feeling distant from your spouse. But this isn’t because God is punishing you; it may simply be that you didn’t spend enough energy getting to know each other on a heart level. And that can be fixed!

Or maybe part of the allure of sex before you were married was because it was forbidden and therefore “hot”. And now that it’s not forbidden, it doesn’t feel as hot! 

These things can be fixed. 

But here’s the thing: When we see these problems as just issues we’re having in our relationship, then they can be fixed. These are things we can work towards. We can reconnect with our husbands and get to know them on a heart level. You can learn to spice up your marriage! But if you see these things as the fixed state of your marriage because God is punishing you–then there’s no point in working at anything. God doesn’t want that. 

You are new creations together. 

Finally, I often tell people that when they marry, they become a new entity. God forms you together as one flesh. It’s really beautiful. And so think of it as a new beginning, because God does. What happened before is past; the present is what God wants you to work on now. Whatever you did before, Jesus already carried it away. God does not want you punishing yourself for it now.

My dear friends, God does not delight in punishment.

Yes, God punishes a lot in the Bible. But if you look carefully at those instances, it tends to always be about fixing injustices. God gets very angry when we hurt each other, and eventually God will act to punish that. 

That’s because God cares about us and God wants us to live well. Jesus came so that we could have life, and have it to the full. He does not delight in punishing people for sins that they once committed. And He does not set up rules just so that He can punish you if you cross a line.

He wants your good. 

Can you see that in Him today? Can you see that God does not want your marriage tainted because of something you did earlier? 

Yes, you may always regret not doing things in a different order. But that does not mean that your marriage today needs to be tainted or “less than”. It does not mean that God is not pleased with you. It does not mean that God is deliberately making things bad for you.

God wants to smile on you. I pray, dear friends, that you will accept that smile, rather than turning away from it. 

What do you think? Is this something you’ve struggled with? What has God told you? 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 Do You Ever Feel Rejected When Your Husband Seems to Prefer Sleep to Sex?

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How Can We Help Youth Groups Not Teach Harmful Messages about Sex?

How can you make sure that the messages your kids hear in youth group about sex won’t be harmful ones?

One of my big passions is helping sort through the messages about sex that we get in evangelical culture and throwing out the harmful ones and keeping the helpful ones. That’s why we changed the podcast name to Bare Marriage–bare because it’s about sex often, yes, but also because it’s about stripping away the bad stuff.

We were talking on the podcast last week with Rachel Joy Welcher about her new book Talking Back to Purity Culture. To reiterate, we both believe in an orthodox biblical sexual ethic–meaning that we do believe God intends sex for marriage. However, the way that we’ve taught this to teens often has many shame messages that are “extras”, and not necessary, and do more harm than good. 

Messages like:

All boys lust, and so girls have to watch what they wear to protect boys from sinBoys won’t be able to control themselves like girls do, and so girls need to make sure that the relationship never goes too farYour worth is in your purityPurity  = virginity, which is so problematic on many levels. What about sexual assault victims? And isn’t this a shaming message about sex overall? Plus it’s not in line with the Bible, which does not only look at sexual sin. 

Besides, as I said on the podcast: 

Listen to the podcast here!

And read more about things that scare me about purity culture, too. 

After that conversation, a woman emailed me asking:

My oldest is in junior high youth group and I also help lead our senior youth. After listening to and reading your stuff I am so very keen for my kids NOT to hear the Every Man’s Battle version of this stuff and so I have plans to meet with the junior high leaders as well as our youth pastor and my team leaders to nail down exactly what we will be teaching our youth on this topic. 

I have a pretty sinking feeling that the vibe at junior high will be much more leaning towards the things we hate… a focus on girl’s modesty and boys basically doing their best to avoid the problem rather than ever actually address it and encourage them to treat girls with respect. My question is, what questions should I be asking of this leadership and how can I challenge their thinking on this if needed? I do not want to have to counter unhealthy teaching at home if I can avoid it, I would love to see a more healthy culture cultivated on this topic and am very happy to try and lay some of the groundwork, I’m just not sure how to go about it exactly.

