Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 41
January 12, 2021
On Alpha Males and Beta Males and Getting a Mate
The comic book character Archie was always your typical beta. So was Richie Cunningham from Happy Days, while Fonzie played more the alpha.
And girls prefer bad boys! Don’t they?
Well, maybe the whole alpha and beta thing isn’t that simple.Even though our book The Great Sex Rescue is launching March 2, Keith and I are in the middle of writing the first draft of The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex. Keith’s been doing all this research and going down all these rabbit holes to figure out what makes sex best for both men and women.
Not surprisingly, the idea of “confidence” and the alpha male has come up a lot. But the more that Keith’s done research into this, the more he’s found both that alphas don’t exist in human societies the way that we think; but also that the whole idea of what will make an alpha is skewed.
The most dominant, meanest, strongest animal often loses out on alpha statusThe idea for the “alpha” really comes from animal studies, where one male animal seems to be in charge of a whole group of women and children, providing them protection in exchange for mating rights. And that male fights off both other males and other predators. In other animal groupings, the non-alpha males aren’t expelled, but one dominant does rise to the top. So how do these groups decide who is dominant? Is it always the most aggressive, meanest, and strongest?
Turns out it’s often not. Animals can gain alpha status by doing favours for other animals. Sometimes the animals just realize they don’t want a bully in charge, and so they find an alternative. In many primate groups, the females are quick to defend the group against intruders as well, and don’t rely only on the male to be strong. So they’ll choose a male who won’t abuse them. In fact, in many animal societies it’s the women who decide who they want to be in charge–and again, it’s usually not the most predatory. It’s usually a combination of strength, yes, but also an alpha who will treat them and their children well.
When it comes to human societies, we tend to prefer stability over bullying behaviour, too. While there is a certain amount of typical “alpha” behaviour that societies may tolerate, and even like, at some point it becomes too much. A person who is violent disrupts the entire society, and so they’ll be ostracized.
We may talk about the macho, controlling, bullying alpha man as being the most attractive, but it turns out most women would rather have a caring man, just like most chimps or wolves or any number of other animals.
What makes “alpha” attractive may not be what we think.I read a really interesting study as Keith and I were looking into this that I want to share with you that helps illuminate what it is that women want. It was one of the earliest studies done on dominance and sexual attraction, and it’s talked about in this article on alpha males.
In the original study, college-aged women were given one of two descriptions of John, a tennis player. Both descriptions started out with the same sentences:
John is 5’10” tall, 165 lbs. He has been playing tennis for one year and is currently enrolled in an intermediate tennis class. Despite his limited amount of training he is a very coordinated tennis player, who has won 60% of his matches.
The Myth of the Alpha MaleThen one group was given a further description of John that used words like confident, dominant, authority, and assertive. Another group read a passage that described John as “not particularly competitive“, and somebody who preferred to play for fun rather than to win, and who was easily dominated by others.
When given those two descriptions–one of the typical Alpha, or dominant male, and one of the typical Beta, or submissive male, dominant John was called the most sexually attractive, but also the least appealing as a spouse.
But then the researchers wondered, what words are women actually reacting to when they called alpha John sexually appealing?
In follow-up studies, they found that “dominance” and “assertive” were appealing, but “aggressive” and domineering” were not.
But guess which John scored the best between dominant and assertive John, aggressive and domineering John, and John with no adjectives, where it was just three-sentence John with no qualifiers?
Turns out sexiest John is three-sentence John, with none of these descriptors at all (like above).
What’s going on? Well, this most certainly doesn’t mean that the extremely brief three-sentence description of the John depicted in the control condition was sexually appealing. Rather, it’s more probable that hearing about either dominant or nondominant behavior, in isolation of other information about him, made him less sexually attractive. The researchers conclude: “In short, a simple dominant-nondominant dimension may be of limited value when predicting mate preferences for women.”
The Myth of the Alpha MaleThey went on and measured more words, and developed a new way of looking at what actually is sexually appealing. Here’s what they concluded:
Instead of thinking about alpha males and dominance, we should start thinking about prestige.Prestige is formed when people (males in this case) use their assertiveness and confidence to gain other people’s approval and to gain status in the long-term. It’s not about being domineering in the here and now, but about demonstrating a particular character over time. They further elaborate:
The dominant male who is demanding, violent, and self-centered is not considered attractive to most women, whereas the dominant male who is assertive and confident is considered attractive. As the researchers suggest, “Men who dominate others because of leadership qualities and other superior abilities and who therefore are able and willing to provide for their families quite possibly will be preferred to potential partners who lack these attributes.”
Their results also suggest that sensitivity and assertiveness are not opposites. In fact, further research suggests that the combination of kindness and assertiveness might just be the most attractive pairing.
The Myth of the Alpha Male What I find so interesting about this is that you’re basically describing Jesus.Jesus was confident and assertive, but he also cared deeply for people. His kindness was what gave him moral authority and status–basically prestige.
And these characteristics of being assertive and confident but also kind and sensitive are not true only for males, but also for females.
I worry that the “Alpha Male” that many talk about in the church isn’t Christlike at all–and also is the least appealing to women.We tend to divide men into “real men” and “wimps”. And yet this isn’t telling the real story. That “real alpha man” who is domineering, aggressive, controlling? He doesn’t usually win, either in the animal kingdom or in love.
As the study concluded:
Taken together, the research suggests that the ideal man (for a date or romantic partner) is one who is assertive, confident, easygoing, and sensitive, without being aggressive, demanding, dominant, quiet, shy, or submissive. In other words, a prestigious man, not a dominant man.
The Myth of the Alpha MaleI find this whole thing fascinating, and if you want a shorter look at the alpha male debate, here’s an awesome four minute video from the Adam Ruins Everything YouTube channel:
Now, that still doesn’t answer the question about why women often go for bad boys.
I think for that we need to look more into trauma theory, and how, when we’ve been traumatized and hurt in the past, we often subconsciously recreate those relationship dynamics because they feel normal, but also because it gives ourselves a chance to get it right this time.
The only problem? It never works.
So all that is to say that aggressive, domineering behaviour is not what is sexy.Women: we need to see these behaviours as red flags. We need to steer our kids clear of them by teaching empathy and real Christlikeness. And men? Let’s stop idolizing and propping up other men who display these character traits. Let’s prop up men who are assertive but also humble, who are kind, and who show empathy. That’s what Jesus did, and I think He’s a pretty good example!
What do you think? Do we emphasize the wrong things in masculinity? What do you think are the most appealing traits? 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 PostsJan 7, 2021 | 13 Comments
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January 11, 2021
The Church’s #MeToo Reckoning
Publisher’s Weekly named Ruth Everhart’s The #MeToo Reckoning one of their books of the year for 2020 in the religion category, and for good reason. The #MeToo Reckoning looks at how the church has often been complicit in covering up sexual abuse in churches, or has actually enabled sexual abuse by some of the ways that it talks about authority, gender, and sex.
And it needs to stop. If the church is going to be a place where people can experience Jesus and find safety, then it has to actually care for the sheep rather than defending the wolves.
Ruth’s book is riveting, filled with true stories of abuse, but also interwoven with Scriptural stories that Ruth will help you see in a whole new way. In reading it, I also realized some of the ways that in the past I have enabled a culture that protected people’s images rather than really cared for the “unimportant” at the bottom of the ladder.
I invited Ruth to tell us a bit about her heart behind the book today. And she’ll be joining us on our podcast next week, too! So here’s Ruth:
I’m a little jealous of Sheila.We both write about sex and faith, but she writes about sexual pleasure — orgasms — while I write about sexual assault and shame.
It’s pretty obvious that she got the better gig.
In my defense, I didn’t choose my topic; my topic chose me. I was the victim of a brutal assault when I was 20 years old. I’ve written an award-winning memoir about the experience, but the basic facts are these: when I was a senior in college, two armed strangers broke into the home I shared with friends. They terrorized us for hours, and took turns raping us at gunpoint. To put it simply, I didn’t know how to process the evil acts my friends and I had endured.
Unfortunately, my religious subculture seemed equally undone by what had happened to us. The college we attended was Christian, but the authorities seemed unable to account for the reality of the evil we experienced. Even worse, the messages about sexual purity that I’d been peppered with while growing up had become part of my identity, and these triggered a huge amount of sexual shame. Was I still a “good girl” after a man had “had his way with” me (as my mother put it)?
Still, even though my faith community abandoned me in my time of need, Jesus did not.As I drove through the darkened streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan, hitting my steering wheel and imploring: Why did this happen? I did not get a Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus answer. But I did feel a listening presence. I did receive a measure of comfort. Later I came to realize that these rants — perhaps my first authentic prayers — were the beginning of a faith journey.
It took a decade to rebuild my faith and life. This soul-searching process eventually landed me in seminary, which was an especially significant shift because my conservative Christian upbringing did not allow women to be ordained.
