Sheila Wray Gregoire's Blog, page 43
December 9, 2020
Aragorn, Cinema Therapy, and Authentic Masculinity
As we’re trying to understand emotional maturity, can we get a better picture of what authentic masculinity is?
We talk a lot about toxic masculinity, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a healthy term. Many people fear that we’re labelling the stuff that guys tend to do as being toxic, and the stuff that girls tend to do as being healthy.
I have a son-in-law in the military who loves hunting and fishing and fixing stuff. That is not toxic! Typical “masculine” things are not bad.
What is bad, though, is when those are the only things that men are allowed to express.
My daughter Rebecca recently found a YouTube channel that she just loves, called Cinema Therapy.
There, a licensed therapist and a filmmaker just watch movies and talk about emotional health. It’s really well done, quite funny, and very moving. And I was quite taken with their video on Aragorn and the Lord of the Rings, and the points that they were making about masculinity.
Instead of the term “toxic masculiniity”, they prefer to talk about “limited masculinity.”
When men are only allowed to show a very few things, then masculinity becomes very limited. And the only emotions that men are encouraged to show, they say, are anger and lust–two things we’ve been talking about over the last week! And limited masculinity then tends to become about dominance–money, status, power, control. But real masculinity isn’t like that at all.
When you look at Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, though, he can cut the heads off orcs and then go write poetry. He’s a complete man.
Many of you in the comments over the last month, as we’ve been talking about emotional maturity, have asked what it looks like to be an emotionally mature and healthy man.
I thought this video answered that question so well that I’d let them have the last word before we get into Christmas posts, and a little bit on respect I want to do tomorrow.
It’s a great one to watch with teens, too, to get some discussion going!
So watch this, and then let me know what you think! And let’s talk about what real masculinity looks like in the comments.
Posts in the Emotional Maturity Series:
Four Markers of Emotional Maturity
Do We Use God Language to Avoid Maturity?
2 Keys to Handling Stonewalling Behavior
6 Ways to Grow in Emotional Maturity
A Book List to Help with Emotional Maturity
What Does Emotional Maturity Look Like (Podcast)
When Christian Resources Perpetuate Your Spouse's Immaturity
What if Emotional Maturity is a Skill Guys Can Learn?
How Anger is Like an Iceberg
What is Real Masculinity?
And check out 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage--my book that covers emotional maturity. Plus there's a FREE group study you can take with it!
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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Anger is often a secondary emotion. So we need to ask: What’s going on below the surface?
We’re wrapping up our emotional maturity series with a look at anger. Yesterday I was talking about how anger is like an iceberg; anger is the emotion that we’re comfortable with others seeing, and that we’re comfortable expressing ourselves. But anger can also be protective; feeling anger allows us to ignore the deeper emotions that are often going on below the surface–insecurity; guilt; fear; shame; rejection. Those emotions are scary, and so we’d rather lash out as an attempt at self-preservation.
It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis wrote:
“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”
C.S. Lewis
What he was feeling was grief; what he was expressing was anger.
If we want to get emotionally healthy, with ourselves and with others, we need to be willing to go below the surface of our anger and allow ourselves to feel and express what we’re really feeling.
Yesterday in the post I suggested a way to handle a spouse’s anger (or your own) when you want to go below the surface. But as I was writing that, it reminded me of an incident I wrote about from my own life when I just started blogging, back in 2008. The girls were 11 and 13, and here’s what they were like back then:
Katie and Rebecca back in 2008
And here’s the story I told:
Two weeks ago I was really down in the dumps.
I felt like nobody in my family really understood me or supported my speaking ministry.
They loved me, sure. They told me that, they hugged me, they helped me around the house. But they didn’t ask about my speaking, and sort of seemed disappointed every time I had to go (even though I’m home 90% of the time because I homeschool).
Anyway, I ended up talking to them about it, and guess what happened today!
I had to drive 2 1/2 hours this morning to a women’s outreach I was giving, and Keith got up at 6:00 a.m. to make me breakfast. Isn’t that sweet? I’ve never gotten up at 6:00 when he’s had to go to work early. I’m going to have to make it a point to do that sometime soon!
A very bad picture of me speaking at that outreach!
And then when I came home I found out that my 11-year-old had completely cleaned my study. Even my craft closet. She organized my yarn, she shredded all the paper that needed shredding, she moved stuff around so it looks better. It’s wonderful!
So I’m feeling very loved and very silly for my pity party. My family does appreciate me, and I appreciate my family. It was a good day.
But it reminded me of something: There are times when we see the worst in our family members. Often t’s because we simply haven’t communicated to them what we need.
However, the problem may go even deeper than that.
I’ve been wrestling a lot with guilt over my speaking for the last few years. My family comes first, and I’ve always felt a little torn whenever I have to go away overnight. I wonder if this is worth it, if God has really called me to this, or if I’m just pursuing it on my own. I put myself through the wringer on it, and start to accuse myself of all sorts of things. Am I in it for the pride? Do I just want the recognition? Do I think being a mother isn’t enough? And then I can take a different tack: what right do you have to give advice anyway? Do you think you’re better than everyone else?
You know the things we often say to ourselves. You likely say similar things to yourself, too.
The areas in our lives where we are most likely to feel guilty are also those that we are most likely to project onto others.
And that guilt will often come out as anger.
So if I’m feeling guilty about speaking too much, and my family doesn’t gush all over my speaking engagements, I assume they’re mad at me because that’s what I’m feeling. Or maybe you’re feeling guilty about not losing weight, and whenever your husband orders a water instead of a pop at a restaurant you feel like he’s silently judging you.
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Do you ever experience that? We tend to assume other people are mad at us for the very things that we struggle with, when in reality those issues may not even be on their radar screens.
I’ve realized is that I need to own my feelings. They are mine. I have to stop attributing these feelings to Keith, or my kids. They are not trying to make me feel guilty; I was doing that just fine on my own.
So ask yourself this: what is the one area where you are most sensitive right now? Is it about your sex life? Your work? Your relationship with your mother? Name it. Often we hide from these things because we don’t want to face our feelings, but name it to yourself.
Now, ask yourself this question: have I been assuming that my husband is mad at me for that, too? Have I been supersensitive to other people about this issue? Have I even erupted in anger when they’ve pushed certain buttons?
Talk to them about it, and try, from now on, to not assume the worst in people. Don’t project your guilt onto them. You’ll find your marriage, and your life, goes so much better!
Can you relate to this? Do you find that there are certain areas of your life where you’re really defensive? What about your spouse? 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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Handling Anger in Marriage: Understanding the Iceberg
Many marriages are plagued by anger, and yelling matches or big angry outbursts.
People will often say, “I have a temper problem” or “he has an anger problem.”
As we finish up our series on emotional maturity, I promised to spend a little bit of time on anger because so many find this difficult to deal with.
Sometimes we have good reasons for feeling angry in marriage. Anger, in and of itself, is not a bad emotion. Sometimes anger is an appropriate emotion to show in different situations (as Jesus clearing the moneychangers’ tables in the gospel accounts show), though HOW we handle anger can be problematic. “In your anger, do not sin,” says Ephesians 4:26. Anger is not the problem necessarily; what you do with it is.
Other times, though, anger becomes a problem in our relationship because it’s the go-to emotion whenever something bad happens.
For many people, anger is a safer emotion to show than any other emotion.
Anger, you see, is a protective emotion, and often a “secondary” emotion. What we’re actually feeling is rejection, or disappointment, or fear, or insecurity, but because those feelings are so terribly uncomfortable to us, we turn to anger instead because that’s safer, and it allows us to go on the attack to protect us from whatever was causing those other feelings in the first place.
Anger, then, is like an iceberg. You see the yelling and the raging above the surface of the water, but there’s a whole lot more going on underneath.
That’s how The Gottman Institute describes it:
If you’re unsure of why you’re feeling angry, try thinking of anger like an iceberg. Most of an iceberg is hidden below the surface of the water.
Similarly, when we’re angry, there can be other emotions hidden beneath the surface. It’s easy to see a person’s anger, but it can be difficult to see the underlying feelings the anger is protecting.
For example, Dave believed he had an anger problem. When his wife would make a request of him, he would criticize her. He didn’t like his reactions, but he felt he couldn’t help it. As he worked on discovering his dreams within conflict and started noticing the space between his anger and his actions, he opened up the door into a profound realization.
He didn’t really have an anger problem. Instead, he felt like his wife was placing impossible demands on him. By seeking to understand and accept his anger, rather than fix or suppress it, he began to improve his marriage by recognizing his anger as a signal for a need—a need to set healthy boundaries for what he would and would not do.
The Anger Iceberg
So how should you handle anger in marriage?
If you’re the one feeling the anger
Remove yourself from the situation and allow yourself some time to get a handle on what you’re feeling.