Great question! And as we strip away the bad teachings we’ve been given, i’ve become more and more convinced that this starts in junior high and high school. We need to start teaching the right things then. 

So let me give some quick thoughts:

How do we help our kids get good messages at youth group?1. Always keep talking to them at home and let them know what you want them to know

Always, always be your kids’ main source of information about sex. My kids got a really large dose of purity culture at youth group and from reading Brio magazine, but they’ve said that the reason it didn’t impact them that much was because we talked so much at home. 

Besides, even if your youth group itself is okay, often the worst messages kids get are at those youth rallies teens go to (I know that’s the only place I was ever exposed to super unhealthy teaching, and my girls said it was always worse there for them, too). 

We’ve tried to make this easy for you by creating The Whole Story course, a video based course that moms use with their daughters or dads use with their sons. My girls are on the girls’ videos, and my sons-in-law and television personality Sheldon Neil are on the boys’. We’re hoping to create a youth group and Christian school version in the not-too-distant future, but we have so much on our plates right now!

Are you terrified to give your kids “the talk?”

We want to help. So we created The Whole Story: an online video-based course to help parents tell their children about sex, puberty, and growing up.

Let us start those awkward conversations, so you can finish them!

Learn More! 2. Volunteer at Youth Group

Keith and I have led two youth programs in our adult lives, and volunteered at others. I can tell you that most youth leaders love volunteers that are reliable, and that mentor kids other than their own. When you volunteer and build that relationship, you’ll have far more influence over the slant of what is taught. 

So it sounds like this mom is doing everything right!

3. Share the long-term effects of unhealthy teaching

In our new book The Great Sex Rescue, we look at how believing certain common evangelical teachings in high school ends up hurting future marriages–beliefs like “all men struggle with lust”; “boys will want to push your sexual boundaries”, etc. etc. It’s all laid out there. 

The book doesn’t launch yet, but it’s all available for pre-order! I think it’s going to be such an amazing resource.

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?

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Starting tomorrow we’ll have a download available that you can show pastors that gives a quick snapshot of the effects of some of these teachings, and gives a scorecard of some of our Christian bestsellers. I think this will be really handy to give to youth pastors (and pastors). It’s available for anyone who has pre-ordered. Just forward me your receipt or a screenshot of  your order or whatever you have to show that you’ve pre-ordered, and we’ll send it along! 

We’re not set up to do that today, but if you don’t want to miss it, just forward me your receipt now and we’ll get it to you tomorrow when it’s live!

Forward Sheila your pre-order receipt for The Great Sex Rescue!

Want the report that gives a scorecard of our best-selling sex & marriage books on how they handle healthy sexual teaching; a list of the common teachings that hurt sex (and their effects); and how we can reframe how we talk about sex? Just email me your receipt!

Email me!

We’ve just finished our survey of men, and I can tell you that the messages that hurt women’s sexuality hurt men’s too–and the magnitude is even greater for some of them (especially the “all men lust” message). When boys are taught this in high school, sexual dysfunction goes up, porn use goes up, and sexual satisfaction goes down while selfishness increases. It’s bad. I don’t have those numbers ready to share, because we’re working on another book with them, but suffice it to say, NONE of the fruit of this is good. We’ll be talking about it in next week’s podcast!

4. Offer alternative ways of talking about sex

One of the problems that leaders have when you say, “the all men lust message is harmful” is that they reply, “but all men DO lust!”

Now, that’s not empirically true, but nevertheless, they often balk because at some level, there is a kernel of truth. That’s where you can show people how to reframe these messages. For instance, 

Instead of saying…

All men struggle with lust; it’s every man’s battle

You can say…

Many people struggle with lust, and often, but not always, boys more than girls. But many people also don’t. And we know that God is able to help us. This is a battle you can win! 

See the difference?

And also, I think reframing the whole way we talk about this stuff so that it’s less focused on the sin-willpower spectrum and it’s more focused on respect. 

I think a far better message for boys to hear, for instance, is something like:

When you’re tempted towards lust, just remind yourself, “she’s not for me like that right now”, and then ask, “how can I show her respect?”