When, decades later, I wrote my memoir about that fateful night, I thought I was putting something to bed. I wanted those pages to be the end of my journey with sexual assault.
Instead, it was a beginning.
After Christianity Today Women named RUINED the 2017 “Book of the Year,” messages and emails poured in. Most of them were from women who wanted to thank me for sharing my story, and, most often, tell me their own stories of abuse, whether in thumbnail form or excruciating detail.
As I traveled to speak about the memoir, I quickly realized that very few people of faith address sexual abuse frankly, and there are few safe places where victims and survivors can tell their painful stories. Just months later, in the fall of 2017, the #MeToo movement took hold. Stories of abuse were featured prominently in major newspapers. I felt excited that victims’ voices were being heard.
But the response from the church — the lack of response — angered me.Instead of joining this justice movement, or offering leadership to it, many faith leaders decried it. Victims were told to be silent, to protect the church from suffering for its past harms. That angered me. I felt the Spirit calling me to go broader and bolder with another writing project.
I decided to tell ten true stories about sexual abuse within churches. Some of those stories are my own, a sort of unwelcome follow-up to being raped at gunpoint, an experience which seemed to mark me. The other stories belong to brave survivors who entrusted them to me. As I wrote about each story, I chose an ancient story from scripture to interweave with the contemporary one. I had not seen a writer do this before, but I knew the braided narratives would inform each other. I wanted readers to experience the power of scripture firsthand.
One such story is Melissa’s:
(Sheila’s synopsis)
Ruth tells the heartbreaking story of Melissa, a homeschool graduate who had spent time on the mission field, become engaged to a wonderful man, and then lost that man to a sudden illness and death. As she was coping with grief, she was raped one night by an unknown assailant. She was so shamed she couldn’t tell anyone–except John, her friend from church. John came over to comfort her, but ended up raping her, too.
It took Melissa years to work through the shame.
Ruth writes of this:
“When Melissa’s “friend” John raped her, he was following the logic of purity culture. Even though he originally offered to console her, it seems as though his lens quickly shifted as he realized the implications of what she told him. Since she had been raped, she was no longer virginal and pure, but damaged. Her decreased value meant that she was less a person to be in relationship with, and more an object to be acted on. She was fair game. In this scenario, Melissa was “spoiled goods.”
Purity culture creates a trap. A woman’s “most-prized pos- session” is something that can be ripped from her by force. This implicitly casts women as frail creatures, potential victims, rather than powerful moral agents in their own lives. It down- plays their agency. In contrast, purity culture urges men to stay pure, but through a message that has much less intensity. Why are the two genders viewed so differently? Rhetoric about the radically different lives that God intends for women and men is nothing but a smokescreen to hide cultural sins. The two genders were created equal and deserve equal respect and dignity.
How much dignity was involved in Melissa’s story? No person should be reduced to just a body or body part.”
Ruth Everhart The #MeToo movement may be current news, but what it protests is not new.Sexual assault is as old as Scripture. Only particular forms of exposure and accountability are new: the hashtags, the social media, the front page coverage. It may be new that some powerful men have faced public consequences. But the struggle for justice after sexual assault is an old story. Others have engaged this struggle, and we stand on their shoulders, grateful.
This reckoning will take a stout heart and strong stomach.And it will cost us. Exposing our dark past may cost our churches their reputations and cultural authority—if they have any left. But Jesus says, “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35). Churches may need to lose many things, even everything. Let’s hope that churches lose the right things: an addiction to cultural power and authority, a self-righteous clamp on the idol of sexual purity, an attachment to secrecy and silence as effective means of control. I pray that these things will wash away as the power of Jesus captures another generation.
As it always does. As it cannot not.
The Jesus we follow is like no other. His love changes everything.He is the divine one who came into this world via vagina. To Jesus, women’s bodily experiences matter. To Jesus, all humans bear the image of God equally. To Jesus, the voices of victims crying out for justice is a beatitude sung by a chorus.
Will we stop and listen?
Has your church done a good job with this? Or have you seen some bad things happen, too? What should be our next steps? Let’s talk in the comments!
Ruth Everhart Author of The #MeToo Reckoning
Ruth Everhart is a Presbyterian pastor whose writing explores the hidden ways religious belief shapes our thinking about the lives of women. Her most recent book, THE #METOO RECKONING: Facing the Church’s Complicity in Sexual Abuse and Misconduct , was named one of the best Religion books of 2020 by Publishers Weekly. FacebookTwitter Related Posts How Do I Reconnect with My Husband? Finding the Spark AgainJan 5, 2021
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The World’s a Mess. God Still Sees You.
This week the world watched as America went crazy.
It actually broke my heart to see the nation that has been the shining light of democracy the world around have insurrectionists attempt a coup.
I have had the privilege of visiting so many moving American monuments about freedom and democracy; I mourned on Wednesday to see what was happening.
At Gettysburg
At the D-Day Monument with Katie: “We are determined that before the sun sets on our terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom….”
I don’t like getting political on this blog, but I hope we can all agree that, no matter one’s political leanings, what was done on Epiphany (how ironic!) was unconscionable.
The only thing making it worse was all the “Jesus Saves” signs they were carrying.
I’d like to share some quick lessons I’ve learned trying to process how things can go so wrong.
As I’ve shared on recent , and on the blog for the last year and a half, it’s been so disillusioning watching the evangelical church spread such dangerous and harmful messages about marriage, sex, and women. How can a group that I love get it so wrong?
Where is Jesus?
And as I push back, and try to get people to see the truth, I often get attacked. Or people do things that I can’t see Jesus ever doing or saying.
I know that’s what many people are reeling from right now, and here are a few things that have helped me process when my world appears to be falling apart:
1. Not everyone who says they’re a Christian is a Christian.
One of the big things I had trouble dealing with was, “how can people who know Jesus say such things or act in such a way?”
Why doesn’t God do something? Could God really be okay with this?
But as Rebecca reminds me frequently, “Just because people can quote the four spiritual laws does not mean that they’re Christian.” In fact, Jesus spoke very clearly that those who know Him will:
hear His voice and recognize His voice
love one another, and be primarily known by their love
bear good fruit
If someone is not loving; is bearing terrible fruit; is known as a judgmental person who wrecks everything he or she touches–it could be that he or she doesn’t know Christ at all.
And the Bible is clear that many in the last days will say, “Lord, Lord,” and Jesus will say, “Depart from Me, because I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:21-23). Many people think they are following Christ when really they are following nothing of the sort.
To me, that’s actually a hopeful message.
2. Many are always speaking truth; but rarely are these people in power
If you wonder why those in power don’t “get” it, it’s likely because, as Rebecca and I , there’s no real incentive for them to get it. There’s a reason that pressure to get rid of slavery; end the Salem witch trials; reform the church; fight pornography; fight child sex trafficking; feed the hungry; deal with abuse has come first from voices outside of power in the church. Christians will be fighting for all these things, but often they’re fighting the leaders in the church. And each time a victory is won, and the church becomes a little bit better, then a new institution is calcified. No institution, though, will ever be perfect; there are always changes that need to be made. But leaders, who have their power and jobs from things staying the way they are, are usually not the force for that change.
Leaders rarely do the right thing until they lose the people they are leading.
When the people turn against the leaders, then, and only then, does real change usually occur within the church. Until then, it tends to take place outside the church walls. Once people abandon the church in great numbers, then it becomes incumbent on leaders to change, and they do.
So if you’re dismayed that leaders aren’t leading, look outside of leadership. People are indeed leading the way. Look for them. You’ll find them. Join them.
I find the story of Elijah so interesting in this regard. Elijah has spent years calling out King Ahab and all the priests of the land. He’s been studying the leaders, wondering why they’re not following God, and driving himself crazy (almost literally) because of it. Even after the big showdown on Mount Carmel, when he called down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice, while the priests of Baal accomplished nothing, and even after he had all kinds of priests executed, the leaders still weren’t listening to him. He felt like he was the only one.
So he went off in the wilderness, as the leaders of the day were out to get him, and he felt sorry for himself. God showed up, and talked to him, and made him many promises of what would happen. But this reassurance is very apt for today:
Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.
1 Kings 19:18
Earlier Elijah had had this showdown with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. After he won that showdown, he had them all killed.
So he had been focusing on these 850 people, plus the king and queen, who were at the head of the country, and who had turned against God.
And then Elijah told God that he was all alone; he was the only one left.
God replied by telling him, “Actually, there are 7000 more that I have reserved.” 7000.
That’s almost 10 times as many as Elijah had seen killed.
They weren’t high powered. They weren’t visible. But they mattered. They believed. Elijah was not alone.
The halls of power may disappoint you. But perhaps we should stop looking at the halls of power, either in evangelicalism or in politics or wherever, and start looking for likeminded people, wherever they are, who are running after Jesus.