Take some deep breaths, recite a few Bible verses or read a Psalm to calm yourself (Psalm 23 is a good one), and then ask yourself:
What am I feeling right now other than anger?
What happened right when I got angry?
What is it that I need in this situation?
What’s a way that I can express that need?
For instance, let’s say that you’re a stay-at-home mom and you’ve had a horrible day with the kids. The living room is a mess. You’ve got a low-grade headache. You’re trying to get dinner on, and your husband comes in and tries to take care of two of the kids that are bickering over a toy. He turns to you and asks, “who had the toy first?”
And you just lose it. You yell at him because he should be able to figure something out with the kids without you having to do everything.
Now, what if, instead of yelling at everyone, you were to say, “I can’t deal with this right now. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be back down,” and you go and sit in the bedroom for a bit. You take some deep breaths. You sing a song to yourself. And then you ask those questions. And you realize:
I’m tired. I feel like I don’t have control of anything in my life right now. I feel like I’m doing a really bad job.
What was going on right before?
The kids were bickering. And that leads you to another insight: Sometimes I am just sick of them. I am. I just want to get away and not have to deal with them. Does that make me a bad mom?
What is it that I need in this situation?
I may need some down time. I may need some time when the kids aren’t my problem. I may need some help parenting them so they don’t fight so much all the time. I may need some help figuring out how to organize the house because I can’t handle this chaos.
What’s a way that I can express that need?
I can go downstairs and tell everybody that I love them, but i’m tired and need some help. And then my husband and I can talk about getting me more margins or more organized or just more coping skills.
If your spouse is the one expressing anger
Scenario 1: The anger is really an outburst of rage, with yelling, belittling, and instilling fear
First, realize that you cannot have a productive conversation with someone when they are angry, because they’re in “fight or flight” mode where they’re working out of the instinctual part of their brain that reacts, rather than the higher part of the brain that’s involved with reasoning. You cannot reason with an angry person. You need the anger defused first.
So you can say, “I see that you are angry. Take some time to calm down and then we can talk.”
Please know: If you feel like you have to sit there while you get yelled at or you will make the situation worse; if you feel unsafe, as if your spouse will get physically abusive or abusive in some other way if you don’t allow yourself to be raged at this is not a safe situation. Call the police if there is an urgent need; call a domestic abuse hotline; or, if this is a chronic problem where there is no immediate danger to your safety, seek out a licensed counselor to help you draw boundaries and decide what to do.
If they will not leave the room to calm down, then you can leave the room (and take any children with you). A simple, “I can see you’re angry, but I am not willing to talk to you when you are angry. When you have calmed down, I’ll be happy to revisit this with you.” And then go.
Scenario 2: The anger is not full-blown rage, but rather something that can be dealt with.
One of the biggest mistakes that we can make when a spouse is angry is to try to talk them out of being angry.
When someone is in fight or flight mode, you can’t reason with them. But that fight or flight, anger reaction often dissipates when they see you not as someone who is attacking them, but as someone who is their ally. So if the anger isn’t something that is blowing up and becoming rage, try to “stand on the iceberg with them”, as the Gottman Institute says.
“I can see that you’re angry and that you’re really upset by this. I know this is hard. Can you tell me what you’re feeling?”
Try hard not to get defensive and not to talk them out of it. What you want to do here is help them get below the surface and see what they’re really feeling.
So in the same scenario as above, here’s what the husband could do:
Husband: “Wow, honey, you sound really angry. Has it been a hard day for you?”
Wife: “I’m just so sick of having to do everything by myself! Why can’t you figure out what’s going on with the boys? Why do you always need me?”
Now, here’s where things get dicey.
This is a MAJOR danger point in the conversation.
If I were that husband, I’d be really inclined to defend myself right now. But remember: You’re trying to go below the surface, not trying to talk them out of the anger. The goal is not to show why they have no right to feel angry and why you are right; the goal is to help them understand what’s happening inside so that anger is no longer the go-to response, and so that you can feel on the same team again.
Husband: “You sound like you’re feeling really alone. Do you feel alone about other things?”
And then let her talk. And in talking, the anger may dissipate, and she may find what those things are below the surface.
Expressing what we need in a situation is far more vulnerable than expressing anger, and people often need help to get to the bottom of their needs. But it’s a journey worth taking! And if you have trouble talking about your needs, our emotional needs exercise can help. Just put your email in below to receive it for free!
Handling anger well involves mirroring back the emotion, not the facts.
Don’t engage in the factual argument, but engage in the emotion. When we can act as a mirror for our spouses, allowing them a safe place to go below the surface, often they can make those discoveries more easily and THEN you can get solution focused. Once you start going below the surface, often the anger will turn to frustration or fear or disappointment or discouragement, and then the anger will often turn to tears. And tears can be easier to handle. Then the “fight or flight” mode is gone, and you can actually engage in the rational side of the brain again.
Keith often says in marriage conferences that “your wife can ask you questions for free that you’d pay a psychiatrist hundreds of dollars to ask you.”
And the same thing goes for husbands: we can help each other glimpse below the surface and develop healthier emotional coping mechanisms.
It’s not easy. It means stopping being defensive. It means stopping our natural inclination to get our back up. It means putting our own egos on hold for a bit. But if we can engage in this, we can help our spouse grow!
Is anger an issue you’ve dealt with over your life? Do you find that it’s often a cover for something else? Or does your spouse struggle with anger? Let’s talk in the comments!
Posts in the Emotional Maturity Series:
Four Markers of Emotional Maturity
Do We Use God Language to Avoid Maturity?
2 Keys to Handling Stonewalling Behavior
6 Ways to Grow in Emotional Maturity
A Book List to Help with Emotional Maturity
What Does Emotional Maturity Look Like (Podcast)
When Christian Resources Perpetuate Your Spouse's Immaturity
What if Emotional Maturity is a Skill Guys Can Learn?
How Anger is Like an Iceberg
And check out 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage--my book that covers emotional maturity. Plus there's a FREE group study you can take with it!
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
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(Your) Final Words on the Stumbling Block Debate about Lust and Modesty
Yesterday on the podcast I shared about how “don’t be a stumbling block” is a toxic message to give to young girls about modesty.
It all stemmed from a discussion on Facebook where I was presenting a scenario where a 13-year-old girl was blamed for causing an adult man to lust in church.
You can see those posts here:
Post 1: Initial post on how thinking a 13-year-old is to blame for an adult man lusting is a red flag
Post 2: If you’re in a subculture where it’s assumed all men lust and that lusting after 13-year-olds is normal, that’s not a safe place.
Post 3: If you were ever given unwanted sexual attention at church as a teen, what were you wearing (to show it’s not about clothing)
The comments on Facebook were numerous (hundreds on each post) and all over the place. But some really stood out. And I thought today I’d just share a few that said something important.
First, when commenters started saying that 13-year-olds need to watch what they wear, commenters made some excellent points:
Thanks for providing more evidence that Sheila’s posts and work on this topic is necessary. The fact that so many women read a post about a grown man lusting after a 13 year old CHILD – and think the appropriate response to said post is to think teens and women need a modesty lecture is incredibly disconcerting. This is absolutely part of the problem.
It seems to me that some of you need to rethink your ideas of responsibility. Attaching the same amount of responsibility to a child that you do to an adult man is horrific. Adolescents choose their clothing primarily based upon style, peers, and social pressure. This is appropriate development. very rarely does a child choose their clothing because they want to be sexy or seduce a man . Please understand that first and foremost!
Men are adults. A healthy Christian man protects a child regardless of what they are wearing. They understand that they are in a position of authority. men are not ruled by their penises because they are adults and are capable of making choices. So if you’re attaching the same amount of responsibility to a child’s adolescent peer-driven choice in clothing as you do to a grown man’s choice to sexually abuse and use a child… You are also in sin
Several comments showed concern for the CHILD, which is as it should be:
First – I am glad the 13 year old is at church, I don’t care what she is wearing. It may be all she had. So blessings that she is turning to God.
Second – if a man is married or not and he is lusting after anyone under the age of 18 he needs help. If he is married and he is lusting after anyone other than his wife – he needs help.
Third – even if the roles are reversed and it’s the woman lusting after anyone under the age of 18 or if she is married and she is lusting after anyone other than her husband, she needs help.
The adults are the red flag, the minor is in the right place and is obviously seeking God and the right way of life and doing the best they can.
Fourth – if for some reason the minors behavior is inappropriate towards an adult or even another child – red flag as they may have had trauma in their life and needs help! Don’t ignore any of the red flags! Our children deserve protection.