Instead of being focused on “I must try not to sin,” try to focus on, “I am going to respect her.”

Oh, and one more tip: Don’t say, “tell yourself she’s someone’s sister” or “tell yourself she’s someone’s daughter.” That implies that her worth is still based on her relationship to other people like me, rather than just for who she is. She deserves respect regardless, because of who she is, and the whole “she’s someone’s daughter” teaches us that people only have worth in their relationship to others, not because they’re made in the image of God.

Again, in The Great Sex Rescue we have so many examples of how we can talk about modesty, lust, porn, and other problems in a healthy way rather than an unhealthy way.

5. Talk about things other than sex and porn and lust

One of the reasons my girls found youth rallies ridiculous is that all they ever talked about was sexual struggles or struggles with self-harm and addictions. Yes, those things are important–but they’re not the whole story. They wanted to go deeper with God; to figure out what prayer really looked like; to figure out how to find your calling; to figure out how to do big things for God.

And it seemed like youth rallies only saw them as walking hormones.

I’ve shared before that I know one young man in his twenties who started watching porn because of youth group. They were always talking about porn and how guys struggle with it, and he didn’t struggle. He actually liked treating women with respect.

But after a while he started wondering if he was a real man. So he started dabbling in porn.

It only lasted a few years, because he realized he was treating women differently. But it never would have started had the youth group not talked about porn all the time.

So, yes, it’s important to reframe how we talk about sex and lust. But it’s also important that this is not the main thing the youth group is focused on!

All right, those are my main points for helping youth groups talk about sex well.

It’s okay to have a meeting with the youth group leader to talk about these issues, or to talk to other parents as well.

Again, I think The Great Sex Rescue will be an awesome resource for this, and hopefully we’ll create more of The Whole Story soon. But I’m so glad to see people taking the healthy messages I’m trying to share down to the youth group level!

Let me know–did your youth group, or your kids’ youth group, handle this well or badly? Did you ever talk to a youth leader about this? 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 On Alpha Males and Beta Males and Getting a Mate

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Why Believing All Men Are Sex Machines Leads to So Much Rejection among Women

If we believe that men are insatiable sex machines who will want and need sex everyday, what happens when we marry and wives find their husbands are just human?

This week, on our Bare Marriage podcast, we talked with Rachel Joy Welcher about her book Talking Back to Purity Culture. When I was reading it, one part really resonated with me. She talked about how many women feel unnecessary rejection because they were taught that their husbands would be sexually insatiable.

Then, if you marry and your husband doesn’t chase you around the house or want sex everyday, you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you. You feel rejected.

I talked about this in Wednesday’s post about rejection, and asked the question on Facebook and Twitter about what this message did to women’s sense of closeness with their husbands.

I received so many messages–many in private–and I thought I’d just let some stories speak for themselves today.

I know so many of you wrote about the pain of marrying men who have virtually no libido, and having to learn to live with almost no sex. That’s a huge problem, and I do want to investigate it again soon. (And you can read my posts for higher drive wives, too!)

But I want today to look at what happens when there’s actually not a problem–but our resources turn what’s a normal difference into a problem. 

What happens when we’re told that men are sex machines, and your husband has a normal, or on the lower-end-of-normal, sex drive?

Feeling rejected when there’s actually not a problem

 

I grew up in a strict purity culture movement centered entirely on a man’s need for sex. I was told all through high school that men want sex all the time and once you’re married just make sure it happens every day. As an older woman said “it only takes 15 minutes to meet his needs.” Knowing, since puberty, I had a high drive I thought my husband would be over the moon once we got married. We were both virgins. I was absolutely stunned when I found out he didn’t want or need sex every day. I was truly lost and heartbroken and it took several years of pain, resentment and some difficult conversations to work through it. Thankfully, we have settled into a rhythm of how many times each month we have sex. We have learned to better communicate our needs. I don’t understand why the focus has always been on the man needing sex rather than teaching newlyweds how to communicate with each other about one another’s specific needs. It would have saved so much heartbreak. My husband has a DIFFERENT drive than mine. It’s not even all that much lower. He does have a healthy desire for sex, he just doesn’t need it three times a day. His drive just felt low because of what I had always been told men are like (which is an incredibly unhealthy view of men, btw).