3. Tipping Points Happen Quickly
One of Malcolm Gladwell’s first big books was The Tipping Point. His question was, “how does something that has been present in culture, but has been largely ignored, suddenly become something that everyone knows about?” How does an idea, a product, a cultural moment become part of our consciousness?
I love that book from a social and a marketing point of view.
But it’s also a really good way to describe what’s been happening. There’s been a drip-drip-drip of scandal in the church for years. Sexual abuse. Power hungry pastors falling. Coverups. Everyday there’s a new headline.
But when does anything actually change?
What Gladwell showed was that when change finally happens, it tends to happen very, very quickly.
Everything that can be shaken will be shaken.
I think these verses from Hebrews 12 describe what has been happening in so many arenas lately:
At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”f]">[f]
Hebrews 12:26-29
Everything is being shaken. And when things change, they will change quickly.
Do you feel like everything is accelerating? I do. That’s scary to live through, as what we have built many of our identities around is all falling down and crumbling around us.
But it’s also comforting to know that God is at work. He is shaking. And when we remain in Him, we will still remain.
4. God sees you.
Finally, one last thing–or perhaps the most important one.
Elijah had his eyes on the seats of power, and felt alone, like the world was ending–and God told him to look lower.
God doesn’t only look at those in power. Our God’s eye is on the sparrow. He knows if it falls. He sees you. He is not only concerned with those in power. He cares about you.
I want to leave you with an excerpt from our upcoming book The Great Sex Rescue (which you can pre-order now):
When the three of us think of how badly women have been hurt by the obligation-sex message, whether through manipulation, obligation, coercion, or pain, we’re reminded of the Bible story of Hagar, Abraham, and Sarah. As you may remember, God had promised Abraham he would have a son and from this son God would make a great nation. The problem? Abraham and Sarah were both old, and Sarah was barren. In desperation, Sarah suggested that Abraham have a child with her slave, Hagar.
Nothing in the Bible story tells us that Hagar was a willing participant. As a servant, she would not have been able to truly consent. Her feelings and needs wouldn’t matter. Nevertheless, Abraham heeded Sarah’s advice and used Hagar to have a son. Some years later, miraculously Abraham does have a child with Sarah. Now Hagar and her son Ishmael were threats to Isaac, the child of the promise. Abraham sends Hagar and her son away.
While she is in the desert, God provides for her. And here’s where things get interesting. Hagar is the first person in Scripture who is given the honor of bestowing a name upon God. And the name she chooses? “The God who sees me.” After being sexually assaulted, forced to carry a baby, and then abandoned, never having her needs or wishes taken into account, being invisible and used to meet other people’s needs, God sees her.
And being seen makes all the difference.
Sheila Gregoire, Rebecca Lindenbach, Joanna Sawatsky
God sees you. You matter.
We are living in a time when everything is being shaken, and the foundations of what we thought we believed and what we thought are holding us up are crumbling down.
But God has not left. He remains. And we are not alone. He has reserved others.
Cling to Him. Look for the fruit. See who is moving towards Christ. And know that you are never, ever alone.
I’m leaving this open for comments–but please, let’s not get too into politics or into the validity of the election results. I will delete that. I just want to talk about trusting leadership, not what to do when your world view crumbles. Thanks!
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
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January 7, 2021
We’re Changing the Name of our Podcast! Welcome to Bare Marriage
We’re in a new season of our podcast–and we’ve decided to change the name!
Well, really we’re going through a rebranding process that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but couldn’t because I relied on Google so much for my income (that’s changed in the last year, so now we can finally do it!).
One of my most popular facebook posts and tweets from 2020 was actually my very last one, when I said this:
True story:
— SheilaGregoire (@sheilagregoire) December 31, 2020
Want to rebrand blog. Thought of the best name. Domain is already bought. Put in a request for GoDaddy to negotiate on my behalf to buy it.
Then discovered my son-in-law owns it on his account because he parked it for me a year ago.
I’m negotiating with myself.
Yep. We’re rebranding!
And we’ve decided to start with the podcast, which will now be known as the Bare Marriage Podcast.
I know everyone knows me as To Love, Honor and Vacuum, and that name made sense in 2008 when I started this blog. It was the name of my first book, and it had a very important subtitle which explained it: When you feel more like a maid than a wife and a mother. It was about how to make marriage feel less like a to-do list and more like a relationship.
But over the years as I’ve morphed more into talking about sex, it didn’t make any more sense. And it had a weird connotation.
So we’re starting with the podcast, and we’re hoping to rebrand the whole blog in the next few months. But that takes some time on the back end!
(And by the way: nothing will change for you all. My blog will just automatically forward to the new URL, and all the posts will stay the same, and you really won’t notice a difference except for the new name).
In this first podcast of the year, Rebecca and I explain the name change, and then we launch into some questions!
So listen in:
Listen to the Podcast Here
Browse all the Different Podcasts
See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast
And you can watch on YouTube, too:
Don’t forget to subscribe to me on YouTube, so you’ll see whenever we put up new videos, because sometimes we post stuff that isn’t even podcasts.
Timeline of the Podcast:
(with Rebecca)
0:41 We reveal our NEW name!
2:33 Why we want to strip everything ‘bare’.
11:40 The ‘authority’ message has distorted the church
23:11 The institutionalized church is NOT the problem.
(with Keith)
24:35 Research: All about mental health, connectivity in relationships, and long-term sex!
31:18 RQ: How to I have a healthy view of men/sex with my tough job?
35:15 The importance of healthy routines and people around you
38:51 Why we need to replace BAD with GOOD.
Main Segment: Why the new name?
“Bare” Marriage certainly has a sex connotation. That’s why we used the name for our big survey project last winter!
But it’s more than that. Like I was talking about last week in my post on scattering stones, it’s about stripping marriage of all the weird and negative teaching we’ve been given, and getting back to the basics of what life is about–Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He is who we follow.
Rebecca and I get rather passionate about this, and share the Scripture that’s been most important to us as we think about this.
If you want to read more about what we’re talking about, I highly recommend Rebecca Davis’ article on how your pastor isn’t Moses. (I didn’t mention this in the podcast; I just think it’s good).
New Research Segment: What do political views have to do with sex as a senior?
The famous Harvard long-term study on happiness, which I’ve written about before, was a longitudinal study of a cohort of men they followed for fifty years. And one interesting finding was that conservatives tended to stop having sex earlier than liberals did once they entered the senior years.
Keith and I had fun talking about this–and no, we don’t think it’s all about Democrats vs. Republicans. And we really didn’t get political in this! We think it has more to do with people’s views of relationships.
Reader Question: How can I keep a positive view of sex when everything around me is ugly?
A reader wrote in asking:
What are some practical (and smart) ways that I can develop a healthier, more positive view of sexuality? For background, I’m a woman in my early 20s, I’ve never been in a serious relationship, and I work/study in a field that deals with a lot of heavy stuff like domestic violence, rape, abuse, etc. As a result, I’ve developed issues with vicarious trauma and my own sexual self-image and my view of sex and intimacy have been strongly affected. Although consciously I have a healthy view of/interest in sex, and am very educated on the subject, I still have serious trouble untangling consensual, pleasurable, life-giving sex from the opposite, which is what I’m exposed to more often just because of my field (which I am very passionate about and feel called to be in, so abandoning it isn’t a viable option). I desperately want this to change, because it’s actually a big reason I’m chronically single and it also fuels my anxiety disorder.
I can really relate to her problem! Keith and I gave our thoughts, but I’d love to hear yours in the comments, too.
Things Mentioned in the Podcast
The Great Sex Rescue–our book that’s coming out in March! You can pre-order it now.
Tim Challies’ post on the importance of following mediocre leaders
Rebecca Davis from H
My post on The Harvard Study
More information about the Harvard Study
The Great Sex Rescue
Launches 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!)
So there you go! i’d love to know what you think about how to keep a positive view of sex, too. Or anything else you’d like to comment on! Let’s talk below.
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
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What Attributes Make the Sexually Healthy Man?
How can we define a sexually healthy man?
I’ve just spent a year thinking about what it takes to be a sexually healthy woman–after doing our survey of over 20,000 women last winter! You’ll see all about it in our upcoming book The Great Sex Rescue.
But while I talk a lot about what a sexually healthy man is not, I haven’t spoken so much about what a sexually healthy man is.
So when Andrew Bauman told me about his latest book, I was intrigued, and I read it in one sitting!
You may remember Andrew–he was featured on my podcast recently talking about stonewalling behaviour and what it means to be an emotionally healthy man. But Andrew’s real specialty is sex. He’s a licensed mental health counselor, and the Co-founder and Director of the Christian Counseling Center for Sexual Health and Trauma.
His blog posts are really insightful, about how trauma affects us; how to navigate sexuality that’s been affected by porn or dysfunctional family dynamics; and so much more.