Girl come on. The correct response from a grown man to a girl who is deliberately trying to dress provocatively is, “Gosh that poor thing, it’s got to be so hard being a kid and feeling so much pressure to act sexy in our oversexualized society. I’ll be praying for her. Maybe my wife could invite her to the teen girls Bible study she runs. Lord, protect this sweet child from the evil in this world.”
Is a provocatively-dressed teenager AN EXCUSE FOR LUST? Or should it be an occasion for sympathy, empathy, compassion, and prayer? I remember dressing provocatively to get men’s attention when I was a teenager. What I desperately needed was for an older woman to take me aside and say, “Honey, you are so much more valuable than the ‘sexiness’ of your body or how appealing you are to men” — to teach me to value myself apart from how attractive men found me!
I don’t think anyone is saying it’s a good thing for a girl to dress provocatively. I think what most people are saying is 1. that a teenage girl is still a GIRL and her maturity is the likely culprit rather than wanting to seduce adult men, and 2. that men, especially men who claim the name of Christ have to (and are able to) be better than that. If a sexily-dressed 13-year-old is “in sin” in some way, her “sin” absolutely pales in comparison with a so-called Christian man ogling and lusting after someone who he should look on as a daughter, seek to protect, and pray for.
Then, over the course of several threads and in several comments, I made these points, which I’d like to end on!
(POINT 1):
Of course we need to help girls see their worth. Of course. But the topic of this post is that a man is lusting after a child. The fact that we keep turning the conversation to “BUT THE CHILD….” is highly concerning. The main problem here is NOT THE CHILD, but the man. I think the fact that so many are focusing on the child shows that in our minds and our hearts we do not truly understand that men are to blame for lust, and that women and girls are not to blame for it. Until we understand that, we will continue to pass dangerous messages on to the next generation–messages that do harm their marriages. If you want to teach girls how to respect themselves, by all means do so. But please don’t do it in the context of a bigger conversation about men’s lust. That equates two subjects that should never, ever be equated.
(POINT 2):
You said that “Adults need to know it is never OKAY to lust after a child.” However, you said that in a thread where what you focused on most was fashion for children and girls. Can you see that, even if you give the caveat “adults should never lust after children,” if you make the focus of your discussion what is appropriate clothing and how girls keep wanting to show their butt cheeks, that you’re actually giving the opposite message? You’re saying adults shouldn’t lust and there’s no excuse, but then you’re going on and on with things that are excuses. You need to separate the two arguments. When we’re talking about adults lusting after children, that must be ALL we’re talking about. Modesty and dress should never, ever enter into the discussion. Have that discussion at another time, by all means. But when you conflate the two, then you’re giving the message, “Actually, sometimes it’s understandable that adults lust after children.”
(POINT 3):
It is very, very possible for men to control where their minds go. It truly is. Scientific studies have shown this; we also know that lust is cultural. We lust after what we’ve been taught to lust after. If you are in a subculture where it’s normal that men would lust after children, that isn’t safe. If you are in a subculture where, if a man lusts after a child, the first question is “but what was the child wearing”, then that is not a safe place for a child. Most men, when they realize someone is only 13, stop thinking of them in a sexual way. That should be the norm. This is what we should call men to, because this is what JESUS called men to.
Sheila Wray Gregoire
Finally, this is how I ended a lot of the discussion (and you can tell I was getting testy):
What if telling a girl that she is causing a man to sin is actually being a stumbling block TO HER? Why do we think that “don’t be a stumbling block” needs to be addressed to GIRLS? Why shouldn’t it be addressed to the ADULT MEN who have been Christians for decades, who are telling young, impressionable children that they are responsible for the adults’ sin? Just read this thread and read the stories of the girls who were shamed in church and scared to go back. Read the stories of the girls who were abused and blamed for it. And then ask yourself: Who is the weaker brother who is being hurt? Who is the one whose faith is being weakened (which is what the stumbling block passages in Romans are about)? Is it the young girl, or is it the adult male who is objectifying her and blaming her? And then maybe, just maybe, we need to change entirely how we talk about this.
And then maybe, just maybe, we need to change entirely how we talk about this.
Yep.
You may also enjoy these posts on modesty and lust:
How Don’t Be a Stumbling Block is a Really Bad Modesty Message
My 40% Modesty Rule
Our lust & modesty podcast
Our podcast on yoga pants, noticing, and lusting
Experiencing shame when you develop puberty early
I really hope this can be our final word! But I’ll give you a chance now–anything else you want to add about modesty and lust? And how can we help the church stop talking about this in weird ways? 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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PODCAST: Can We Please Put the Lust and Modesty Debate Behind Us for Good?
I am very, very tired of the “don’t be a stumbling block” argument when it comes to modesty for girls.
I know that this is a very widespread debate, and I have talked about it before in two main posts:
My 40% Modesty Rule
Why Don’t Be a Stumbling Block is a Really Bad Modesty Message
In our recent survey of 20,000 women, we found that when girls are made to feel responsible for boys’ sin, very bad things happen in those girls future marriages and sex lives.
And recently on Facebook, I shared a few thoughts that blew up quite big. The support was huge, but at the same time, the arguments that 13-year-old girls can cause adult men to sin are still very widespread. And so today, in this podcast, Rebecca and I would like to put that to rest once and for all.
We got kind of heated, too!
Browse all the Different Podcasts
See the Last “Start Your Engines” (Men’s) Podcast
Watch on YouTube, too!
Timeline of the Podcast
0:45 Let’s talk about lust in a non illegal way, please.
5:30 Noticing isn’t bad, facts aren’t bad.
8:45 Lusting for adolescents is not normal
11:40 Mixed messages about lust & modesty
17:20 We’ve confused men with their sexuality!
29:05 The Bell-curve Modesty Rule
34:20 But what about the dangers with clothing choices?
42:04 Research on gender visual stimulation
47:43 RQ: Help with my son growing into sexuality?
Main Segment: The Lust Discussion and the Modesty Discussion Must Always Be Separate
Why? Because if you say, “Men are 100% responsible for not lusting after 13-year-old girls, but 13-year-old girls are also 100% responsible to be modest and dress appropriately,” then you don’t really mean the first part. Yes, we need to teach girls to dress appropriately (and I have a way to do that at the bottom of my stumbling block post), but it’s never, ever about not causing someone to sin.
This discussion came up because of the response to these Facebook posts:
Post 1–on how we should think a man lusting after a 13-year-old girl is a major red flag
The comments are rather interesting–and some are rather depressing. Hence the need for this podcast!
I won’t go into all our arguments here, but you need to listen to this one!
Even listen to it with your teenage daughters and teenage sons, and start the discussion going!
You're telling me WHAT goes WHERE?!
Talking about sex with your kids doesn't always go smoothly.
That's why we created The Whole Story, our online course that walks parents through the tough conversations and does the hard parts for you!
Learn More!
Reader Question: How do I prepare my 9-year-old son for the lure of porn?
A woman writes in with this question:
My husband has struggled with porn since he was a kid. We are trying to heal during recovery. We’ve been married 10 years. My son is 9 and he’s coming close to the age my husband was exposed to porn by his father’s addiction and his carelessness. I am repulsed still somehow as I grew up very conservative, by the fact that men are sexually attracted to women, but I have always understood that it’s one of the glues that bind a marriage together. I bought your course the whole story and I still have yet to read it, but I am thinking about my reaction when I see my son fight his attraction to ladies. I’m afraid I’m gonna just be so mad at his natural impulses because I’m maybe bitter still at my husband’s past sin and his potential to fall again into lusting for other women. I don’t want to make my son distance himself emotionally from me because of how I handle his learning to be a man, so please have you heard pointers to be prepared and not react but be proactive in guiding our sons’ minds and souls?
A lot of issues going on here!
Porn has damaged their marriage
She grew up feeling disgusted by sexual attraction/men’s sex drive
She doesn’t want to transfer shame onto her son
I do think The Whole Story will be able to help her husband have those conversations with his son, or help her have them, so that’s going to be a big help, because it does open up the pornography conversation in a safe way. And it also tells boys that it’s natural to feel sexual feelings. These aren’t anything to be ashamed about. Very important!
But it also sounds like she has some healing to do with the messages she heard growing up and with the problems in her marriage. I wish The Great Sex Rescue were available now, because it would be great for her, but you can still pre-order it (which helps us immensely!).
I think the key here, though, is communication. Be honest about how you feel. Tell him the truth even if you struggle with the truth, too. It’s okay to struggle. It’s a difficult subject. But most shame is transmitted by not talking about it.
What the Research Says: Women are Visual, too
Over the last few months so many readers have been sending me links to new studies showing that the idea that “men are visual” is actually being disproved by science–or at least the idea that men are visual and women are not is being disproved! And the readers are right. Over the last 2-3 years, more and more studies have come out showing that the idea that men’s brains react more to visual stimuli than women’s brains do is not nearly as straightforward as it’s made out to be–and in many cases may be simply wrong.