H.M.

When we were first married, my husband was starting his first job and I had a much easier schedule. I basically sat around all day waiting for him to come home, and often expected he’d want to jump into bed as soon as he walked in the door, and it was hurtful when he frequently didn’t, and often didn’t want to have sex at all that day.

We read the Act of Marriage while we were engaged (I know) and I remember reading all the stuff about how women won’t really want or enjoy sex, and I had quite a high sex drive and felt like there was something wrong with me. So finding out my sex drive was higher than my husband’s was a real shock to the system and quite hard to deal with at the time. We talked through it though, he made me realise it wasn’t about how attractive he found me. Years have passed and we’ve worked through this, but it was hard at first!

B.

Feeling lonely because you’re never pursued–though you were promised you would be.

I don’t mean to downplay this problem, because it is a real one. But so many women said that they felt teachings that all men are sex machines make this even worse.

Yes! It was really hard for me when he didn’t want me all the time, or even frequently. In the beginning of our marriage he was so consumed with work and it’s stress I started keeping track of when we had sex and would confront him with the fact it has been over a week and question why he didn’t want me. The feeling of rejection cut really deep for me. Pregnancy also took my drive pretty high and when he wasn’t interested I felt rejected personally a lot and had serious body image issues. Multiple times in our short marriage I’ve been the one initiating and I have nearly lost heart because I just want to be pursued by him. All my training about men’s lust and women’s responsibility to keep them from lusting didn’t prepare me for any of that. Thankfully, we have really tried to work hard together to communicate with, and listen to, each other and things begin to even out now, but I still struggle with those leftover rejection feelings.

L.L.

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Honestly, I wish we could believe that men are not one-dimensional. Sex is not the only thing, or even the primary thing, that motivates most men. That’s what these women found–that their husbands were simply human, with real feelings as well.

I grew up in the height of purity culture but was fortunate that I didn’t absorb most of the negative teachings about sex. However the one lie that I really internalized was the idea that men always want sex all the time. So I assumed that most marriage problems were due to a negative view of sex by women and since I was sex positive, I naively figured I would have no problems with sex in my marriage since everything I read implied that sexual issues in marriage were caused by women not wanting sex.

I was caught so off guard when it turned out that my husband only wanted sex infrequently. There have been times that I felt angry and hopeless. This is a real problem that we need to work on, however, the thought that my husband must not love me if he doesn’t want sex tonight definitely makes the problem even worse. I’ve had to reframe and remember that my husbands lower drive doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love me and that he is a person who gets tired and run down just like I do.

E.

Yes, the teachings I grew up with related to sexuality perpetuated negative stereotypes and hurt my marriage! We married as virgins after dating since high school. I was very much looking forward to sex; and was very surprised when my new husband didn’t want sex every day. Some days he just wanted to cuddle and watch a movie and fall asleep. We have been married well over a decade and he has always been this way. I wouldn’t say he is low drive, but he definitely isn’t high drive. He also told me he doesn’t really struggle with lust and he doesn’t think about sex itself that often. There’s nothing pathological about this, but it has left me feeling very rejected throughout most of our marriage because i wasn’t being pursued the way I had expected. It took years of honest conversation and some marriage counseling for me to finally believe him and accept him. Interestingly enough, he also doesn’t want sex if we are in an argument or emotionally disconnected— he wants us to fix the conflict first, and have some quality time, before connecting on a physical level. This is the opposite of what I’d been taught about men. I thought sex would be my magic trick to resolve things between us, but he is more complicated than that. I had to learn to see my husband as a unique individual, rather than put him in a box just because “all men are supposed to be like THIS “.

T.