And he wrote a series of essays that form a book, The Sexually Healthy Man. They cut to the quick and that are highly personal and readable to help men confront the things that are often holding them back from real intimacy. He gave me permission to use part of his blog post on sexually healthy men today, and I thought I’d highlight some of what he said, starting with this image:
Now I’ll let Andrew talk:
When you review the image above, what do you feel in your body? Do you feel regret, hope, or maybe longing and desire for something new?
Where do you find yourself? Do you see yourself more on the unhealthy or the healthy side?
If you have a partner and enough courage, would you be willing to ask them which of these character traits they experience from you? Would you be willing to write about each of these aspects of unhealthy and healthy sexuality, and how they apply to your life? Think about your past, your present, and what you hope for your future. Let’s review these aspects of healthy and unhealthy sexuality together.
EMOTIONALLY DISTANT vs. EMOTIONALLY PRESENT
Simply put, does your partner have your face during intimacy? Are you with them, not just physically, but with the entirety of your being? Do you make eye contact during sex? Do you feel embodied, or do you at times feel you are a bystander to your own sex life?
ISOLATION vs. COMMUNITY
Sexual dysfunction is bred in isolation. Most of the men I know don’t masturbate to pornography in public, they do quietly and shamefully, either at night when their spouse is asleep, or when they are alone in the bathroom. To be fully known, we must be in communion with others. Community doesn’t just mean accountability, it means bleeding together; it means sharing our deepest shame, greatest fears, and deepest delights. True communion is fully knowing and being fully known by another.
IMMATURE vs. MATURE
Pornography use, secrets, half-truths, and lies are all examples of adolescent behavior. These habits indicate a need to look deeply within yourself and see your immaturity clearly. Ask yourself, “How old do I feel”? What would it mean for you to live into your true age? What parts of your trauma story have stunted your ability to become a mature man, and how can you give that part of yourself tenderness, kindness, and care?
SELFISH vs. MUTUAL
Pornography has taught generations of men to be selfish with their sexuality. In my thirteen years of use, it taught me that sex was about my pleasure, and no one else’s. This conditioning is problematic when a real person is introduced in the context of an authentic sexual relationship, because sexuality up to that point has never involved shared mutuality. Mutual pleasure and mutual service means that both partners get to use their full voice of consent; they get to say, “yes”, “no” or “maybe”, as they learn each other’s bodies and desires.
INSECURITY vs. STRENGTH
The sexually unhealthy man is an insecure man. These wounded little boys try their hardest to appear big because they feel so small inside. They try to find worth through money, toys, possessions, bullying, aggressive behavior, or the attractiveness of their spouse. These are all different ways of trying to overcompensate for how insecure they feel. Grounded, masculine strength never has to “prove” anything. Strong men know who they are and what they have to offer their partner and the world. Their strength protects and honors their partner, and does not try to gain mastery or power over them.
ASHAMED vs. UNASHAMED
Shame plagues many evangelical men. Some shame is guided by toxic beliefs about sexuality, and some of it is shame masquerading as guilt over living an inauthentic life. Shame and guilt are not the same. Shame says that the core of you is dirty and bad, while guilt speaks to your actions being bad, not your personhood. There is no place for shame in a sexually healthy man. He honors himself and his partner. He has made peace with his darkness and the stories of his past, and he now walks in courage and strength.
OBJECTIFY vs HONOR
The objectification of women has become normative. Many times through pornography use, men develop what I call a “pornographic style of relating” (this concept is explained more fully in my book, The Psychology of Porn) in which men learned how to relate to women from pornography. Sadly, pornography is centered on the objectification of women, making women “less” so that men can feel like they are “more”. This view of women dehumanizes them, making it easier for men to harm them and harder for men to honor them. We must change the way we engage with beauty, standing in awe, and honoring the feminine, which God created and named the summit of all of creation.
Andrew explores the rest of his dichotomies of sexual health/sexual unhealth in his original blog post, and I’d encourage you to read the rest!
Andrew J. Bauman
What is a Sexually Healthy Man?
You can’t be sexually healthy if you’re not comfortable with yourself.
If you are always trying to prove something to others, but especially yourself; if you worry that you’re not worthy of love; if you’re so disconnected from yourself that you can’t connect with other people but can only use other people–you’ll never be able to be sexually healthy in the bedroom.
All of that applies to both males and females, but I found his book, speaking to men who have grown up in the porn generation, to be refreshingly honest and also right on the money. Whether it’s about how men often feel disembodied in a way that women don’t; or how shame is only confronted when we allow ourselves to tell our stories and confront our stories; or how to create a healthy sex life after years of porn addiction, I found myself agreeing with Andrew in every page.
Here’s something I thought many guys needed to hear:
I encourage my clients to take full responsibility for their poor choices. If they want to objectify, use, and abuse women, then that is their choice and they should own it. If they want to cheat on their wives and live secretive, hidden lives, then I echo the great reformer, Martin Luther, by telling them to at least “sin boldly”. Fully own that you are a misogynist who loves to abuse women! At least then I can respect your integrity in owning your poor choices.
What I have learned over the past decade of working with men and their sexual restoration is that neither shame nor shamelessness is the answer to sexual wholeness. Both extremes miss the point entirely…..
“[S]hamelessness” has become popular in progressive circles recently. This approach to sexuality is a reactive counter-response to the toxic, shame-driven narrative promoted by more conservative ideologies. I am thinking of the stories I have heard from one of those “liberated” progressive seminaries, where a couple of the students decided to “mark” certain areas of the campus by having sexual intercourse there. This is not liberation, but a form of adolescent rebellion which stems from immense wounding and unaddressed heartache. Many of these folks take their painful stories and sprint toward the other extreme in pursuit of a radical escape from toxic shame, yet in that noble plight they end up cheapening sex and making it less than a sacred act of love. Another example is the pro-porn progressives and therapists that I run into all the time. I believe they are well-intentioned, but merely focusing on shame reduction is to misunderstand healthy sexual reconstruction and wholeness.
Andrew J. Bauman
And that wholeness is found in coming to terms with who you really are; understanding your own story; and accepting what it means to be intimate with others and to serve others.
It’s a very Christ-centred look at what health should be, and, quite frankly, it is just so darn NICE to listen to a Christian man write about this in such an affirming way after over a year of combing through all the terrible messages in some of our bestsellers.
Andrew Bauman deserves to be a bestseller for men far more than Every Man’s Battle, and so I encourage people to check out The Sexually Healthy Man!
(It’s also free with Kindle Unlimited, so take a look!)
What do you think? Are there elements of sexual health that you think are more difficult for men? Or are we missing something? 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
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How Do I Reconnect with My Husband? Finding the Spark Again
“How do I reconnect with my husband?”
That’s a question I get in various forms from so many of you who email. Life has gotten too busy, you feel like you pass like ships in the night, and you just want to feel like you know each other again.
As we’re launching a new year, I thought it would be a good idea to look again at how to reconnect with your husband if you feel as if the previous year–or years!–has made you grow apart.
Here, for instance, are two questions quite typical of many that come in to the blog:
I am married to an emotionally distant man. We go through the motions of being married, but I have no idea what’s actually going on in his heart. In fact, I doubt there’s much there at all. And he certainly has no idea what’s going on in mine! We only have one child left at home and I’m afraid that when he leaves for college we’ll have nothing left between us.
Another woman writes:
I’m tired of feeling all alone! My husband doesn’t want to do anything except play on his computer or play video games. We never spent any time together. Shouldn’t marriage be about the two of you? I don’t know how much more loneliness I can take.
Okay, those are rather sad to start off our year. But I know many of you are lonely. So let’s set the stage here on what emotional connection looks like, what it doesn’t look like, and how we can move towards reconnecting.
Some truths about emotional connection
Connection is based on communication. And there are five different levels of communication–cliches, facts, opinions, feelings, needs, as I talked about in a big post last month.
We can share facts about our day–“It was so busy today, the last client didn’t leave until 5:15, and I didn’t think I was going to get out of there.”
But we can also share feelings–“I’m not even sure I like this job. People put so many demands on you and it all seems so pointless. We’re not producing anything worthwhile anyway.”
And then you can get to the point of sharing needs–“I just feel like there’s more to life than this. When I’m in my shop with a saw and some wood, I feel like I’m creating something. But all day long at work I feel like I’m just chasing paper, playing some big game, that doesn’t mean anything. I need more than that.”
Do you see the difference?
I want to continue what I started talking about in that post on the levels of communication, and look at some practical ways that we can boost communication. So let’s go a little bit deeper today!
Many couples never get beyond facts or opinions.
Here’s the problem: when you’re stuck at the facts or opinions level, tension is going to start to build up, because you’re not really emotionally connected. You don’t know anything about what’s going on in each other’s hearts.
And so with each interaction that is only surface level, it’s going to feel like you’re actually growing more distant. That’s right: talking may actually make you feel worse, if the talking isn’t about something important.
And you can’t just jump over several levels of communication and expect to be able to get truly vulnerable and talk about your needs without starting to share consistently at some of the other levels.