Today we pointed to a meta-analysis that came out recently (a review of 61 studies) that shows that women are also visually stimulated. Read the study here. Here’s the summary:
Neuroimaging studies suggest differences in the underlying biology of sexual arousal associated with sex and sexual orientation, yet their findings are conflicting. Following a thorough statistical review of all significant neuroimaging studies, we offer strong quantitative evidence that the neuronal response to visual sexual stimuli, contrary to the widely accepted view, is independent of biological sex. Both men and women show increased activation in many cortical and subcortical brain regions thought to be involved in the response to visual sexual stimuli, while the limited sex differences that have been found and reported previously refer to subjective rating of the content.
Neural substrates of sexual arousal are not sex dependent
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, July 2019
Things Mentioned in This Podcast:
Our stumbling block post, that looks at the biblical passages often used to support the idea that women must dress modestly in order to not cause someone to sin (and why that’s a poor application of those passages)
A closer look at the modesty passage from 1 Timothy 2
Noticing is Not Lusting–a better way to understand what lust really is in men
Are you inadvertently raising your sons to lust?
Our podcast on recognizing grooming behaviour
The Whole Story puberty course
The 4 Stages of Recovery from Pornography
Pre-Order The Great Sex Rescue!
Are you a guy (or are you married to one?) We need men to take our men’s survey! Pretty please!
Andrew J. Bauman’s resources on healthy male sexuality
What do you think? Will we ever be able to talk about modesty and lust well? What messages were you given as a teen? 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 to Stop Being a Doormat in Your Marriage
Do you ever feel like a doormat in your marriage?
You want so badly to connect with your spouse, but whatever you do, your spouse just doesn’t connect back with you.
Yesterday I shared an email from a woman who felt like she never talked with her husband and basically had no relationship with him. She began by talking about how they never talk. I’d like to share the rest of that email today. She writes:
Communication is basically nonexistent because he doesn’t talk to me. How can I have sex when there is zero emotional connection? How do I want to have sex with someone who doesn’t take my feelings into consideration?
Which leads me to the next- I have to treat him like a child. I have to yell at him to get out of bed in the morning or else I would listen to the alarm going off for 2 hours straight because of the snooze function. Zero consideration for the fact I have to get up in a couple hours and get the big kids ready for school and some days babysit babies.
On Sundays I have to tell him a hundred times to get out of bed for Sunday school while I am trying to get myself and all our kids ready and he always makes us late, sometimes I just leave without him. If I wasn’t there he wouldn’t even take the kids to Sunday school.
Then we never have sex, how can you want to have sex with someone who only cares about himself? I’m just so tired of doing everything by myself, taking care of everyone and everything. Our Sunday school class just did a course on the 5 love languages, mine is quality time- which never happens. He doesn’t talk to me if we are together anyways so why bother. I’ve had the post of conversation starters pulled up on my phone for weeks now. But I just feel like we are in just a constant fight. I’ve tried every love language on him, I text him that I’m proud of him and all sorts of affirmations – no text back, I’ve packed his lunches- no thank you and sometimes he even forgets them in the fridge, I’ve made his favorite meals and picked him little things up at the grocery store, physical touch and then he’s back to being rude the next day. I just can’t win.
Divorce isn’t an option at all, I just feel like I’m so done. Help me.
This woman is trying to raise a bunch of kids while her husband is not engaging–with her or with the parenting.
He talks to her when he wants sex, but other than that, he’s not into the marriage, and he does little to help her.
She has tried being nice and learning love languages, but as she’s found, the problem is not that he doesn’t know what her love language is. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to care. Like Keith talked about on Monday’s post, we often assume that the problem is a knowledge gap when it comes to emotional connection–if my spouse just understood what I need, then my spouse would provide it!
But often it’s not a knowledge gap. Often it’s a willingness gap, or a skills gap.
When one spouse is unwilling to do the work that goes into building connection, then the other will feel taken for granted and put upon. When only one spouse is doing the work, you create a very unbalanced and unhealthy relationship. And you essentially do create a dynamic where she feels like a doormat.
What makes someone a doormat in marriage?
When you consistently live out your vows, but your spouse does not live out theirs, then you create an unequal marriage where one spouse is overfunctioning and one spouse is underfunctioning.
This could happen in any number of ways. It could be that your spouse leaves all the care for the household and kids to you, and goes out with friends all the time, feeling that his (or her) schedule is open. It could be that one spouse never does any work around the house or cares for the kids, but relaxes and expects that the other will do everything. (See my series on mental load and emotional labor if this is you!). It could be that one spouse routinely betrays marriage vows through watching porn or having affairs, but then expects the other spouse to put up with it.
And it could be, as it is in this woman’s case, that one spouse stays emotionally disconnected and physically disconnected from the family until, and only until, they want sex.
In all cases, one spouse is underfunctioning, and one spouse is overfunctioning.
When you feel like a doormat, the answer is not to punish your spouse, but instead to let your relationship show truth.
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. If you are living in such a way that your marriage is telling a different story than your relationship dynamics, then you’re not living in truth.
And sex is supposed to be the culmination of your relationship! It flows out of everything that you are together. That’s why it’s not just physical, but instead an intimate “knowing” as the Bible describes.
If someone cannot and will not connect with you outside the bedroom, it is okay to say,
“Our marriage is not healthy right now. We have some real issues we need to work on. I feel completely disconnected from you. I want to grow our relationship and feel close to you again, and I desperately want a great sex life with you. But that needs to flow out of a relationship that is healthy, so we have some work to do.”
You promised to love and cherish your spouse; those things are non-negotiable.
But loving your spouse does not mean that you ignore real issues between you. Loving your spouse means that you want good for your spouse, not bad. And good is not the same thing as being nice. Good means that you want growth; that you want wholeness; that you want maturity and responsibility. Good means that you want your spouse walking in the purposes that God has for your spouse, not living a life where they don’t have to do hard things because you’ll do them for your spouse, and you’ll cover up for them.
That’s what a doormat is–someone who covers up the hard parts, and allows your spouse to use you–to walk all over you. This doesn’t mean that you’re to blame if your spouse does this. But in most cases, you do have a choice about whether or not you put up with it.
(If you do not feel safe making any changes to the dynamic in your relationship, please call a domestic abuse hotline. If you are in an abusive relationship, but feel like you can’t leave because of financial considerations, please call a hotline where people may be able to put you in contact with resources in your community).
In my book 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage, I said this:
From 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage
A great marriage is not about being nice; a great marriage is about being good. And too many women focus on the nice–“I’ve got my happy face on today!”–and miss the good.
A nice woman wants to put others at ease, but she does this largely by dealing with surface issues and ignoring the important underlying heart issues. She isn’t intentional; she reacts to what is going on around her. A good woman, on the other hand, acts. She wants to be part of what God is doing. And sometimes that ends up seeming not very nice.
It wasn’t nice of Lily to stop paying the bills and to start putting consequences in place if her husband didn’t fulfill his responsibilities, but it was good. It wasn’t nice of Paul to call out Peter in public, but it was good. It isn’t nice of a wife to say, “I find when we’re making love that you’re a little rough and it’s difficult for me to enjoy it. Can we look at how to make my body feel aroused, too?”, but it is good.
Marriage should be a relationship that helps both of us grow in maturity and health, not a relationship that provides a cover for immaturity and selfishness.
That means that it’s okay if the outside of your relationship starts telling the truth about what the inside of your relationship is like. If you are not connecting; if one of you feels taken advantage of and feels like a doormat; then it’s okay if you don’t act like everything is okay.
Sometimes it can be hard to know what that means. How do you draw boundaries? What’s a good way of talking about this? What are good steps to take?
That, my friends, is what 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage is for. You can learn to be good, not just nice. You can be set free to aim for what God wants for your marriage, and not just to do the things that you think you’re supposed to do. It will surprise you, empower you, and feel like a breath of fresh air! As Maria, a blog reader, said to me:
I have a few of your books but want to say that one of my all time favorite marriage books is your 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage. Thank you for letting God use you to help others!
Are you GOOD or are you NICE?
Because the difference matters!
God calls us to be GOOD, yet too often we’re busy being nice. And sometimes, in marriage, that can actually cause problems to be even more entrenched.
What if there’s a better way?
Take me to it!
You are valuable. God created marriage to be a relationship where you each would have support as you do the things that God put you on this earth to do (Eph 2:10). If your marriage is sapping your energy rather than giving you support, then part of emotional maturity is confronting that fact and doing what you can about it–or at least not enabling selfishness.
This doesn’t need to be mean, and it certainly shouldn’t be done out of anger or selfishness. But part of loving your spouse is wanting the best for them, and the best includes growing as a person. It does not include taking advantage of others.