I had a very standard 80s/90s Christian church culture upbringing (lots of Dobson, Brio magazine, and later Eldreges, Eggerichs, etc.). The cumulative effect of these teachings lead me to believe that a man was practically helpless to resist his wife’s advances. I was an awfully conservative young woman, so the idea of being seductive was hard for me to grow into. When I finally gathered up the courage to make a move, I was met with disinterest from my husband. I was embarrassed. I was hurt. And I felt lied to–hadn’t all of that mentoring, all of those tropes about gender, basically guaranteed me success in this? It was quite painful. It happened more than once too, and the results were even more difficult for me to process. In short, it bordered on cruelty: my husband laughed at me. I can’t quite put into words the gaping, gnawing chasm in my gut as I realized that I was not automatically “captivating” (thank you, Eldreges), my desire to be seen as lovely was not automatically matched by my “hero’s” desire to make me feel lovely (thank you, Eggerichs), and in more scientific analysis, my nakedness did not produce automatic arousal (thank you, Dobson). So much of my pain could have been mitigated if the church had presented sexuality as complex, emotional (for men too, not just women), and honestly fragile–something that needs to be handled with care. I felt like it been talked about in more transactional, crude ways. All of the talk in the church about sex (because the church does like to talk a lot about sex) left out so much of the mystery, the pain, the unfulfilled longing, the artistry. I learned two things: I repented of thinking so uni-dimensionally of men. They are not beholden solely to their physical desires, they are full, holistic people. Secondly, I learned through pain that sex isn’t the bandaid that the church presented it as–it doesn’t solve marital conflict. We have had sex in the middle of conflicts! For what its worth, it helped remind us of our togetherness, but it didn’t end the arguing. I think that (my) Christian culture had presented sex as the great panacea–to solve lust! to solve loneliness! to solve conflict! and that misunderstands sex by trying to make it do too much. It is far to vulnerable of an act, and far too fleeting of fulfillment for it to bear that much weight. 

L.W.

And here’s Lisa on Facebook, summing up the whole thing succinctly:

In addition to normal variation of libido, the idea that all men want sex all the time is part of not treating men as experiencing human emotions as much as women. Which is sad and wrong.

Exhaustion, illness, stress, anxiety, depression, and/or feeling emotionally disconnected from their wives can reduce libido for many men. They are not robots or sex driven animals

Lisa

Exactly! If we believe that sex is not just physical, but is also about emotional and spiritual intimacy, then the whole person needs to matter. And our husbands are whole people.

I hope that we can start looking at libido in a healthier way. Not all men have the higher libido. Even among men with the higher libido, that doesn’t mean they will want sex all the time, or will be insatiable.

Sex is a part of life, but it is not the whole of life, and we shouldn’t make it more than it is. Perhaps if we had that perspective, then these differences, when they happened, would just be more a normal part of life, rather than a devastating rejection.

What do you think? Have we created unnecessary problems? What’s the best way to change this conversation?

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 The Church’s #MeToo Reckoning

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The Podcast That’s Talking Back to Purity Culture!

Did you grow up with purity culture? And if so, how did it affect you?

We’re launching in to two months of podcasts looking at how specific beliefs may impact sex in marriage, all leading up to the release of our new book The Great Sex Rescue, based on our survey of 20,000 women. It’s coming March 2, and I’m so excited!

One of the things we covered in our book, but didn’t delve too deeply into, was “purity culture”–that cultural movement in the 1990s and early 2000s that equated purity with virginity, asked teens not to kiss until marriage, and promised great rewards if they did everything right.

We didn’t go into it too much (though we certainly discussed many aspects of it!) because other books had already done that so well.

One of those books is Rachel Joy Welcher’s Talking Back to Purity Culture, which is awesome. And we were thrilled to have her on the podcast today, to talk about unrealistic expectations, and then answer some reader questions with us!

Listen in to this second edition of the Bare Marriage podcast (we just rebranded from the To Love, Honor and Vacuum podcast!). 