That’s why the answer to grow emotional connection isn’t necessarily to do something big. If you start insisting on a date night, for instance, where it’s supposed to be all romantic, you’re almost guaranteed to be disappointed and hurt. There’s too much tension there to have the date night go well! Instead, it’s better to start with little things to put into your day that can help you connect, and then, once that connection is starting to be there, add some bigger things to your life regularly that are low-stress and low-pressure.
But first, a few more truths about reconnecting with your husband:
Truth #1: Most men are not emotionally distant or emotionally unavailable
Some men may indeed be emotionally unavailable, but what I’ve found in so many marriages is that the couple has built up patterns of interaction that have made sharing feelings hard.
So ask yourself this–when we were dating, did I know what my husband was feeling and thinking? Did he talk about his needs? Was he vulnerable to me? If so, it’s unlikely he’s suddenly become completely emotionally unavailable. It’s more likely that life has made him stressed, or that you’ve gotten into negative patterns of relating that have cut you both off from each other.
If he never opened up to you, and you never felt emotionally close, that’s a bigger problem, and may require a licensed counselor.
Truth #2: Most people actually want a good marriage
The vast majority of people rank having a good marriage as a major goal of theirs.
Often when we’re distant, though, we assume: “he must be angry at me and doesn’t really love me anymore.” We project negative feelings on our husbands that they may not actually have. He just may feel awkward, stressed, or unsure of what to do. Most likely he wants to feel closer to you, too! But he probably feels a lot of failure when he’s around you, because you’re likely upset at the lack of communication, and he senses it. And when a guy senses that he’s disappointed you, he will tend to retreat.
Of course he shouldn’t do that! But that’s not really the point right now: the point I want you to grasp is that your husband most likely wants to reconnect with you, too! Few people honestly want to go through life feeling distant from their spouse.
So here’s your assignment: assume the best of him. Assume that he is not deliberately keeping you at arm’s length. It will make a huge difference!
(Again, if he honestly doesn’t want the best, then I’d suggest seeing a licensed therapist, but in the majority of cases, the husband does care).
Truth #3: Most people are lazy
We fall into these ruts, like playing video games all night or watching Netflix and never talking. And then those turn into habits. It’s hard to break a habit unless there’s something else vying for our attention. If you guys are used to separating at night, it’s going to be hard to start doing something together unless there’s an actual option ahead of you. So when he goes off and gets back on his computer after dinner, it isn’t necessarily that he’s deliberately abandoning you. He’s developed a habit. And he isn’t likely to break that habit unless there’s something else on the agenda for that night.
Truth #4: Men tend to appreciate low-key communication
Or, to put it another way, women tend to be more comfortable communicating face to face, when we’re sitting across the table sharing our hearts. Men tend to open up more when they communicate side by side, when they’re doing something together. If you try to force him to sit down and talk to you, he’ll likely feel very uncomfortable, like he’s on the spot. So try reconnecting by actually doing something!
Again–these are generalities. In your marriage it may work the other way, and sometimes different personality types make communication preferences quite different from what we’d normally assume. But often the generalities ring true!
Like this post so far? You should also check out:
One Thing Most Couples Get Wrong about Date Night
50 Conversation Starters for Couples
How to Get the Spark Back in Your Marriage
Putting it All Together: Baby Steps for Reconnecting with Your Husband
Suggest something small
Walls of tension have built up between you which make it hard to talk about something important. And here’s a simple fact:
When we lose the ability to talk about the little things, then we lose the ability to talk about the big things.
Talking about the state of your relationship and talking about that tension is definitely a big thing. So that isn’t your aim. Instead, your aim should be to bring down some of those walls so that it becomes easier to talk about big things!
That comes by suggesting something small. Why not take a walk after dinner? Or share a cup of coffee together right after the kids go to bed? You don’t need to spend the whole evening together. Just develop a new habit that helps you start to talk without tension.
Try my conversation starters, too!
Ask with no guilt trips
Don’t say, “I feel like we haven’t talked in ages. Can we talk tonight?” That puts him on the defensive immediately. Or steer clear of, “All you ever do is get on the computer. How about you just give me ten minutes for once tonight?” Again, negative connotation.
Try something like this:
Hey, hon, how about after dinner we take a quick walk around the neighbourhood and get some exercise and look at the leaves?
Or even, why don’t we share a cup of coffee together before we get on our computers tonight?
Be deliberate
Then, when you are together, let’s do something deliberate that helps take us to deeper levels of communication. I’ve talked about this concept before, but this one habit can change everything about how you feel about each other. Ask him, “What’s the best time you had today? When did you feel more productive and most successful?” Then share your own. Then ask him, “When were you most stressed and disappointed today?” Then share your own experience.
Don’t make judgments or try to fix anything. Just listen. Laugh. Repeat back some of the things he was saying. And that’s it. It doesn’t have to take very long. Maybe just ten minutes.
And then go back to your computer or Netflix. The rest of your evening may still be lonely. But let’s work on simply starting to communicate again and opening the doors to feeling like you know each other. That brings the tension level down, and after a few weeks of that you’re ready to start tackling some bigger issues! But try to fix everything in one go, and you’ll be adding to tension, not taking away from it. You can’t talk about big problems in your relationship until you’ve built up some goodwill to handle it. And this is the easiest way to do it!
Don’t forget the power of making love to help you reconnect with your husband!
One more thought. Here’s what happens when there’s tension in a relationship: we tend to retreat in the areas of our lives where we’re the most vulnerable. So women tend to retreat sexually, and men tend to retreat emotionally.
But what happens when we do that? We make that distance worse, because women tend to feel closer when we share emotionally, and men tend to feel closer when we share sexually. Make love to a man, and it’s often going to be much easier to have those conversations about feelings. Talk to a woman on a heart level, and it’s often going to be much easier for her to be in the mood for sex.
Hold on a second. Stop everything you’re thinking right now! I can just hear the wheels start to turn. “How do you expect me to make love to a guy who never ever talks to me? How do you expect me to want to be that open with someone who doesn’t even care about me?”
I get it. I do. But please hear me out: if the emotional distance is bothering you, just realize that it may not have started out as emotional distance. It may have started as sexual distance, at least in his mind. And it’s amazing how making love can often, in and of itself, start to bring down the tension level in your relationship!
Now, if there are other issues, like trust issues, or infidelity, or emotional abuse, then I’m not saying you should jump into bed with him at all. You really need to get help! And if sex has never felt good for you, then of course that’s important to work on (and my Orgasm Course can help!).
But I do believe that if we can start reconnecting in small ways in every area of our relationship, it’s going to be much easier to feel emotionally connected!
One of the best ways to reconnect sexually is with the Intimately Us app!
It’s just so much, well, FUN! And sometimes having an app suggest things for you to do brings tension down, too, because it adds this layer between you where you don’t have to be as vulnerable and suggest things. The app’s telling you to do it, not me!
Plus the Intimately Us app is designed so that it’s not only about trying new things in bed and having more fun, but it’s actually designed to help you talk and communicate about what you want and like. And there are so many prompts and games in there as well to work on your emotional connection.
Read My Review of It!
Check the App Out!
It’s a new year now, and 2020 was HARD. We all were under more pressure than usual.
So as you launch into 2021, make a concerted effort to stay connected with your husband–or to reconnect if that connection has waned. And remember–small things add up. And small things are often more effective at first anyway. So do little things that help you connect on a daily basis, and you may find that you’re able to get those deeper levels of communication sooner than you thought!
What do you think? Have you ever experienced a dynamic like this in your marriage? What did you do about it? 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
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A Letter That Made My Year to Begin a New Year
Happy 2021, everyone!
Well, we made it through 2020, and 2021 stretches ahead. And it’s going to be awesome. (It has to be!).
Our book The Great Sex Rescue releases March 2 (you can pre-order it now!). Keith and I are writing The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex–which is due at the publisher the same day the Great Sex Rescue launches! We’re going to be developing tools for counselors to screen for sexual issues in marriage, and so much more.
I’m excited.
And even though it’s a big job, we feel like it’s important.
I know that I’m usually the face of to Love, Honor and Vacuum, and I’m mostly the one you see. Rebecca, of course, pops up in podcasts, but we really are a team behind the scenes. Tammy keeps me sane by dealing with all my details and by just talking to me when I need to vent. Rebecca and Joanna and I FaceTime constantly throughout the day, bouncing ideas off each other; talking about new stats Joanna has found in the data from the surveys we’ve done (we just closed our men’s survey last week; fascinating stuff!); planning posts.
I wish Joanna could be on the podcast more so you could see her, but she literally lives in the Canadian arctic, and her internet’s not always reliable. But we may try soon!
Here we were, with Joanna’s two girls and Rebecca with my grandson, the week before Joanna and her family moved to the Great White North.
The Great Sex Rescue authors before Joanna moved up to the Arctic!
And then, of course, there’s Keith, whose schedule is even busier right now as he’s trying to cram editing a book into seeing patients during COVID (which is really tricky).