And the sooner you speak up when you notice a bad dynamic is starting, the easier it is to stop that dynamic before it solidifies into a strong behaviour pattern.
So speak up. You matter. And God wants more for you in your marriage than being taken advantage of.
You may also enjoy:
Iron Should Sharpen Iron: How marriage should make us better people
Are You a Spouse or an Enabler?
I Figured out Why Christian Marriage Advice is So Trite
What do you think? Have you ever felt like a doormat? What helped you? Let’s talk in the comments!
Sheila Wray Gregoire
Founder of To Love, Honor and Vacuum
Sheila has been married to Keith for 28 years, and happily married for 25! (It took a while to adjust). She’s also an award-winning author of 8 books, including The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex, and a sought-after speaker. With her humorous, no-nonsense approach, Sheila is passionate about changing the evangelical conversation about sex and marriage to line up with kingdom principles. ENTJ, straight 8
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How to Get to Deeper Levels of Communication in Marriage: Understanding the 5 Levels of Communication
Growing in emotional maturity is largely about being able to comfortably go to deeper levels of communication.
So many readers write to me saying that they find it so hard to connect with their spouse. One reader recently, for instance, said this:
We have been married for almost a decade and have a bunch of kids. I just feel like I’m just tired and at the end of my rope and I want to give up, but I know there’s no option of divorce. I don’t even know which problem to address first. I guess first. We don’t talk. Yes he’s a quiet guy but I feel like we
never have a conversation, like I usually feel like I’m talking to a wall. Which leads me into I am so lonely. I don’t know how many times I have cried and pleaded to just talk to me and told him I am just so lonely. And nothing ever changes, it’s like he just doesn’t care. I feel like we are roommates. Which leads me into our sex life. He’s nice and attentive when he wants to have sex and then the next day he’s right back to being uncaring and rude. He never comes out and says he wants sex, if I initiate it then he will, he just always wants sex. Communication is basically nonexistent because he doesn’t talk to me. How can I have sex when there is zero emotional connection? How do I want to have sex with someone who doesn’t take my feelings into consideration?
There are a whole lot of issues going on in this marriage (and she describes many more in the rest of her email), but one of the most common things I hear, that’s at the root of so many problems, is that the couple just doesn’t talk. Or, when they do talk, it’s because he’s changing his attitude because he wants sex, and then once sex is done, he goes back to being distant again.
Now, every couple will inevitably go through seasons of distance–seasons when you don’t feel as close because of work schedules, the pressure of illness, busy-ness that can’t be avoided, etc.
It is NOT inevitable, though, that you will fall out of love, lose your libido, or feel disconnected. If we learn the skills of emotional maturity, as Keith talked about yesterday, and actually practice them–then we can avoid much of the distance in our marriage and stay close.
A large part of emotional maturity is feeling comfortable enough with your emotions that you’re able to share with someone on an emotional level.
Gary Smalley, in his book The Secrets of Lasting Love, says that there are five levels of communication:
The 5 Levels of Communication
Cliches
Facts
Opinions
Feelings
Needs
Gary Smalley
The Secret to Lasting Love
Intimacy increases with each level.
When you hold the door open for someone, you tend to talk in CLICHES: “nice day, isn’t it?”
Many couples spend most of their time communicating at the level of FACTS: “Johnny has band practice tomorrow at 3 and someone has to pick him up at 4:30. Can you do that on the way home from work?”
OPINIONS isn’t that scary, either: “I just think that my new supervisor is out to get me. She never smiles and nothing I do is right!”
But it’s really in the FEELINGS and NEEDS that we become vulnerable.
“I’m scared that my boss is going to think that the supervisor is right. What if no one recognizes what I’m doing? I just feel so drained when I go to work now, and I’m not sure how much longer I can take this.”
Or NEEDS:
“I want to feel like what I’m doing makes a difference. Lately it’s been so hard to get out of bed because I don’t know if anyone even notices my contributions. What if God is disappointed in me, too? I need to know that someone smiles over me.”
Now, think about how a marriage will be if all of the communication is at the FACTS level. The couple may talk a lot–but they don’t really know each other any better.
And sometimes we think that by sharing opinions we’re really opening up. But we’re not. Opinions are safe–it’s feelings that are vulnerable. It’s feelings that reveal what’s really going on inside of you.
The problem is that many couples never really learned how to live comfortably at levels 4 and 5. Often the level of emotional intimacy we’ve reached when we start to become sexually involved tends to be the level we’re stuck at–unless we take specific steps to overcome that. So couples who have sex early in their relationship can end up substituting physical intimacy for emotional intimacy, and have a hard time progressing now into emotional vulnerability because they’ve done things backwards. Or couples who never really developed emotional intimacy before marriage may feel stuck and never progress either.
(That’s one of the reasons that God wants us to wait for marriage to make love! Going to deeper levels of communication also shows us whether this is a good person to marry or not. But even if you had been sexually active before marriage, your marriage can be strong and healthy now!)
So some couples may never reach levels 4 and 5 to begin with, and others may have been there, but then seasons of busy-ness come and they start staying at facts and opinions. They don’t have time to become vulnerable, or there’s so much that’s happened in the relationship that they don’t feel safe becoming vulnerable.
It’s that sharing of vulnerability, though, that will help you feel close, and here’s why: there are very few people that we actually get down to communication levels 4 and 5 with.
And we tend to bond with those individuals. So you want to make sure that one of those people is your spouse! If you’re not sharing at these levels with your spouse, then it’s all too easy to get caught up in an emotional affair with someone else. Being vulnerable makes us feel close and increases intimacy–whether within marriage or outside of it. So make sure it’s within marriage!
I know, though, that many of you struggle with this.
You’d like to get to deeper levels of communication, but how do you just begin the conversation?
And often many men think that what their wives need is to talk, and so if a guy listens, he’s done enough. But emotional intimacy is a two-way street. You can’t have one person becoming vulnerable while the other never does. Women don’t just want their husbands to hear their hearts; they want to hear their husbands’ hearts, too.
Sometimes we just don’t ask the right questions, and we just don’t know our spouses as well as we could.
I really believe that if we were more intentional about communicating at some of these deeper levels that even when the inevitable seasons of distance come, our marriages could withstand them. We’d still feel intimate and vulnerable with each other. But if all we’re doing is communicating facts and opinions–well, you can do that with anyone. And then what is going to make you want to be with your husband especially? What makes him stand out? Nothing.
Yet it’s difficult to go to deeper levels of communication when you’re not used to it. Sometimes having a ritual that you do that helps you share, or having outside prompts that helps you share, makes talking at these deeper levels easier than just expecting those conversations to spontaneously happen on their own.
Here are some ideas to help:
Try the High-Low Exercise, where everyday you share with each other the time you felt the most energized and in the groove today, and the time you felt the most defeated. Try to do this ritual at the same time everyday–getting into bed; while you’re making dinner; sitting over a cup of tea after dinner.
Use our 50 Conversation Starters for Couples ! They’re really fun, and they’ll help you reveal things about yourself you may even have forgotten. Pick 2 or 3 a night and ask them while you’re out walking, while you’re sharing a bath together, or over dessert.
3. Check out the Intimately Us app! It’s an app specifically for the sexual side of your relationship, but the app also stresses that sex flows from an intimate relationship–it doesn’t produce intimacy on its own. So it has conversation starters and games you can play together too to get to know each other better!
You can grow your emotional intimacy by getting to deeper levels of communication
Yes, it may feel awkward at first. Yes, it will take the willingness of both parties. But instead of saying to your spouse, “we never talk!” or “you never talk to me!” or “I feel like we don’t even know each other”, try suggesting one of these hands-on ideas. For guys especially for whom emotional vulnerability is a skill that they have yet to learn, practising in a way that’s easier with a few more parameters can seem less intimidating.
And you never know what you’ll learn about each other when you start using some conversation starters!
What do you think? Do you find getting to levels 4 and 5 a challenge? Are you stuck at 3? Or have you had a breakthrough? Let’s talk in the comments!
Posts in the Emotional Maturity Series:
Four Markers of Emotional Maturity
Do We Use God Language to Avoid Maturity?
2 Keys to Handling Stonewalling Behavior
6 Ways to Grow in Emotional Maturity
A Book List to Help with Emotional Maturity
What Does Emotional Maturity Look Like (Podcast)
When Christian Resources Perpetuate Your Spouse's Immaturity
What if Emotional Maturity is a Skill Guys Can Learn?
And check out 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage--my book that covers emotional maturity. Plus there's a FREE group study you can take with it!
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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EMOTIONAL MATURITY SERIES: What if Emotional Maturity Is a Skill that We Can Learn?
Men are emotional beings–whether we think that or not.