Listen to the Podcast Here

Browse all the Different Podcasts

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

And, as always, you can watch on YouTube if you’d prefer:

 

Timeline of the Podcast

0:30 What is purity culture?
3:21 Are we promised great sex lives if we wait until marriage?
6:45 Does purity culture give us a selfish view of sex?
8:01 Does sex before marriage doom your sex life?
10:20 Virginity = Purity?
13:30 Conservative Christianity could be linked to risky sex?
18:03 RQ: Advice for my daughter who is struggling to ‘stay pure’?
23:58 RQ: A single woman struggling with porn and masturbation
37:45 A discussion on how sexual assault is portrayed in Christian books
42:08 Research on honeymoon sex and arousal levels
47:25 Is more information better when teaching kids/teenagers about sex?

Main Segment: Were you promised great sex if you did everything right?

I decided to delve deeply into one particular chapter of Rachel’s book–the promise that if you do everything right and wait until marriage for sex, you’ll experience amazing sexual rewards. Sex will be great and easy and you’ll have it all the time.

Rachel actually critiqued many of the same books we do in the Great Sex Rescue, with some difference. She focused more on books for singles; we focused more on books for married couples. But we came to similar conclusions–including that Every Man’s Battle calling women “methadone” for their husband’s sex addictions is sick in multiple ways.

Reader Question: How can I help my 19-year-old daughter stay pure?

A concerned mom writes in:

My fantastic 19-year-old daughter just tearfully confessed to me that she and her boyfriend of two years are struggling in their physical relationship. Sex has not happened yet and they are both Christians and want to remain pure until marriage. Due to school and military commitments marriage is out of the question for at least 2 more years. Besides setting up rules for their relationship (never being alone together where someone can’t walk in) what other advise is there? Is there a book that’s recommended?

We had plenty to say about this one (especially the equation of virginity with purity), but you can all chime in in the comments as well!

Reader Question: How do I stop masturbating to porn?

This one’s from a young woman: 

I’m single and very interested in sex and have a high sex drive. I want to experience a great sex life in marriage and have everything that God wants for me, but I’m afraid I’ve wrecked it. I started watching porn and masturbating to porn when I was 14. It’s been hard to stop. I talked to a mentor about it and she said that masturbation is okay without pornography, so I’ve been trying to do that instead, but I find I can’t finish and often turn to porn just to get release. Will this continue when I’m married? How do I stop?

I have other posts on how to break the porn habit, but we talked here about how sometimes our rhetoric around lust and porn makes it sound like you’ve doomed your life, when you really haven’t. Yes, porn rewires the brain. But you know what else rewires the brain? Counseling. Letting go of the porn. The brain is elastic and healing is more than possible!

Again, leave your answers to this one in the comments!

New Research: Most women have lousy sex on their honeymoons

Okay, this one isn’t entirely new research, because some of it is from my book The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, but what I found when surveying women for that book is that about 20% of women have great sex on their honeymoon, 20% have terrible sex, if they do anything at all, and for the rest it’s pretty blah. Follow that up with an informal poll I did on social media last year, and only 52% of women report being aroused the first time they had sex when they were married.

So how can we better understand the sexual response cycle, and make it so that sex is more of a natural progression, even if you wait for marriage, rather than something you have to do right away?

We talked about this a lot last spring when we looked at arousal as the missing piece in many women’s sex lives.

We loved having Rachel on the podcast!

Check her out on:

Her InstagramHer TwitterAnd, of course, check out Talking Back to Purity Culture Going shopping?

Use my link to support this blog!

Things Mentioned in This Podcast: Talking Back to Purity CultureThe Good Girl’s Guide to Great SexThe Great Sex Rescue (coming March 2; you can pre-order now!)Why arousal can be difficult for women when we don’t understand the sexual progression10 things to know about women and pornWhy I Didn’t Rebel (Rebecca’s book where she talked about how more conservative religious teens are more prone to participate in risky sexual behaviour than less conservative but still religious teens)

What do you think? How did purity culture affect you? Or do you have any thoughts on any of our reader questions? Chime in 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 The World’s a Mess. God Still Sees You.

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Do You Ever Feel Rejected When Your Husband Seems to Prefer Sleep to Sex?