All that to say that we are really a team, and we do strategize and pray and think together about what we’re doing and how to make the greatest difference.
Last week, in one of the last posts of 2020, I was talking about how you have to scatter stones, you have to tear down the bad stuff, before you can build up healthy stuff.
In the next few weeks we’ll be tearing down some very unhealthy teachings, so that we can build on Jesus-centered principles instead.
After I wrote that post on scattering stones, I received so many amazing emails and comments, and I can’t tell you how encouraging they were to all of us.
I want to leave you with a longer one, that summarizes so much, and which literally brought tears to all of our eyes. I read it out loud to Joanna, and couldn’t get through it without choking up.
I thought this was a fitting post to start the new year, because it summarizes everything we’re trying to do!
It was written by someone who has followed this blog almost since its inception, and whom I’ve actually met in real life at a speaking event (that was cool!).
Today, yet again, your post nailed it. All these messages you talk about – the obligation sex, unconditional respect and the husband always having the final decision, staying in the marriage no matter what, if you don’t have sex whenever he wants, he’ll turn to porn and it’s your fault – these are all beliefs deeply ingrained in both my husband and me.
Your Love & Respect posts kicked off a huge deconstructing process for me. Wowzers, it’s been quite the ride.
I can look back at our marriage and see how these beliefs were slowly killing me and killing our marriage, no matter how much “healthy” I added. Because in spite of me learning healthy things, I was still building on that broken foundation!! I’ve always been taught that a wife should essentially sit down and shut up, yet no matter how well I did that, our marriage only got worse. I was originally baffled by why L&R didn’t work for us, because I truly have a “good-hearted” husband — yet when you started those posts I realized how deeply steeped in patriarchal beliefs he was. He said he wants me to have a voice – but he’s been taught all his life that my voice doesn’t actually matter, so that’s how he was actually operating. And I believed the same things. It was killing our marriage.
The more you scatter stones and tell us how harmful those stones were, the more I deconstruct, the more my amazing counsellor (who tells me many of the same things you teach!) points out the insanity of the beliefs I was building my marriage on, the healthier our marriage gets. It is ROUGH going. It’s like slogging uphill through a swamp of mud, with a million mosquitoes swarming you, while your partner tries to haul you back to where “normal” used to be.
But there is LIFE and hope in this direction, with you and my counsellor to teach me. My depression is lifting. My sex drive can outpace my husband’s now. I am more confident. I have better things to teach my daughter. Once in a while my husband will admit that this route is better than our old patterns. I am more alive. These things you teach – they match with what Jesus taught, and this brings LIFE! They match with how He lived. They match with how He treated women. They do not match fundamental conservative Christian beliefs of oppression.
I feel like when I got married, I was given this box of beliefs, all beautifully wrapped up in books like Created to be His Helpmeet (boy that one was bad! My HUSBAND told me to burn it or he would!!), Sheet Music, Love & Respect, For Men [and women] Only, Every Man’s Battle) and was told that if I followed these beliefs, my marriage would be amazing. So I jumped in and threw myself 100% into believing and following them.
Now, over a decade down the road, I’m realizing they gave me a broken set of beliefs! No wonder my marriage is worse!! Because whatever health I tried to add, the cracks and holes underneath were so big they were swallowing me up!! Every time I finish a counselling session, I’m so mad at how I was literally SET UP TO FAIL by these. I was told they were the key to success but they were actually the opposite. YOU and my counsellor are literally THE ONLY voices I know of who are actively scattering these stones and then teaching a better foundation.
So all this to say – your work is valuable. Your voice is valuable. Without it, I would still be caught and stuck and sinking even deeper. Because of you, our marriage has a chance. Because of you, I have better things to teach my daughters for marriage. Because of your stone scattering now, I will have a stronger foundation to add all your healthy teaching to.
So please don’t stop scattering stones. We need you. Women like me need you.
There’s a little sticker on my floor, and it’s put there so every time I sweep over it, I remember to pray for you and your team. For wisdom, for safety, for protection over your own marriages and families, and for courage and strength to keep going, keep fighting, keep teaching. You are doing God’s work. You are bringing His light and His hope to countless marriages like mine. We need you.
Long Time Reader
Are we setting up couples to fail?
That sticker bit was what made me a sobbing mess, but the part that really stands out is how many of our bestsellers may inadvertently be setting couples up to fail.
That’s what we found in our surveys, and we’ll be sharing those numbers with you in the next few weeks. We’ll be showing how some of the specific teachings in these books, about lust, about porn, about men’s sex drives, about women’s lack of sex drives-, and so much more, has set up couples to fail.
And we’ll show that if you’re having issues, you’re not crazy. You’re not broken. It’s likely not even your fault! You were often just given faulty information that changed how you saw yourself, your spouse, sex, and even God for the worse. So let’s throw that stuff out and come back to what’s true and healthy.
The Great Sex Rescue
Launches 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!)
That’s what we want to do in 2021! I’m a little (a lot) overwhelmed, but I’m excited for this journey!
(And thank you again to everyone who sent in letters and emails and comments like this one. We saved each one!).
Happy start to 2021, everyone!
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
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The Best To Love, Honor and Vacuum Podcasts of 2020
Probably the most fun I’ve had at To Love, Honor and Vacuum this year is doing the podcasts!
This week I’ve been looking back over the blog for the year, with the biggest traffic posts of the year, and the most debated posts of the year. I talked about my philosophy of blogging going forward–how we have to tear down the unhealthy stuff before we can build that which is healthy.
And today I thought I’d try to run the top 10 podcasts of the year, for those of you who may not have started listening yet and want a place to jump in!
Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Just search for To Love, Honor and Vacuum!
And we made two big changes this year:
First, the last Thursday of every month we’ve been running a podcast geared more to the guys;
and then we’ve started video recording the podcasts so they’re up on YouTube as well (thanks, Katie, for coming on and helping me by editing the videos!). So you can subscribe to me on YouTube, too!
To be totally honest, there’s no science behind this list of top 10 podcasts for the year.
My previous lists this week have been objective measures–top traffic; most comments.
For this list, we looked at download numbers, but that doesn’t tell us play numbers, so it’s not that helpful. So we asked on Facebook which ones were your favourites, and then I threw in some of my own favourites, and here’s our list! I’ve got it in order, but the order means nothing! It’s kind of like an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway--the game where the points mean nothing.
But all of these are great, and worth listening to, and I hope you got something out of them!
So let’s count up to #1 in a totally arbitrary fashion:
#10
Ep. 55: We Read The Act of Marriage So You Don’t Have To!
I read excerpts from the book The Act of Marriage, the biggest sex book for Generation X Christian couples, to Rebecca, and she just reacted to it live. And Aunt Matilda made her first appearance. You’ll be hearing a lot more about Aunt Matilda when The Great Sex Rescue launches, because SHE MATTERS. In fact, I even used my dedication in the book to Aunt Matilda, and all others like her. Marital rape is NOT okay. I can’t believe we even have to say this.
But though that sounds heavy, this was actually a fun podcast to record! We’ve had a lot of requests to do other books in the new year. Once The Great Sex Rescue launches, we may do just that. In our new book, we quote liberally from some of these sex and marriage bestsellers, and show how things got so off base. It would be great to delve further into some of the more egregious ones.
#9
Ep. 57: On Marital Rape, Consent, and Obligation Sex
We recorded this one in April, when Rebecca and I were writing The Great Sex Rescue, and exploring how the obligation sex message seriously messes up women’s sex drives and sexual response. And one of the things that so disturbed us in reading Christian sex and marriage books was how consent was never mentioned–but all too often marital rape was excused.
We’ve thought about this even more since recording this, and we’ll be revisiting it in February!
#8
Start Your Engines Ep. 6: Do All Men Lust? Let’s Rethink Every Man’s Battle
Again, another podcast we recorded when we were in the thick of writing our manuscript! The “all men lust” message is one of those messages that isn’t just harmful to women; we can argue that it’s even more harmful to men (and we’ve looked at that in our recent survey of men, too, and we’ll be exploring it in our upcoming book The Good Guy’s Guide to Great Sex).
We just need to find healthier ways of talking about this!
#7
Ep. 45: How to Draw Boundaries Around a Spouse’s Bad Behaviour
Here’s the very first podcast of 2020–which launched our iron sharpens iron series last January! I really enjoyed this series, and I find myself linking to it all the time when I write new posts, so if you missed it, this is worth listening to (and reading what goes along with it!).
#6
Ep. 74: You Are Not Broken–You CAN Orgasm!
We spent two months this fall looking at the trouble many women have with orgasm, leading up to the release of our Orgasm Course (it’s a great one to get in this new year! Start your year with a bang! sorry I just had to say that).
I know so many women feel broken, and in this podcast we go into why that is, and why we can have hope instead (plus some practical tips on what to do!).