Keith here with this month’s installment of Men’s Corner. This month’s theme is “Emotional Maturity”.
Can I start out by being really blunt? I think many people of both genders tend to write men off in this area and unjustly so. It seems to me that it is generally assumed by many that women are by nature more “emotionally intelligent” than men.
In fact, this so engrained in our culture that I would say that some people would even equate the phrase “become more emotionally mature” with “be more feminine”.
I categorically disagree that emotional maturity is “a woman thing”. I do think this is an area that many men do struggle with (for reasons I will get into below), but I think it is something that all people can develop and master regardless of gender.
Emotional maturity is not intrinsically gender-based.
After all the discussion on the blog this month, I hope I don’t need to argue that. We have all known many emotionally mature and immature people of both sexes. And I think most people also realize that emotional maturity is an ongoing process that is open to both men and women. I have seen myself change and grow over my life and I have also seen Sheila and my two daughters develop emotional maturity over their lives. I don’t think that Sheila and my daughters were born more emotionally mature than me, nor intrinsically better at developing emotional maturity over time. It is simply a matter of putting in the time and developing the necessary skills. And that, to me, is where the problem lies.
Emotional maturity is a product of a set of skills–skills which require practice in order to perfect them.
And men start out with a tremendous disadvantage when it comes to developing those very skills based on the way we socialize boys and girls (and men and women, for that fact!). It seems clear to me that from a young age, females are praised and rewarded for recognizing and processing their emotions whereas males are praised and rewarded for denying and repressing their emotions.
If you disagree, I invite you to consider a theoretical story from the primary school playground to demonstrate the vastly different experiences growing up as a boy versus as a girl. Imagine you are a girl who is picked on by a boy at recess. You are annoyed and you decide to talk to someone about it. No matter who you talk to about how the situation is making you feel – a parent, a teacher, another student – you will certainly get some level of support and encouragement. Unless you clearly deliberately provoked the situation, the experience will be nothing but positive for you. In fact, even if you did provoke the situation, you will likely be reprimanded for your part, but your feelings about when the little boy “struck back” will also be affirmed.
Contrast that to a little boy being picked on by a girl in the same situation.
What is the reception he receives when he brings this issue to light? If he gets exactly the right person at exactly the right time he may get some support, but more than likely this is going to be a very different experience for him than for our female protagonist. He may be met with actual ridicule that he should be so upset about being picked on by a girl. If not outright ridicule, there will certainly be the expectation that he should be tough enough not to let things like that bother him.
At some level the message will be received: Don’t be a wimp. This is the classic “Big boys don’t cry” idea. But I think the message is received at an even deeper level than just holding back tears to appear strong. The overall theme is “Big boys don’t feel sad” and there is something wrong with you if you feel hurt in the first place. How could such an approach ever encourage a child to recognize, identify and process what he is feeling? The answer – It can’t. And worse still, this is not limited to the playground; this double standard continues through into adult life as well.
The stereotypical man is supposed to be “tough as nails”, basically a tower of emotionless strength and should expect to be ridiculed if he shows weakness.
I have heard women saying absolutely cutting things to men then ridiculing his “fragile male ego” when he takes it badly. This is not to disparage women. I know most women are not like that and that men can say very hurtful things as well. However, I do think it is strange that no one notices how things change when the situation is reversed. When a man says cruel things to a woman, everyone’s instinct is to (rightfully) label him a brute but no one ever talks about a “fragile female ego.” Everyone knows you aren’t supposed to talk to women like that. Too often, however, it is assumed that men should be tough enough to take whatever is said to them or (worse!) be so scary that no one would ever dare say it in the first place. Tragically, men learn quickly that being angry or being numb are the only two emotional options.
But let me make an impassioned plea to my brothers in Christ to not let this be the end of the discussion.
This “macho image” is an incredibly anemic view of what it means to be a man and we need to let it go. We can do so much better than that. And we must do better than that if we really want to seek emotional maturity.
Yet that exact mindset – for no good reason that I can see – still has a firm root in the church. Despite what some would teach, I see no basis for this “macho” view as the ideal for men in Scripture. Quite the opposite, in fact! The Bible is full of examples of strong men who felt deeply. From David pouring his heart out in the Psalms to our Saviour weeping over Lazarus, we have so much proof that feeling deeply does not make you any less of a man in God’s eyes. And yet somehow, we seem to have bought into that concept “hook line and sinker” and continue to pass it on to the next generation.
It needs to stop if we want to be healthy.
If you are a man who has a hard time putting words to his emotions. If you find yourself reacting emotionally to things and you don’t know why. Or if you are just scared of emotions in general, then please seek out help in this area.
If you like to read, maybe check out this list of books about emotional maturity. If reading is not your thing, seek out emotionally mature men to mentor you or work through these issues with a certified counsellor. The Bible tells us to “be mature” (James 1:4), to “grow up in all things” (Eph 4:14) and through all its pages, encourages us to be people of good character. But how can you possibly become spiritually mature when you have not yet learned how to identify and handle your own emotions? Being emotionally healthy is part of being fully human. Seek out the help you need and don’t settle for your current situation. God wants more for you.
But being an emotionally mature husband means more than just understanding and learning to process your own emotions; it means being able to interact with your wife in an emotionally healthy way.
And that is another area where I think we husbands often stumble. I am always struck by how often I hear about women wanting to connect to their husbands, but feeling like he is shutting them out. Whether in the comments section on the blog or in question & answer sessions at marriage conferences, this is a huge issue that keeps coming up again and again. I am not talking about outright stonewalling which is a separate issue. I mean the situation where it seems that the wife feels the need to connect more than the husband seems to want to.
I used to think this was a “knowledge gap”. I thought men just didn’t understand how being emotionally distant was hard on their wives. So I would explain that when you don’t make an effort to regularly connect with your wife on an emotional level, she interprets that as you not being invested in the relationship. A husband may not mean it that way, but it comes across to her as unloving, because “if you loved me, you would want to connect with me.”
I now realize that a “knowledge gap” can’t be the whole answer. I have seen too many situations where the husband knows this, but still does not change his behavior. HIs wife tends to conclude that her worst fears are true – that he truly is not invested in the relationship, that he doesn’t really love her. But I wonder if in at least some cases, the issue goes “back to the playground” and is fundamentally a manifestation of how some men handle a “skill gap” with regard to emotional maturity.
As Sheila pointed out in last week’s podcast, women perform better than men on most tests of emotional maturity. Given what I said above about how we socialize boys versus girls, this should come as no surprise to us. Of course they do! They have had more practice with the basic skills of handling their own emotions and interacting with others on an emotional level since they were children.
So in most marriages, when it comes to the skill set of maintaining relationships, the unfortunate reality is that the wife likely starts off with a larger and more impressive set of skills than the husband.
As a husband you then have two options: Either work on honing those skills yourself or saying, “Well, I guess relationship-building isn’t my thing” and leaving that task to your wife. It’s just a theory, but I wonder if many guys drift into a situation where their wife is doing most of the “relationship work” in the same way that he does most of the yard work or household repairs or the family finances. Couples tend to specialize; they recognize early on who is naturally better at certain tasks and (often without a word) they take over the areas they feel competent in and avoid the ones they feel incompetent in. The problem is that – unlike fixing a toilet or mowing the lawn – the work of maintaining a relationship is not a task that can be handled by one person alone. If you want your relationship to succeed, both husband and wife need to be engaged. I have talked about this on the blog before when I shared John Gottman’s research proving that emotionally intelligent husbands are the key to a lasting marriage.
Husbands, if we want our marriages to thrive, we need to start doing some of the “heavy lifting” emotionally speaking.
For many of us, that will be a frightening prospect. It may feel like we are taking on a task we have not been trained for – probably because for many of us we are taking on a task we have not been trained for!
But we absolutely cannot let that stop us! Remember that the components of emotional intelligence – like any set of skills – can be learned if we invest the time and energy. So get out there and practice! Commit to growing in emotionally maturity. Read blogposts and books about it. Or, if reading is not your thing, listen to podcasts.
And I have two other quick things that can help you!
1. A FREE email course that Sheila has set up to help you reconnect.
It’s a 5-email course, and each email has a different activity or skill you can do with your spouse to grow your emotional connection, including the high-low exercise Sheila and I talked about at the end of the last podcast. (Yes, it’s aimed at wives, but honestly, the exercises are the same whether you’re male or female).
2. The Intimately Us App
This will pique the attention of many of you–the Intimately Us intimacy and sex app! Sheila’s reviewed the app, but basically it helps you spice up your sex life by communicating more about what you like, what feels good, what you’d like to try–and also where we’re at in our relationship. The prompts give you discussion topics, help you share with each other, and, when you turn to the sexier parts of the app, also help you have great sex!