I wonder: since we’ve grown up believing so much that men want sex all the time, then when he doesn’t initiate sex, do women feel rejected?

I’m not talking about the rejection that higher drive wives feel (that’s real, and that’s difficult, and I’ve got a series on what to do if your husband doesn’t want sex here.)

I mean that even lower drive wives can feel rejected, even if they don’t want sex themselves, if their husbands don’t proposition them.

I want to talk today about the dynamic where he has a libido and does want sex…but it may not be everyday. He’s perfectly healthy, there’s no porn use, he just isn’t necessarily always trying to get sex. 

Tomorrow on the podcast we’re featuring Rachel Joy Welcher, who wrote Talking Back to Purity Culture (which is a great book!). Rebecca and I had a great conversation with her that I know you’ll enjoy. But as I read her book over the weekend, I came across this part that stirred up some thoughts:

I thought sex would be my magical wifely power, able to comfort and cure anything that ailed my husband. Because I was told that he would want sex constantly, I experienced deep and unnecessary rejection when he wasn’t in the mood. Men had been painted as sex machines, not human beings who experience tiredness, sickness, and stress, just like everyone else. (p. 98)

Rachel Joy Welcher

Talking Back to Purity Culture

Earlier she’s recounting a conversation she had with two men, Blake and John, who are good husbands with normal sex drives, but who chafed at the description of men as sex machines. Welcher writes:

“I went into my marriage with certain expectations,” Blake told us. “Things people were telling me, like men crave sex six times more than women do.”

“Where did you hear that?” I asked him.

“One of the megachurch pastors was on stage with his wife and they were breaking it down.” He continued, “A wife might think her husband is looking at pornography, when really, maybe he just had a long day, and if you sit still long enough, you’re going to fall asleep.”

We all laughed. I thought about times I’ve interpreted my husband’s tiredness as rejection and other woman who have shared similar experiences. It is a deep pain, pressed deeper still by the stereotype that men always want sex. Women wonder if there is something wrong with their body, their perfume, or their performance in bed. They wrack their brains trying to figure out what they are doing wrong. Shouldn’t their husband always want them? (p. 57-58)

Rachel Joy Welcher

Talking Back to Purity Culture

When  he doesn’t want sex everyday, she often interprets it as rejection, because she hears that men’s sexual appetites are insatiable, and he can’t feel close to her without sex.

As Blake and John continue to discuss this with Rachel, one makes the observation that it’s not so much that Christian men are obsessed with sex as it is that they are immersed in sex. Christian manhood is almost always defined as:

Getting a job and providingWanting sex a lot (and working at being good at it)Lifting lots of weights and being physically strong

Sex is so much of the male conversation that the church ends up reinforcing negative stereotypes. Just because some men struggle with lust doesn’t mean all do; just because some men struggle with porn doesn’t mean all do. But when we talk constantly about these struggles, it can give the impression that real men lust and struggle with porn and want sex all the time, and only “wimps” don’t (like we were talking about yesterday).

That ends up hurting men, who can feel “unmasculine” or “beta” if they actually treat women like whole people, and it hurts women who can feel rejected by a husband who isn’t sex obsessed.

Right now Keith and I are writing The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex, and I’d like to include some stories from this perspective in it, because I don’t think this is talked about enough.

So I thought I’d just ask a question today: have unrealistic expectations about sex and your husband’s sexual appetite ever left you feeling rejected, even when your husband is simply acting like a normal guy? What was that like for you? Did you ever talk about it? How have you worked that through?

I’d love to about it!

(And get ready for tomorrow’s podcast with Rachel, because it’s awesome!).

And if you do have difficulty because your husband doesn’t want sex and it’s a perpetual problem, here are some other posts that can help:Why Doesn’t My Husband Want to Make Love?10 Things Higher Drive Wives Need to Know8 Questions to Ask if Your Husband Doesn’t Want SexWhat to do When Your Husband Won’t Initiate Sex

Let me know: Have unrealistic expectations about a husband’s “sex machine” libido ever left you feeling rejected? How did you work it out? Or if you’re a guy, has that stereotype hurt you? 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

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