The Orgasm Course is Here to Help You Experience Real Passion!
Figure out what's holding you back. Open the floodgates to orgasm.
Tell Me More about It!
I Need that Now!
#5
Start Your Engines #14: On Emotional Maturity and Stonewalling
Here’s a podcast from our emotional maturity series, where we brought on Andrew Bauman, a licensed counselor, to talk about stonewalling and why it is that some men find difficulty expressing emotions. Really enjoyed this whole series, too!
#4
Ep. 60: Splitting the Mental Load of Housework
So many women told me that they listened to the podcasts in June with their husbands, and were finally able to articulate what they were feeling about mental load! If you missed this series, you need to catch up, because it was important.
#3
Ep. 81: Churchianity vs. Christianity and our Year of Being Homeless
The top 3 podcasts for the year were actually our 3 last ones! I think we’ve honestly gotten better and a little bit more raw (plus having Katie on board behind the scenes helps!). But these last three really resonated. Even though more people listed the next two podcasts as their favourites, I have NEVER had as many emails as I did after airing this last one about our problems in finding a church as our eyes have been opened to the harm that is being done in so many evangelical circles. I’m glad this one resonated. I didn’t actually think it would–but I was overwhelmed with your stories. Thank you.
#2
Ep. 79: Can We Please Stop Talking about Girls Being Stumbling Blocks?
If you want to see Rebecca get passionate–you should actually watch this one on YouTube! But we had a lot of fun recording this one because we’re just so passionate about it. After a number of posts about modesty went totally viral on Facebook, and people kept blaming 13-year-olds for what they were wearing, rather than the adult men who were lusting, I just had to let loose and get real. So many people told me that this podcast gave them a way to talk to their kids about this. I even had some moms tell me that they watched the YouTube version with their teen boys!
#1
Ep. 80: Why Unconditional Respect Isn’t a Thing
Really, the stumbling block podcast was called out as often as this one, but THIS ONE was seriously BOOM. Major BOOM.
In a nutshell: the whole premise behind the “men need unconditional respect and women need unconditional love” is based on two things: Ephesians 5:33 and one study. So we looked at both. Dr. Cynthia Westfall showed how Ephesians 5:33, in Greek, insinuates something very different. And that study? Based on 400 men. Ambiguous question. They never asked women. When others did, women answered the same way as men.
In short, this whole thesis doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
So how about we put this all to rest now? What was sad about this podcast was how easy it was to actually do. Why didn’t anyone look into this beforehand, before this idea permeated EVERYWHERE in the church and hurt so many marriages? The information about the problems with the study was in the very book! Just very concerning about the state of intellectual honesty in evangelical circles.
Those were your favourite podcasts this year!
Or maybe you had another? Leave it in the comments and I’ll try to put a link to it in reply so others can see.
And if you haven’t listened in, again, please subscribe! I’m finding that more people actually listen to the podcasts than read the blog, so next year we’re planning on reversing our blog a bit. We’ll START the topic in the podcast on Thursday, and then the next four posts will elaborate on that topic, rather than having the podcast summarize what we’ve already been talking about. And we’ve got about 10 all planned out already. I’m excited!
Happy New Year, everyone!
Did you find a podcast that didn’t make the list really spoke to you? Leave it in the comments! Or did you agree with these choices? Let me know why, too!
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
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So–which posts of the year resonated the most?
Which ones made people the angriest? Which ones resonated the most? Which ones just plain had a lot of opinions flying back and forth?
On Monday I ran a post with the posts that I wrote in 2020 that got the most traffic. But sometimes that traffic is from Google, and it’s not necessarily the top posts in this community.
So I thought I’d take a look at the number of comments and use that as a measure instead. You’ll notice some overlap with a few of these posts, but many are new. And if I think back to 2020, these are the posts the tend to stick out in my mind, too! So here we go:
Tied for Ninth (which is why there’s no #10!)
From March:
Have We Turned Sex into a Male Entitlement?
”When we talk about sex as something that women must give men with no caveats, we treat men’s need for sex as a bigger need than anything else.” This heartbreaking comment about a woman whose husband wanted sex even though she had postpartum healing still to do generated a lot of comments.
“When we make sex into an entitlement, we change the very nature of it.” A lot of the thinking in this post made it into The Great Sex Rescue as well!
Tied for #9
From March:
Can You Divorce for Abuse?
This year, Wayne Grudem, a big-name theologian who has always said that you cannot divorce for abuse, changed his mind (although he says you still need the permission of the elders of your church–major problem). But why is it that we decided that adultery was worse than abuse anyway? Whenever I post anything that says that divorce may be permitted in some circumstances, people step in and say God wants you to stay no matter what. I find that very problematic.
#8
From May:
Are Men Really from Mars and Women from Venus?
One of my husband’s posts made the most commented list! Keith will be happy. Maybe instead of focusing on being a “godly husband” or a “godly wife”, we should just aim to be godly! Plus what science actually tells us about gender differences.
Tied for #6
From July:
On Debi Pearl, Created to Be His Helpmeet, and an Unbiblical View of Submission
This one made our top 10 overall as well because Google likes it (which is awesome, because I want people to find this post if they’re thinking of reading this terrible book!).
Usually when I write about this book, though, its supporters come out in droves and defend it. Thankfully they didn’t as much this time around. I think the tide is turning!
Tied for #6
From April:
On Marital Rape, Consent, and the Obligation Sex Message
The only podcast to make our list (and it also makes tomorrow’s list on the top podcasts of the year!), this one was honestly one of the most important things we’ve said, in my opinion. The way the evangelical church talks about sex sets us up for marital rape, and ignores her needs. If she can’t truly say no, then she can’t truly say yes either.
#5
From June:
On Emotional Labor and Mental Load: Let’s Talk Fair Play!
This one made our top 10 overall posts as well, and I’m also glad it generated so many comments. Many people tell me that of all the things I write, this is the series that changed their marriage the most. If you don’t know the concept of “mental load“, you need to read it!
#4
From August:
Can We Please Stop Talking about Disciplining Babies?
Rebecca’s post made the list here! With lots of pictures of my adorable grandson Alex, Rebecca pleads with us to stop seeing Alex as someone whose spirit needs breaking. Far too many “Christian” books advocate spanking babies. It needs to stop.
This should no longer even be a subject for debate. It just needs to STOP. (And yet debate in the comments we did! Spanking babies should never be a thing).
#3
From November:
What Happens when Comments are Hijacked by People Who Want to Talk about Themselves?
So here’s a highly commented post–on comments. Seriously, the subject of this post was what should I do when the comments section gets hijacked by people with a different agenda? What if the post is about something women are really suffering from, but a man keeps trying to talk about his issues instead? I really appreciated the feedback from people in this post, and it finally did inspire me to ban someone that I’d been struggling with for a while. But I do love commenters as a whole!
#2
From May:
How Did Having to Be the Sexual Gatekeeper Affect You?
This one generated far more comments than we imagined–and we were grateful, because this is one of the big teachings that we measured in our book The Great Sex Rescue. We found that girls who believed that boys would push their sexual boundaries, and they had to be the gatekeepers, had worse sex lives when they got married because “gatekeeping” was really difficult to turn off. After this post we ended up talking about how arousal is the missing piece for many women when it comes to orgasm, and it really informed much of the curriculum for The Orgasm Course, too! We found the comments here so helpful to further along our thinking as we’ve been writing our books and courses.
#1
From January:
An Open Letter to Focus on the Family on Love & Respect and Emerson Eggerichs
Hardly surprising, but this open letter that launched our year also was our top commented post of the year! So many of you shared your stories of how Love & Respect negatively affected your marriage. Please know that Focus on the Family did see the comments-even if they never really replied to me directly. This post was read a TON in Colorado Springs, where Focus on the Family is located. I can see that from my Google analytics. They were watching, and they were warned, and still they do nothing, to their everlasting shame.
If you want to add your comments to the letter, please do.
And then I’d like to throw in a few more honorable mentions, which also generated lots of comments, and which I think are important posts!
Honorable Mention #1
From March:
Is “Bouncing Your Eyes” So You Don’t Lust Respectful to Women?
Every Man’s Battle tells men that the way to stop lusting is to bounce your eyes from women. But this is not respectful. This still sees women the same way that porn does–as simply body parts. How about we teach men to respect women and truly SEE them instead?
Honorable Mention #2
From November:
Are We Using God Language to Enable Emotional Immaturity?
My emotional maturity series didn’t make the top comments posts, but I thought this one should be added to our list here. I was talking about how people often excuse really bad decisions by saying “God told me…” And so many of you shared your own stories in the comments! I think they’re , as a warning that we need to not (which is really what this is).
Those are the posts that generated the most comments this year!
Thank you so much for being part of the blogging community. I really appreciate all of your comments. They help me know that I’m not just writing out into the abyss, and people are actually reading.