Intimately Us--the fun and sexy marriage app that helps you play more and explore more, while discovering more about the person you love!
Check it out!
That’s it, guys! Practice, practice, practice. And let’s stop calling men who are good with their emotions “feminine”, okay?
What do you think? Can handling emotions well be a learned skill? How did you learn (if you had to)? Let’s talk in the comments!
Posts in the Emotional Maturity Series:
Four Markers of Emotional Maturity
Do We Use God Language to Avoid Maturity?
2 Keys to Handling Stonewalling Behavior
6 Ways to Grow in Emotional Maturity
A Book List to Help with Emotional Maturity
What Does Emotional Maturity Look Like (Podcast)
When Christian Resources Perpetuate Your Spouse's Immaturity
How to Deal with Passive Aggressiveness
It's Not Feminine to Have Emotions (November 30)
And check out 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage--my book that covers emotional maturity. Plus there's a FREE group study you can take with it!
Keith Gregoire
Blog and Podcast Contributor, Co-Author with Sheila of two upcoming marriage books
Keith is the rock that supports Sheila, who runs this blog! Sheila and Keith married when Keith was attending Queen's University medical school in Kingston, Ontario. He later completed his residency in pediatrics at the Hospital for Sick Children, and has since directed the pediatric undergraduate program at Queen's University, and been Chief of Pediatrics at a community hospital in Belleville, Ontario. He and Sheila speak at marriage conferences around the world, and together they've also done medical missions in Kenya. Next up: They're authoring The Guy's Guide to Great Sex together! Plus, of course, he's an avid birdwatcher.
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Can We Talk about How Porn and Emotional Immaturity Are Related?
When we think of porn, we tend to think “sin”.
(It’s Sheila introducing this post, but I’m going to put Rebecca as the author since most of these are her words below!)
When it comes to porn, what if there’s more going on than just “sin”? What if an action can be sinful, but what if the impetus for that action was more based on trauma, or hurt? And what if that unresolved trauma makes it so much harder to quit the action?
This week on the blog there was a very interested and deep conversation between an anonymous guy and Rebecca (my daughter and the co-author of The Great Sex Rescue–it’s available for pre-order!). I think that conversation has the potential to be quite healing, so I’d like to share it here today. This conversation started in response to our podcast on emotional health and men, and how men aren’t hardwired to sin. (And these have been edited for brevity):
You say that men aren’t meant to sin sexually. And I totally agree with that but why is it that sex and porn are the most common things that men are drawn too?
I can so relate to Andrew’s story because it sounds so much like my own. I always struggled with fear and insecurities because of my emotionally abusive dad. And early on I found an erotic book at home and I got hooked and have sadly been since then. It got worse when I became a teen. I remember hearing my dad screaming at my mom and I felt so guilty and so much shame because I had just masturbated. And I felt that it was all my fault but still I went back to it.
And even after becoming saved it was still a struggle. And I wonder sometimes why? Why sex and porn if we aren’t overly sexual creatures? I didn’t grow up reading the books you mention and my mom and dad never had the talk with me. I heard that sex before marriage was wrong(my parents are christians) but not much more. But I felt like a monster the first time I ejaculated. And that shame and guilt follows. I guess a lot of these men defend this because they have to sometimes deal with their own monstrosity (many are just plain evil and defend it abuse people sadly). Because I know I try to deal with it. The constant feeling that you are horrible is something that eats you up.
My therapist (who sadly doesn’t think porn is wrong but understands that it is hurting me) thinks that the shame and guilt is a huge problem. She has even said that I shouldn’t read blogs like this because they usually just makes me feel worse when I feel that I can’t reach the level of perfection I should. And I wonder if that happens with many men. Specially when you hear that it shouldn’t be that difficult and we have the Holy Spirit and so on.
LIke my therapist told me today when she said that I need to stand strong when temptation comes and I said that yes it is that easy but why can’t I do it? and she then tells me that its not easy. That trying to minimize the enormous task it is only adds more shame because it just more and more builds up the idea that something is awfully wrong with me. Which I am still convinced about.
Men in the church haven’t known how to deal with it and then have had to find a way to somehow excuse or accept it. Because if there are so many men watching porn and not stopping, are all those men bad? Doesn’t that just show that men are evil and women are just better?
My story hasn’t ended as well as Andrew’s though. My search to deal with the problems I had led me to a sexual relationship with my now wife, both wanted it. But I realize now that it wasn’t based on love on my part. A regret I live with and try to deal with . It has sadly been through porn for a long time but I am trying to get better so that I at least can be a decent husband for her.
Anonymous
When we say men weren’t created to sin sexually, what we mean is that there IS freedom and sexual sin isn’t simply a birthright of being male. There are many gender differences in terms of destructive behaviours–women are far more likely to self-harm in high school and attempt suicide than their male counterparts, but we don’t say God made girls to be suicidal. Women also are around 2x as likely to experience some sort of anxiety disorder than their male counterparts are but, again, we don’t say that anxiety is “every woman’s battle” and we don’t tell women that are anxious, “Well, that’s just a part of being a woman.” Rather, we help them fix it and we say, “This doesn’t need to be your entire life. There is hope.” And then of course, there are eating disorders which range from 3 times to 9 times as likely for women to develop than men, depending on the criteria used to define an eating disorder.
I think your musings about the acceptance of pornography use are really insightful, and I think one of the big problems with dealing with the porn problem in churches is that it’s dealt with simply as a sin issue that we just have to muscle our way through to resist. But for many men porn use stems from sexual abuse in childhood, including being far too young when they were first exposed to pornography. If a man’s first exposure to sex was seeing a violent porn clip when he was were 10 years old, and that triggered a porn addiction because of curiosity and shame that led to diminished coping skills because porn became his only real way to handle stress for 8 years, that’s going to need a lot more to overcome than simply confessing and deciding to not do it again.
Women are not more spiritual than men, our struggles are often just different. Because yes, this is more of a pull for men on average than it is for women. And there will be some men who have life-long struggles with it. But not all. And that’s missing in the conversation.
But what else is missing is WHY men get hooked on porn to begin with. And a lot of times it’s stories like yours–emotional abuse, shame and embarrassment, a lack of education about healthy sexuality, a lack of open conversation. Imagine how your story may have been different if instead of yelling at you when they found out, you were able to have real open and honest dialogue about this where you weren’t shamed for having sexual curiosity but instead you were coached and helped to understand healthy sexual expression when you were 12, 13, 14. I guess my question is, with all of these other factors in the equation, why is the immediate assumption that you got hooked on porn because you were male? Because reading your story it would make sense that if you were in a healthier environment it may not have happened to you. So the issue may not be maleness as much as abuse and dysfunctional dynamics that affect women and men differently. If you were a girl, perhaps you may have still had a porn problem. Perhaps you may have developed an eating disorder to cope with the feelings of worthlessness. Perhaps you would have attempted suicide. There’s no way of knowing. But the issue for many is not maleness: it’s trauma, frankly.
I’m not a therapist clearly, but I just hope I can encourage you to have compassion for yourself, especially your younger self. You were a little boy, you were in an environment where you did not feel emotionally safe and did not have anyone teaching you about how God made sexuality to be more than a set of rules. Your adolescent brain was desperately seeking some way to cope and relieve stress and feelings of inadequacy, and pornography and erotica offered some comfort. Obviously that’s a maladaptive and unhealthy strategy, but I hope you can see yourself not just as a horrible sinner but forgive that confused, hurt little boy you were when this all started. Self-compassion can be a huge tool on the road to healing, no matter what the issue at hand is.
Rebecca Lindenbach
What you say makes sense but as you say I think the problem is that it is treated only as a sin issue. The examples you talk about women aren’t seen as sin issues. They are often a consequence of a messed up world who treats women as objects. It’s easier to see that women in that position need help.
Porn is often seen as something else. The monster inside so to speak and as I said I think that many times the men in the church don’t know how to deal with it and don’t understand the why so at the same time as they want to say that its wrong they have to deal with their own shame and failure in this and then I guess it comes out like they are saying that we cant do anything about it. I believe some just use it as an excuse to continue to sin but I do think some genuinely want to quit. I know many of the books the blog mentions are bad but I have also heard many men who has read the book and overcome their sin and says that it really helped them. But maybe they overcome it in the wrong way?
I do think as you say that the church must become more (dare I say it) therapeutic. The church need licensed therapist and more teaching about how we humans work on a psychological level. Specially when it comes to porn. But sadly we don’t. Instead the message is shame and guilt. To be honest, your answer was one of the first even on this blog where the message doesn’t sound like all men are the worst. But i guess that my own shame filters what I read and just makes me feel worse. So the church need to introduce more psychology at the same time as not losing the message that with Christ we can overcome everything. Because thats another risk that when we know the cause of the problem we just give up and blame it on our past. My therapist has called me out on that (even tough she wishes I would let go of the shame thing and just accept that its ok to watch porn every now and then) and has said that I need to take responsibility and decide what to do with instead of finding excuses. Something I think is an important part of maturing emotionally.