And if you’ve never commented before, don’t be afraid to start, even if it’s just to say, “I agree!” Those comments are nice to read, too. And the more comments there are, the more that people know that others are listening, too.
If you’re reading this post via our daily emails, just click through on the title of the post, and you’ll end up on the blog and you can comment!
And if you’re NOT reading this by email, but you’d like to, you can sign up right here! Choose to get either the Friday roundup email or the daily emails!
And thanks again for being part of my community in 2020. In many ways, you guys have filled a lot of the void I’ve had from not seeing people in person at church this year, and you mean a lot to me.
Tomorrow I’m running my favourite podcasts of the year. Do you have any that stand out to you that you want me to include?
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
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We Can’t Rebuild Without Knocking Down First
My big prayer, the thing that motivates everything I do online, is “how do I help people grow emotionally healthy marriages that reflect God’s kingdom?”
That’s been my aim for years, actually. But one thing that I’ve realized in the last two years is that you can’t build something healthy and strong on a faulty foundation.
Like Jesus said,
And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.
Mark 2:22
And also,
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
Matthew 7:24-27
I used to think that I could help people have healthy marriages simply by teaching what healthy was.
But that isn’t enough. You can’t pour new wine into old wineskins. It doesn’t work. You can’t build something healthy on a shaky foundation.
If women believe the obligation sex message, that they must have sex if their husbands want it, then no amount of teaching about women’s sexual pleasure is going to help. Sex has become about duty and obligation where her needs are erased. Sex feels depersonalizing, and even threatening. Sex feels like it erases you as a person. When women believe this message, orgasm rates plummet, and rates of sexual pain go up. You can’t teach women how to enjoy sex unless you first deal with the obligation sex message.
If couples believe that the husband should always make the final decision, and that he deserves unconditional respect, so that her speaking up about something that she feels is disrespectful or unsubmissive, then no amount of teaching about healthy conflict resolution is going to help. They both will already be prioritizing his needs and deprioritizing hers. If she has an issue that she brings up, she will already be labelled as being in sin. You have to deal with the root problem first (and my submission series is a great place to start!).
If couples feel that keeping the marriage together no matter what is what God wants and what glorifies God, then the husband will feel like he’s in sin if he brings up issues, too. He will feel that he has to unconditionally love her and put up with anything, and he may also be afraid to rock the boat. What if he brings up something and she reacts badly? Then he will have wrecked the marriage.
If we believe that the reason men watch porn is because wives aren’t having enough sex, and if he believes that the only way to quit porn is for his wife to have sex on demand, then their sex life will become empty, shallow, and degrading. They have already changed the very nature and very definition of sex. It is no longer the biblical idea of “knowing”, or of true mutuality. It has become, in the words of Every Man’s Battle, simply a methadone fix for his addiction. No woman can be excited about sex when she is merely called methadone. How can someone be excited about being used?
And this is the problem that we face.
We cannot build something healthy until we first demolish that which is dangerous.
Keith and I bought our grandson Alexander wooden blocks for Christmas. He’s 14 months old, and he likes stacking things up.
But even better than that, he likes knocking down whatever he builds (or whatever his parents build). Knocking things down is super fun! And it’s often easier than building things up anyway.
That’s the danger that we face.
The problem is that you can’t build without knocking down; the danger is that sometimes the knocking down becomes too much fun, or becomes the sole focus.
Please know, on a personal level, that I really, really wrestle with finding the right balance with this. I do not want to just knock down. I don’t think that’s fruitful, and that isn’t my intention.
But I also really, really want to build up that which is healthy, and we cannot do that without the knocking down.
As I shared in my post on Monday, the verse that keeps coming back to me this year, and that will likely be my verse for 2021, is this:
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
Ecclesiastes 3:5
God Himself says that there is a time to scatter stones.
What does that mean exactly? It means to demolish something. There is a time to demolish that which is built, so that you can gather them together again and build again. We see this theme again and again in the Ecclesiastes 3 passage:
To everything there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to break down and a time to build,
Ecclesiastes 3:1-3
There is a time to uproot; a time to scatter; a time to tear down.
We have to deal with that which is unhealthy.
On March 2 our book The Great Sex Rescue launches. Behind the scenes, that has been our focus for the last year. Almost everything we do has been thinking about what is in that book–as we try to cast away stones, so that we can gather them up again. Identify where we have gone so wrong, so that we can rescue and build and heal.
I find it very personally difficult when so many call us out for criticizing what other authors say. I am told again and again that I am mean, that my daughter Rebecca (my co-author and frequent podcast guest) is mean; that we are out just to wreck other authors’ careers in order to advance ours.
Please know that’s not the case.
Honestly, it takes every breath of energy I have not to give up every single day. I’ll be more frank than I usually am on this blog: my husband is a physician. We do not need my income. I have a basement full of yarn that is just waiting to be knit. I have a grandson who lives around the corner who is just waiting to be played with. I absolutely adore cooking elaborate meals. I would love to retire. Just love it. I am not trying to be famous. In fact, my prayer is that this will never, ever be about me, but rather about Jesus and about these ideas. We are trying to figure out a retirement plan (don’t worry; it’s very long-term at the moment) where I can fade out but the materials can stay without them being associated with my name so much.
I had an epiphany when I was about 30 years old, that I recently shared with another young woman in a similar marriage/career situation. I said to her, “I realized when I was younger that I had an incredible gift. Our family did not need my money. So I could choose what I wanted to do. I could ask God to guide me, and I could work at what I felt was my calling, without concern for income. We could take the money that I earned and we could use it to support charities that I believed in. We could make sure that my time was being spent to further the kingdom of God. So because I have the blessing of that choice, I need to hold that blessing with deep responsibility.”
And I feel very called to do this, even though I would love to knit. And I am privileged that the money that I make from this blog can employ so many people, too.
I find it difficult, then, when people accuse us of just being mean, because I know that this is not what is going on.
I know how much Rebecca, Joanna, Keith, Connor, Tammy, even Katie and I all agonize how to do this well.
One of the first comments I saw this week after being offline for an entire week was this one, about my daughter Rebecca’s input in our podcast on unconditional respect not being a thing:
Whenever she talks about another author she always seems mad, rebuking, giving the idea every other author is a stupid person who does everything wrong. I know there are a lot of book bad teachings but she seems to have all the truth and her tone of voice let us know how smart she is while how dumb other authors and researchers are.
Please don’t tarnish a great ministry with arrogance.
Podcast Commenter
Podcast: Why Unconditional Respect Isn't a Thing
We get this sort of thing a lot–watch your tone. Be nicer. You’re being too mean. You’re arrogant.
It’s interesting, because this kind of complaint is hardly ever lobbed at men doing similar things. It’s really only lobbed at women.
In fact, in this podcast Rebecca never raised her voice or got angry. Other people told me how very NOT angry she sounded.
You know who did get angry in that podcast, and in the one after it? My husband Keith. But no one ever criticizes his tone of voice; only Rebecca and me. That’s a little difficult, too. He’s allowed to sound angry; we’re not. And we’re told that we sound angry even when we’re quite calm.
And, in context, what Rebecca was critiquing was the study on which the book Love & Respect was based: a survey of only 400 men which asked an extremely ambiguous question which the survey consultant and the pilot study group both said was inaccurate. And they never asked women. When they did ask women, women answered the same as men–but still the study was used to say that men want respect and women want love.
Seriously, there was no way to sugar coat that. It’s not that research is on our side; it’s that we are on the side of research. There’s a big difference.
We will try to watch our tone this year. We aren’t trying to take glee in just breaking down.
But break down we must. When women have been told they aren’t allowed to say no to sex; when instances of marital rape are recorded in Christian books without even being called rape; when women have been told they don’t need sex, don’t want sex like men do, and don’t have sex drives; when sex has been made entirely about a man’s orgasm–well, it’s hard not to get angry. And it needs to come down. In smithereens.
And then we want to build up. We want to get rid of the harmful stuff so that we can talk again about what a healthy sex life and healthy marriage look like. Our goal is that, at this time next year, we won’t have to tear down anything anymore. Our prayer is that the Christian world will see it and agree and scatter stones with us, so that we can build up again. We don’t want to keep doing this forever.
It is exhausting. It is demoralizing.
But it is also necessary. And so, over the next few weeks, we’re going to tear down some big messages in the evangelical world about sex. I hope we can do it with some humour, because we did try to make our book humorous (and I think we succeeded). We will be a little tongue in cheek! But we may also be angry, because we are angry. It is very, very wrong.
It is time to tear down, to uproot, to scatter stones. That time will be brief, I hope, if people get the message and embrace it. And as we scatter stones, we will be simultaneously building up, painting a picture of what a Jesus centered marriage and Jesus centered sex life look like (even if it seems weird to put it that way!). That’s our aim. Please be patient with us. It’s hard to do this well, and we won’t satisfy everyone.
But it needs to be done, and we’re ready to get started!
I’m almost scared to hand this one over to comments now–but have at it! 