Lastly I just want to say that my parents weren’t screaming because I had masturbated. My father was screaming at my mother because they had problems and my dad always screamed and was emotionally abusive. I sat in my room but I had learned that God punishes sin so I blamed myself for my parents marital problems and my fathers behaviour. Me masturbating had unleashed God’s anger. And that’s tough to live with even to this day. My parents didn’t believe in therapy and thought psychology was bad because it could lead people astray from God. I don’t know how common that is in churches but I think that can also make it difficult for men to find help. Many times we are referred to pastors who aren’t licensed therapists and then we don’t receive the help we need.
Anonymous
Sheila just interjecting in the conversation here and say that I completely agree with Anonymous that we need more licensed therapists! Most pastors are not equipped to handle issues of shame, childhood trauma, etc. etc. That’s why, when we’re talking about healing from porn use, I tend to always point people to licensed counselors (not necessarily biblical counselors, but Christian licensed counselors), and especially those who are trauma informed and who understand about sexual health. We need to understand this not just as a simple sin issue, but as something far more complex. I completely agree that too often guys just go to pastors, and that compounds the shame. You need to see people who are actually equipped in this stuff!
Okay, on with the conversation:
Yeah, I think you’re right and we need to change the conversation so that there is a clear understanding that for many, many men porn use stemmed from a serious hurt or an emotional vacuum in their childhood or adolescence.
If we use the analogy of swimming a length of a pool, it’s perfectly valid and reasonable to say, “It’s not hard to swim a length of the pool.” But if a bunch of the men showed up to the pool wearing 17th century armor and never learning how to swim because they were spending their time learning to joust instead, swimming is going to feel like an impossible task. And what has happened is men have said, “Well swimming is impossible so this must just be men’s struggle.” They don’t ask, “What is in the way of me swimming and how can I overcome that?” They just try to muscle through and swim with the armor on, using the skills they have for jousting. And it’s a disaster.
With porn, we say, “Men can live a life free from porn.” But that’s not going to happen until men also understand that for many people, the struggle with porn is made so much more difficult because of all this baggage, and because instead of learning healthy coping skills during adolescence, many young boys used porn, so they lack the very skills needed to cope with stress without the aid of sexually explicit materials as an escape. They lack the skills they need to quit the porn!
What I hope is that we can start changing the conversation so that removing that armor and learning new skills isn’t seen as excuses, but as a part of the healing process. Because that’s not blaming it on the past, that’s just recognizing reality and choosing to change your trajectory while shedding that which is holding you back!
I also want to say, Anon, that your story really isn’t over. And if your therapist isn’t helping you, you can always consider searching for a therapist who understands pornography trauma and the negative effects of pornography (there are many out there, both Christian and secular!). But of course, I don’t know your whole story and if you’re getting good care that’s fantastic.
But God really doesn’t work that way, where he punishes you for sins like that. I think God likely had a lot of compassion for the small, confused you back then. And understanding God’s compassion for us can make such a difference in how we see ourselves, our story, and our standing before God. Said a prayer for you today, I really do feel for your struggle.
Rebecca Lindenbach
I thought that was such a helpful conversation that may help others as well. Let’s remember that porn use is often rooted in shame and emotional hurt as adolescents, and then, in adolescence, those boys (and girls) didn’t learn the very coping patterns they would need to be able to fight the porn use later.
That’s not to say that porn use isn’t bad in a marriage, or that we should just accept it. But we do need a more nuanced conversation about the harm that porn does. Yes, it harms the wives of porn users. Yes, it DEFINITELY harms those in porn, and contributes to sex trafficking. But it also harms the porn user, especially if that person began watching porn when they were very young. Think of the effect of watching all of that violence and degradation when you weren’t emotionally able to handle it. This leaves a mark, and to get over it we don’t just need repentance, but healing from that trauma as well–and a realization that in many cases you missed key steps in maturity growing up, and it’s now incumbent on you to seek treatment and learn those steps.
What do you think? Has porn use ever caused trauma to you, or those you know? Let’s talk in the comments!
Are you a regular reader and commenter on this blog?
For the last two weeks, we’ve had issues with the comments section, where if you tried to reply to someone, the comment didn’t show up as a reply to them, but as a totally new comment. We THINK (hope?) that we’ve got it sorted out! But for it to work for you, you may need to clear your cache on your browser. You can Google how to do that on your browser pretty easily, and it’s actually a good idea to do it every so often anyway. But then the comments should work again!
And if you’re new here–you shouldn’t have a problem at all!
Sorry about all of that!
Posts in the Pornography Series:
Top 10 Effects of Porn on Your Brain, Your Marriage and Your Sex Life
When Porn Wrecks YOUR Sex Drive–Not Just Your Husband’s
Defeating Porn: Are We Creating Panic?
4 Things You Must Do if Your Husband Uses Porn
4 Stages of Porn Recovery: What Porn Recovery in Marriage Looks Like
The Truth About Porn’s Role in Sex Trafficking
How to Break the Stronghold of Porn
PODCAST: Marital Rape, Consent, and the Problem with “Obligation Sex”
Resources to Help Kids & Adults Understand Consent and Sexual Assault
Defeating Porn: A Look Ahead at The Next Generation
Motivation for Men to Fight Pornography
And don't forget to check out Covenant Eyes to help protect your children from pornography--and to provide filtering during the recovery period.
Rebecca Lindenbach
Blog Contributor, Author, and Podcaster
Rebecca Lindenbach is a psychology graduate, Sheila’s daughter and the author of Why I Didn’t Rebel. Working alongside her husband Connor, she develops websites focusing on building Jesus-centered marriages and families. Living the work-from-home dream, they take turns bouncing their new baby boy, and appeasing their curmudgeonly rescue Yorkshire terrier, Winston. ENTJ, 9w8. Check out Why I Didn't Rebel, or follow her on Instagram!
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November 26, 2020
A Personal Post: If You Grew Up with My Girls, Can We Have a Word?
It’s American Thanksgiving today, and I wasn’t going to post anything because most of my readers are American, and I wanted a day off anyway.
But over the last few weeks a number of things have happened that have made me worried and alarmed about what’s going on in the lives of some of the young adults who grew up with my daughters.
And so, since we’re Canadian anyway, I thought I might take today to give a personal message to those kids.
My girls were involved with a lot of churches, youth groups, homeschooling groups, and church activities as teenagers, and I was right there with them, super involved. I got to know most of their friends quite well–or at least we certainly talked!
But what I’ve been realizing is that, as well as I thought I knew their friends, I really didn’t know what was going on behind closed doors.
And I now know that some who grew up with Becca and Katie were living with abuse–physical, emotional, and sexual.
Some of your stories I’ve become familiar with more recently, and I’m so, so sorry I didn’t see the red flags when I knew you. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t connect the dots and step in where I could have.
But I know, or suspect, that there are others of you where I don’t know your stories, but you still have them.
And because I was so involved with all of you, I feel a sense of responsibility, or at least a sense that I want to do what I can to help. I genuinely loved the kids who hung out with my girls, and I genuinely care about you now, too, even if I haven’t seen you in a decade.
If you were abused when you were growing up, whether it be by a family member or by someone else, and you knew my girls personally and know me personally, and if you’d like some help, I would like to try to get you connected with people who can help you. If you’re trying to process what happened to you, and if it’s affecting your relationships now, I would love to connect you with the help you need.
You can find me on Facebook or email me (or text me; my number hasn’t changed in 10 years, though we don’t answer our old home phone number). If you do, I will not tell Becca or Katie that you did so. Or, if you’re more comfortable, you can text or DM Becca, and she can tell me in broad terms what the issues are and I can try to help without knowing who you are.
I don’t want to message the people that I’m thinking about directly, because you may not be ready, and I don’t want to put you in an awkward position if I ask you directly. But I thought I would just say this here, because there’s a good chance some of you may see it. Know that you can talk to me, and I will keep it confidential (unless it is something that must be reported to authorities).
And if you are in an abusive marriage, and you don’t know what to do, and you feel trapped, please contact me, too, and I will try to get you some local support. I know that among the moms I used to hang out with are some in difficult situations and, again, I would like to help where I can.
(If you haven’t been in a social circle with me or my daughters, I’m not in a position to help. But please reach out for help from someone else! Call a domestic abuse hotline in the country, province, or state where you are. They can often point you to resources and counsel you on next steps. And check out the bottom of this blog post for links to support groups online.)
Thanks for letting me say that–and Happy Thanksgiving again to all my American friends.
